Tchaikovsky ~ The Seasons - Vladimir Asheknazy: Piano

Much of Tchaikovsky's piano music is trivia written for the salon, so a pianist must select carefully to hold our interest. Ashkenazy plays the entire series commonly mistranslated as The Seasons (it should beThe Months, of course), pieces Tchaikovsky ground out under pressure for a monthly magazine. The pressure seems to have inspired him, as these are lovely miniatures. The additional pieces are also lovely, especially the Berceuse from Op. 72 (Tchaikovsky's last piano music), a breathtakingly beautiful piece. Best of all, Ashkenazy plays this music with total sympathy and a kind of rich piano tone he doesn't always exhibit, convincingly caught by Decca's engineers. Tchaikovsky completists may want to look elsewhere, but this is as fine a single-disc selection of his piano music as you will find. Vladimir Ashkenazy plays with much conviction and brilliance these lesser known works composed for the piano by Tchaikovsky. Undoubtedly the best is his performance of the Berceuse, the composer's last work for the piano, but those of the "The Seasons" are rich in pathos and other complex emotional shading too. Without question, Ashkenazy's performances of these works are compelling reasons why they should no longer be neglected.

tracks
01. Meditation, Op.72 No.5 (5:29)
02. Polka Peu Dansante, Op.51 No.2 (4:46)
03. Aveu Passione (3:07)
04. Tendres Reproches, Op.72 No.3 (3:18)
05. Berceuse, Op.72 No.2 (6:37)

Les Saisons, Op.37A 

06 Janvier. Au Coin Du Feu (5:10)
07 Fevrier. Carnaval (2:35)
08 Mars. Chant De L'alouette (2:53)
09 Avril. Perce - Neige (2:40)
10 Mai. Les Nuits De Mai (4:50)
11 Juin. Barcarolle (5:25)
12 Juillet. Chant Du Faucheur (1:42)
13 Aout. La Moisson (3:05)
14 Septembre. La Chasse (2:27)
15 Octobre. Chant D'automne (5:17)
16 Novembre. Troika (2:57)
17 Decembre. Noel (4:19)

Novembre: Troika

 Decembre: Noel 

Franz Liszt ~ The Piano Works Vol. 1

This recital represents a well-planned view of several sides of Liszt's multi-Faceted genius. And whether you warm to him as a nationalist poet, ardent lyricist, diabolist, elegist or intricate and mischievous arranger of other people's music, here you t will find his art in all its infinite variety.The Twelfth Hungarian Rhapsody (1853) is a notably eloquent and flamboyant example of a hybrid form. Decried by Liszt's detractors as paste rather than diamonds, the Hungarian Rhapsodies are of mixed gypsy origin rather than true Magyar descent, yet this in no way compromises their very real qualities. In the Twelfth, high drama alternates with a relaxed charm, and the music's mercurial changes of mood and dress are accentuated by vivid contrasts of register, texture and rhythm. The third Liebestraum (c 1850, subtitled "Nocturne") has achieved an even greater popularity than the Rhapsody. An arrangement of his setting of Ferdinand Freiligrath's "O love as long as you can love", Liszt's florid and impassioned treatment of his own heart-easing melody is in sharp contrast to the more pungent view of love represented by the First Mephisto Waltz (1859-60).(more in the booklet)

tracks

1. Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 (10:27)
2. Liebestraum No. 3 (4:54)
3. Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (11:35)
4. Funérailles (11:20)
5. Rigoletto (Verdi) - Concert Paraphrase (7:04)
6. La Campanella (1851) (5:06)

La Campanella

Chee Yun ~ Violin Concertos - Mendelssohn / Vieuxtemps

Chee-Yun, who was born in the South Korean capital of Seoul, began the violin at the age of six. She was awarded the Grand Prize at the Korean Times Competition when she was eight, and thereafter gave frequent performan¬ces with all the leading Korean orchestras. She moved at the age of thirteen to the United States and was immediately invited to perform the Vieuxtemps Concerto No. 5 with the New York Philharmonic. She then entered the Juilliard School of Music, since when she has been taught by Dorothy DeLay, Hyo Kang and Felix Galimir (chamber music). In 1985 she appeared as so¬loist with the New York String Orchestra under Alexander Schneider at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. In 1988 she was awarded first prize in the concerto competition at Juilliard. As a recitalist, she made her New York debut in 1989. In 1990 she was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. In the summer of that year she took part in the Marlboro music festival, study¬ing chamber  music performance under Rudolf Serkin and Alexander Schneider.

Chee Yun & Jesus Lopez Cobos

More recently Chee-Yun has appeared as a soloist with many leading orchestras including the Washington National Symphony Orchestra, the New York Chamber Orchestra, the Cincin¬nati Symphony Orchestra, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under such conductors as Mi¬chael Tilson-Thomas, Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman and Yoel Levy. She has given recitals throughout the United States and has also toured the United Kingdom, Japan and Korea as a recitalist. Her performances have in¬variably met with an ecstatic reception from both audiences and sponsors, resulting in fre¬quent re-engagements. In the autumn of 1993 she was invited to appear as a soloist at a cere¬mony held at the White House, where she per¬formed before President and Mrs Clinton, lead¬ing members of the United States government and other notables. In June 1994 she was fortu¬nate enough to be invited by Isaac Stern to ap¬pear in the farewell concert to mark Rostropovich's departure from the Washington National Symphony Orchestra, and performed on this oc¬casion as a soloist together with Jean-Pierre Rampal, Isaac Stern and Yo-Yo Ma. Chee-Yun is very popular among the producers at Ameri¬can FM radio stations broadcasting classical music: she has appeared frequently on stations such as WQXR and WNCN and was also fea¬tured on "KTV", a children's program on the CNBC cable network. She is thus become in¬creasingly well-known throughout the United States.

tracks
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E Minor, Op.64
1. I Allegro molto appassionato 13:48
2. II Andante 8:45
3. Ill Allegretto non troppo—Allegro molto vivace 6:49

Henri Vieuxtemps
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra No.5 in A Minor. Op.37
4. Allegro non troppo 15:24
5. Adagio 4:10
6. Allegro con fuoco 1: 11

Mendelssohn: Allegro molto appassionato (excerpt) 

Meditations for a Summer Evening

Frederick Delius (1862-1934) 

Summer Evening Summer Evening was composed and premiered in 1890, and was not heard again until 1949 when it was rescued from almost total obscurity by Sir Thomas Beecham, Delius's interpretive champion. The work's arabesque-like, gently swirling melodies are plangently scored and lushly harmonized with the yearning nostalgia so characteristic of the composer. It is rich and full bodied in its romantic expression and perfectly sets the meditative mood for a summer evening.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Nocturne from A Midsummer Nighfs Dream
This lovely fairy music evokes the mist of the wooded scene in which the characters in William Shakespeare's comedy all find rest from their silly quarrels.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikvosky (1840-1893) Elegy from Serenade for Strings
The autumn of 1880 was a relatively serene period in Tchaikovsky's life. It was at this time that he composed his elegant Serenade for Strings, a work that he maintained was "written by chance." The Serenade was very close to the composer's heart, and the haunting Elegy exhibits great harmonic richness and intensity of emotion as it invites us into the composer's inner soul. 

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Adagio and Rondo from The Firebird The Firebird, dating from 1910, was the first in the trilogy of scores composed for the Russian Ballet - the other two being The Rite of Spring and Petrouchka. The scenario in six scenes is based on the Russian legend of the magical Firebird and the Prince who captures him and extracts a feather. He later encounters a group of maidens and falls in love with one of them. Captured by the evil fairy, Katschei, the Prince summons the Firebird with the magic feather. The Firebird arrives to break the spell and free the Prince to marry the maiden.

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) Larghetto from Serenade for Strings
Dvorak's Serenade for Strings is a work in five movements written at a time of great happiness for the composer. It reflects his joy during the early years of his marriage and is reflected in the beautifully serene fourth movement - the Larghetto.

Frederick Delius (1862-1934) At Night from the Florida Suite
The Florida Suite is a vivid evocation in music of Delius's memories of the sights, sounds and impressions of the Solano Grove in Florida, where the young composer had been sent by his father to grow oranges, and where instead he rebelled by studying and composing music. In the final movement of this work, At Night, Delius celebrates a time when feeling and passion are at their most poignantly individual and unrestrained.

Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934) Dream Children
Dream Children is a pair of brief idylls, composed in 1902, which take their title from an essay by Charles Lamb titled, 'Dream-Children; a Reverie/ from which Elgar quotes in the score: "...And while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech: 'We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all....We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been'..."

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956) Nocturne from Love's Labours Lost
Finzi originally composed incidental music to Shakespeare's comedy for a BBC broadcast in 1946. In 1952, he created a Suite for the Cheltenham Festival based on the little snippets he composed in 1946. The following year an open air production of Love's Labours Lost was produced with the Southend Shakespeare Society. The Nocturne was added for this production to allow a scene-change from the park outside the King's to the Princess's dwelling. The hushed mood of evening is perfectly evoked in this tender excerpt.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) Quiet City
Our retrospective of the sounds of a summer evening ends with the mournful sounds of a trumpet being played into the haunting stillness of the night. Quiet City was drawn in 1940 from incidental music written the previous year for a play by Irwin Shaw. Like Barber's Adagio for Strings, which recalls Bach in its broad melodic lines, this short piece contains echoes of the Baroque in the rhythms of its central solo for English Horn. Yet the spirit is uniquely of our time and uniquely American. It evokes a potent image of urban America and the sounds of a great city on a sultry summer evening.

tracks

01. Delius - Summer Evening (6:08)
02. Mendelssohn - A Midsummer Night's Dream - Nocturne (6:40)
03. Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 - Elegy (9:29)
04. Stravinsky - The Firebird - Adagio (5:01)
05. Stravinsky - The Firebird - Rondo (4:48)
06. Dvorak - Serenade for Strings in E, Op. 22 - Larghetto (5:44)
07. Delius - Florida Suite - At Night (7:49)
08. Elgar - Dream Childre, Op. 43 (8:00)
09. Finzi - Love's Labours Lost - Nocturne (3:19)
10. Copland - Quiet City (9:09)
mp3, 320kbps, artwork

Dvorak - Serenade for Strings in E, Op. 22 - Larghetto 

New Age Bach ~ The Goldberg Variations

There is something about Bach's music that has made it appealing to every period. Its universality seems to have something to do with the fact that it can be interpreted and arranged in a seemingly infinite number of ways without losing its essential qualities, its inner core. At any rate, it is a fact that each generation has appropriated him for one of its own. Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven had already re-discovered Bach before the end of his own century. The romantics romanticized him. In the 1920s Stravinsky fed a "Back to Bach" movement and a bit later did some Bachian recomposition of his own. Jazz musicians discovered an extraordinary affinity with Barb's music early on (jazz and baroque music share many features) and there is, among other items, a recording made in the late 1930s of Bach's Concerto for Two Violins with Stephane CrappeUi and Eddie South accompanied by Django Reinhardt that must be heard to he believed. After World War II. the Swingle Singers developed the Bach-jazz idea in vocal form and, in 50 doing, revealed a rather unsuspected pop side to Bach s music. And, of course, Walter (later Wendy) Carlos brought Bach into the elec­tronic age with the famous and popular "Switched-On Bach1' recordings.

tracks

01. Aria (2:41)

02. Variations 1 - 3 (4:17)

03. Variations 4 - 6 (3:40)

04. Variations 7 - 9 (3:55)

05. Variations 10 - 12 (5:35)

06. Variations 13 - 15 (7:10)

07. Variations 16 - 18 (3:21)

08. Variations 19 - 21 (4:57)

09. Variations 22 - 24 (5:01)

10. Variations 25 - 27 (6:29)

11. Variations 28 - 30 (3:55)

12. Aria da Capo (2:33)

mp3, 192kbps, artwork

Aria

Variations 1 - 3