The best cellos were made in Italy – just think of Antonio Stradivari in Cremona or Matteo Goffriller in Venice – but France set decisive standards in cello playing from the 18th century until today. To name just a few names: Pablo Casals, Pierre Fournier, Paul Tortelier, Maurice Gendron, André Navarra or today Gautier Capuçon, they all bear witness to a proud line of tradition. Therefore there are also outstanding compositions from France for the baritone among the string instruments. The great cellomaster Daniel Müller-Schott shows on his new CD how witty, virtuoso and passionate composers like Camille Saint-Saëns, Gabriel Fauré, Arthur Honegger and Édouard Lalo understood the cello as an eloquent, extremely flexible “speaking” solo instrument. Together with the DSO Berlin under Alexandre Bloch Saint-Saëns’ famous first cello concerto turns into a fine parlance between the soloist and the orchestra. That never sounds fat or German-strenuous. Fauré’s elegy, on the other hand, demands intensity of expression, the energy to increase, and yet it has to be dynamically precisely balanced and must never sound like panting and toiling, which succeeds convincingly here. Honegger’s three-movement concerto from 1929 thrives on punctuation, briefness and sometimes percussive directness. The highlight of the CD is probably Lalo’s far too seldom played cello adventure with a Spanish flavor. Müller-Schott’s Goffriller cello sounds as supple as it is gripping, as in love with rhythm in the gorgeous intermezzo movement as it is fiery in the glowing finale. (Orfeo)
The Jewish Chamber Orchestra plays Alexander Zemlinsky.
(Photo: SZ-Bildverarbeitung / JCOM)
Night and dream are original musical regions. Since the romantic era at the latest, moons have been shining, stars twinkling and the nocturnal sky company arches over lonely and unhappy lovers, inconsolable wanderers along rushing brooks, or pauses music so magically that one hardly dares to breathe. Alexander Zemlinsky, whose birthday will be on October 14th, 2021 for the 150th time, was a master of night and dream music, this applies to his operas as well as to songs and chamber music. The Munich Jewish Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Grossmann got with the baritone Thomas E. Bauer released a CD with seven songs from op. 2 and op. 5, written in 1895/96. In addition, a chamber concert version of Zemlinsky’s piano trio, also from 1896. These are successful hybrid versions of these songs and the trio, which were written for voice and piano. Richard Dünser orchestrated so richly and audibly, and singers and musicians sing and play so vividly that the wonderful mixture of dark Brahms associations and glistening Wagnerian feverishness of the young Zemlinsky comes out effectively. (JCOM)
Gaia Sokoli has rediscovered Fanny Mendelssohn.
(Photo: SZ-Bildverarbeitung / Piano Classics)
The young Italian pianist Gaia Sokoli, Born in 1998, did not make the typical mistake of aspiring talents on their first CD, hopefully recording hits like Chopin’s Etudes or Beethoven Sonatas, of which there have already been countless recordings. Rather, she dedicated herself to the sonatas of a composer whose brother loved her sister and respected her as an equal and most important conversation partner and letter partner, but jealously refused to acknowledge her great talent. It’s only slowly becoming clear that Fanny Mendelssohn, married Hensel, Felix’s older sister, also had great musical abilities. Gaia Sokoli shows how imaginative, varied and compositionally sovereign Fanny designed her sonatas. The late 1843 in G minor in particular has a dramatic approach, austere harmony and an abundance of figures and characters. The fact that there is a certain Mendelssohn similarity in sensation and lightness of hand in the siblings cannot be overheard, but not in the sense of imitation or epigoneism. Fanny’s music is less nervous than Felix’s. It never comes up trumps, but it knows surprising sound clearings and a kind of witty secrecy. Even if Gaia Sokoli relies too much on a passepartout sound for the different pieces and thus levels the variety and structures, her commitment to these interesting pieces is commendable. (Piano Classics)
Quatuor Ébène: The instrumental rush “’round midnight”.
(Photo: SZ-Bildverarbeitung / Erato)
Finally, a reference to another CD with night music, which was a brilliant success. The fantastic Quatuor Ébène Not only does Henri Dutilleux’s quartet masterpiece “Ainsi la Nuit” play as inflamed as it is disciplined, as lurking and expectant in the interludes as it is attacking and beguilingly beautiful in the nocturnal excursions, but also together with the excellent violist Antoine Tamestit and the brilliant cellist Nicolas Altstaedt Arnold Schönberg’s sextet “Transfigured Night”. This is a first class instrumental high. Between these peaks, the Ébène cellist Raphaël Merlin has hung a sophisticated, somewhat long bridge of jazz allusions. The whole company is just great! (Erato)