Igor Stravinsky

Miniatures

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Tango
Concerto pour orchestre à cordes en ré majeur
Concertino (arrangement d'une œuvre originale pour quatuor à cordes)
Octuor pour instruments à vent (version révisée de 1952)
3 Pièces pour quatuor à cordes
Praeludium pour ensemble de jazz
Ragtime
Duo pour bassons
Fanfare for a new theatre
Scherzo à la russe pour orchestre de jazz
Suites pour petit orchestre
N° 1 : I. Andante - II. Napolitana - III. Española - IV. Balalaïka
N° 2 : I. Marche - II. Valse - III. Polka - IV. Galop

Ce CD propose des œuvres rares du compositeur russe où sa science de la couleur et des sonorités instrumentales fait merveille. Des influences multiples, depuis la musique de la Renaissance jusqu'au Jazz, et un humour omniprésent rendent ces pièces typiques de l'univers de Stravinski.
Interprétation de référence, digne de ces merveilles miniatures.

This recording was highly praised when released and in 2001 was awarded a Grammy.
Stravinsky never had much time for conventions. His teacher Rimsky-Korsakov was similarly maverick, and was at his best when free of the strictures of the symphony and classical form. Stravinsky openly defied the Austro-German way of doing things, and adopted an unpredictable (if at times neo classical) style, and this CD contains some of the smaller works he produced that illustrate is unique, and sometimes quirky style. The two Suites were arranged from the original piano pieces intended for children. The three pieces for string quartet are unlike anything form the period – 1914. No sign of late romanticism here, or of the Second Viennese School. It is an utterly unique and new sound word – icy, different, but very Russian. The Octet sounds superficially like a dissonant wind divertimento by Mozart.

Stravinsky’s opposition to the traditional structures of classical music softened a little towards the end of his life, and the Scherzo a la Russe and the Concerto in D for strings illustrate this well with their less spiky sound, and longer melodic lines. The complete list of pieces is: Tango, Suites for small orchestra, Concerto in D for strings, Concertino, Octet for winds, 3 Pieces for string quartet, Ragtime, Duet for two Bassoons, Fanfare for a New Theatre, and the Scherzo à la Russe for jazz orchestra.

Vivaldi, Du Puy, Villa-Lobos, Olthuis

Bassoon Concertos [Bram Van Sambeek]

Performer: Sinfonia Rotterdam, Bram Van Sambeek (bassoon)

Concerto for bassoon, strings and basso continuo in E major, RV484  (Antonio Vivaldi)
Concerto for bassoon and string orchestra in A major  (Edouard Du Puy)
Ciranda das sete notas for bassoon and string orchestra  (Hector Villa-Lobos)
Capricho for bassoon and string orchestra (rev. 2008)  (Kees Olthuis)

Bram van Sambeek (born 1980) decided to play the bassoon at the age of ten.  After graduating at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague he took lessons with Gustavo Núñez , and took masterclasses with Klaus Thunemann and Sergio Azzolini. As a student, he won prizes at the Princess Christina Competition and he received 2nd prize at the international Gillet-Fox Competition in Utah, USA. In 2009 Bram van Sambeek became the first bassoonist ever to receive the Dutch Music Award and he received a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award in 2011. He worked as Principal bassoonist of the Rotterdam Philharmonic from 2002 until 2011 and now focusses on chamber music and solo work. Working together with musicians such as Alexei Ogrintchouk, Julius Drake, Inon Barnatan, Liza Ferschtman and Jörg Widmann at chamber music festivals such as West Cork, Oxford and Delft, Bram van Sambeek has also been a soloist with orchestras such as the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Georgian Sinfonietta. Current and future work includes a focus especially on broadening the contemporary repertoire of bassoon concertos. He currently teaches at Codarts, the Conservatory of Rotterdam.

Un programme passionnant et original présentant le basson sous ses aspects baroque, romantique, moderne et contemporain. Français d'origine, Edouard Du Puy passa une grande partie de sa vie comme directeur musical à la cour de Suède où il se lia d'amitié avec Franz Berwald et Bernard Crusell. Le compositeur contemporain néerlandais Kees Olthuis s'est inspiré pour son Capricho pour basson et orchestre d'une forme espagnole du 17e siècle.
Né en 1980, Bram van Sambeek est premier basson de l'Orchestre Philharmonique de Rotterdam et commence à faire parler de lui dans des concerts ou enregistrements solo acclamés par la presse et le public.

Bernat Vivancos

Bernat Vivancos Music
 

NOTA : it's not music from a CD

Messe aux sons des Cloches 1-Kyrie

Messe aux sons des Cloches 2-Gloria

Messe aux sons des Cloches 3-Sanctus
Messe aux sons des Cloches 4-Agnus Dei
Nigra Sum
Contemplació polièdrica de nu femení I.
Contemplació polièdrica de nu femení III. 
Sonatina Ligeti
Ombres 1.
Ombres 2.
Ombres 3.
El cant dels ocells
Codex. Tres glosses sobre fragments del LLibre V… 
Codex. Tres glosses sobre fragments del LLibre V… 
Codex. Tres glosses sobre fragments del LLibre V… 
Salve Regina 'Monteverdi'
Escil.la
La ciutat dels àngels
La ciutat dels àngels II.1 
La ciutat dels àngels II.2 
Dues evocacions sobre proverbis amorosos a l'est… 
Dues evocacions sobre proverbis amorosos a l'est… 
Dues cançons populars catalanes de Nadal. El can… 
Dues cançons populars catalanes de Nadal. El Noi… 
Nigra es, pulchra sum 
Sis cançons mallorquines. Cançó d'olivarers 
Sis cançons mallorquines. Cançó de s'espadar 
Sis cançons mallorquines. Cançó des caçador 
Improvisation 
Messe aux sons des cloches. Agnus Dei 
Blau I. 
Blau II. 
Ombre des rêves I. 
Ombre des rêves II. 
Nigra sum 
Maria, la Verge 
Tres pregàries per abans d'anar a dormir. Ave Maria 
Tres pregàries per abans d'anar a dormir. Pareno…
Tres pregàries per abans d'anar … 
Es ist ein Ros entsprungen 
Stille Nacht 
Dialogues 
Suite française Choral 
Suite française Bagatelle 
Suite française Danse du bourdon 
Moustik's étude 
Les trois moustiquier's
Images 
Bonus track: El gran alquimista: Cançó de laboratori 
Bonus track: Bach x 3 

Most of this music is World Premiere Recording (live recorded?)

Biography

• Born in Barcelona on 1973.

• Escolania de Montserrat (1983-1987), studies of piano, violin and organ under the direction of P. Ireneu Segarra.

• Studies of violin with Eva Graubin (1987-1991).

• Studies of piano with Maria Canals and Raquel Millàs. Ars Nova (Barcelona), graduating with a First Degree from the Academy of Music of Barcelona. Important piano soloist activity, awarded in numerous national and international piano contests (1988-1998).

• Studies of Composition with David Padrós, and of Harmony and Counterpoint with Xavier Boliart (1987-1997).

• Chapel Master of the Manresa Cathedral and head organist of the Notre Dame of the Angels Sanctuary in Barcelona (1997-1998).

• Publishes the book "Àngel Rodamilans, evocació i recerca" (1997).

• Conservatoire de Paris, CNSMDP (1998-2003), studies at with Guy Reibel and Fréderic Durieux (Composition), Laurent Cuniot, Luis Naon, Yan Geslin (New Technologies), Marc-André Dalvabie (Orchestration) and Alain Louvier (Analysis), wining in 2002 the Prix of Analysis and Orchestration, and in 2003 the Prix of Composition of the Conservatoire and the DFS (Diplôme de Formation Supérieure) in composition. Awarded in numerous international contests (Métamorphoses, Gaudeamus, INAEM, Kubik, Jihlava...).

• The Norwegian State Academy of Music, Oslo (2000-2001), studies with Lasse Thoresen (Composition, Sonology).

• Professor of Composition and Orchestration at ESMUC, Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (since 2003).

• Director of EMC, School of Music Casp, Barcelona (2005).

• Musical Director of Escolania de Montserrat (since 2007).

Richard Rodney Bennett

The Film Music of Sir Richard Rodney Bennett

Rumon Gamba: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Murder on the Orient Express
Far from the Madding Crowd
Lady Caroline Lamb: Part I
Lady Caroline Lamb: Part II
Tender is the Night: Nicole's Theme
Enchanted April
Four Weddings and a Funeral: Love Scene

Richard Rodney Bennett was encouraged in his musical interests by his mother (a former student of Holst’s) who taught him piano from the age of five. Already composing in his teens, he won a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1953 where he studied under Lennox Berkeley and Howard Ferguson. While in the midst of his studies he was spotted by film producer John Hollingsworth who invited him to try his hand at film soundtracks; initially he worked on small-scale scores for industrial documentary films.

In the field of film music he tackled a wide variety of subjects and styles, including comedies such as Peter Sellers’ Only Two Can Play and The Wrong Arm of the Law, Satan Never Sleeps, Hammer’s The Nanny and The Witches and Michael Caine’s Billion Dollar Brain. Having worked with John Schlesinger in 1965 on Billy Liar, he returned to score the director’s Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), the score of which was nominated for Best Original Score in the Academy Awards of 1967.

The score of Lady Caroline Lamb was adapted into the suite Lady Caroline Lamb (Elegy for Viola and Orchestra). Bennett’s spectacular Orient Express theme from the film Murder on the Orient Express is possibly the star of the film. ‘Nicole’s Theme’ is from the ambitious television adaptation of Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night (1985). The nostalgically mellow Enchanted April (1991) was a Merchant Ivory film and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) saw Bennett’s music rubbing shoulders with pop music. Although touring as a solo performer and accompanist, Bennett still finds time to involve himself in selective film and television projects, and in 1998 he was knighted for his services to music.

“Richard Rodney Bennett possesses a natural flair for composing for both big screen or small. The concept of presenting the music in suites (no credit here for the arrangers) makes the best possible case for it, circumventing the problems encountered on the original soundtracks where fragmentation sometimes marrs enjoyment.
It's a measure of his standing in the film world that all these scores were issued on disc concurrently with the film. The earliest, Far from theMadding Crowd (1967), belongs to another era sonically speaking, but on this sumptuously recorded disc you can imagine yourself back in that state-of-the-art Odeon, Marble Arch, as the curtains parted to reveal Hardy's Dorset landscape on its giant curved screen, with Bennett's wistful unaccompanied theme for flute answered by oboe on the soundtrack.
Like that film, Lady Caroline Lamb was presented on its initial run as a road-show attrac- tion, with an Overture, Entr'acte and Exit Music on the soundtrack, played respectively before the showing, during the intermission and after the film.
The Suite reveals Bennett's fondness for a lyrical line at its most impassioned, with Philip Duke's eloquent viola-playing going to the heart of the story of this aristocratic lady's doomed affair with Byron. Enchanted April moves us to the sunshine of Italy, where the colours of the percussion and ondes martenot lend a sweet fragrance to the scene. Elgar's Chanson de matin makes an unexpected but entrancing appearance.
When concentrating on the music without visual distractions it's easier to note the discreet Love Theme for Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Beginning on low flute with broken chords on the harp, it subtly underlines the weddings and the funeral where John Hannah reads Auden's poem Stop all the Clocks.
From television comes Tender is the Night –Nicole's Theme, a popular foxtrot, 20s style, representing Scott Fitzgerald's ill-fated character Nicole Diver, inspired by his wife Zelda. Period dance music plays a part, too, in Murder on theOrient Express, where Yuri Torchinsky, leader of the BBC Philharmonic, catches to a tee that sweet sound so characteristic of Oscar Grasso, leader of Victor Silvester's ballroom orchestra.
Conductor Rumon Gamba knows just how to levitate Bennett's celebrated train waltz theme, and the response of his orchestra throughout this disc suggests that they can turn their hand to the idiom of this music at the flick of a wrist.”

Joaquín Turina (1882-1949)

Piano Trios

Trio de Madrid

Piano Trio No.1 in D major, Op.35

Piano Trio No.2 in B minor, Op.76

Círculo . . . , Op.91

Joaquín Turina was born in Seville in 1882, the son of a painter of more distant Italian origin. The Seville of his childhood and adolescence remained an important element in his life and work. As a boy Turina showed, as one might expect, an early interest in music. His schooling was at the Colegio de San Ramón and the Colegio del Santo Angel and he had his first piano lessons with Enrique Rodriguez and studied counterpoint and composition with the director of music at the cathedral, Evaristo García Torres. His father, while aware of his son’s musical abilities, had intended a career for him in medicine, but was willing to allow to follow his bent and develop his musical gifts.

Turina made his first public appearance as a pianist in Seville in 1897, when he played Thalberg’s very demanding Moses Fantasy. Meanwhile he had started to write music, including a setting of verses by Rodriguez Marín, Las coplas de la Pasión. In 1902 he moved to Madrid to study the piano with José Trago, taking with him a newly composed biblical opera, La sulamita. He made his first appearance as a pianist in Madrid in 1903, and the following year his zarzuela, Fea y con gracia was performed with success. The death of his parents now persuaded him to follow the example of other musicians of his generation and travel to Paris, where he studied with Moritz Moszkowski before entering the Schola Cantorum, on the recommendation of Isaac Albéniz, who was of material assistance to both Turina and Manuel de Falla. Turina studied at the Schola with Vincent d’Indy, following the prescribed course assiduously until 1913. Paris brought him contact with leading French and Spanish composers and performers, including Debussy, whose influence on his music was perceptible. It was Albéniz who was able to make the publication of Turina’s Piano Quintet, Opus 1, possible, and the work was first performed in Paris by the composer with the Parent Quartet.

It was on the advice of Albéniz that Turina’s serious attention was drawn to Spanish folk material and particularly the music of Andalusia.

The years in Paris allowed frequent journeys back to Spain. Turina’s orchestral La procesión del Rocío was successfully given in Madrid in 1913 under the direction of Enrique Arbós and won similar acclaim in Paris. The following year he returned to Spain, settling in Madrid and pursuing a career as a pianist, conductor and composer. In 1930 he was appointed to the chair of composition at the Royal Conservatory and five years later became an academician of the Academy of Fine Arts, his inaugural lecture postponed until after the Civil War, during which Turina wrote nothing. In the last ten years of his life he wrote relatively little, composing a small number of chamber works and a larger number of piano pieces. He died in Madrid in 1949.

Turina’s Piano Trio No.1 in D major was written in 1926, triumphing in that year in the Spanish National Competition. The work was published with a dedication to the Infanta Isabel de Borbón. The first movement opens with a slow introduction in which the violin and cello present first a melancholy descending passage, followed by the dotted rhythm of the piano. The Prélude ends with violin and cello once more, before the brighter mood of the Fugue, its contrapuntal texture largely concealed in the more elaborate piano writing. The theme of the second movement is entrusted first to the cello, joined by the violin, with a chordal accompaniment from the piano. The Spanish character of the material is apparent in the first variation, marked Allegro moderato, a dance that starts a series of further variations based on Spanish dance rhythms. The second version of the theme is a whimsical Andantino mosso. The third variation, in irregular 5/8 metre and marked Moderato, is given to the piano, after which a fourth variation brings the plucked notes of the cello and the muted sounds of the lower register of the violin, with interpolations from the piano. The Andantino fifth variation is a further Spanish dance, leading to the return of the original theme. The last movement, Sonate, offers a variety of thematic material, at first seeming to promise a moto perpetuo soon forgotten in a first theme of national outline, leading to a contrasting second theme. The first lilting theme provides a framework for other material, including reminiscences of the fugal theme of the first movement and a final return to the opening of the first movement.

The Piano Trio No.2 in B minor, Opus 76, was completed in 1933, originally conceived, it seems, as a set of three Nocturnes. It was dedicated to Jacques Lerolle, the nephew of Chausson, director of the French publisher Rouart-Lerolle, later absorbed by Editions Salabert. The first movement is introduced by three bars marked Lento, before what promises to be a full-textured Allegro molto moderato is launched. A gentler secondary theme appears, marked Allegretto, interrupted by a passage marked Lento, with a melancholy cello theme, extended by the violin, before the tranquillity is replaced by the return of the modified Allegro molto moderato and the secondary theme. The following movement, in a very Spanish 5/8 metre, has the two string instruments offering a rapid accompaniment to the emphatic chords of the piano. This is interrupted by a passage of greater serenity, before the onward momentum is resumed. The cello, joined by the violin, makes a strong opening statement in the last movement, before ominous piano chords, the theme taken up by the violin. The mood changes and changes again, as the movement continues in the manner of a Spanish Fauré, Turina’s French training and Spanish rhythmic and melodic inspiration never far away.

Círculo, Opus 91, described as a Fantastic Trio, is an evocative set of three pieces, published in 1942. The dark stillness of the first piece, Amanecer (Dawn), at first makes use of the sombre lower register of the cello, before the world begins to waken, as the music gently grows in volume and day breaks. The second piece, Mediodía (Noon), more overtly Spanish in theme and rhythm, suggests aspects of the time of day, including unusual activity. The cycle ends with Crepúsculo (Twilight), as tranquillity gradually returns.