The Virtuoso CLARINET, Volume 2

"... This warmly recorded recital continues the good work established by Collins in the earlier volume." --MusicWeb-International.com, June 2014

“Michael Collins and his pianist Michael McHale present us with a programme of pieces all expertly written for the clarinet, and very entertaining too… This CD has been planned with great care, taking the listener from one enticing piece to the next in sheer delight.” --Gramophone magazine, April 2014 

↪ Volume 1

Michael Collins (clarinet) & Michael McHale (piano)

Chandos exclusive artist Michael Collins here presents the second volume in his series designed to display the extraordinarily wide range of music written for the clarinet. Volume 1 was BBC Music Magazine Editor’s Choice and received IRR Outstanding from International Record Review, which stated: ‘It is difficult to imagine a finer performance than is given here.’

Debussy’s Première Rhapsodie was written as a test piece for the Paris Conservatoire and contrasts long lyrical lines with capricious acrobatics for the clarinet, being described by the composer as ‘hovering between reverie and scherzo’.

Pieces by Rabaud and Widor, also written for the Paris Conservatoire, test the abilities of the player with their exuberant displays of virtuosity. A jazz influence is present in other works on the release. The Clarinet Sonata which Bernstein wrote at the start of his career is a vivid testimony to his early promise and his fascination with jazz. Milhaud’s Duo concertant and Martinů’s Sonatina were composed in 1956 and demonstrate a diversity of influence, both combining folk and jazz elements. Each of the four Time Pieces by Muczynski highlights some specific characteristic of the clarinet in terms of range, technical prowess, tone colour, and expressiveness.

"... it is impossible not to admire his dextrous skill, musicality and joie de vivre. In all, this is a very well-constructed and pleasurable album." --International Record Review, April 2014

SZYMANOWSKI, DEBUSSY, SCHULHOFF, JANÁCEK & SZYMANOWSKI Chamber Music

As the album title suggests, the repertoire on this collection is centered on the concepts of identity, both personal and national. Written between 1904 and 1927, a time that predates, includes then postscripts the WWI era, the diverse works on this collection examines four early 20th century pioneers: Claude Debussy, Leos Janacek, Erwin Schulhoff and Karol Szymanowski. The duo of Noé Inui (violin) and Mario Häring (piano) illustrate these composers search for new sounds, tone colours and forms at a time of great foment and through the duos nuanced thoughtful performances enable listeners to experience anew the many musical worlds that were created during that time.
Release date: 23rd Oct 2015

DEBUSSY Clair de Lune & Other Piano Works

Pascal Rogé has for many years been considered the prime interpreter of French piano repertoire.

"Rogé produces consistently beautiful tone and this recital gives no mean pleasure on this score. His playing is distinguished by intelligence and sympathy, as well as a subtle command of colours. He is moreover supported by recording quality of real excellence." --Gramophone Magazine

BONJOUR PARIS

“. . . his immaculate, mellifluous artistry is a marvel.” --Gramophone, June 2011

“Mayer produces a velvety, ravishing sound of sensual purity. The authentic Gallic oboe tone is more nasal and plangent than Mayer's blemishless stream of eloquence, but when the results are so alluring I can't imagine anyone worrying unduly...Mayer sustains an astonishing level of musical poise, shaping every phrase to golden perfection.” --Classic FM Magazine, June 2011 ****

Albrecht Mayer (oboe), Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Albrecht Mayer, principal oboe of the Berlin Philharmonic, celebrates a lifelong passion for France with this album of popular melodies, including favourites by Debussy, Fauré, and Ravel — plus the world-premiere recording of the impressionistic Été.

“Gotthard Odermatt's Été is a delightful modern piece in the style of Ravel at his most pastoral.” --The Independent, 25th February 2011 ****

NOCTURNES

Pianist Natasha Kudritskaya revisits with talent the French Nocturnes. Includes music by Debussy, Satie, Fauré, Decaux and Ravel.

Extreme expression and total control: that magical mix characterizes the musical personality of Natacha Kudritskaya. Out of a boundless curiosity this Ukrainian pianist explores the possibilities of the grand piano in new and early music.
Release date: 6th Nov 2015

DEBUSSY, ADÈS & RAVEL Chamber Music

“Micro-sensitive to each work's emotional and harmonic pacing, the Signum sound as though they are dioscovering the wonders of the Debussy and Ravel Quartets and Ades's ravishing Arcadiana for the very first time.” --BBC Music Magazine, June 2015 *****

“An engaging continuity [emerges] over the course of the seven movements [of the Adés] in which irony and pathos are held deftly in accord through to those teasingly insubstatial closing pages…this release is arguably the most provocative coupling yet for these warhorses of the quartet repertoire.” --Gramophone Magazine, August 2015

Signum Quartet

Debussy’s music reveals characteristics that justifiably move it into the proximity of Impressionist painting, as it produces moving paintings, landscapes of sound, and soundscapes in the narrowest sense of the word that can draw the listener into the middle of the picture.

Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, completed in 1903, had to be and was compared with Debussy’s quartet. At the same time, it can be seen here how Ravel’s musical diction – based on Debussy’s – prepared the way for French Modernism.

Like only a few of his colleagues, the Briton Thomas Adès, born in 1971, is capable of fusing traditional elements from music history, including obvious references to existing compositions, with modern sound production, into an individual style appealing directly to the listener.

Album Reviews

La Clarinette Française

“This truly outstanding CD is not only ideally programmed and superbly played - using a clarinet from 1830 and a Bechstein from 1870 - but most naturally recorded too. Every work here is a small-scale masterpiece and, throughout, this remarkable partnership is as of two artists playing as one” --Gramophone Magazine, June 2015

“The highlight is Saint-Saëns’s sonata, one of the very late group that also includes sonatas for oboe and bassoon, a marvellous work. There is light relief in miniatures by Bloch and Pierné, and Lisa Shklyaver blossoms in Milhaud’s famous Scaramouche suite in an arrangement possibly not by the composer that Immerseel has partly rewritten – so it’s more authentic than the original!” --The Observer, 26th April 2015 ***

Jos Van Immerseel (piano) & Lisa Shklyaver (clarinet)

'Musical love at first sight’, that is a good description of the meeting of Jos van Immerseel and Lisa Shklyaver. With her sweet tone and fine articulation, the young clarinettist effortlessly won the pianist over. No matter which repertoire they played, it clicked immediately.

The desire to come as close as possible to the sound aesthetic of composers at the time of the first performance of their works, along with the simple pleasure of the sound of period instruments, guide Jos van Immerseel in his approach.

For this recording, offering a panorama of French music for clarinet and piano from the early 20th century, Jos van Immerseel has chosen a Bechstein piano of 1870, and Lisa Schklyaver, a Dolnet Lefevre & Pigis clarinet from 1930.

The recording is doubly precious in that it proposes both the view of one of the finest performers of French music on a variety of remarkable works as well as, in a way, the sonority and poetry of an era.

2015 marks Jos van Immerseel’s 70th birthday, one of Belgium’s most acclaimed musicians. Later in 2015 Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna will record and release an album of Janacek and Dvorak.

DEBUSSY, PROKOFIEV & BARTÓK Études

Garrick Ohlsson has an unbeaten reputation as the master of the miniature. In this new recital he presents three sets of Études: the twelve by Claude Debussy (so ferocious in their demands they were shunned even by elite pianists for decades), as well as Prokofiev’s revolutionary opus 2 and three works by Bartók. In all Ohlsson excels.

“His powerful technique motors through Prokofiev’s four miniatures with tremendous confidence, relishing their naughty-boy dissonances, and he treats the Lisztian flourishes that occasionally surface in the modernist currents of Bartók’s three pieces with suitable flamboyance. There are some fine moments in the Debussy set, too.” --The Guardian, 23rd July 2015 ****

 

 "The wonder of this very varied programme is that in Garrick Ohlsson’s hands these 19 Etudes shed their functional aspect (or seem to) and instead emerge as beautifully crafted miniatures. Even the opening Debussy study 'for five fingers, after Monsieur Czerny' parades colour and a sense of play before all else, whereas the Fourth Etude ('Sixths') settles on the sort of focused atmosphere more associated with his Images or Préludes. By prioritizing mood and texture over technical display Ohlsson releases the musical value of these fascinating pieces. Prokofiev’s set of four Etudes approximate chippings from the workbench where the Sonatas were crafted, the first of them a choppy, medium-paced ostinato, the Lisztian second initially slow and dark (though it closes like the Toccata), both superbly played. And then there are Bartók’s three Etudes of 1918, masterpieces all of them, the second and third like cerebral improvisations, the first hinting at the world of boogie, though the fierce frown is unmistakably Bartók’s own. Highly recommended." --Classical Ear, July 2015

Album reviews