Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

A true discovery for many western ears: Valentina Levko, star contralto of the Bolshoi!

“In a career of 50 years, I have rarely encountered such a voice, rounded, youthful, with an uncommon timbre and astonishing warmth” , thus said the legendary Sol Hurok, one of the most famous American Impresarios, who introduced Valentina Levko in the New York Met.

Although she frequently toured the world, her real home was Russia, where she reigned for more than 40 years, and 25 years as the star contralto of the Bolshoi Theatre.

This set features Levko in a wide variety of repertoire, ranging from moving Baroque arias by Bach and Handel, through the art songs of Schubert and Brahms, towards great opera scenes from Prince Igor, Ruslan & Ludmilla, Ivan Susanin, Queen of Spades, Rossini, Verdi, the songs of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and a superb collection of Russian folk songs.

An unrivalled breadth of recordings.

Valentina Levko was another in the glorious line of Russian 20th‐century contraltos who in some ways defined the sound of Russian opera for ears, both Eastern and Western, which were often discovering the rich tradition of Russian opera for the first time through recordings. Levko's name, however, unlike compatriots such as Elena Obratzova, never travelled as far or as well. Committed to her contract at the Bolshoi, she spurned several opportunities to make a name for herself in the West, with the lucrative recording contracts that would surely have followed.

And yet hers was, as this important set reveals, a voice and dramatic presence firmly in the mould of greats of the past such as Zara Dolukhanova. The set is carefully curated by themes, thereby revealing Levko's remarkable versatility. Arias from Bolshoi classics by Glinka, Rimsky‐Korsakov and Tchaikovsky sit alongside Western operas by Ponchielli, Verdi and others; her ability to scale her voice to an intimate environment results in warmly idiomatic recordings of art song by Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. The pleasure she took in the popular song of her own country also resulted in many recordings with the Ossipov Folk Orchestra, but her facility extended to folk songs of many languages, as the last CD reveals. Perhaps most remarkably of all, the first CD reveals a natural interpreter of Bach and Handel. An extensive booklet note discusses her life and career; for anyone interested in Russian voices, this set will be essential.

A genuine trumpet phenomena, Romain Leleu has quickly gained an enviable profile courtesy of his infallible technique, enthusiam and his natural musicality, which have already won him a Victoire de la Musique.

He is back, on a third disc for Aparté, with his playmates the Ensemble Convergences for this very personal album of classic standards and crossover, specially orchestrated for string quintet and trumpet. Fun, cheesey even and in excellent arrangements.

This 3‐disc collection showcases Russian piano trios from the mid‐nineteenth to early‐twentieth centuries. Piano trios were unheard of for Russian composers until Mikhail Glinka wrote one in 1832; it earned the epithet ‘Pathétique’ as it seemed to be a reflection of Glinka’s general sadness at the time of writing, the piece alternating between caustic tension and attempts at light‐hearted optimism.

A mournful, melancholic influence then became characteristic of the Russian piano trio: Tchaikovsky unknowingly created a tradition when he composed his offering in 1882 – one of his greatest chamber works and which he dedicated to his recently deceased and much‐missed friend Nikolay Rubinstein. On several subsequent occasions, piano trios were written as memorials. The collection also includes the mathematically‐governed trio of Sergey Taneyev, who had gained a reputation as a cerebral composer, and the trio of Rimsky‐ Korsakov, whose mastery of opera and vocal writing can be seen in the final movement as each instrument takes on its own ‘voice’ and emotion – thus resembling an interaction between characters. Alexander Borodin used the Classical model for his trio, although it contains surprising chromaticism as well as dramatic changes of temperament, including the tragic hymn in the second movement. Anton Arensky’s take on the genre completes the collection. The Moscow Piano Trio was formed in 1976 and has achieved huge success in international competitions, notably winning the Maurice Ravel Gold Medal at the Bordeaux ‘Mai Musical’. The trio is comprised of pianist Alexander Bonduriansky, violinist Vladimir Ivanov and cellist Mikhail Utkin.

Eugene Fodor was a pupil of Heifetz pupil who became a 1974 Tchaikovsky Competition prizewinner.

Erich Leinsdorf conducts the Tchaikovsky; Peter Maag conducts the Mendelssohn.

Gerhard Taschner became the concertmaster in Brno at the age of seventeen, and shortly thereafter Wilhelm Furtwängler appointed him to the same post in Berlin. Taschner was one of the twentieth century’s top talents, and the fascination with which this genial musician held his public spellbound is documented on this brand-new release featuring the violin concertos of Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky – with an encore in the form of Sarasate’s Gypsy Airs.

The Seasons and Serenade for Strings were composed in the second half of the 1870s – early 1880s, in a period of the composer’s first creative uplift. Those were the years when the author of Symphony No. 4, Eugene Onegin and Swan Lake stepped into an age of genuine artistic maturity, and not only his large-scale dramatic opuses but also smaller pieces composed for a narrower circle have the seal of that maturity. Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s compositions are performed by the USSR State Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Evgeni Svetlanov, a recognized master of interpretation of Russian symphonic music from the 19th and 20th centuries.