Future Releases

Neeme Järvi is back conducting the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, with the violinist Marianne Thorsen, in this second volume of Chandos’ series devoted to the orchestral works of Johan Halvorsen. This Norwegian composer, conductor, and violinist was a highly prominent figure in his country’s musical life during the first decades of the twentieth century. The works on this CD are all performed by the orchestra that Halvorsen himself conducted in the 1890s. As in the first volume of the series, they represent Nordic folk-based music at its very best: light and airy compositions with the strings firmly at centre stage. Air norvégien was described by Halvorsen’s contemporary, Edvard Grieg, as ‘a folk-tune medley, but so well done that the result is a piece of art’.

Because Halvorsen spent more than thirty-six years working at the theatres in Bergen and Oslo, a large proportion of his compositional output is music for the stage. The movements of Suite ancienne were originally composed for the play The Lying-in Room by Ludvig Holberg in 1911. The first two movements, Intrata and Air con variazioni, are in the style of late-eighteenth-century serenades, whereas the Gigue, Sarabande, and Bourrée were modelled after baroque dances. Halvorsen himself counted Suite ancienne as one of his finest compositions.

Halvorsen also composed in more prestigious genres and his Second Symphony is commonly regarded as the best of his three symphonies. Nicknamed Fatum, the Second Symphony is inspired by the work’s opening motif which, in the manner of the ‘fate’ symphonies of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, is heard in all four movements. In the second movement, Romance, a beautiful oboe cantilena is followed by a dramatic development that draws on the ‘fate’ motif, and the brisk main motif of the cheerful third movement, Intermezzo – the fate motif cleverly altered in rhythm – belongs among the most successful, and at the same time most personal, that Halvorsen ever wrote.

Michael Collins is one of our most versatile clarinettists, possessing a dazzling virtuosity and sensitive musicianship that have made him the favourite of conductors, composers, and audiences throughout the world. Now an exclusive Chandos artist, Collins is embarking on a series of recordings designed to display the extraordinarily wide range of music written for his instrument. The present programme comprises a varied repertoire, concentrating generally (though not exclusively) on its more extrovert virtuoso aspects and offering some breathtaking show-stoppers. Well-known works such as Rachmaninoff’s haunting Vocalise contrast with the sunny brilliance of Giampieri’s Il carnevale di Venezia, and the playful, inventive French items by Milhaud and Messager provide a further contrast in mood and colour.

Weber’s bubbly Grand Duo concertant is also among the many highlights on this disc. Unlike other works of his, in which the main purpose of the accompanying instruments is to support the virtuoso solo part, the Grand Duo presents an equal juxtaposition of two virtuoso solo parts, one being the clarinet, the other the piano. The piece is a Duo in the true sense of the word. Another key piece is Milhaud’s famous Scaramouche. This was initially composed as a work for two pianos, but due to its immediate and immense popularity, the composer was soon called on to make several arrangements of it, starting with the one for clarinet and piano which we hear on this CD. The first movement, Vif, has a sense of breezy excitement that is intensified by the bravura cartwheels of the clarinet part. The gentle Modéré that follows has a lovely dreamy feel to it, which is in stark contrast to the vigorous rhythmic energy of the exuberant finale, Brazileira.

Moving to the present day, the disc also presents Simon Milton’s Carmen Fantasy which was premiered at the Harrogate Festival in 2009. Milton stays closely to Bizet’s harmony and keeps the tunes highly recognisable despite all the elaborations and mini-cadenzas with which he intersperses them. It is a thoroughly engaging work, well worth a separate mention.

Future discs will include one dedicated to showing the instrument’s lyrical qualities, and several devoted to clarinet concertos, including Weber’s and a group of British works.

Beethoven has always been a part of the concert repertoire of exclusive Chandos artist Louis Lortie, and it rose again to the top of his agenda as he prepared to complete his recorded cycle of the composer’s sonatas earlier this year. Sonatas Nos 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31 and 32, newly recorded, will be released for the first time as part of a box set of the entire canon, which will be available at the bargain price of 9 CDs for the price of 3.

This box set of the complete piano sonatas is a must for all lovers of Beethoven and great piano playing. The compositions are bold and beautiful, challenging, witty and fresh. They seem to encompass all aspects of human sensibility and aspiration, and the superb playing of Louis Lortie takes the music to another level. His recording of the composer’s ‘Eroica’ Variations, which won an Edison Award, was described by Gramophone in glowing terms:

‘His account… is spacious and magisterial, virile yet sensitive, and the wide range of dynamic nuance and keyboard colour is there to illumine Beethoven’s textures and not highlight the artist’s pianism. He succeeds in communicating the power of Beethoven’s imagination: the part-writing in the fugue emerges with a masterly clarity, and is beautifully weighted and balanced.’

Highlights among the new recordings are that of the sublime Sonata No. 30, composed in 1820 – 22, which displays all the characteristics of Beethoven’s last creative phase: rich harmonic structures, a fascination with intricate counterpoint, and a strict adherence to classical and baroque forms. Also worthy of a separate mention is Sonata No. 22, a veritable study in contrasts. Its two complementary themes – a gracious, dignified ‘feminine’ theme resembling a minuet, and a stamping, assertive, ‘masculine’ theme – gradually influence one another in the course of the movement until they become thoroughly integrated and combined in the final passages.

Edward Gardner, the music director of English National Opera and an exclusive Chandos artist, has completed the first disc in a projected Chandos series devoted to Polish music. Also his first purely orchestral CD for Chandos, the disc presents music by one of Poland’s most important twentieth-century composers, Witold Lutosławski, including perhaps his most famous work, the Concerto for Orchestra (1950 – 54), a brilliant and highly attractive work.

Also included is the Third Symphony (1981 – 83) which was given its world premiere by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti, on 29 September 1983. Many passages employ the by then well-developed technique which the composer called ‘limited aleatorism’, according to which each individual orchestral musician is asked to play a phrase or repeated fragment in his own time – rhythmically independent of the other musicians. During these passages very little synchronisation is specified: events that are coordinated include the simultaneous entrances of groups of instruments, the abrupt end of some episodes, and some transitions to new sections. By this method the composer retains control of the work’s architecture and of the realisation of the performance, while simultaneously facilitating complex and unpredictable polyphony.

In later years Lutosławski developed musical forms that combine unrelated strands of music, whose short, discrete sections overlap one another like the links of a chain. Elements of this method can be found in many of his earlier works, but the first to emphasise it was Chain 1 of 1983 for fourteen instruments, written for the London Sinfonietta. Chain 2, subtitled ‘Dialogue for Violin and Orchestra’, followed in 1985.

The last work to adopt this approach was Chain 3 (1986) for large orchestra. Broadly speaking, the composition’s ten-minute span falls into three sections, of which the first provides a particularly clear, readily audible example of the chain technique. After a quick opening flourish, Lutosławski presents a sequence of twelve overlapping ideas, each characterised by a particular mode of expression, and each vividly coloured by a few instruments playing as a unit. For example, chimes, violas, and flutes together form the first ‘link’; this is overlapped by a quartet of double-basses; these in turn overlap a xylophone and three violins, and so on. The last of the twelve links in this musical chain thicken into a kind of general babble among the winds, which marks the first stage in the work’s larger form. Chain 3 was written for the San Francisco Symphony which gave the first performance, conducted by the composer, on 10 December 1986 in Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.

October 2010 sees the release on Collegium of a major collection of new choral music by John Rutter, featuring a host of previously unrecorded works in glittering performances by the Cambridge Singers and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Conducted by the composer, John Rutter: A Song in Season ranges across the church’s year, incorporating music for Christmas, Epiphany, Pentecost, Easter and Harvest.

The first album of new anthems and canticles by Rutter since his landmark 2002 recording of ‘Mass of the Children’, this beautifully-packaged, full-price digipak release promises to delight both seasoned Rutter followers and new listeners.

Volume I of Traditional Christmas Carols broke iTunes’ record for the most downloads of a classical album and remains one of The Sixteen’s most popular discs. This brand new recording contains more festive delights.

There is such an abundance of festive music available to us that sometimes one wishes Christmas did not come but once a year! The Sixteen’s first volume of traditional Christmas carols contains some of our most favourite pieces but there is so much more wonderful festive music that deserves to be better known. So we decided to make a second volume. On this disc you will discover familiar seasonal favourites such as ‘Unto us a boy is born’ and ‘It came upon the midnight clear’ but we have also included some less well-know gems like ‘Cherry Tree Carol’ and ‘Gloucestershire Wassail’.

Without doubt, Monteverdi was the greatest of the early baroque European composers. He revolutionised the music of the theatre and the church by his dramatic and imaginative use of voices and instruments and by his daring harmonies and rhythms. Next to his Vespers of 1610, the Selva morale e spirituale of 1641 is his most significant and virtuosic collection of sacred music. Over the next few years we intend to record the complete publication with a variety of forces. His much performed Beatus vir is a mere appetiser for this delightful yet thrilling music.

Franz Danzi composed six symphonies in total. These highly original, masterfully instrumented orchestral works open the door to romanticism and show why Weber thought so highly of his friend.

While the fifth and the ninth quartet quite audibly sound like Shostakovich, Weinberg’s fourteenth string quartet seems to set out on a new creative journey. Its five movements continue without a break, but each of them has a completely different thematic character.