Canary Classics label

Gil Shaham and Sejong Soloists’ association extends back over a decade, the Haydn concerti and Mendelssohn Octet on this release benefiting from a US tour in April 2009 just prior to the recording sessions.

Haydn and Mendelssohn may not be obvious bedfellows but there is considerable synergy in the composers and this repertoire. Both Haydn’s C major and G major concerti date from the 1760s, still very much in his self proclaimed, “extended youthful period”, together with the fresh and adventurous nature of the Octet, composed when Mendelssohn was still just a teenager. Haydn and Mendelssohn also shared a certain financial freedom that seemed to propel both to new heights of inspiration.

Shaham and Sejong give this repertoire a sense of real intimacy, creating a magical intensity and engagement. The Haydn concerti display Shaham’s flawless technique and lyrical tone - communicating like few others can - and Sejong embrace his direction and Haydn’s intricacies magnificently.

Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Major is arguably THE crown jewel of chamber music. In this recording, Gil Shaham combines aspects from Mendelssohn’s original manuscript version of the Octet, which saw him achieve instant fame, and the final published edition, the 2 versions being separated by 7 years and several revisions in between.

Here, for the first time, the modern music world is introduced to the youthful spirit with which Mendelssohn first brought this work to the world. Of particular significance is the considerably more lively tempi adopted from the original manuscript. Shaham and Sejong embrace and execute this with amazing clarity, the sound being lush and sumptuous yet with an amazing sense of intimacy.

This recording is one of those rare occasions where the ensemble and repertoire come together, the ultimate triumph being the blend and balance achieved by Shaham and Sejong to completely immerse the listener in the moment.

The insightful CD booklet annotations have been authored by Stephen Somary, Artistic Director of the Mendelssohn Project.

‘Shaham manages to combine extraordinary virtuosity with uncommon restraint ... The majestic sweep of the augmented quartet form was given full rein ... two powerful forces in the service of a higher cause.’ Santa Barbara Independent, Mendelssohn/Haydn Concert Review April 2009

Violinists Adele Anthony and Gil Shaham share many passions. Along with their personal connection (they are married) and careers as performing artists, they both feel a deep affinity for the music of Sarasate. This legendary violinist and composer’s inspired works are enormously entertaining and irresistibly appealing, eloquently summarised by Adele as ‘works being a culmination of melody, violinistic idiom and elegance, often evocative of his native Spain’. Gil rates him ‘as one of my great personal heroes. He was a meticulous composer; his style was always full of imagination, full of melody, always perfectly clean and concise. I love this guy.’

Adele and Gil used the occasion of Sarasate’s centenary in 2008 to pay tribute to the revered master’s work. This included a concert at the Lincoln Center in New York, broadcast live on PBS in North America and to end the year’s festivities ¡Sarasateada!, an all Sarasate Festival in Valladolid, in Sarasate’s native Spain.

¡Sarasateada! included both chamber and orchestral concerts from which this release is born and this disc captures the expected and unexpected. A red blooded live performance of Camen Fantasy, Zapateado the raucous cowboy dance and Zigeunerweisen, all works which have challenged violinists for decades and never fail to dazzle. The unexpected works are some wonderful yet lesser known - Song of the Nightingale, Airs Eccosaise showing the his compositional gift, ‘his diversity and imagination’ as Adele puts it, with the disc concluding with a delightful and stratospheric duo Navarra, a folk song derived from Navarre in Spain.

Siblings Gil and Orli Shahams’ new release 'Nigunim' is a wonderful and thought provoking offering of Hebrew melodies. Jewish folk music has always played an integral part in the Shaham’s life - as a small child, Gil fondly remembers hearing Achron’s Hebrew Melody being sung by his grandparents in Jerusalem. This music, more often than not, vividly evokes troubled origins, the music providing an escape of sorts and the violin the perfect voice which transcends the world from which they sprang. “One very powerful aspect of this music is its soulfulness”, Orli Shaham says; “Regardless of your background, I don’t think you can listen to it without feeling that connection”.

This release includes masterpieces by Ernest Bloch, Joseph Achron and Leo Zeitlin. They all started their musical lives as child prodigy violinists, as their idiomatic writing for the violin might suggest.

The centrepiece of the disc comes from the work sharing the album’s title Nigunim. Commissioned by Gil and Orli from Israeli composer Avner Dorman, it shares the universal appeal of the wordless melodies on which it was named. Unlike Bloch, Achron and Zeitlin, Dorman is a composer/pianist and this can be clearly heard in the equality he gives the piano in this engaging 4 movement violin sonata. “He has created a masterpiece and in my experience everybody who hears the piece falls in love with it – they’re electrified by it”, Gil explains. Indeed, when he performed the work, San Diego Today affirmed that “it was hard to miss [its] visceral excitement and structural elegance”, the Boston Globe admiring the “uncommonly intriguing sounds”.

John Williams is the only composer here who does not share the Shahams’ Jewish heritage, but his mastery in the score Schindler’s List is such that, according to Orli, in this piece “he has absolutely captured the feeling of ghetto life and what that looked like and how people interacted … the pieces included here are so authentic that they are a part of this tradition”.

Orli and Gil’s musical partnership is a lifelong one. The violinist recounts: “Orli and I used to play together at home when we were kids, but we didn’t give concerts together until we were in our 20s”. In addition to countless concert appearances, in the recording studio their collaborations include two previous Canary Classics recordings, The Prokofiev Album (CC02) and Mozart in Paris (CC01) and Dvorák for Two (Deutsche Grammophon).

At the age of 13, Adele was the youngest winner of the Australian Broadcasting Corporations Instrumental and Vocal Competition performing the Sibelius Violin Concerto, and here offers a recording of a work she has lived with for over 20 years. She returns to her home city of Adelaide, Australia to make this recording with acclaimed Sibelian conductor Arvo Volmer. Volmer’s recording of Sibelius’ Symphonies No.2 and No.7 for ABC Classics has received wide acclaim IRR noting that Volmer is ‘very sensitive to the drama and atmosphere’, and that his ‘interpretation of Sibelius come in 3 sizes – large, larger and largest…’. Classic FM awarded this same recording ‘Orchestral Disc of the Month’ in January 2008. Adele brings a soulful femininity to her interpretation of the Sibelius concerto, maintaining a bold richness and accuracy of tone. A critic in the Chronicle Herald observed of Adele’s recent May 2011 performance of the Sibelius concerto with the Nova Scotia Symphony that her rhythm was ‘as sharp as a skyscraper’, with ‘her consistently full, even, warm tone impeccably tuned and maintained across every register, every range and every dynamic level.’

Of particular interest here is Ross Edward’s Violin Concerto, Maninyas. The original inspiration for Maninyas came from a Houston Ballet commission created by Stanton Welch. This recording is currently the only available commercial recording, and is one of the great modern day violin concertos. This work enjoyed its’ European premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2010 under the baton of Vladimir Askenazy with the soloist Dene Olding. It had its US premiere in 2008 with soloist Ani Kavafi an conducted by William Boughton. Ross Edward’s profi le is on the ascent. His oboe concerto Bird Spirit Dreaming has been performed by the New York Philharmonic and Lorin Maazel and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and is currently enjoying many of his works programmed in the 2011 City of London Festival.

Adele Anthony’s triumph at Denmark’s Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition in 1996 launched an acclaimed and expanding international career. Adele’s concert career spans North America, Europe, Australia, India and Asia, and has made notable recordings for Naxos (Philip Glass, Violin Concerto and Schubert Duos), Centaur (Nielsen, Violin Concerto), Deutsche Grammophon (Pärt, Tabula Rasa) Albany (Ewazen) and Canary Classics (Sarasate).

Gil Shaham’s affair with the Elgar Violin Concerto started over 15 years ago. In the early 1990’s David Zinman spoke with Gil about the Elgar Concerto, a work Gil knew of but had not learnt. Zimnan effused to Gil: ‘you should really learn it..it’s mine and Mary’s [Zinman’s wife] favourite violin concerto’. Gil subsequently, ‘couldn’t understand the intensity of his passion for this piece’. That is until Gil started learning the score, where he very quickly realised the ease in which one can get easily lost in the detail of every bar.

With the trajectory that Gil’s career was on in the early 1990s, time did not allow for the Concerto’s undertaking until 4 or 5 years ago. Now that it is in Gil’s repertoire he has performed it around the world, including with the Philharmonia Orchestra here in the UK, throughout the USA including Miami, New York, San Francisco and Chicago and in late October this year undertakes 3 consecutive performances with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by David Zinman.

This live recording starts with a bracing tempi, in a style which Elgar himself would have approved, and as the first movememt progresses it gains a surging quality that the Concerto ideally requires. In the slow movement conductor, soloist and orchestra come into their own impressively and seemingly effortlessly achieving just the right level of intensity to clearly convey the narrative. The third movement (allegro molto) is beautifully paced and brings the recording to a satisfying completion that leaves the listener requiring repeated and continous listening. Orchestra, conductor and soloist achieve a wonderful synergy throughout, obviously a result, in part, from the nine straight concert performances undertaken with the CSO in February 2007.

In 1880 Tchaikovsky’s patron, Nadezhda von Meck, asked Tchaikovsky to write a work for her ‘house’ trio (which included the young Debussy), a request he initially refused. However, after Nicoai Rubenstein’s death in 1881 Tchaikovsky returned to the idea of a trio as a means of paying tribute to his friend.

Tchaikovsky rebuked the suggestion that the twelve variations of the second movement, with their unusual structure - theme and variations - depicted different aspects of Nicolai’s life. In fact Tchaikovsky wrote this music for the enjoyment of the performers which accounts for the trio’s popularity amongst chamber musicians.

This recording features an established trio each with high profile international careers. Pianist Yefim Bronfman apears regularly with the world’s greatest orchestras and has won widespread praise for his solo, chamber and orchestral recordings.

Truls Mørk’s reputation as a cellist of fierce intensity and grace has been built on performances throughout the world. He performs with the most distinguished orchestras including the New York, Berlin, Vienna, and London Philharmonic Orchestras.

Finally and arguably most importantly, violinist Gil Shaham is internationally recognised as one of today’s most virtuosic and engaging artists. His wide discography includes many award winning discs, including multiple Grammys. Gil’s most recent recordings have been produced for his own label, Canary Classics, which he established in 2004.

‘Shaham is warm and elegant, Mørk poised and thoughtful...Bronfman is a heart-on- sleeve type pianist, mediating grandly between his colleagues.’ Chicago Tribune, 2002