ECM label - CDs

For their latest album for ECM, and over 20 years after their first recorded foray into Gesualdo with his Tenebrae Responsories (8438672), The Hilliard Ensemble turn again to the music of the Italian nobleman, this time to sing the entire Fifth Book of Madrigals.

An aristocrat who forged an idiosyncratic style of musical expression, Don Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, was one of those composers in music history who can truly be described as being ahead of his time: the creator of a harmonic language bold almost to the point of anarchy, whose every unpredictable interval was viewed with suspicion by the opponents of musical autonomy and guardians of liturgically based sacred music. A friend of Torquato Tasso and founder of his own academy, to which many leading madrigalists of the 16th and early 17th centuries belonged, Gesualdo was a highly expressive composer and a virtuoso performer on the bass lute.

Yet his chromatic progressions baffled his contemporaries and had to wait until the 19th century era of high Romantic period to find resonance in artistic parallels. Among his most important compositions are six books of five-part madrigals dating from between 1594 and 1611. The last two books in particular – this recording by the Hilliard Ensemble brings new performances of Book 5 – displays his dissonant musical language with its extreme harmonic disruptions, striking tempo contrasts and a distinctly modern feel for drama.

The Hilliard Ensemble’s expressive singing, here also featuring soprano Monika Mauch and countertenor David Gould, conjures up that sound described by the great music historian Hans Redlich as growing out of “the antithesis between extravagant/debauched eroticism and self-castigating longing for death”.

Sofia Gubaidulina’s 80th birthday in October 2011 generated much press coverage around the world, appropriately stressing the uniqueness and the variety of her compositional approaches. Both are in evidence on this album of recordings from the Lockenhaus Festival in Austria. Gidon Kremer is the soloist and Kremerata Baltica the ensemble on the world premiere recording of The Lyre of Orpheus, dedicated to the memory of Gubaidulina’s daughter, while cellist Nicolas Altstaedt takes the solo role in The Canticle of the Sun, which the composer wrote in tribute to Mstislav Rostropovich on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1997.

Gidon Kremer has long been a committed advocate of Gubaidulina’s work, and the composer has praised the way the violinist seems to unleash music from the soul. In The Lyre of Orpheus, a work of austere beauty and raw lyricism, violin, string orchestra and percussion intermingle in new ways. At a subterranean level, the piece is also an exploration into acoustic phenomena and the physics of sound, with pulsating difference tones part of its underlying structures. It was recorded in 2006, a month after Kremer gave the first performance.

The Canticle of the Sun, recorded in 2010, revisits the celebrated piece composed for Mstislav Rostropovich for his 70th birthday. Rostropovich’s famously sunny disposition was an inspiration, by association prompting Gubaidulina to set St Francis of Assissi’s “Canticle of the Sun” for choir. In his ECM recording debut, the young German cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, a current BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, takes on the highly expressive lead role. A further, timely, Lockenhaus connection here: in 2012 Altsteadt takes over from Kremer as the new director of the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival.

ECM New Series debut for the exceptional Russian-born pianist Lisa Smirnova, playing Handel’s Eight Great Suites (1720), also known as “The Eight London Suites” or “Suites de Pièces pour le Clavecin” – by any name, major pieces in the keyboard literature. Outstanding artists from Glenn Gould to Keith Jarrett have been drawn to these suites, but there are very few recordings of all eight, either on piano or harpsichord, currently on the market. Smirnova opts for the modern piano. She had been working rigorously on the Suites for five years prior to undertaking this recording, making many discoveries.

The 1720 edition of Suites – HWV 426-433 – is considered by many the most important collection of Handel’s early works. Published by the composer himself, it includes works from both his Hamburg and English periods, all extensively revised by the composer, right through the printing process.

Educated at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatory, the Salzburg Mozarteum, and with Maria Curcio and Robert Levin, Smirnova (born in Moscow, currently living in Austria) burst onto the classical scene in 1992 with a well-received debut at Carnegie Hall when she was only 20. In 1993, she received the Brahms Prize at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the first pianist ever to be honoured with this award, and her concert activities have extended to international concert podia in Europe, Asia and the USA. She has a long relationship with the Far East – since 2007 she has been Artistic Director of the Nagasaki-Ojika International Music Festival.

Smirnova’s repertoire extends across the centuries – she has collaborated with contemporary composers including Kancheli, Silvestrov and Rihm, and won international awards for her recordings of Bach on MDG. Other widely-praised recordings include her account of Bloch’s works for viola and piano with Daniel Raiskin, on BMG/Arte Nova.

To coincide with the 30th anniversary of Gidon Kremer’s Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival in Austria, ECM releases a 5-CD box set of recordings from 1981-2008. Out-of-print material reappears here, joined by never-before-released recordings of Richard Strauss (conducted by Simon Rattle) and Messiaen.

Edition Lockenhaus is the first New Series release in ECM’s Old & New Masters range, produced as specially-priced limited edition, with 60-page booklet. It includes recordings from 1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, and 1986 – previously issued as Edition Lockenhaus Volumes 1/2 and 4/5 (ECM 1304/05 and 1347/48). These have been long unavailable on CD and LP, and are eagerly sought-after by Kremer aficionados. Lockenhaus has been, above all, a young musicians’ festival and some of the very greatest have appeared there, alongside Gidon Kremer, early in their careers – including players strongly associated with ECM: Kim Kashkashian, Thomas Zehetmair, Thomas Demenga, Robert Levin, Heinz Holliger and more.

The edition opens with unreleased recordings – from 2001 and 2008 – with Sir Simon Rattle and Roman Kofman conducting Kremerata Baltica in revelatory performances of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen and Olivier Messiaen’s Trois petites Liturgies de la Présence Divine. The committed interpretations convey the spirit of Lockenhaus. (Kremer himself has described Rattle’s conducting of Richard Strauss’s music as “unforgettable”).

Discs two to five focus on music by César Franck, André Caplet, Francis Poulenc, Leos Janácek, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Erwin Schulhoff.

Songs of Ascension is a major new recording from composer Meredith Monk - one of the core artists of ECM New Series - and her vocal ensemble. It finds her playing with the musical, sonic, metaphysical and literal connotations of upward movement. This is her first new album for the label since 2007’s impermanence, so it’s eagerly awaited by her many admirers around the world.

In recent years Meredith Monk’s work has been expanding into the realms of the orchestra and string quartet. Here she teams up with a string quartet of New York players well versed in new music. With winds, percussion and two vocal groups added to her already extraordinary singers, this is one of Monk’s most musically ambitious ventures. Voices and instruments are paired and balanced against each other to an extent rare in her music.

Inspirations for the work included the Song of Ascents, a group of psalms said to have been sung during pilgrimages, and a timely invitation to perform at an eight-story tower designed by visual artist Ann Hamilton. Written in 2008, it is conceived as a continuous composition, a departure from Monk’s earlier collaged or episodic extended works.

Songs of Ascension has been performed live to audiences internationally – including the 2009 Edinburgh International Festival – and received the very highest acclaim. It is a work that refocuses perceptions of what music theatre can achieve.

“Songs of Ascension is a major Monk work. The music is glorious. Monk’s most significant growth over the past decade or two has been as a composer. She is a great master of utterance … a listener feels somehow in communication with another, perhaps wiser, species.” Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times

“No matter what category you put it in or by what criteria you judge it, this is a special experience. I left it feeling unexpectedly moved, deeply grateful and with a sense of privilege for having been there.” The Times

The first new Trio Mediaeval album in four years (since Folk Songs), and the first since Stella Maris (2005) to feature medieval sacred music, A Worcester Ladymass presents a reconstruction of a 13th century votive Mass to the Virgin Mary, based on manuscripts and fragments originating in a Benedictine Abbey in the English Midlands. Inserted amid the medieval music are a Credo and Benedicamus Domino specially written for this programme by Gavin Bryars, one of several leading contemporary composers who have championed the Trio.

The old and the new, literally and conceptually, intermingle in the work of this vocal ensemble. “We feel that performing mediaeval music today gives us the freedom to let our imagination and ideas flow, as though we are creating contemporary music,” says Anna Maria Friman. In this spirit the group explores the polyphonic movements of the Mass, the intricately interweaving voices of motets and the declamatory tone of the Conductus.

The Trio Mediaeval, founded in Oslo in 1997, made a powerful impact in 2001 when their ECM debut, Words of the Angel, was released, and have been going from strength to strength ever since. Their highly distinctive “Scandinavian” vocal sound has brought something fresh and original to the performance of sacred music.

“The word ‘mellifluous’ might almost have been coined to describe the distinctively pure, cool sound of Trio Mediaeval’s three female voices. It has an alluring quality all its own, which makes everything they sing – from the earliest polyphony to newly composed pieces which, to some extent, inhabit the same sound-world – wonderfully rewarding to listen to.” Daily Telegraph

Long-awaited third album from one of the most touching and magical sound combinations in music today: Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek with Britain’s premier vocal group, The Hilliard Ensemble. The first album, Officium, has sold nearly 1½ million copies, and it is still in the charts as one of the top 20 best-selling classical albums of the past decade, well after its 1994 release.

The spellbinding Officium album, with Garbarek’s saxophone as a free-ranging ‘fifth voice’ with the Ensemble, gave the first indications of their immense combined musical scope and emotional power. Mnemosyne (1999) expanded the repertoire beyond ‘early music’ to embrace works both ancient and modern. Now Officium novum finds the collective at the crossroads of East and West.

A central focus is music of Armenia based on the adaptations of Komitas Vardapet, drawing upon both medieval sacred music and the bardic tradition of the Caucasus. The Hilliards studied these pieces during visits to Armenia, and the music’s modes encourage some of Garbarek’s most impassioned playing. Also included are Arvo Pärt’s “Most Holy Mother of God” in an a cappella reading, Byzantine chant, two pieces by Jan Garbarek, including a new version of “We are the stars”, plus Perotin’s “Alleluia, Nativitas”.

Beautifully-recorded album from master violinist Gidon Kremer and his Kremerata Baltica, spanning a wide range of music, from the spirited to the spiritual, all of it broached with conviction. Intensity and concentration, differently calibrated, are the watchwords here. At the centre is César Franck’s massive Piano Quintet, flanked by works of a ‘spiritual’ cast by Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer and Giya Kancheli, currently celebrating his 75th birthday.

Franck’s Piano Quintet in F minor is the work in which the Belgian-French composer is perhaps at his most impassioned and melodically inventive. BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili (b 1987), in her ECM debut, gives a bold and compelling performance.

Gidon Kremer and Giya Kancheli have a long association that’s resulted in several ECM recordings, including the superb ‘Lament’, and ‘Time...and Again’ and ‘V & V’ on the album In l'istesso tempo. Silent Prayer was composed on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Mstislav Rostropovich and the 60th birthday of Gidon Kremer in 2007 and is dedicated to these two great musicians, both among Kancheli's closest friends. After Rostropovich died shortly after his birthday, the composer entitled the just-finished work ‘Silent Prayer’.

Long a champion of original compositional voices, Kremer presents also music by Stevan Tickmayer, born in the former Yugoslavia in 1963, and currently resident in France. A musician of diverse background, Tickmayer has been studying with Kurtág since the mid-

90s. He began his Eight Hymns in December 1986, on learning of the death of his favourite filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky, and played the (unfinished) work in his solo concerts for several years. He revised it in 2003 after working with Kremerata, “the ideal messengers” for this musical mourning.

Gidon Kremer’s relationship with ECM dates back to the legendary album Tabula Rasa from 1984 that put Arvo Pärt on the map. It was followed by several volumes from his famous Lockenhaus festival – from where the performances on this new CD also emanate. Kremer’s second recording of the Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin by Bach, released in 2005 on ECM New Series, met with unanimous international acclaim.

Arvo Pärt returns to symphonic structure and scope, in a new work scored for string orchestra, harp, tympani and percussion: the Symphony No. 4 ‘Los Angeles’. Almost 40 years after his Third Symphony, the Estonian composer wrote his Fourth for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen – and ECM releases their premiere performance, recorded live in January 2009, to celebrate Pärt’s 75th birthday (on 11 September).

This is the first symphonic work Pärt has written since developing his “tintinnabulation” style. A composition in three movements, it opens with characteristically shimmering suspended chords, and an extraordinary journey begins. “The symphony is large,” wrote Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times, “and exceedingly beautiful.”

The Fourth Symphony is both literally and figuratively a 'musical setting', based on an underlying text. Canon of the Guardian Angel forms the work’s point of departure, determining its structure down to the smallest details. It was recorded live at LA’s Walt Disney Concert Hall. The 37-minute work is augmented on disc by a new montage of “fragments” of Kanon Pokajanen, a piece which Pärt feels is closely related to the symphony. “To my mind, the two works belong together and form a stylistic unity.”

A second birthday celebration from ECM will be the release on 13 September of a special deluxe version of Tabula rasa (4763879), Arvo Pärt’s international breakthrough album in 1984. This book/CD edition will include study scores of all four pieces on the disc, previously unreleased facsimile manuscripts, liner notes, an introductory essay by Paul Griffiths and exclusive photographs.

One of today’s most versatile violinists presents a new account of Paganini’s Caprices – an unsurpassed compendium of technical difficulties – played as “improvised character pieces”. Zehetmair reveals extraordinary technical perfection coupled with uniquely imaginative insight and a sense of musical drama.

Conductor, chamber musician, ardent pioneer of contemporary composition and an adventurous soloist, Thomas Zehetmair is certainly the most versatile artist among the performers of the Caprices by Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840), the set of 24 hair-raisingly difficult violin studies that established new standards of the instrument’s technical possibilities.

Zehetmair’s overwhelming and critically acclaimed ECM recording of the Sonatas for unaccompanied violin by Ysaÿe, released in 2004, offered ample proof that alleged virtuoso pyrotechnics can be surprisingly multifaceted and complex when approached by a musician with a rare awareness of stylistic layers and expressive traditions. His (long deleted) Teldec version of the Capricci from the early 90s quickly won benchmark status. In 2007 he went to the Austrian monastery of St. Gerold to record a second – even more ambitious – interpretation whose improvisational freedom conveys all the demonic and haunting aspects of the music.

Both Zehetmair’s solo records and his quartet albums on ECM have met with unanimous praise in recent years – especially the Zehetmair Quartet’s Schumann disc which was Gramophone’s Record of the Year.