SACDs - Bizet

Winners of a number of awards, the sisters Mona and Rica Bard now present their first CD, a pas de deux though 80 years of French piano music. At one and at two instruments, they create a panorama of piano sound, ranging from the simulation of orchestral colours, percussive and motoric élan to the suggestion of an intensive song-like quality. With Bizet‘s Jeux d’enfants, Ravel‘s Rapsodie espagnole and Poulenc‘s Sonata for Two Pianos, this SACD contains three 'secret' masterworks by their respective composers. With its combination of elegance, irony and samba rhythms, the Scaramouche Suite quickly became Darius Milhaud‘s most popular work. Four hands, two sisters, one pulse – Mona & Rica Bard have won national and international awards at competitons; among them the German Music Competition, the Concorso Internazionale di Musica da Camera Palma d`Oro (Finale Ligure) and the Concorso Internazionale per Duo Pianistico Twenty Fingers (Rome). The Ensemble was accepted in the National Selection of Young Artists’ Concerts of the German Music Council and in the artists’ list of the association Yehudi Menuhin – Live Music Now. Extensive concert engagements have taken Mona & Rica Bard throughout Europe, to Asia the USA and to numerous festivals such as the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the NCPA May Festival Peking and the Chicago Piano Duo Festival.

Prize winning organist Iveta Apkalna performs these works on the Kuhn organ in the Philharmonie Essen. She has established herself as a virtuoso and combines a deep sense of musicality and masterful technique with an unerring instinct for the effect of the music.

The music selected by Tina Chen and Hannibal for this recital is the soundtrack for a day dream, or the twilight accompaniment for a romantic dinner. The emphasis is on Melody – beautiful, finely arched musical lines that reach beyond the pressures of everyday life and transport you, to a quiet realm of song, warmly and realistically recorded in SACD, Super Audio Sound!

This recording also marks the CD debut of the charismatic, young concert violinist , Chen Yi, was the Gold Medal winner at the China International Violin competition (2008). As part of the Mendelssohn Bicentennial Celebrations, Ms. Chen was invited to perform the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in Beijing’s new National Center for the Performing Arts. In 2010 she will perform the Nielsen Violin Concerto as part of the Danish Gala Concert in EXPO in Shanghai. This major event marks artistic dialogue between Denmark and China.

This brand new recording opens with Maurice Ravel’s magnificent Boléro, known for its feverish, hypnotic rhythm and massive orchestral sound. Boléro, Ravel’s most famous piece, epitomises his preoccupation with restyling and reinventing dance movements. The listener is then taken to Baghdad circa 1071 A.D. with a medley from the classic 1953 musical Kismet. This Tony-award winning show was constructed entirely around the music of celebrated Russian composer Alexander Borodin. The listener journeys from Baghdad back to Spain with Suite Nos. 1 and 2 from Georges Bizet’s immensely popular opera, Carmen, and closes with Féte-Dieu à Séville from composer Isaac Albéniz.