SACDs - Kodály

On this CD the father and daughter combination of cellist Dmitry and violinist Liza Ferschtman perform three major pieces from the 20th century. The featured works are duos by Kodaly, Ravel, and Schulhoff.

Violinist Liza Ferschtman released her debut recording for Challenge Classics in 2007 with music for violin and piano by Beethoven and Schubert (CC72174), and this was was followed in early 2010 by a disc devoted to the solo violin music of Bach and Ysayë (CC72351). In 2010 she made a critically acclaimed recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the Netherlands Philharmonic and conductor Jan Willem de Vriend (CC72384).

Liza Ferschtman’s father The Russian-born cellist Dmitry Ferschtman co-founded the Glinka String Quartet which toured the Soviet Union, Europe and the United States for twenty three years. All through his career Ferschtman has been an active chamber-music player, performing at many international festivals with artists such as Gidon Kremer, Mark Kaplan, Leonidas Kavakos, Boris Berman and Nobuko Imai.

Folk, Gypsy and Hungarian influences are very evident in these exuberant compositions. Appropriately, Lawrence Foster was decorated by the Romanian President for services to Romanian Music in 2003. This is a live performance by the Gulbenkian Orchestra.

“Widely regarded as one of the world’s finest small professional choirs” (musicweb- international.com), “one of the best professional choruses on the international scene” (klassik-heute.com), “moments, which in their musical culture make the ensemble truly unique” (Münchner Merkur) – these comments and similar ones show that the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks is a leading figure in the world of choral music.

Frank Martin was on the program of Peter Dijkstra’s inaugural concert in October of 2005, when he – an authentic shooting star on the choral scene – assumed the direction of the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks at the sensationally young age of 0nly 26. The same composer is now also featured at the beginning of a-cappella production for the BR-KLASSIK label, on which the chorus presents itself under its director Peter Dijkstra. Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Chorus, which was not given its world première until 40 years after it was composed, has nevertheless ranked since then as one of the Swiss composer’s major works. Zoltán Kodály’s Missa brevis is directly marked by powerless despair over the horrors of World War II. Francis Poulenc’s Litanies à la Vierge Noire was prompted by a far more personal motivation. He composed the work on the death of his composer friend Pierre-Octave Ferroud in 1936, a short time after Poulenc had found his own way to religion on a pilgrimage.