Brahms: Rhapsodies, Op. 79

Andre Laplante plays two of Brahm’s most seminal piano pieces. The early Sonata No. 3, composed when Brahms was just 20 years of age and the later Two Rhapsodies, dedicated to his pupil Elisabet von Stockhausen. Over the last decade, Canadian pianist André Laplante has firmly established himself as one of the great virtuosos of the romantic period repertoire.

Henri Bonamy is fast becoming one of the most ‘in demand’ young talents of his generation, on the concert platform today. A graduate of the Paris Conservatoire he has played extensively throughout Europe and the Far East, in concerto and solo performances. He is a regular chamber music recitalist and his performing partners include Julia Fischer, Marina Chiche and Wen-Sinn Yang.

World premiere recording of Brahms’s Violin Concerto for Piano and Orchestra.

Own arrangement of pianist Dejan Lazic.

Premieres with top orchestras around the world in 2010.

In his extended liner notes Dejan Lazic explains against the historical background why and how he worked on this major project:

‘I started working on this project in early 2003 and completed it in 2008. The violin was always a favourite love, and I continue to hold violinists in high esteem, realising just how wonderful their literature is. Thus far, I have been tremendously lucky to have had many an opportunity to perform with some wonderful colleagues. And it is with a degree of pride that I present – after Bach and Beethoven – the third “great B” in the present arrangement. Is one actually "allowed" to make such an arrangement? With the benefit of hindsight, we know that Brahms made countless arrangements and transcriptions of his and other composers' works. I am convinced these were more than justified; hence, I hope that Brahms himself would not have anything against my idea. What lingers is the rhetorical question of what is a transcription, what makes an arrangement, what may be defined as a new version. The key to this conundrum is that I sought to construct anew the violin part, recomposing the voice in a thorough-going Brahmsian style and adding my own Cadenza. Throughout the piece that was my thought: to imagine what Brahms would do. Of great import is that the orchestral score remains entirely unchanged! With this arrangement - done solely out of respect and admiration for the composer - my main goal was to translate Brahms's unique musical language into a new setting without losing any of its original musical value and, in addition, to give pianists an equal chance to perform and enjoy this wonderful music the same way violinists do for exactly 130 years now.’ Dejan Lazic

CD+DVD

This unusual project presents a rounded portrait of the Belgrade-born pianist Mira Yevtich through a live concert DVD of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for piano & strings and four diverse pieces for solo piano by Venetian composer Baldassare Galuppi, via Haydn and Brahms to Alexander Tchaikovsky (born 1946), and a CD, recorded in a Moscow Radio studio, of those same four solo works. Mira Yevtich studied at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatoire and won the 1988 International Festival of Modern Music in St Petersburg. Now an Australian national, she is a regular soloist at Sydney Opera House, and performs in Russia and throughout Europe and America. She has played with conductors such as Valeri Gergiev, Evgeni Svetlanov, and Yuri Bashmet, and made several CDs, among them four for Bel Air. These include Mozart Piano Concertos, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and most recently ‘The Music of Grant Foster’.

Here her typically enterprising repertoire encompasses a Haydn Sonata and Brahms Two Rhapsodies, Op 79, and two rarities, a keyboard sonata by Galuppi, the prolific Italian Baroque composer very much better known for his operas, and the Piano Sonata dedicated to her by contemporary Russian composer Alexander Tchaikovsky (apparently unrelated to his famous namesake Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky). Her performance of the Schnittke concerto with the State Hermitage Orchestra under Vladimir Fanshil and the alternative versions of the four solo pieces were recorded in St Petersburg in May.