Weill, K: Youkali

For the programme on this CD, the renowned recorder group Flautando Köln explore entirely new directions, interpreting music well outside the normal repertoire for their instruments. Amongst them are pieces by Kurt Weill, Claude Debussy and the jazz great Dizzie Gillespie.

For almost 20 years the four musicians of Flautando Köln have been developing new and interesting repertoire. For this they draw on a huge area of music from the middle ages to the present century, arranging melodies and compositions for their instruments or playing in an assured style works especially written for them. Usually they are joined in performance by invited musicians playing different instruments.

Bataclan’s latest project immerses the listener into the fin d’époque atmosphere in cities such as Paris, London and Berlin at the dawn of the 20th century.

Bataclan’s unique combination of instruments; bandoneón, bassoon and harpsichord provides a wonderful combination for this music.

The title, taken from the opening Gershwin track, says it all. Each of the gems presented here by Austrian violinist David Frühwirth tells its own unique and captivating Short Story. David takes the listener on a musical journey through Western and Eastern Europe with an intriguing collection of miniatures, many by virtuoso violinists of the 19th and 20th centuries who applied their personal touch to the range and idiosyncrasies of their instrument to create these small but perfectly formed masterpieces. Works by relative unknowns such as Joseph Achron, Ovid Musin and Hans Sitt mingle with popular transcriptions by Kreisler, and arrangements of works by Glazunov, Ravel and Weill, including several world-premiere recordings.

David Frühwirth garnered international attention with his Gramophone Editor’s Choice Avie debut, Trails of Creativity (AV 0009). On Short Stories, he applies the same ingenuity for seeking out unknown but deserving and striking repertoire.

At the invitation of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Diane Dufresne sang some of the best-known Kurt Weill songs at an all-Weill concert that took place in March 2003 in Montreal and that is already regarded as one of the most important events of recent years on the Montreal music scene. The recording was done shortly after the concert. The CD also contains Symphony No. 2, a work Yannick Nézet-Séguin had dreamed of performing for a long time. The provocative Diane Dufresne has been the object of an enduring fascination on the part of audiences everywhere. An real artist right down to the core, La Dufresne has explored various musical styles, including symphonic concerts where even Mahler has had a place. She is accompanied in this Kurt Weill exploration by the Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal under Yannick Nézet-Séguin.