Stravinsky: Tango

A new recording with Riccardo Chailly, a top classical conductor, and Stefano Bollani, a top jazz pianist, following their phenomenally successful Gershwin Rhapsody/Concerto album. A new exciting programme focused on the magic ‘30s: a decade full of energy and creativity, in which several top classical composers were strongly influenced by such modern trends like jazz, tango and fox-trot.

2CDs for price of 1.

Stravinsky’s collaboration with the violinist Samuel Dushkin was a great artistic success, generating new works for the repertoire as well as arrangements of some of the composer’s most tuneful and popular works. Of these arrangements, Dushkin wrote that Stravinsky seemed ‘to go back to the essence of the music and rewrite or recreate the music in the spirit of the new instrument’. Reviewing the current performers in The Independent, Bayan Northcott writes that ‘these are no ordinary transcriptions. In reducing items from The Firebird or The Fairy’s Kiss to the violin and piano medium, Stravinsky rethought and respaced their every chord’.

In the performing partnership of Anthony Marwood and Thomas Adès, Hyperion has a combination that seems to reignite the original flames of inspiration, creation and re-creation.

On ‘Oscillations’ the highly-talented Israeli born pianist Einav Yarden contrasts pieces by Beethoven and Stravinsky, two major figures from completely different musical eras. Both composers however shared the same passion for the piano, and considered it to be an indispensible tool in the art of composition. The recording features Beethoven’s Sonatas opus 14 No. 2, and Opus 10 No. 2, and the same composer’s 11 Bagatelles, alongside Stravinsky’s only solo Sonata and several of his piano miniatures.

Einav Yarden juxtaposes two composers who are rarely heard on disc together, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) and Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). For Beethoven, the piano was a central instrument, and he wrote five piano concertos, 32 sonatas, numerous variation works, bagatelles, and individual pieces. Although Igor Stravinsky’s piano compositions are limited to three works for piano and orchestra, the Sonata of 1924, some early pieces, etudes, barely a dozen individual pieces, and a few works for two pianos, the piano was key also to Stravinsky. “Every note I wrote,” said Stravinsky, “was tried out on this instrument, every interval singly tested, heard again and again.”

The miniatures collected here speak to vanished worlds and altered lives, to the fragility of destiny and the possibilities of new beginnings: postcards from the Exiles' Café

A captivating presence both on and offstage, critically acclaimed Steinway Concert Artist Lara Downes is redefining the solo recital format with visionary, cutting-edge performances at prestigious concert venues worldwide. Lauded by NPR as "a delightful artist with a unique blend of musicianship and showmanship" and praised by the Washington Post for her stunning performances "rendered with drama and nuance," Lara presents the piano repertoire - from iconic favourites to newly commissioned works - in new ways that bridge musical tastes, genres and audiences.

The recording ‘Tango Perpetuel’ features the Take Four Guitar Quartet performing music by Piazzolla, Stravinsky and Ginastera, plus the rather less well-known Patrick Roux, Unto Mononen, Ernesto Nazareth, Stefan Wolpe, Christopher Grafschmidt and Martin Ackerman.

On this anthology the four guitarists illustrate tango’s many facets from the drama of Piazzolla’s Argentinian tango nuevo through the lightness of the Brazilian Nazareth and the subtle irony of European classicists Stravinsky and Stefan Wolpe to tango from Finland and original works written especially for the programme. The Take Four Guitar Quartet - Pia Grees, Johan Fostier, Matthias Kläger and Luc Vander Borght - come from Germany and Belgium but all four studied in Paris under the Spanish classical guitarist Alberto Ponce.

The quartet itself was formed in 1999 and has achieved great success with regular concerts around the world ever since.

The title is something of a charming misnomer: only a few minutes of Igor Stravinsky’s all-encompassing output were originally scored for violin and piano. However, once he had made the acquaintance of the violinist Samuel Dushkin, his interest in this most Classical of chamber genres was piqued, and the two men worked closely to transform some of his most popular, melodic and balletic music into suites and miniatures that are no mere transcriptions but stand, witty and proud, in their own right.

Dushkin was suggested to Stravinsky as a possible performer for the premiere of his Violin Concerto. Stravinsky acceded, and found Dushkin to have ‘a musical culture, a delicate understanding, and – in the exercise of his profession – an abnegation that is very rare’ – qualities also to be appreciated in the deft approach of the Dutch violinist Isabelle van Keulen, complemented by the famously quirky originality of her partner here, the Finnish pianist Olli Mustonen.

Hailed as ‘Queen of the classical accordion’, Mie Miki made her first public appearance at the age of five, and has since then given countless concerts. This CD brings together pieces that do not form part of her standard performance repertoire but are more old friends and new, childhood acquaintancies, and some surprise guests from a wholly different musical universe.

Arrangement of works originally written for harpsichord (Daquin’s Cuckoo or Handel’s Blacksmith) or piano (Stravinsky’s Tango and Schubert’s two Moments musicaux) rub shoulders with original accordion compositions such as Wolfgang Jacobi’s Sérénade. Moods range from the irrepressible Miss Karting, straight out of the great French musette tradition, and the breakneck comedy of Road Runner, to the intense pathos of Astor Piazzolla’s Chiquilín de Bachín and the calm serenity of A Spotless Rose, in Brahms’ setting (originally an organ prelude).

Recording made in 1995.

This recording was highly praised when released and in 2001 was awarded a Grammy.

Stravinsky never had much time for conventions. His teacher Rimsky-Korsakov was similarly maverick, and was at his best when free of the strictures of the symphony and classical form. Stravinsky openly defied the Austro-German way of doing things, and adopted an unpredictable (if at times neo classical) style, and this CD contains some of the smaller works he produced that illustrate is unique, and sometimes quirky style. The two Suites were arranged from the original piano pieces intended for children. The three pieces for string quartet are unlike anything form the period – 1914. No sign of late romanticism here, or of the Second Viennese School. It is an utterly unique and new sound word – icy, different, but very Russian. The Octet sounds superficially like a dissonant wind divertimento by Mozart.

Stravinsky’s opposition to the traditional structures of classical music softened a little towards the end of his life, and the Scherzo a la Russe and the Concerto in D for strings illustrate this well with their less spiky sound, and longer melodic lines. The complete list of pieces is: Tango, Suites for small orchestra, Concerto in D for strings, Concertino, Octet for winds, 3 Pieces for string quartet, Ragtime, Duet for two Bassoons, Fanfare for a New Theatre, and the Scherzo à la Russe for jazz orchestra.

Since winning the Arthur Rubinstein Competition and the Sidney Piano Competition, Alexander Korsantia’s career has taken him to many of the world’s major concert halls, collaborating with renowned conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Christoph Eschenbach, Yuri Bashmet and Paavo Jarvi and orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, the Kirov, Israel Philharmonic and Oslo Philharmonic. He has also given many recitals with renowned violinist Vadim Repin. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Korsantia has lived in the United States since 1992. He now resides in Boston where he is Professor of Piano at the New England Conservatory. Enjoying great popularity in his country of birth, he performed at the inauguration of Georgian President Saakashvili in 2004.

Korsantia’s live recordings, on two discs, present an attractive programme carefully chosen from recitals he has given since 1995 in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Toulouse, Boston and New York. The first CD features arrangements of Bach by Busoni, Egon Petri and Myra Hess’s famous version of the chorale Jesu, Joy of Men's Desiring, two Piano Sonatas by Haydn and Mozart’s Sonata in C major, KV330 and 20th century Russian and Georgian music. Korsantia has rearranged Gwido Agosti’s magnificent 1934 piano transcription of the last three pieces from The Firebird Suite to reflect more of Stravinsky's original orchestral sound. Stravinsky’s Tango is followed by Giya Kancheli’s Instead of Tango originally written in 1996 for violin, piano, bandoneon and double bass. Kancheli’s own piano arrangement is dedicated to three Georgian pianists, one of them Alexander Korsantia. The second disc is devoted to Sergei Prokofiev: his Pastoral Sonatina and Vision Fugitive, No 11, Op 22 bookend the Piano Sonata No 7 in B flat major and the substantial Piano Sonata No 8.