Absolutely on Music

A deeply personal, intimate conversation about music and writing between the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author and his close friend, the former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Lawrence Power makes the second of his appearances in this month’s release lists, this time with his regular pianist partner Simon Crawford-Phillips in the chamber music of Shostakovich. The centrepiece is the Viola Sonata, Shostakovich’s last completed work, premiered posthumously, on what would have been the composer’s sixty-ninth birthday. Its ravishing slow finale reworks the opening of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata—a tribute to a composer he revered. Shostakovich the film composer also takes a bow, in the form of The Gadfly, with its famous ‘Romance’ beloved of violinists everywhere. That this works just as compellingly on the viola is triumphantly displayed in the arrangement made by Vadim Borisovsky (founding violist of the Beethoven Quartet), one of the Five Pieces he recast from Shostakovich’s original. Shostakovich’s 24 Piano Preludes have also proved irresistible to transcribers and here we have the seven brilliantly reworked by a pupil of Borisovsky, Yevgeny Strakhov.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Janáček’s birth, this Decca Collector Edition brings together most of the composer’s chamber works and solo pieces plus his most popular orchestral works and the magnificent Glagolitic Mass in a superb digital recording with Riccardo Chailly and Wiener Philharmoniker. The recordings of the solo works and chamber pieces feature one of the world’s most distinguished ensembles: the London Sinfonietta and David Atherton. Their recordings were originally released as a 5-LP set in 1981 and many of these performances have not been available for several years; many also make their first international appearance on CD. This set provides the listener with all the essential non-operatic Janáček in one convenient collection.

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She is currently a member of the Novus Promusica team, a record label headed by the composer and music producer Manuel Ruiz del Corral, with whom she has developed both composition and production skills. Under this label she has recorded two albums, 'Jeux' and 'Reflets'. One of the facets that characterizes her is her commitment to contemporary music; in her discography there is absolutely inspiring music by Einojuhani Rautavaara, Manuel Ruiz del Corral, Miguel Bustamante, Ana Silva, José Buenagu and Brian Field.As a composer, she has explored various genres of film music and has composed and produced the music for the promotional video for the new building of the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Malaga created by the architect Eduardo Pérez Gómez. She is currently immersed in the composition of a commission for Lynn University (Florida).

The Chinese composer and violinist Ma Sicong was born in Haifeng in Guangdong (Canton) province in 1912, and was among the relatively few Chinese musicians of his generation to study abroad. He settled in America in 1967. The music on this disc embraces contrasting moods, each imbued with Ma Sicong’s abiding love for his homeland and combining Chinese inspiration with Western musical techniques. Shortly after composing the Rondo No. 4 he wrote this heartbreaking entry in his diary: ‘When can I end my exile? Nobody knows.’