Alfred Schnittke Edition Vol.22 Epilogue Works For Cello And Piano

Alfred Schnittke’s use of the elegiac voice of the cello evokes Russian musical tradition and history. His works for the cello were to a large extent inspired by his friendship and close collaboration with the exceptional musicians Mstislav Rostropovich, Alexander Ivashkin and Natalia Gutman, to all of whom he dedicated works. Rostropovich has said about the composer: ‘As far as I am concerned, the most remarkable thing about Schnittke is his all-embracing, all-encompassing genius… he uses everything invented before him. Uses it as his palette, his colours. And it is all so organic: for example, diatonic music goes side by side with complex atonal polyphony.’

Cellist Inbal Segev debuts on AVIE, with pianist Juho Pohjonen, in the romantic repertoire of Chopin, Grieg and Schumann.

One is Swiss, the other Mexican. Beyond the barriers of language and oceans, they invite us to transcend the frontiers in inviting Latin American jewels to communicate freely with Parisian creations – just as musicians coming from beyond the Atlantic Ocean a century ago were welcomed with open arms by “the most beautiful city in the world”.

Music is flux. Only the printed music on the page appears to us to be something objective, inalterable. Yet, the actual experience of music, which occurs anew and uniquely in each performance, is subjected to continual changes in spite of all “faithfulness to the original.” Personal experiences of life inform the effect of the music. It is the power of great music to convey its individual message at any time to every person. Thus the recordings on this album represent an invitation to undertake a very personal journey into Beethoven’s world.

German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser and Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson present a moving portrait of the Mendelssohn family with this recording of pieces by the siblings Felix and Fanny. Once composed for the popular Sunday Sessions at the Berlin Mendelssohn family house, these works fit into the typically nineteenth-century tradition of domestic music-making, albeit at the highest thinkable level. Beatson plays an 1837 Érard fortepiano, identical to the instrument that belonged to the Mendelssohn household when these pieces were composed.

After a first album as part of the harmonia nova collection, which resulted in a well-deserved Victoire de la Musique Classique (category New Instrumental Soloist), Bruno Philippe continues his path on the harmonia mundi label.

The five cello sonatas span Beethoven’s three creative periods, with the audacious op.5 sonatas dating from the early years on his time in Vienna as a piano virtuoso and aspiring composer (1792-9), the great op.69 sonata is from the period that saw the composition of symphonies 4-8, the violin concerto, Mass in C and the String Quartets op59. The two op102 sonatas are from the cusp of the ‘late’ period, this is the time of the 9th Symphony, the Missa Solemnis, the great string quartets op127 – 135 and the last five piano sonatas.

For their first recording, Bruno Philippe and Tanguy de Williencourt have chosen three masterpieces of Romantic chamber music. Throughout this programme, the piano carries on a dialogue with the full, warm sound of the cello in a fascinating polyphony.

The trumpeter Alison Balsom has a rich Warner Classics catalogue, but this is her first CD recital with piano - here played by her long-standing recital partner, Tom Poster.

Patchwork is a chance to join Eastern-European composers of the XXth century. Sonatas for flute and piano from Prokofiev, Enescu, Schulhoff and Muczynski show the strong personalities of the universal Masters. Those vibrant musics are made up with dancing & scintillating rhythms. The soul of the Slavic culture is being displayed here, on the model of warm and coloured mosaics of fabrics. Poetic dream-like and tender worlds are then arising, that enhance the unique musical sound of this duo.