Fredrik Ullén Liszt Messiaen

By far the largest collection of concert etudes in the known repertoire, Kaikhosru Sorabji’s set of 100 Transcendental Studies, composed between 1940 and 1944, has a total duration of more than eight hours. On five previous discs, the Swedish pianist (and neuroscientist) Fredrik Ullen has introduced the first 83 etudes to a wider audience, the large majority of them appearing on disc for the first time. Now, 15 years after the release of the first volume comes the final installment, a 2-album set with the last 17 studies. In his own liner notes, Ullen describes the experience of learning and recording the collection: ‘From the F sharp minor of Study 1 to the F sharp minor chord concluding Study 100: traversing Sorabji’s Transcendental Studies has been somewhat like joining a comet following a long eccentric orbit through pianistic outer space, and finally returning back to mother earth.’

‘The Bach violin concertos are not only one of the Baroque period highlights, but are one of the foundations of the entire history of music’ writes Swedish violinist Christian Svarfvar on his new album of Bach Re Composed by fellow Swede Johan Ullén. ‘It’s a whole world of beauty in 60 minutes. Then you may ask yourself: why recompose something that is already so perfect?’ The result is this brilliant album of re-composed Bach concertos, with a fearless and technically challenging stratospheric solo violin part contrasting with enriched cellos and basses. For those who loved Max Richter’s Four Seasons Re Composed, Infinite Bach will be a wonderful discovery for them. Bach was forward looking and his influence has travelled the centuries, influencing jazz, rock and pop musicians as well as every classical composer who came after him.

Steven Osborne has only twice before been mentioned in the review pages of Gramophone: Andrew Achenbach found his playing ‘outstandingly sensitive and dashing’ in concertos by Mackenzie and Tovey (Hyperion‚ 10/98)‚ while Roger Thomas appreciated his wit in the jazzinflected sonatas of Nikolai Kapustin (Hyperion‚ 8/00). He faces a much tougher job in Messiaen’s Vingt Regards: not only music of exceptional difficulty but a score of which there are seven rival recordings currently available‚ six of them very good indeed.