Hyperion Duo

The Art of Courtly Love takes center stage on Duo Trobairitz's Hyperion CD The Language of Love, which is devoted to French troubadour and trouvère songs of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. These are monophonic songs originally performed in the courts of France of that day, and performing them in modern times has proven a challenge; as this is some of the earliest secular music to be written down, the sources don't reveal a whole lot about the way such pieces were heard. While a handful of treatises and other accounts exist about troubadours and the practices they observed, listeners still need to use their imagination to make a performance of such music credible and comprehensive to a twenty-first century audience.

Duo Trobairitz - The Language of Love
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 435 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Hyperion # CDA67634 | Country/Year: UK 2007
Genre: Classical | Style: Medieval, Vocal

…If one has an interest in the sound and repertoire of medieval troubadour literature and desires to hear it in a period-appropriate setting without too many bells or whistles employed, then Duo Trobairitz's The Language of Love is about as close to such an ideal as one is likely to get.

For those who like their modernism light, buoyant, and lyrical, there's Bohuslav Martinu's prewar music. And for those who like their modernism big, bold yet still lyrical, there's Martinu's postwar music. On this 2007 Hyperion disc, the first of four devoted to the Czech composer's complete violin concertos, violinist Bohuslav Matousek with Christopher Hogwood and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra present three wonderful works from both sides of the war: the Concerto for flute, violin, and orchestra from 1936 and the Duo concertante for two violins and orchestra from 1937 plus the Concerto in D major for two violins and orchestra from 1950.

With the vast majority of Beethoven's works being frequently performed as part of the modern canon, we can sometimes forget those few pieces that often lie dormant. This Hyperion album, featuring the Nash Ensemble, celebrates three such works. The program opens with the Op. 104 C minor String Quintet, which keen listeners will instantly recognize as a transcription of the Op. 1/3 Piano Trio. The quintet version came into being as a sort of "oneupsmanship" after an amateur composer submitted his own transcription. Beethoven, who accurately assessed that he could do better, rewrote it and published it as Op. 104. If you're not already familiar with the piano trio, you may never know that the string quintet began its life in a different genre. Beethoven's writing is highly idiomatic while preserving almost the entire original score of the trio. The Nash Ensemble's performance is equally refined and stunning, making it all the more curious why this piece is not performed more frequently.

Volume 23 in the Hyperion Liszt series validates Liszt's phenomenal mastery of transcribing, and in the case of Berlioz's "Harold in Italy," translating an orchestral work with viola obbligato into a magnificent chamber work for piano and viola. The excellent content of Berlioz's work alone can easily earn five stars, but the other three substantial transcriptions of Gounod and Meyerbeer enhance the splendor of this recording even further.

In the second of four Hyperion discs dedicated to the works for violin and orchestra by Czech-French-American-Swiss composer Bohuslav Martinu, violinist Bohuslav Matousek with Christopher Hogwood and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra join two of the composer's typically atypical works: the Concerto da camera for violin with string orchestra, piano and percussion and the Concerto for violin and piano with orchestra.

If Saint-Saëns has been called the French Mendelssohn, in a curious turnabout, Joseph Rheinberger (1839?1901) might be called the German Saint-Saëns. Both composers were accomplished organists for whom the instrument played a major role in their professional careers. Both composers labored in the field of opera, neither, however?notwithstanding Saint-Saëns?s Samson et Dalila with much success. Both composers found their main calling in instrumental, chamber, and, in Saint-Saëns?s case, orchestral music.

Robin Holloway writes in his notes for this record that 'It seems both odd and foolish to take one of the acknowledged pinnacles of western music and 'recompose' it'. But his 'Goldberg adventure' (as he calls it) began with modest aims as a didactic piece. Frustrated as a single pianist by inability to clarify the close-weave canons or manage the more fiendish hand-crossing so idiomatic on a twomanual harpsichord, he began to transcribe a few for two pianos. Over the next few years he became absorbed with the task and ended …….

Since none of Mendelssohn's cello and piano works were currently available on CD, this disc would have been welcome enough even without the tenderly nostalgic little unpublished Assai tranguillo (written by the 26-year-old Mendelssohn for his good young friend, Julius Rietz) recorded here for the very first time. Lasting only just over two minutes it ends inconclusively on the dominant, as if intended to preface something bigger.

The luminous partnership of Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien returns to Hyperion for this double album containing Schubert’s complete music for violin and piano. Their intelligence and technical prowess, their seamless and intimate connection as performers and their profound understanding of the music combine in magical performances.