Immortal Bach Ensemble, Leipziger Kammerorchester, Morten Schuldt Jensen　schubert

Austrian composer Thomas Larcher’s new album features premiere recordings of three strongly contrasting works. The Times has hailed Larcher’s music as a world “of haunting landscapes and dreams, stylistically disparate but fused by the composer’s astonishing ear and quizzical attitude to traditional forms”, a description borne out by the compositions here. The Living Mountain, for soprano and ensemble, draws upon the memoir of the Scottish poet and nature writer Nan Shepherd. Unerzählt is an intimate song cycle for baritone and piano, deploying texts of German writer W.G. Sebald. And Ouroboros, named for the serpent of eternity, is a powerful piece for cello and chamber orchestra. Recorded in Munich and Weerberg in 2021 and 2022 and produced by Manfred Eicher, The Living Mountain is the fourth New Series album of Larcher’s compositions.

"The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said." Taking a cue from these lines of Philip Larkin, pianist Simone Dinnerstein casts her album of the music of J.S. Bach and Franz Schubert in poetic terms. Her understanding of the composers is summed up in her own words: "The music of Bach and Schubert share a distinctive quality, as if wordless voices were singing textless melodies." Of course, Bach and Schubert were masters of setting texts to profoundly expressive music, so it is fruitful to look for the lyrical impulse in their keyboard works and appropriate to find songful interpretations. Yet Dinnerstein doesn't merely serve up rhapsodic renditions or treat the music as some kind of tuneful vehicle for idiosyncratic or personal reveries. Her playing is quite in character for both composers, and her treatment of the material is far from self-indulgent.

Simone Rubino - Immortal Bach (2017) {Genuin Official Digital Download}
FLAC (tracks) - 16bit/44kHz - Official Digital Download -> 203 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 135 Mb
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© 2017 Genuin Classics / Deutschlandradio | GEN 17479
Classical / Percussion / Marimba

When Simone Rubino plays Johann Sebastian Bach on the marimba, it sounds like the music of the spheres: ancient and brand new and more that ere the priozewinner of numerous competitions combines Bach witrh works of the 20th and 21st centuries.