Julia Carin Cavazos

The work group formed by Telemann’s overture suites is regarded as exemplary and even today offers a wealth of discoveries – and the three works presented here in CD recording premieres certainly answer this description. It is difficult to determine the chronological order of Telemann’s extant overture suites because the composer incorporated very different influences into them, not only from French music since the invention of the form by Jean-Baptiste Lully but also from the »Lullists« active in Germany such as Johann Sigismund Kusser, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, and Johann Fischer. And for Telemann’s pronounced tendency to mix existing formal, stylistic, and generic traditions, the overture suite formed an absolutely ideal foil. Here we can find diverse characters, formal combinations, and stylistic interconnections in great supply. The great imagination and spirit at work here are also shown in the plentiful stores of surprising ideas that shine like flashes of brainstorm lightning in various passages.

Julia Fordham has rarely found a song that her voice didn't capture and own. Herein lies a best-of collection of 15 tracks, including some new versions of her classics, a remix of "I Thought It Was You," and two new tracks confirming this assertion. Although other fan favorites are missing, such as "The Comfort of Strangers" and "I Want to Call You Baby," this assemblage of quality music is very well put together. A near-classic collection from an artist in a class all her own.

When the composer Sergey Akhunov discovered the ground-breaking book of 1947, “Jazz”, by Henri Matisse – a collection of prints of his colourful cut-paper collages – he was struck by its almost surreal nature, and he conceived the idea of composing music with the title “Jazz”, but which, like Matisse’s book, has nothing to do with jazz. That inspiration finally took shape when Julia Igonina and Maxim Emelyanychev commissioned him to compose a work for them. The result was Jazz, a cycle for violin and piano: fifteen miniatures, bearing titles taken from the prints in Matisse’s book. On this new recording, those pieces are brought together with two French masterpieces of the 1940s by Messiaen and Poulenc (whose favourite painter was Matisse), performed by Julia Igonina and Maxim Emelyanychev on period instruments – violin with gut strings and a magnificent 1908 Blüthner piano (part of the collection of the Piano Museum in Rybinsk).

On The Next Door Julia Hülsmann returns with the quartet from 2019’s Not Far From Here, and presents her unique pianistic voice in a varied programme of almost exclusively original music, composed by herself and her colleagues – tenor saxophonist Uli Kempendorff, Marc Muellbauer on double bass and drummer Heinrich Köbberling. A deep respect for the jazz tradition, as cultivated in the post-bop and modal jazz of the 60s, permeates this session and, with the quartet’s modern twist, sets the stage for highly expressive soloing and profound interplay.