Julia.2008

Since they started in the early 1970’s, ECM has been giving the world one excellent jazz piano disc after another–significant names include Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, and Paul Bley, more recently Anat Fort, Bo Stenson, and now Julia Hulsmann. Leading a trio on her ECM debut, THE END OF SUMMER, Hulsman displays a graceful, muted, and melancholy air. In the manner of Stenson and Bley, Hulsmann expresses maximum emotion and mood using the fewest (but well-placed) notes. Unlike the aforementioned gentlemen however, Hulsmann favors almost folk-like, affable, and concise melodies. Her bassist and drummer seem subdued at times, but they’re constantly lending the tunes a sense of forward motion.

Odradek Records is delighted to present the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos performed by Artur Pizarro and the Sinfonieorchester Wuppertal under the baton of Julia Jones. This is a recording not to be missed: Artur Pizarros interpretations are renowned internationally for their insight and nuance, and this album represents for Pizarro and his fellow musicians a very personal labour of love, especially when overcoming the obstacles of the pandemic in order to record together. The majesty, power and innovation of the Beethoven Piano Concertos is contrasted with a selection of solo pieces by Beethoven; Romances and Rondos that round off the release with irresistible intimacy. On this recording Artur Pizarro plays Bechstein grand pianos kindly provided by Bechstein. Artur Pizarro has recorded a series of highly-acclaimed albums with Odradek, including the complete Rachmaninov piano music, and Lebensreise, a disc of music by Robert Schumann, for which Pizarros playing was praised as: soft as velvet, but muscular and virtuoso if necessary technique and virtuosity are unconditionally at the service of the composers intentions (Klassiek Centraal). Pizarro also performed the Poulenc Piano Concerto with the Beethoven Philharmonie and Thomas Rsner on the album Couleurs, praised in Gramophone magazine: Pizarro seems delighted to meet the score on its own terms, turning in a performance of considerable sensitivity and subtlety.

When Julia Hülsmann was little, there was a memorable concert on the television. A man was sitting alone at the piano singing wonderful things with a uniquely appalling voice. Julia Hülsmann found it particularly appealing… And she was especially delighted that, by coincidence, her parents had bought this very man’s sheet music. This encouraged her to sit down at the piano at home and practise for the first time her classical studies. They were of course the songs of Randy Newman. It was the beginning of a long love affair.
Julia Hülsmann has herself in the mean time become a well-known pianist. In 2003 she made the recording "Scattering Poems" with her own trio and Norwegian singer Rebekka Bakken. The release was a special success with public and critics alike…

It is difficult to imagine two greater opposites. On the one hand, Jazz, the rough companion who made ends meet in the big cities of the 20th century. On the other, Emily Dickinson, the quiet poet from a Calvinist family, who spent all of her life in the rural community of Amherst, Massachusetts. When Dickinson died at the age of 56 in 1886, jazz had not been born yet. It was no more than a dark premonition, lingering in the dank swamps of the Mississippi delta.
Do they go together? Without doubt. But to achieve this union requires a unique talent. Great musicianship. A feel for words, images, and sounds. It requires the ability to invent tunes that linger in the ear and move the heart. Only then can we fully appreciate the brittle, secretive art of Emily Dickinson…

Like many renditions of Bach's monumental B Minor Mass, this one puts forward a musical argument: in this case, for the use of a vocal ensemble made up of ten soloists rather than a choir. Minkowski's approach may be historically aggressive, but the sound is unstintingly lovely and the pared-down arrangements shed an interesting and unusual light on this most familiar of the baroque masterworks. Highly recommended to most classical collections and all period-instrument collections.