Julia.2008

Normally, one thinks of pearl-divers as of people from the Southern seas, typically the Tropical ones. Certainly, the ice-cold waters of the polar and subpolar seas are not those most immediately associated with pearl-fishing. And, indeed, the “pearls from the Northern Seas” represented in this Da Vinci Classics album are intangible and invisible, as they represent the domain of the audible.

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).

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…

“During these entire dozen years which I spent in Weimar, there was one great idea valways on my mind – the reformation of music through its deeper bond with the art of poetry”, Franz Liszt wrote in a letter from 1860 to his piano student and close friend Agnes Street-Klindworth (1825-1906). But Liszt ́s entire artistic life shifted even more in the field of tension between art and religion, between freedom of expression and the strictness of dogmatic limitations. This artistic credo not least becomes clear in his large-scale piano cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses S.273. This varied piano cycle, dating back to the year 1835, relates to a poetry collection by the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) and combines great concert pieces (f.e. Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude or Funérailles) with simple and shorter compositions partly including Gregorian melodies.

This outstanding new release brings together two of the world’s most sought-after violinists in a pair of rarely-heard 20th-century Russian chamber pieces: Shostakovich’s Five pieces for two violins and piano, and Prokofiev’s Sonata for two violins. Both pieces explore the possibilities of two violins duetting and in dialogue, providing the perfect repertoire to showcase the natural rapport between these two exceptional violinists.

Over the course of his long and eventful career, Dussek composed 38 violin sonatas – or rather sonatas for the keyboard, accompanied by the violin – and the partnership of Julia Huber and Miriam Altmann is acquiring impressive credentials and critical praise as they gradually uncover them for the first time.

One jealous husband. One dirty cop. And one brave woman who will fight to stay alive. This twisted murder mystery is full of surprises at every corner, as Julia McKay is thrown into a life or death struggle with men of power and greed. When Julia's husband and business partner Matt suspects her of having an affair, he begins to go mad and agrees to have her killed. Once he is informed of Julia's murder, however, Matt spirals into remorse and takes the final plunge: suicide. Or does he? It seems Matt's death might actually have been a murder, and when Julia shows up after faking her own execution, the men left in her life are now determined to finish the job.