Olga 6.0

The concert season of the Ruhr Piano Festival 2020 has suffered heavily under the Corona pandemic shutdown – loosing more than 85% of all scheduled concerts. In the late June/July days some concerts had taken place, some were live recorded; some concert also had taken place in the early autumn 2020, before the entire new planning was cancelled as well for all 2020, like for so many other concerts and festivals. At least the few live recordings are showing an interesting picture of a list of unknown piano works of Beethoven. It is therefore for sure a rich source for collectors and connaisseurs.

The dignified bearing and quiet wisdom of Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881–1950) gained him the sobriquet of ‘the conscience of Russian music’ – and those qualities are reflected in the unemphatic strength of his music. His orchestral, chamber and instrumental works are regaining the currency they once enjoyed, but his large corpus of songs, many of them understated masterpieces, has yet to attract systematic attention – a situation this series hopes to remedy. The pairing here of his late Violin Sonata with his last two song-cycles for soprano and piano mirrors the Moscow concert in 1947 when all three were given their first performances.

Shaping Motions is the story of Olga Amelchenko, a modern nomad, a wonder, at once restless and restful. Her music draws its inspiration from the many cities she has called her home; Novosibirsk, Moscow, Paris, Cologne, Berlin - all have left their mark on her music, carrying with them their own character, mood and experiences. Meetings and separations, memories and expectations. A yearning for home, yet a hunger for the new - the unfamiliar, the unexplored. In Shaping Motions, jazz blends together effortlessly with elements of classical music and folk, producing a rich sound that both reflects Olga’s vast musical background and creates a space for interaction and improvisation. Together with her Berlin based quartet and guests Ilkka Uksila (vibraphone) and Florian Menzel (trumpet), Olga paints the motions that have shaped her life, as well as those that are yet to come.

This is an excellent disc from one of the best mezzosopranos working during the last couple of decades. It does also, I suppose, present a nice survey of Tchaikovsky’s songs (of which there is quite a number, few of which are well-known) and includes at least the two most famous ones, “None but the lonely heart” and “Once Again, Alone” – and the selection consists of songs from both early in his career (the 1869 set including “None but the lonely heart”) and late ones. However, I would warn against listening through this disc in one go – these songs are pretty much all rather dark and sad and slow, focusing on loneliness, regret, sorrow and longing. Taken a few at a time, on the other hand, virtually every single one comes across as a marvelous gem.

This album showcases a stellar line-up of artists–Clarinet Meets Guitar (Silviu Ciulei and Jeff Brooks), Rene Izquierdo, Xavier Jara, Kithara Duo (Olga Amelkina-Vera and Fernand Vera), Owen Moriarty, Matt Palmer, and Weimar Guitar Quartet (Stephanie Jones, Karmen Stendler, Hanna Link, Jakob Schmidt)—performing select works by composer Olga Amelkina-Vera.

The baritone Georg Nigl is fascinated by ballads, which unfold in him "dream images". Schubert's long and little-known lied Viola , based on a poem by Franz von Schober, or the great ballads based on texts by Goethe "opened up a world that has always accompanied me, that of the storyteller (…) stories of frightening beauty, with as many colours as possible…". The magnificent pianos on this recording - a Christoph Kern fortepiano after Conrad Graf (Vienna, 1826) and a Steinway & Sons concert grand piano (New York, 1875) - beautifully played by Olga Pashchenko, with whom Georg now forms an intimate and inspired duo, allow us to hear "unknown sounds and sometimes unheard-of colours"…

Two classic piano quintets from two centuries — Brahms and Shostakovich — are given superb renditions by acclaimed pianist Olga Kern and the Dalí Quartet.

Is Prokofiev's Scythian Suite a deliberate parody of Stravinsky's La sacra du printemps? On the basis of Valery Gergiev's recording of it, yes, it is. Gergiev's interpretation is comic and a big, brutal slapstick Stravinsky with bone-crushing percussion and brain-rattling brass, with squealing winds and skittering strings. Gergiev's rhythms in "The Enemy God" and the "Dance of the Black Spirits" have the subtlety of a pie in the face and his colors in "Night and in Procession of the Sun" have the nuance of a pratfall. Gergiev's interpretation is not only the funniest ever recorded, it is also the most accurate representation of the score and the best ever recorded.

Olga Pashchenko is one of today’s most versatile keyboard players. Equally at home on the fortepiano, the harpsichord, the organ and the modern piano, she radiates extraordinary virtuosity and passion. Her discography has hitherto enabled her to explore the music of Beethoven, her great passion, but also that of Dussek and Mendelssohn among others. A key figure was missing until now: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. That omission has now been repaired with this recording of his Piano Concertos nos. 9 and 17, written in 1777 and 1784. This initial collaboration with the ensemble Il Gardellino, founded more than thirty years ago by the oboist Marcel Ponseele and the flautist Jan De Winne, is scheduled to continue with other Mozart concertos in the next few years.

Gerviev and the Vienna Philharmonic give a splendid performance of Symphonie fantastique. The Death of Cleopatra is a dramatic "lyric scene" written in 1819 describing "an Egyptian queen who has been bitten by a poisonous snake and is dying a painful death in an agony of remorse." Mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina, now at the peak of her career, is magnificent in this performance, a very appropriate coupling for the symphony. The Vienna Philharmonic is at its best and this recording, from live performances in May 2003 in Vienna's Musikverein is superb sonically, more natural in sound than the same conductor and orchestra's recording of Pictures at an Exhibition recorded in April 2000 (see REVIEW). Text/translation are provided for Cléopåtre.