Schulhoff Schoenberg Chamber Works

Shostakovich's introspective Piano Quintet is one of the composer's supreme achievements. Perhaps it was the subtle nod to Baroque forms as well as the Beethoven-like use of fugue that earned this piece a permanent place in the chamber repertoire. The Nash Ensemble, led by Marcia Crayford and Elizabeth Clayton, shines especially in the playful and colorful Scherzo.

An interesting coupling of two chamber symphonies (one from the old world and one from the new) yet, Adams himself admits his work is only a superficial resemblance to its predecessor. His chamber symphony served as a mere starting point for a new and challenging compositional format.

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, born four years before her brother, Felix Mendelssohn, was an accomplished pianist and a prolific composer. When she died of a stroke, aged just forty-two, she left around 460 pieces of music, some 250 of which are songs. The difficulties of making a career in her own era (her supportive father would not allow her to publish or work as a ‘professional’ composer) have condemned much of her work to obscurity, a situation that is now rapidly being reversed as the number of concerts and recordings devoted to works by women composers increases.

Les Explorateurs is a chamber ensemble based around pianist Joanna Ławrynowicz, with guest musicians coming in according to the requirements of works at hand. Ławrynowicz has recorded over thirty CDs for Acte Préalable (AP) spanning more than a decade, and was apparently the first Pole to record the complete works of Chopin - also for AP. For these two new releases she and cellist Łukasz Tudzierz combine in genial, committed performances to reveal to the world another batch of forgotten gems from seriously neglected composers. The Dobrzyński disc in particular is outstanding in every respect - perhaps AP's finest to date.

"The wonderful discoveries that I have made during my research on neglected repertoire often make me wonder why it is that so much beautiful Polish music has fallen into oblivion" - thus writes Acte Préalable (AP) impresario Jan Jarnicki in his customary preamble for the CD booklet. Music-lovers who have bought previous AP discs will have asked themselves the same question - how to account rationally for the big repertoire gap between Chopin and Szymanowski, and again between Szymanowski and Penderecki/Górecki. The names capable of filling those holes are legion, a fact to which many previous AP recordings are persuasive testimony.

This is CPO’s second release of Pejačević’s chamber music. The internationally active and renowned Sine Nomine Quartet from Switzerland and Oliver Triendl are outstanding advocates on behalf of this versatile composer. The last movement of the Piano Quintet Op. 40 is a highlight; with a solemn introduction and animated theme, which pervades the entire movement with kinetic energy.

The English composer, Benedict Mason, has been called "one of the major talents in music today" by the critic Julian Anderson. The three works recorded on this disc introduce the work of a startlingly original voice. Mason's music incorporates a huge range of expression- from commonplace to the sublime. Barriers between tonality and non-tonality are swept aside easily by the force of Mason's musical argument, his broadly inclusive vision calling to mind such visionaries as Janacek, Mahler and Ives. Indeed, ghosts of Beethoven, Stravinsky, Ives and even Elgar occasionally haunt the discourse of Mason's surreal landscape, projecting a brilliantly refractory sub-text, the music's surface always alive with humor and highly detailed invention.

Arnold Schoenberg - Chamber Music - Arditti String Quartet (1995) {2CD Set, Auvidis–Montaigne MO782025}
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© 1995 Auvidis / Montaigne | MO 782025
Classical / Modern Classical / Avant-Garde / Chamber Music

Arnold Schoenberg exercised very considerable influence over the course of music in the 20th century. This was particularly through his development and promulgation of compositional theories in which unity in a work is provided by the use of a determined series, usually consisting of the 12 possible different semitones, their order also inverted or taken in retrograde form and in transposed versions.