String Concertos

Alba’s new release is the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra's new album 'Pēteris Vasks'. The publication includes two string concertos by Latvian-born composer Pēteris Vasks, the first of which is 'Concerto No. 2 'Klātbūtne' for Cello and String Orchestra' – a three-part concerto for cello and string orchestra. Marko Ylönen will perform as a cello soloist on the recording. The second work on the album is the four-part 'Concerto for Viola and String Orchestra' that features viola player Lilli Maijala as soloist. The orchestra is conducted by Juha Kangas.

During the 1990s, Collegium Musicum 90 and Simon Standage released several volumes of Albinoni concertos, which proved popular with critics and public alike. The concertos were released as discs of single oboe concertos, double oboe concertos, and string concertos. In this re-issue on the Chaconne label, the concertos are presented in opus number order, showing the contrasting colours and tonalities of the concertos as they originally appeared.

This boxed set reassembles largely analog material from existing Lyrita CDs under a new generic grouping. Dates and locations of recording sessions are not given. Lyrita seem always to have been reticent about those details. The sound is a model of its kind – Lyrita were always able to boast glorious sound. The freshly written liner-notes are by the authoritative and accessible Paul Conway and run to ten pages. These are not a simple retread of the original notes by other authors.

C.P.E. Bach eclipsed his legendary father s fame to become the mid-18th century s leading German composer. This wide-ranging collection of symphonies, concertos and vocal works by the great forerunner of Haydn and Mozart is performed by authoritative interpreters including Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert. The evident delight of the musicians in this music makes for rewarding listening … Impressive and fascinating.

As one goes along in their classical-music journey, you eventually start moving beyond the "safeness" of the major composers and exploring the lesser-known "minor" composers - and often discovering soon enough some of the "hidden treasures" of the classical repertoire. And among some of these treasures are the clarinet concertos and the featured quartets on this CD by the Finnish-born virtuoso/composer, Bernhard Crusell.

The concerto, such a familiar feature of the modern concert landscape, seems a simple thing in its opposition of individual and group. But its early history is not so simple; composers had to find structures that would support contrasts between one or more soloists and an orchestra. The "classic" Baroque concertos of Corelli actually represented a simplification of experiments carried out by earlier composers, the Bolognese Giuseppe Torelli central among them. Torelli is usually associated in Baroque listeners' minds with a few trumpet concertos, two of which (labeled sinfonias) are heard here. The short concertos for one or two violins (mostly six or seven minutes long, for three movements) are rarer but very attractive. They don't have the clean symmetries of the Vivaldian concerto, instead exploiting various ways of breaking up a movement into solo and tutti. Although short and essentially compact, each movement has an aspect of free imagination that is nicely brought out by the veteran English early music conductor and violinist Simon Standage, who joins with several other well-known soloists from Britain's historical-performance movement.

When the German transverse flute found its place in Italy and was accepted by the Catholic church as a suitable replacement for the proscribed recorder, Antonio Vivaldi took to it with great enthusiasm. His flute concertos mark a point of departure, coming after he had completed his 40 bassoon concertos and virtually all of the string concertos. Although some of these pieces were reworkings of material previously composed for recorder, Vivaldi came to capitalize on new techniques he learned from Ignazio Siber, the flute instructor at the Ospedale della Pietà. Of Vivaldi's 15, the 7 flute concertos presented here were freshly written for the instrument.

Bartok - Violin Concertos 1 & 2, Viola Concerto, etc. - Yehudi Menuhin (2003) {2CD Set EMI Classics rec 1965-1975}
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© 1965-75, 2003 EMI Classics | 7243 5 85487 2 3
Classical / Early 20th Century / Concerto

Compiled from recordings dating from 1965 to 1974, this EMI/Gemini double-disc of Bartók's string concertos and other works features Yehudi Menuhin at the peak of his powers, with support from two important Bartók specialists and their sympathetic orchestras. Menuhin is admirably backed in all the concertos by Antal Dorati and the New Philharmonia Orchestra, and Pierre Boulez and the BBC Symphony Orchestra provide meticulous accompaniment in the two Rhapsodies. The resilient Viola Concerto and the splendid Violin Concerto No. 2 are essential listening, both for their masterful writing and for the vigorous performances Menuhin and Dorati deliver.