Zehetmair

Violinists will sometimes delay recording Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin until they feel they have mastered the music and even let it become second nature to them. Not so Thomas Zehetmair, who, with guidance from his mentor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, first recorded the Sei Solo in 1982 for Teldec, then waited almost four decades before revisiting them for ECM New Series. This time span has permitted Zehetmair sufficient space to reevaluate Bach's masterpiece and to present the music with a mature appreciation of its contrapuntal intricacy and expressive depth.

This disc has a lot going for it. Thomas Zehetmair is a world-renowned violinist; the Amsterdam Bach Soloists comprise a little over a dozen players from the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra; and while they perform on modern instruments, they adhere largely to historically informed performance practice. Thus, we get the best of all worlds: world-class playing; smooth, mellifluous sound; and convincing interpretations.

Neither too nationalist nor too internationalist, this 1995 recording of Béla Bartók's two violin concertos featuring Thomas Zehetmair with Ivan Fischer leading the Budapest Festival Orchestra is just right. Austrian-born Zehetmair has a fabulous technique, a warm but focused tone, and lively sense of rhythm, all of which make him an ideal Bartók player. His interpretations are less about showing off then about digging in, and his performances are more about the music than they are about the musician. Hungarian conductor Fischer and his Hungarian orchestra are not only up for the music in a technical sense, they are also down with the music in an emotional sense, and their accompaniments ground Zehetmair's coolly flamboyant performances. Captured in white-hot sound that is almost too vivid for its own good, these performances deserve to stand among the finest ever recorded.

This powerful New Series album represents “a résumé and a departure” for Thomas Zehetmair, a summing up of his work with the Royal Northern Sinfonia. In his years as Music Director of the British chamber orchestra, Zehetmair was noted both for bringing compelling new music into the repertoire and for insightful performances of classical and modern composition, qualities very much in evidence on this concert recording from The Sage, Gateshead. The album opens with John Casken’s double concerto That Subtle Knot, written in 2012-3 for Zehetmair, Ruth Killius and the Northern Sinfonia. Inspired by the poetry of John Donne, the composition establishes a broad arc between the English Renaissance and music of today. Ruth Killius shines in a revelatory performance of Bartók’s Viola Concerto, and Zehetmair as conductor fully brings out what liner note writer Giselher Schubert describes as “the juggernaut propulsive thrust” of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

Husband and wife team violinist Thomas Zehetmair and violist Ruth Killius have divided their performing and recording careers between standard and contemporary repertoire. On this CD they tackle a diverse selection of 20th and 21st century repertoire for their instruments. Giacinto Scelsi's 1957 Manto for viola and female voice is in the three movements. The first two, for viola alone, betray little direction or focus and are relentlessly, gratingly dissonant. The third movement with voice is intriguing in its interweaving of the contrasting timbres and is altogether engaging.

This is the first recording of the 45-musician Orchestre de Chambre de Paris (OCP) under the direction of famed violinist Thomas Zehetmair, who assumed the role of principal conductor and artistic advisor during the 2012/13 season. Together they present a program of French music by Ravel and Debussy. With a myriad of existing recordings of the orchestral works of Ravel and Debussy on the market, one might ask what would be the reason to pick up yet another.

This powerful New Series album represents “a résumé and a departure” for Thomas Zehetmair, a summing up of his work with the Royal Northern Sinfonia. In his years as Music Director of the British chamber orchestra, Zehetmair was noted both for bringing compelling new music into the repertoire and for insightful performances of classical and modern composition, qualities very much in evidence on this concert recording from The Sage, Gateshead. The album opens with John Casken’s double concerto That Subtle Knot, written in 2012-3 for Zehetmair, Ruth Killius and the Northern Sinfonia. Inspired by the poetry of John Donne, the composition establishes a broad arc between the English Renaissance and music of today. Ruth Killius shines in a revelatory performance of Bartók’s Viola Concerto, and Zehetmair as conductor fully brings out what liner note writer Giselher Schubert describes as “the juggernaut propulsive thrust” of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

Thomas Zehetmair’s manually overwhelming and thought-provoking ECM recording of the complete sonatas for unaccompanied violin by Eugène Ysaÿe – released in 2004 to great critical acclaim – offered ample proof that alleged virtuoso pyrotechnics can be surprinsingly multi-faceted and complex when approached by a musician with a rare awareness of stylistic layers and expressive traditions. His (long deleted) Teldec version of the Capricci dating from the early nineties quickly won the status of a new benchmark recording.