Grosz Achtung Reuss

Fifty years after his death, Poulenc is one of the most frequently performed French composers of the twentieth century all over the world. His choral output offers a nuanced portrait of a musician who, at bottom, fell in love with the texts he set, whether they were sacred (CD 1) or secular (CD 2). ʻA singer, as fashioned by Francis, presents us with words raised to the height of severity or charm by Poulenc’s musical intelligence’, wrote Jean Cocteau. An admirable compliment to an oeuvre as capable of expressing faith (Motets pour un temps de pénitence) as resistance.

Fascinated by the viola, which he chose at the age of eleven after learning the violin for six years, Amihai loves the sound of his instrument, which is so close to the human voice. He also likes the ambivalence of its timbre, midway between the violin and the cello, which in a sense reflects his own musical education in Israel, with its combination of Mediterranean influences and Russian and Germanic traditions. Initially a quartet musician and founding member of the famous Jerusalem Quartet, Amihai Grosz now pursues a solo career while holding the post of principal viola of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Exiled in the United States since October 1940, Bela Bartok was short of money and worn out by leukaemia. Nevertheless, a few weeks' respite from the disease in August 1943 enabled him to fulfil a commission from the conductor Serge Koussevitzky. For a fee of a thousand dollars, he quickly wrote the Concerto for Orchestra, which was to be premiered at Boston's Symphony Hall on 1 December 1944. Koussevitzky was very enthusiastic about the Concerto, even describing it as 'the best orchestra piece of the last 25 years'. It was the success of this score that prompted the violist William Primrose to ask the Hungarian composer to write a work for him. Bartok had little experience of the instrument and was only convinced when he heard the soloist perform the Walton Concerto on the radio. The score was initially planned in four movements, but the composer's death reduced it to three. Amihai Grosz (a founder member of the Jerusalem Quartet, now principal viola of the Berliner Philharmoniker) joins the Orchestre National de Lille and Alexandre Bloch for this recording.

Josquin des Prez was unquestionably one of the greatest composers of Renaissance Europe. His works generally fall into one of three principal categories: motets, masses, and chansons. While his masses and chansons are consistently remarkable, it was in his motets that Josquin gave full reign to his creativity. This release featuring Daniel Reuss and Cappella Amsterdam offers a selection of Josquin's secular homages and sacred polyphony, focusing on the title work, a setting of the Miserere, which became a model for many composers that followed. This is the first of three albums from Cappella Amsterdam devoted to Franco-Flemish masters of the Renaissance.