The longest work on this CD is Psaume, written by the 21 year old Igor Markevitch, who stopped composing rather young in favour of a successful carreer as conductor. Next to this work Psalms by Zemlinsky, Bloch and Korngold are recorded.
Dimitry Markevitch (1923 - 2002) was a Russian concert cellist, researcher, teacher and musicologist. He studied under Gregor Piatigorsky and founded the Institut de Hautes Etudes Musicales (IHEM) in Switzerland. His brother, Igor Markevitch, was an orchestral conductor.Markevitch rediscovered several important manuscripts, including Westphal and Kellner transcriptions of several Bach Suites, and published his own edition of the Suites, playing all six in recital at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1964. He was one of the first people to champion "authentic" instrumental techniques and played a baroque cello for pieces composed before the 19th century.
The new album “On DSCH” by Igor Levit is a 3CD discographic tour de force by “one of the essential artists of our time” (The New York Times). That the self-styled “maximalist” enjoys pushing himself to his limits – intellectually and physically – is well known, but the present project – two key cycles of musical modernism - puts all others in the shade.
Igor Ruhadze's Brilliant Classics recording of sonatas by Locatelli (94736) won warm praise from Gramophone. 'The playing is elegantly supple, the string tone warm, and the architecture of individual movements thoughtfully worked out. All this makes for a pleasant mood and enjoyable listening. The more exuberant pieces are brilliantly and at times breathtakingly performed.'
For this new album, pianist Igor Gehenot continues the adventure of his international quartet and adds the blowing of French saxophonist David El-Malek (Baptiste Trotignon). Between post-bop and contemporary music, “Cursiv” takes us deep into the heart of a sulphurous New York and on to the bare plains and fjords of Norway.
The Summer Night Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic is the world's biggest annual classical open-air concert and will take place in the magical setting of the Schönbrunn Palace Baroque park in Vienna on June 18, 2021. The theme for this year is Fernweh and includes musical favorites from Bernstein, Verdi, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Elgar, Debussy and Holst. It will also include many fantastic Summer Night Concert debuts: SNC debut by pianist Igor Levit & British conductor Daniel Harding.
Paul Juon was born in Moscow, of Swiss parents, in 1872, studying there with Arensky and Taneyev; Rachmaninov, a fellow student at the Moscow Conservatoire, dubbed him ‘the Russian Brahms’. Woldemar Bargiel, Clara Schumann’s half-brother, was his main teacher at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin before Juon himself became a member of the staff. There are indeed echoes of Brahms in Juon’s early music but there is also a fondness for Russian folksong and a mastery of counterpoint, which all feed into his urgent, late-Romantic lyricism.
On An Overgrown Path, Leoš Janáček’s 15 pieces-spanning piano cycle, is here presented in a reshaped guise, arranged for string orchestra and interpreted by the Camerata Zürich under lead violinist Igor Karsko’s direction. This is the premiere recording of the orchestral adaption. In this programme, Janáček’s cycle is bookended by Josef Suk’s Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale St. Wenceslas and Antonín Dvořák’s Notturno – pieces that are thematically connected to the folkloric elements found in Janáček’s composition. French writer Maïa Brami wrote poems to accompany the new arrangement of On An Overgrown Path, and their recorded versions, spoken by the writer herself, are included on the album, contextualizing the cycle with inventive analogies to Janáček’s life.