Ravishing Beauty

Dvořák’s Stabat Mater was a work brought about by personal tragedy of almost incomprehensible proportions, after the composer lost all three of his then living children. A setting of the mediaeval Latin prayer to the bereaved mother of the crucified Christ, it was to become both a work of mourning and a work of healing. The shifts of mood from grief and near despair to hope and faith run throughout the work, before the glory and solace of the final Amen. Neeme Järvi conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir in this live concert recording.

After two song albums together with Ian Bostridge, pianist Saskia Giorgini returns to PENTATONE with a solo recording of Franz Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. Liszt is often seen as a showman, but much of his music reveals his introspective, searching nature. This is demonstrated above all in Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, one of his most ambitious, contemplative and enigmatic compositions, inspired by Lamartine’s eponymous poetry, Liszt’s Roman Catholic faith as well as the 1848-1849 revolutions. To Giorgini, “this music is deeply humane and sincere, tender, but also full of the most sorrowful, violent, painful moments that Liszt ever put into music.” Its ten movements constitute a quest for the deeper meaning of human existence, clothed in music of ravishing beauty. Saskia Giorgini is one of the most promising pianists of her generation, who has won several competitions and is hailed for her technical command and the beauty and poetry of her sound.

Recorded between 1989 and 2004, the Hagen Quartet's recordings of Mozart's complete music for string quartet is clearly the finest set of the works released in the early digital age. For one thing, because the collection includes not only the 23 canonical string quartets but also the three early Divertimenti for string quartet, the five Fugues from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier arranged by Mozart, and the late Adagio and Fugue in C minor, their set really is the complete music for string quartet.