A creative, historically minded album from Apollo’s Fire, an unusual combination of instruments team up, a deep-dive into “Dies irae”, and two separate explorations of obscure 20th-century rep.
New Releases Feb. 11: Three Sopranos, Chamber Works, Rare 20th-Century
Amanda Crider
Their names were Laura, Livia, and Anna. Together, they were known in the late 1500s as the Tre Donne di Ferrara – the three ladies of Ferrara. Their ensemble was praised by contemporary poets and won highest renown throughout Italy and Germany. However, women were not supposed to become famous for their professional achievements. And so, one of them was murdered by her husband – a Count – who went unpunished. Thus, this is a tale of revolutionary women ahead of their time, living in an era when women had no protections.
“In this album, it has been my pleasure to collaborate with three extraordinary ladies of today: Amanda Forsythe, Amanda Powell, and Amanda Crider,” says Jeannette Sorrell, founder and director of Apollo’s Fire. “The Amandas and I are proud to offer this homage to the unstoppable Italian women who broke the glass ceiling in 1580. We hope that their brilliance and boldness resound through this recording.”
The dynamic program includes concerted madrigals, ariette, and secular cantatas for the singers by Claudio Monteverdi, Barbara Strozzi, Luzzascho Luzzashi, and others. The instrumental ensemble shines in ciacconas, toccatas, and other dances including solo turns for star violinist Francisco Fullana.
Clarinetist Patrick Messina, violist Lise Berthaud, and pianist Fabrizio Chiovetta pair works by Mozart and Bruch on this new release. The trio celebrates the evolution of an innovative instrumental configuration established in Mozart’s 1786 “Kegelstatt” Trio, K. 498. Inspired by clarinettist Anton Stadler and written for a circle of close friends, the trio combines virtuosity and sensitivity, capturing the essence of eighteenth-century Viennese salon music. Almost 120 years later, Max Bruch took up the torch with his Opus 83. Driven by late Romanticism, this set of eight pieces bears witness to Bruch’s attachment to a musical language steeped in tradition. Although originally conceived to include a harp, the work adapts perfectly to the clarinet-viola-piano formation.
The BBC Philharmonic Orchestra centers a 20th century Welsh composer whose distinctive voice was influenced by both Vaughan Williams and the Second Viennese School. Four of Grace Williams’s orchestral gems, spanning three decades of her illustrious career, are performed on this program conducted by John Andrews.
Four Illustrations of the Legend of Rhiannon (1939) is a suite that brings the Welsh goddess to vivid life with cinematic flair. The Sea Sketches (1944), composed during the wartime tumult of London, evoke the longing for Williams’s native Barry, Glamorgan. The Ballads mark a return to Welsh mythos, with movements inspired by the emotional and cultural essence of her homeland. The regal Castell Caernarfon (1969), originally scored for the investiture of HRH Prince Charles, showcases Williams’s grandiloquent style.
Pianist Roberto Prosseda, a champion of contemporary music, with the London Philharmonic conducted by Nir Kabaretti, present piano concertos from four Italian composers, two of which are premiere recordings. Written between 1900 and 2015, the works by Guido Alberto Fano, Luigi Dallapiccola, Silvio Omizzolo, and Cristian Carrara provide an overview of the piano concerto in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Italy. All four compositions are new to the WFMT library.
The album gets its title from the striking, yet accessible concerto by Cristian Carrara written in 2015. The composer summarizes the work: “It is an attempt to trace and describe silence, which exists even in war, be it in death or in life. The first movement, Trenches, is the most descriptive depiction of war as we know it, and it is the movement whose meaning has changed the most since 2015; the second, Solitudes, is more slender, referring to the fact that war often means loneliness, the breaking of ties. The third is entitled Fruts (‘children’ in Friulian): the children who represent life in spite of war.”
Pianist Dmitry Masleev, who took first prize in the 2015 Tchaikovsky International Competition, leads the Svetlanov Symphony Orchestra (a.k.a. Russian State Symphony Orchestra) from the piano in a program that centers two piano concertantes utilizing the chant melody Dies irae: Liszt’s Totentanz, and Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. The program also includes Liszt’s Rhapsodie espagnole in a version for piano and orchestra by Mikhail Petukhov, Masleev’s professor at the Moscow Conservatoire. The album closes with the Adagio from Marcello’s Oboe Concerto, arranged for solo keyboard by Bach, a kind of vision of heaven after hell.
