Composer-specific recordings are front-and-center this week, with two foregrounding works by Maurice Ravel, as well as album-length explorations dedicated to Telemann, Franz Schubert, and Georges Bizet. And two debut recordings: by Jeneba Kanneh-Mason and idiosyncratic chamber collective Owls.
New Releases Mar. 24: A Kanneh-Mason Debut, Ravel x2, Rare Birds, and More Composers
Jeneba Kanneh-Mason (Photo: Johanna Berghorn/Sony Music Entertainment)
On her debut solo album, pianist Jeneba Kanneh-Mason takes listeners on a journey that explores connections across different composers’ sound worlds – whether they met, influenced each other, or simply existed in resonance. From Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin and Alexander Scriabin to Florence Price, Margaret Bonds and William Grant Still, Jeneba presents a program which is also very personal to her as an artist. “I’ve always loved coming up with quite complex programs which flow really nicely from one piece to the other and all these works mean a lot to me” she says. “By gathering them here for my debut album, I am not only revealing more of myself as a musician but also sharing the very different styles of music I grew up listening to.”
The third-youngest of the prodigiously musical Kanneh-Mason family, 22-year-old Jeneba knows instinctively who she is as a musician. “We are a very close-knit family and yet we all have very individual personalities,” she explains. “We constantly influence each other, and I have learned a lot from my siblings — and still do. We all have our own voices yet can always turn to each other for support. Isata is six years older than me, and she gave me a lot of lessons when I was younger. She’s always been a massive inspiration for me, and she’s already released many albums, so I feel like I’m following in her footsteps.”
In a companion to Ravel: The Complete Solo Piano Works released in January, Seong-Jin Cho continues his celebration of the Maurice Ravel 150th anniversary year with the composer’s two piano concertos. The recordings were made live at Boston’s Symphony Hall with Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Cho’s critically acclaimed readings of Ravel, on stage and in the studio, underline his status as one of today’s most elegant and accomplished pianists, ten years on from his Chopin Competition victory. Notoriously difficult to play, the Concerto for the Left Hand is notable for its dark sonorities, while the more lighthearted Concerto in G major achieves an exquisite combination of jazz and the Classicism of Mozart and Saint-Saëns.
“For me,” says Cho, “the highlight of the Concerto in G is the second movement – the long piano solo at the beginning. It’s one of the most touching movements in the piano literature.”
The two-time Grammy Award-winning Attaccca Quartet commemorates the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth with a recording of Ravel’s String Quartet in F, an EP that also marks their debut in the Platoon record label.
Celebrated for their versatility and ability to seamlessly navigate between traditional classical repertoire and contemporary collaborations, the ensemble continues to push the boundaries of the traditional string quartet experience. Recent projects have included collaborating on the original score for the Ken Burns documentary Leonardo Da Vinci, bringing FINNEAS’s score to life in Alfonso Cuarón’s Apple+ series Disclaimer, and appearing on the virtual stage of best-selling video game Red Dead Redemption 2.
The years 2023-2028 mark 200 years since the five last years of Franz Schubert’s life. This leads up to the 200th anniversary of Schubert’s death in Vienna on 19 November 2028. In homage to this important event, baritone Samuel Hasselhorn and pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz have started a multi-genre international project titled SCHUBERT 200 which includes the release of one album of Schubert’s songs per year culminating in the year 2028. Each album on the Harmonia Mundi label will mirror the Lieder that Schubert wrote exactly 200 years earlier. Following the first album in the project, Die Schöne Müllerin (1823), is Light and Shadows featuring songs from 1824-25 when Schubert was at the height of his artistic powers. 1824 was a perhaps the most miserable of Schubert’s entire life as he was depressed and suffering from illness, but 1825 brought light to Schubert’s life as he traveled throughout Austria and felt his powers and hopes returning.
In a career spanning less than twenty years, Georges Bizet produced works in every genre: orchestral music, piano pieces, cantatas, operas, songs and more, characterized by a mastery of orchestration and a taste for orientalism and folklore. This comprehensive 4-CD portrait album and accompanying 159 page book from the musicological record label for Palazzetto Bru Zane – Center for Romantic French Music contains works that were never performed during Bizet’s lifetime, indeed some which had to wait until 2024 for their premiere. Of particular note is the “ode-symphony” Vasco de Gama, which illustrates the Romantic taste for vast historical epics, and Le Retour de Virginie, a cantata for the Prix de Rome presented by the composer to his teacher in 1855. Piano music and mélodies are a reminder that Bizet was also a sought-after salon composer. The performers included the Lyon National Orchestra led by Ben Glassberg, The Metz Grand Est Orchestra led by David Reiland, Les Siècles led by François-Xavier Roth, the Lille Opera Chorus, the Flemish Radio Choir, and various singers and pianists including Huw Monatgue Rendall, Karina Gauvin, Cyrille Dubois, Nathanaël Gouin, and Célia Oneto Bensaid. A majority of the repertoire in this compendium is new to the WFMT library.
Owls is an inverted string quartet (two cellos instead of two violins) featuring an all-star lineup of renowned soloists: violinst Alexi Kenney, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellists Gabriel Cabezas and Paul WIancko. Their debut album features six works by an eclectic range of composers, traditions, and eras including Owls’s own Paul Wiancko; Dan Trueman and Monica Mugan folk duo Trollstilt, Azerbaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, 18th Century composer François Couperin; and progenitor of American minimalism Terry Riley.
Drawing on their experiences playing with groups such as the Kronos Quartet, yMusic, and Aizuri Quartet, Owls decided nothing would be off-limits for their ensemble. They built a shared playlist of tracks by their favorite musicians and collaboratively workshopped arrangements. This collective approach to arranging and interpreting their diverse material proved transformative and freeing for Owls. It also cemented their approach to all the decisions they make as a group, as they say in their liner notes: “All four of us must completely love everything we play.”
Georg Philipp Telemann was—to characterize him in contemporary terms—a workaholic, thanks to which we have, amongst his 3,000-plus works, his two sets of marvelously rich Paris Quartets. The first set of quartets, or quadri, was published in Hamburg and such was their popularity that they were republished in Paris by Le Clerc in 1736 without Telemann’s permission. This prompted Telemann to make a long-awaited visit to the French capital where he stayed for eight months in 1737–38. While there, he composed a second set of quartets, naming his two collections Quadri and Nouveaux Quatuors. In the latter part of the 20th century, the editors of the Telemann Musikalische Werke titled the two sets collectively as The Paris Quartets, by which name we still know them. The London Handel Players, featuring leading period-instrument specialists, presents the six Quadri in the first volume of Paris Quartets. The ensemble of London Handel Players is flexible in size, consisting primarily of strings, flute/recorder, and harpsichord. The featured musicians on this first volume are Rachel Brown, flute; Adrian Butterfield, violin; Gavin Kibble, viola da gamba; Sarah McMahon, cello; and Silas Wollston, harpsichord.
