Deep dives into composer catalogues this week, with album-length surveys of music by Bach (in two recordings), Brahms, and Satie. Plus a record juxtaposing quintets by Florence Price and Antonín Dvořák. And we hear from contemporary composers Rami Levin and Michael Daugherty.
New Releases Apr. 22: Bach, Brahms, Price, Satie, and more
Krystian Zimerman (Photo: Bartek Barczyk)
Polish conductor and pianist Krystian Zimerman is joined by violinist Maria Nowak (co-leader of his Polish Festival Orchestra), violist Katarzyna Budnik (principal viola of the Sinfonia Varsovia), and cellist Yuya Okamoto (newly appointed cellist of the Ébène Quartet) to perform two piano quartets by Johannes Brahms.
In an interview with Presto Music, Zimerman is disarmingly honest about the foursome having come together “more or less by coincidence” through serendipitous encounters at concerts and competitions. Of the chosen repertoire for the album he says, “all Brahms’s chamber music is fantastic – the sonatas, the trios, the Clarinet Quintet. There is no bad piece among them.” Although Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor is the best known of his three piano quartets, Zimerman focuses on the sometimes-overlooked Piano Quartets No. 2 and No. 3. He adds, “I particularly love the Third Quartet. It’s crazy. It’s so powerful. It has unbelievable drive.”
French pianist Alain Planès could not let the centenary of Satie’s death go by without paying tribute to this composer whom he admires above all others. Planès is the heir of the great 20th century French pianism as a student of Jacques Février, the renowned interpreter of Satie who studied with Marguerite Long and was a favorite of both Poulenc and Ravel. For Planès’s tribute to Satie, he is joined by baritone Marc Mauillon for Three Songs and pianist François Pinel for Three Pieces in the Form of a Pear for piano four hands. The album, recorded using a splendid Pleyel grand piano from 1928, is illustrated with drawings by the composer and paintings by the Planès himself.
Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble Pygmalion mark their 20th anniversary with a new recording of Bach’s Mass in B minor, a work that has been central to the group’s repertoire. Having first performed the piece in 2013 and revisited it regularly since, Pichon now presents a recording shaped by over a decade of performance experience with a close-knit group of musicians. The vocal soloists are soprano Julie Roset, mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor, contralto Lucile Richardot, tenor Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, and bass-baritone Christian Immler. Pichon has a long-standing fascination with the work and its details. He notes that the Mass was written over the course of 25 years, beginning in 1724 as a simple Sanctus evolving to a full 27 movement Missa tota in 1749 – just a year before his death. “It’s the story of the whole of humanity in two hours of music” says Pichon.
James Ehnes debuted with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra in 1993 when he was 17 and has since shared the stage with the ensemble countless times. He was the Orchestra’s first-ever Artist in Residence from 2021 to 2024 and a featured artist on several national and international tours. Ehnes reunites with the musicians of the NAC Orchestra to perform Bach’s Violin Concerto in A minor, Violin Concerto in E major, Concerto for Two Violins, and Concerto for Flute, Violin, and Harpsichord alongside Ehnes’s own reconstructions of Bach’s Violin Concerto in D minor, Violin Concerto in G minor, Concerto for Oboe and Violin, and Concerto for Three Violins.
This 2-CD album is not only a fulfillment of Ehnes’s longtime desire to present Bach’s violin concertos in their entirety, but also an embodiment of his artistic partnership with the orchestra. “These players are some of my closest friends, even away from music,” says Ehnes. “It was so special to dive into a project like this together with musicians with whom there’s no barrier of formality or unfamiliarity.”
In their fifth album together on Hyperion records, the extraordinary virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin and the superb Takács Quartet explore two piano quintets linked by American heritage; one by Florence Price, the first African American woman to have a composition played by a major orchestra, and the other by Antonín Dvorák, whose residency in America during the 1890s made a profound impact in a country whose classical music life was developing rapidly. While Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major (1887) has long been a chamber music staple, Price’s Piano Quintet in A minor is a relatively recent find — the manuscript was only discovered in 2009, about 70 years after Price wrote it and more than 50 years after her death. Composed around 1936, the Piano Quintet in A minor was one of the unpublished manuscripts found in the attic of Price’s summer house in St. Anne, Illinois.
Following the release of her debut album Wings, composer Rami Levin returns with a second album of chamber music featuring some of the most celebrated Chicago-based musicians. Cavatina Duo performs the title track, where Levin draws on the Brazilian choro, characterized by fast tempi, syncopation, and counterpoint. The cross-cultural infusion continues with the Brazilian rhythms of Danças brasileiras performed by Quintet Attacca, ensemble-in-residence at the Music Institute of Chicago. Violist Anthony Devroye and cellist Cheng-Hou Lee shine in Levin’s three- movement piano trio with pianist Kuang-Hao Huang. Huang is joined by flutist Jennifer Clippert and clarinetist Barbara Drapcho for Dualidades, an exploration of living in two different cultures. Pianist Winston Choi joins Huang in the four-hand duo Dois Irmãos named after Two Brothers Mountain in Rio de Janeiro. The song cycle This Much and More is performed by soprano Amy Broadbent with Kuang-Hao Huang. Here Levin sets three poems by American women on themes of love, separation, longing, and human foibles.
This album showcases three new evocative works by American composer Michael Daugherty, exploring the triumphs and tragedies of flight. Blue Electra is a dramatic violin concerto inspired by the sensational life and mysterious disappearance of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart in 1937. Last Dance at the Surf is a one-movement dance symphony for orchestra that reflects upon rock ’n roll legend Buddy Holly’s final performance in 1959 at the Surf Ballroom in Iowa and his tragic death in a plane crash just hours after his show. To the New World for orchestra celebrates the triumphant Apollo 11 moon mission in 1969 and Neil Armstrong’s historic moonwalk. David Alan Miller leads the Albany Symphony with violinist Anne Akiko Meyers as soloist for Blue Electra, a work she commissioned and premiered in 2022.
