A new album pays tribute to the Jewish composers of 20th-century Vienna. The Arcadia Quartet’s album explores the string quartets of another marginalized Jewish composer: Mieczysław Weinberg. Leading English bassoonist Laurence Perkins offers a lighthearted survey in Honey-coloured Cow. Other highlights include a handful of world premiere recordings by the United Strings of Europe, two violin concertos featuring Hans Christian Aavik, and piano duos from artistic and life partners Lukas Geniušas and Anna Geniushene.
New Releases May 6: Jewish Vienna, Weinberg, Bassoon
Chen Reiss (Photo: Paul-Marc Mitchell
Soprano Chen Reiss, conductor Daniel Grossmann, and the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich explore the music from Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, at the cutting edge of artistic and musical creativity with a sizable and flourishing Jewish artistic community. The works on this album bring together some of the composers of this age, including lesser-known names such as Josephine Winter, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1943, and Alfred Grünfeld, alongside Alexander Zemlinsky and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. The Adagio from Mahler’s Symphony No 10, in an arrangement for chamber orchestra by Cliff Colnot, forms the centerpiece of this delightful orchestral lieder recital.
Praised by Gramophone as “consistently superb, riding the full orchestra without strain and effortlessly floating,” Chen Reiss has performed leading roles with the Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, and the Israeli Opera among many others. Daniel Grossmann founded the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich in 2005, growing it into an internationally recognized professional ensemble performing at the highest musical level.
The Transylvanian-based Arcadia Quartet reaches the fifth volume in its acclaimed series of recordings of the complete string quartets of Mieczysław Weinberg with this release featuring Quartets Nos 3, 9, and 14. As in previous volumes, the varied program features quartets from contrasting periods of Weinberg’s compositional development. Quartet No. 3, composed in 1944, could be considered as the first “mature” quartet, and is set in three movements. The Ninth Quartet, composed in 1963, dates from his self-described “starry decade,” when his work was championed by a significant group of enthusiastic performers, including Emil Gilels, Kirill Kondrashin, Rudolf Barshai, and the Borodin Quartet. Quartet No. 14 dates from 1978, three years after the death of Weinberg’s great friend and mentor Shostakovich: a time when Weinberg was questioning and renewing his artistic identity. The album also includes the short Improvisation and Romance from 1950.
From TV theme tunes to a folk-inspired “circle dance on seven notes” by Villa-Lobos, Laurence Perkins, one of Britain’s best-known solo bassoonists, presents a pleasing miscellany of composers and works demonstrating the expressive potential of the bassoon. Perkins gets sterling support from a wealth of fine musicians and ensembles on his eighth album for Hyperion. The program covers a century of music, much of it little known, including several first commercial recordings.
“I chose the name of the short, delightful piece by Ruth Gipps as the title for this album partly because the music that Gipps wrote illustrates the much-discussed aspect of humor and the bassoon in a tasteful and perceptive manner” writes Perkins. “Yes, it has a ‘moo’ in it, just as Alan Ridout’s Pigs contains a few grunts, but these are real pieces where the humor is simply an ingredient in music which is not primarily about creating cheap laughs at the expense of the instrument. The bassoon has such a wealth of characters and expressions (including humor), which I really hope this album demonstrates in its very wide range of moods and styles.”
The United Strings of Europe and artistic director Julian Azkoul are devoted to developing engaging programs that blend the familiar with the new and encourage the discovery of new repertoire. On Hommages, the ensemble presents a program featuring the world premiere recordings of Dobrinka Tabakova’s Organum Light, inspired by Einstein’s quantum theory of light, Olli Mustonen’s Apotheosis – In memoriam Pablo Casals, inspired by Bach’s chorale preludes, and Azkoul’s arrangement of Stravinsky’s neo-classical ballet Apollon musagète. The album includes Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, a tribute to Carlos Gardel and Astor Piazzolla, and Olli Mustonen’s Second Nonet, in which we hear echoes of the Balkans, music from the Romantic period, and Nordic moods.
This new recording from Hans Christian Aavik, winner of the 2022 Carl Nielsen International Competition, brings together two contrasting yet deeply expressive violin concertos: Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Violin Concerto No. 2, and Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, performed with the Odense Symphony and conductor Gemma New. While Bruch’s concerto is a beloved cornerstone of the violin repertoire, celebrated for its soaring lyricism and rich Romantic textures, Tüür’s contemporary work offers a striking counterpart—ethereal, intricate, and full of dynamic contrasts.
Estonian violinist Hans Christian Aavik, born in 1998 in Tallinn, has garnered international acclaim since winning First Prize at the Nielsen Competition, where he also received special awards for Best Interpretation and the Odense Symphony Orchestra Prize.
This album of works for two pianos features pianists who are life partners as well as a performing duo, and each also has a thriving solo career. Anna Geniushene won the silver medal at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, while Lukas Geniušas’s two Rachmaninoff recordings have both won major awards.
The program for their first duo album pays tribute to American music and the country itself as melting-pots, with works by Gershwin, Stravinsky, Copland (arranged by Bernstein) and Colin McPhee that fuse classical music, jazz, Mexican music and Balinese rhythms. Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues from Frederic Rzewski’s North American Ballads is also included, and the title track closing the album is John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction, a literal and figurative crossroads where all these streams of influence can meet.
