Horn player Felix Klieser shares selections hailing from Scandinavia. Two albums explore the music of Shostakovich. We hear siblings collaborating: Lucas and Arthur Jussen in Cantus and Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason in Shostakovich & Britten. Plus, Baroque deep dives, a tribute to Maurice Ravel, and a lesser-known ballet.
New Releases May 20: French Horn, Shostakovich, Siblings
Felix Klieser (Photo: Julia Wesely)
In his new Scandinavia-centric album, Felix Klieser and the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Jamie Phillips, present two contemporary concertos for horn and orchestra. Soundscape – A Walk in Colours by Swedish composer Rolf Martinsson (b. 1956) was commissioned for Felix Klieser and was premiered in 2022. Martinsson describes Soundscape as a single-movement concerto divided into five distinct sections, beginning with a dramatic opening that transitions into a slower section, where the soloist and orchestra engage in a thematic dialogue. The music shifts into a tranquil soundscape before launching into a long aria for horn in the fourth section, and a return to the dramatic opening themes in the fifth.
The second centerpiece concerto is by another Swedish composer, Kurt Atterberg (1887-1974). The work is characterized by late-Romantic melodies and virtuoso passages in the high register of the instrument.
Two short, crowd-pleasing Nordic selections round out the album: Solveig’s Song by Edvard Grieg and Sibelius’s The Swan of Tuonela, originally scored for English horn soloist, but translated by Klieser for his own instrument.
This album marks the culmination of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s decade-long, Grammy-winning Shostakovich cycle and is released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death. It showcases Yuja Wang’s performances with the BSO under the baton of its Music Director Andris Nelsons of Shostakovich’s two contrasting piano concertos – No. 1 in C minor and No. 2 in F major. Originally conceived as a trumpet concerto, Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor was eventually expanded by the composer into a double concerto for piano and trumpet, accompanied by a string orchestra. This unusual instrumentation, combined with Shostakovich’s characteristic humor and penchant for musical parody – here including sly references to Beethoven, Haydn, and even popular tunes – results in a work both virtuosic and playfully subversive. BSO principal Thomas Rolfs is Yuja Wang’s partner in this performance. Also included are six of Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues for solo piano, offering a more intimate glimpse into his pianistic world.
On this EP of six tracks, brothers and pianists Lucas and Arthur Jussen explore repertoire that was originally based on a sacred aria or chorale melody. CANTUS includes Anderson and Roe’s two-piano arrangement of “Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben” from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, and Reinhard Febel’s four-hand arrangement of Bach’s setting of the chorale “Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott.” The brothers also play three of Johannes Brahms’s Chorale Preludes, Op. 122 arranged for piano four-hands by Eusebius Mandyczewski. The EP is rounded out by the piano duo version of Arvo Pärt’s Pari Intervallo.
The new album from star cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason features Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2, performed with John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London, alongside the cello sonatas of Shostakovich and Britten with his sister, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason. This deeply personal recording pays tribute to cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, the towering figure who inspired both composers and Kanneh-Mason himself. Sheku Kanneh-Mason has a long-standing connection and affinity to Rostropovich and Shostakovich.
His 2018 debut album, Inspiration, featured Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto—the piece that secured his victory at the 2016 BBC Young Musician competition and launched his international career. The Concerto No. 2 “is a piece I’ve loved and studied for a long time,” Kanneh-Mason reflects. “It contains some of the most beautiful and sweetest moments in music, as well as some of the darkest and bleakest. To have all of that within one piece is very powerful.” Shostakovich’s Sonata in D minor, showcases the composer’s early style, blending classical form with deeply expressive lyricism.
The album’s third work, Britten’s Cello Sonata, was composed in 1961 as Britten’s testament to his friendship with Rostropovich, initiated through Shostakovich himself. The five-movement work is filled with stark contrasts, from its electrifying pizzicato Scherzo to the profoundly moving Elegia, which Kanneh-Mason describes as capturing “different stages of grief with extraordinary sensitivity.”
Quartetto Vanvitelli is an Italian ensemble (violinist Gian Andrea Guerra, lutenist Mauro Pinciaroli, cellist Nicola Brovelli, and keyboardist Luigi Accardo) specializing in baroque repertoire with a particular focus on Handel’s works. In Se in fiorito ameno prato, the period instrument ensemble explores Handel’s violin sonatas, connecting them to other pieces, including misattributions, opera excerpts, and keyboard pieces. The program invites the listener to listen top the album in sequence, seamlessly inserting additional music by Handel into some of the sonatas, in two cases, arias from Handel’s Giulio Cesare transcribed for violin. Ironically, the title of the album is the name of a rhapsodic aria for the title character of Giulio Cesare, which is not included here.
Kebyart is a Spanish saxophone quartet currently celebrating its tenth anniversary season. To mark the Ravel’s 150th anniversary, Kebyart sets out to explore his unique compositional legacy, despite the composer never having written for saxophone quartet. The album includes Kebyart’s transcriptions of Le Tombeau de Couperin and Pavane pour une infante défunte, alongside arrangements of French Baroque works by Rameau, highlighting both Ravel’s admiration for ornamentation and his influence on today’s composers. New pieces by Mikel Urquiza and Joan Pérez-Villegas engage with Ravel’s musical philosophy, delving into his radical simplicity, subtle rhythmic layers and inventive structures. Through these works, Kebyart aims to unravel Ravel’s complex yet elegant style, blending the past with the future in a journey of musical discovery.
Kebyart reflects that “[Ravel’s] music is a leaf: a thing of innocent beauty and miraculous architecture. But it is also a tree: from its roots, embedded in a rich subsoil, new shoots filled with a magical sap grow up towards the sky – towards the future.”
Adolphe Adam is famous for the popular ballets Giselle and Le Corsaire, works that were highly influential in the development of 19th-century musical theater, most especially in the evolution of the Romantic ballet. Giselle, still considered the very essence of the Romantic ballet, marked a peak in the composer’s career. The 1848 Revolution, however, coincided with a period of financial problems for his enterprise, causing his 11th ballet, Griseldis, to be cancelled mid-production. The colorful and innovative Griseldis, ou Les Cinq Sens (“Griseldis, or the five senses”) narrates the adventures of Elfrid the Crown Prince of Bohemia, on a journey of discovery and growing self-awareness as he travels to meet his prospective bride, Griseldis, Princess of Moldova. He hears her voice, feels her scent, touches her, tastes her lips when she embraces and kisses him, but he does not see her.
The ballet-pantomime is heard in its world premiere recording in a performance by The Sofia Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Dario Savari with the role of the mysterious voice is performed by soprano Marija Jelić.
