Many works this week straddle the line between late Classical and early Romantic era. Pianist Idith Meshulam Korman and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, present the first complete modern recording of the surviving keyboard music of Marianna Martines (1744–1812). The latest album from Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov includes works by Beethoven’s teacher, Carl Czerny, while volinist Romuald Grimbert-Barré and the Orchestre national de Cannes pay tribute to, among others, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.
Also on the table – the first release from Grant Park Orchestra in 15 years, and 13 premiere recordings of works by Nico Muhly written expressly for the Choir of Magdalen College.
Pianist Idith Meshulam Korman and the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, present the first complete modern recording of the surviving keyboard music of Marianna Martines (1744–1812): a composer, keyboard virtuoso, and cultural force in eighteenth-century Viennese musical life. Admired in her lifetime for her brilliance as both performer and composer, Martines occupied a central position within the city’s elite musical circles, yet her instrumental music has remained largely absent from the recorded canon. This two-disc album brings together Martines’s four surviving keyboard concertos, three sonatas, and her Sinfonia in C major, recorded from newly prepared critical editions. The works reveal a composer writing ambitiously for public performance, combining lyrical vocal writing with striking technical demands, orchestral imagination, and playful formal subversion. Idith Meshulam Korman has dedicated her career to the study of the keyboard music of Martines and with this release she restores Martines’s keyboard music to the classical canon as a vital and compelling body of work.
The latest release from Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov combines the fire and virtuosity suggested by the album’s title (and cover), tempered with the musical depth and poetic communication for which he is equally acclaimed. Inferno begins with music by Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and a teacher to Liszt best known for his technical exercises from The School of Velocity. Après une lecture de Dante (the Dante Sonata) adds Liszt’s wildly virtuosic depiction of the torment of the damned to the program. This is contrasted by the delicate and refined Suite Bergamasque of Debussy (containing the famous Claire de lune), which in turn is contrasted by Stravinsky’s flamboyantly technical Three Movements from Petrushka. Abduraimov has been touring with this program, and as he does in concert, the album concludes with a late Brahms piece: the Intermezzo in B minor, Op. 119/1, an ethereal ending.
The Chevalier de Saint-George(s) is an exceptional figure. Born in Guadeloupe in the eighteenth century to an aristocrat and an enslaved woman, he received the education of a court gentleman in Paris and went on to become a violinist, fencer, Freemason, participant in the Revolution, conductor, and composer. It is naturally to the violin that he dedicated his finest works. His concertos are marked by a virtuosity that is both unbridled and graceful. Violinist Romuald Grimbert-Barré and the Orchestre national de Cannes pay tribute to this extraordinary life by pairing Bologne’s Op. 5 and Op. 8 concertos with Violin Concerto, “Hommage à Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George,” a new piece for violin and string orchestra by the renowned French-Caribbean composer Thierry Pécou. Using a similar instrumental ensemble to build a bridge between Classical and Contemporary, this juxtaposition brings together two composers of Caribbean origin from different eras.
Recorded in front of a live audience at the Harris Theater, this performance serves as a souvenir from Giancarlo Guerrero’s first season as Grant Park Music Festival Artistic Director and Prinicipal Conductor. “Early in his tenure, Guerrero has already developed sufficient rapport with his players that they could mutually revel in Shostakovich’s acrobatic antics,” noted Tim Sawyier for Chicago Classical Review. “Together, they delivered a gripping account of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10.” Available as a digital album with the performance video on YouTube, this is Grant Park Orchestra’s first release in 15 years.
The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford led by Mark Williams (Music Director and organist) present 13 premiere recordings of works by Nico Muhly written expressly for — and the majority commissioned by — the Choir. Comprising settings of the mass and canticles alongside anthems for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascensiontide, Trinity Sunday, and Remembrance, the collection sets a number of little-known texts, casting new light on familiar seasons of the church year. The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford was founded in 1480, as one of the largest choral foundations in late-medieval England, and this historic legacy has been preserved and maintained over five centuries. The Choir, which now enjoys an international reputation as one of the finest ensembles in the UK, exists primarily to sing the daily church services in Magdalen College Chapel.
