Among the most successful and prolific artists on the naïve label, Rinaldo Alessandrini and his dynamic period-instrument ensemble Concerto Italiano take an exciting turn from their exploration of the Italian Baroque with a new release dedicated to a virtually forgotten but compelling Czech composer, Frantisek Ignác Antonín Tuma. Tuma was born in Bohemia in 1704 and died in Vienna in 1774. According to Wikipedia, which calls him “an important late-Baroque composer, organist, gambist, and theorist,” the composer “lived the greater part of his life in Vienna, first as director of music for Count Franz Ferdinand Kinsky [and] later filling a similar office for the widow of Emperor Karl VI.”Wikipedia also explains, “His sacred works, which were known to Haydn and Mozart, were noted by his contemporaries for their solidity of texture and their sensitive treatment of the text as well as for their chromaticism.” The new recording, however, focuses on a selection of vivid orchestral works - partitas, sinfonias, and sonatas - that convey the intimate spirit of chamber music.
Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano will make their debut at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York City in August, with two enticing Baroque programs at the Rose Theater. The first (August 4) focuses on sacred music by Melani (Litanie per la Beata Vergine Maria for nine voices and basso continuo), Scarlatti (Messa per il Santissimo Natale), and Pergolesi (Missa Romana, “di S. Emidio”). Pergolesi’s Missa Romana and Scarlatti’s Messa per il Santissimo Natale (Christmas masses) have been recorded for future release on the label, and an album of Melani motets is scheduled for recording as well. The second program (August 5) features a selection of eight Vivaldi concertos for various instruments, some of which have been recorded by Alessandrini for naïve (the ensemble’s rendering of Vivaldi’s ever-popular Four Seasons, named Gramophone CD of the Month soon after its release, is the single recommended version of the work listed in the new book 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die). Alessandrini and the ensemble were heard most recently on naïve in a 400th-anniversary recording of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. ClassicsToday.com called the album a “must-have for Monteverdi fans,” giving it the website’s highest possible rating: ten out of ten for both artistic quality and sound quality.
naïve adds another dynamic young artist to its roster with a new recording by 27-year-old French pianist Bertrand Chamayou. For his debut release, Chamayou focuses exclusively on keyboard works by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), one of his favorite composers, including some transcriptions of Mendelssohn works by Liszt and Rachmaninov (track list follows).
Chamayou explains his choice of composer and his approach to programming the album:
I’ve always been extremely fond of Mendelssohn, whose compositions aren’t played all that often. He’s the least well-known of the great composers, he’s relatively popular, but you also realize that a lot of musicians don’t know the majority of his works, especially his piano pieces. The idea of putting together a program like a poetry anthology began to take shape little by little, inspired by the Songs without Words, which are like German lieder. I wanted the program to be like a lieder recital, and chose a number of short pieces that, although brief, tell very dense little stories.
Bertrand Chamayou has been praised for his stage charisma, his highly-refined sonority, his stunning technical skills, and his unquenchable thirst for discovery. As Diapason has observed, his playing reveals a rare “emotional density and poetic imagination.”
In 2006, Chamayou was named “Revelation of the Year” at “Victoire de la Musique,” France’s annual classical music awards. At 20, Bertrand was a prizewinner at the prestigious Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud International Competition, since when he has been invited to play recitals at renowned festivals and concert venues around the world. Born in 1981, Chamayou was very soon discovered by international pianist Jean-François Heisser, who was later to become his professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Chamayou completed his training with Maria Curcio in London and has received invaluable advice from such great masters as Leon Fleisher, Dimitri Bashkirov, and Murray Perahia.
Besides giving recitals, Chamayou has played as a soloist with some of the best French national orchestras (Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse) and other prestigious European orchestras (Collegium Instrumentale Brugense, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Sinfonia Varsovia) and with such renowned maestros as Michel Plasson, Lawrence Foster, and Yutaka Sado. He regularly performs chamber music with musicians including Augustin Dumay, Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, the Ebène Quartet, the Belcea Quartet, Sol Gabetta, Antoine Tamestit, Daishin Kashimoto, Jing Zhao, Xavier Phillips, Henri Demarquette, François Salque, and Eric Le Sage.
Chamayou’s live recording of the complete cycle of Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, a 2006 release from Sony Classical, was enthusiastically received.
With “Con Passione”, his new album for naïve’s sister label, ambroisie, the exciting young Belgian violinist Yossif Ivanov lets the sparks fly in a virtuoso program of waltzes, variations, and fantasies with pianist Itamar Golan. Ivanov’s program pays tribute, ultimately, to the legacy of Paganini, whose technical brilliance and musical showmanship with the violin revolutionized the instrument (a full track list follows below). As the album’s liner notes point out:If Paganini eclipsed all the other violinists of his day, he also created a tremendous phenomenon of emulation whose legacy would be confirmed after his death by such figures as Ernst, Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski, Sarasate, and Ysaÿe. The violin owes him its prestige as an instrument, for without him its repertoire would probably never have known the same abundance or the same development. The boldest compositions showcasing such flamboyant violinistic virtuosity appeared in the second half of the 19th century. Their composers, mostly violinists themselves, displayed boundless imagination, not hesitating to use themes from the most celebrated operas to attract an ever-increasing audience and to show off their paces, with their double talents as composers and instrumentalists allowing them to reconcile high technical demands with expressive style. Quite apart from the volume of works specifically written for the instrument, illustrious arrangers like Kreisler or Heifetz (to name the two most famous and prolific), Hartmann, Kochanski, Tzïganov, Francescatti, Szigeti, and many others substantially expanded their repertory by adapting for the violin hundreds of pieces initially intended for the voice, the piano, or even the orchestra. All the pieces selected for this recital by the young Yossif Ivanov belong to this Paganinian legacy.
Born in Antwerp in 1986, Yossif Ivanov won the First Grand Prix at the Montreal International Music Competition (2003) and Second (Eugène Ysaÿe) Prize and Audience Prize at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in Belgium (2005). In January 2006, he received the Midem Classical Award for “Outstanding Young Artist.”
He was named “Rising Star” by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels for the 2005-06 season, appearing at such notable venues as Carnegie Hall in New York, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Vienna Musikverein, and the Cité de la Musique in Paris. In addition to his busy concert schedule in Benelux, he also plays elsewhere in Europe, and in the United States and Canada.
Yossif Ivanov made his London debut in April 2007 at the invitation of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Marin Alsop. He performs as a soloist with the leading orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Katowice Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the English Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre national de Lille, the Orquestra Nacional do Porto, the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra. This enables him to collaborate with today’s foremost conductors, among them Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Yoav Talmi, Jaap van Zweden, Jean-Claude Casadesus, Damian Iorio, David Stern, Pierre Bartholomée, Louis Langrée, and Paul Goodwin. In recitals, Ivanov is accompanied on the piano by Itamar Golan, Frank Braley, Daniel Blumenthal, and Luc Devos.
Jean-François Zygel’s fame in his native France stems from his gifts as music popularizer and educator; his TV show, La Boite à Musique, is watched regularly by more than one million viewers and his Leçons de Musique DVD has become a bestseller for naïve. Beyond these gifts, Zygel is a remarkable improviser, as can be heard on Improvisations, his new album for the label. He has performed improvisation concerts all over France for many years, as well as improvisation duels with the jazz pianist Gonzales. He also improvises regularly to accompany silent films and for radio stations.Zygel is joined on his new album by Philippe Berrod on clarinet, Thomas Bloch on glass harmonica, and Jean Boucault and Johnny Rasse providing bird songs.
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Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, was one of the more colorful characters among Italian Renaissance composers. He wrote unusual and highly emotional music, and he was a murderer. This podcast looks at both his personal life (sometimes gruesome) as well as his music. Music by Gesualdo’s fellow composers Pomponio Nenna and Luzzasco Luzzaschi is also included. The featured artists in this podcast, and on the CD are Concerto Italiano conducted by Rinaldo Alessandrini.
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