Music is the key

[...] bar, and his playing acquires an appropriately heavy tread in the initial statement of the first movement's principal theme. A good proportion of this movement is in bare, unharmonised octaves, and [...]

[...] in these gorgeous readings. Just listen to the transcendent beauty of the second theme in the first movement of the G-Major Sonata, to how it expands to embrace an exalted state of ecstasy. In one [...]

[...] to the three-part cycle "From Jewish Life", of which "Prayer" is the first movement, Gabetta's CD recital includes Bloch's "Meditation hebräique", "Nigun", [...]

[...] Crystallisatio. Percussion becomes more pronounced as stuttering rhythms break the first movement into pieces. In the second movement, a glockenspiel ruptures the high strings as a [...]

[...] soul lives in the music of the East and the West". As Jürg Stenzl points out in the liner notes, hardly any composer of his generation was more greatly affected by the discovery of [...]

[...] a major position in what many feel to be a unified cycle. Wolfgang Sandner, in the liner notes: “Its traditional four-movement design, its moderate length, the absence of fugal [...]

[...] are interwoven in music as arresting and as innovative as the “Mystery Sonatas”. In the liner notes, Peter Wollny writes: “Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704), chapel-master at Salzburg, has [...]

[...] , as does the Amsterdam Sinfonietta under the direction of Candida Thompson. In the liner notes, Wolfgang Sandner describes title piece Quasi Parlando, composed in 2012, as one of the [...]

The Diabelli Variations have long been considered a magnum opus in Beethoven's piano music and a towering historical contribution to the genre, with B [...]

When András Schiff performed the “Waldstein sonata” in New York’s Avery Fisher Hall in November 2005, Jeremy Eichler, writing in the New York T [...]

When I'm so deeply absorbed in a composer, as I have been with Beethoven, then I physically and mentally begin to feel like him. Beethoven changed me [...]

[...] Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) insisted that she wrote no chamber music: instrumentation alone could be no index of her music’s intentions. Her works are infused, she [...]

[...] is regularly appearing on the most important international stages and festivals as well as chamber music partner as soloist. Dana Zemtsov was born in 1992 in Mexico City. She comes from a family of [...]

[...] success in 1936 with the first performance of his Concertino for piano and orchestra at the chamber music festival in Baden-Baden. During the ensuing years, the composer extended his oeuvre with [...]

[...] craftsmanship and great aesthetic open-mindedness. This CD, with three major new pieces of chamber music, is the first to present his art to an international audience. Some time around 2000 Manfred [...]

[...] concerts, dance, theatre, film and installations. The pieces on this album, produced by Manfred Eicher, span over a decade of Moore’s development as a composer, from "Stories for Ocean Shells& [...]

[...] association was further strengthened by an “Armenian Night” realized with the help of Manfred Eicher, at the 1999 Bergen International Music Festival, in which Kashkashian, Robyn Schulkowsky, [...]

[...] to record – projects based not on commercial criteria but rather on artistic impulse. Manfred Eicher wanted us to propose music to him, and if he agreed that it seemed special and right at [...]

[...] that in mind, the choice of instruments made itself.” In this recording, produced by Manfred Eicher at Zürich’s Radio Studio, John Holloway and his ensemble juxtaposed the Pavans with [...]

[...] -born conductor Alain Altinoglu with whom she obviously has a close rapport. Khachaturian's Piano Concerto dates from 1936 and attempted to revive the bravura pianistic traditions of Liszt while at [...]

[...] shaped by the conductor, and Abbado's subtlety in his old age is remarkable to hear. In the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466, he generates a great deal of tension without resorting to the [...]

[...] 16 is the release of the third and final recording of the Beethoven Journey, featuring Piano Concerto No. 5 Emperor and the Choral Fantasy, recorded live in concert at the Prague Spring Festival [...]

[...] Three years after the release of the first volume, András Schiff‘s highly acclaimed Beethoven cycle is now complete. In his afterword to the eighth installment he described the challenges he [...]

[...] International press reactions to the first volume of Schiff’s Beethoven cycle released in October 2005 were unanimous in their praise and critics expressed high [...]

[...]  The first three instalments of András Schiff’s Beethoven cycle in chronological order have met with great critical acclaim. “This will be one of the great [...]

[...] Zeitung after this concert in December 2005. Volume V of Schiff’s much acclaimed Beethoven cycle in chronological order, recorded live in Zurich, offers four masterworks dating from [...]

[...] Giya Kancheli's fifth album for ECM New Series is the first to be devoted exclusively to the Georgian composer's orchestral music, and [...]

[...] sensitivity and distinction bound for 21st- century glory” has been championed on ECM New Series since 2001. Last fall Larcher’s piano piece “What becomes” attracted wide-spread [...]

[...] its outstanding acoustics. Starting in October 2005, the complete cycle will be released on ECM New Series in eight volumes. The Sonatas will be issued in chronological order as single or double [...]

[...] new recording from Kim Kashkashian brings Armenia’s leading contemporary composer to ECM New Series in a programme that also explores the roots of Armenian music. Compositions by Mansurian for [...]

[...] second-movement Allegro molto, and again the rug is pulled from beneath us at the close when solo violin and cello are given quite unexpected monologues like afterthoughts on what has passed. An [...]

[...] wrote in his music for instrumental and vocal ensemble, but especially in his many sonatas for solo violin. But Biber, in his compositions, was concerned with more than simply flaunting his [...]

[...] -bar periods of a simple but moving folk song until the strings enter a dialogue with the solo violin, whereupon a transformation takes place... In terms of textural density, Mansurian’s [...]

International critics writing on the first two volumes of András Schiff’s Beethoven cycle have praised a particularly “sharp attention to detail� [...]

András Schiff’s Beethoven cycle, recorded live in chronological order at Tonhalle Zurich, continues to collect critical praise as it moves forward [...]

 The first three instalments of András Schiff’s Beethoven cycle in chronological order have met with great critical acclaim. “This will be one o [...]