Chopin / Jauregui - Pour Le Tombeau de Debussy - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Aurelia Shimkus wanted to create a selection of works that would best illustrate Bach's relationship to the divine sphere. Because prayers are the best way to communicate and get in touch with the divine, she decided to put together a program that would seem like one big prayer and named it after the Chorale Prelude No. 5 InchIch ruf' zu dirInch (I call yo tou). The pieces of the program are grouped together by their tonal relationships - this allowed Shimkus to combine music from different times and epochs, consolidating them into one large work of prayer.

Philippe Herreweghe records his third disc devoted to a controversial figure in the world of music and art in general Carlo Gesualdo, who had his wife murdered and is suspected of having his son smothered. This time Collegium Vocale Gent performs his fifth book of madrigals (1611), published two years before his death. A collection that even today contributes to the eternal debate to what extent does art become impregnated with reality, and how can it be appreciated when it emanates from a mind living so close to horror? Here the bold dissonances and sometimes tortured expressiveness that can be perceived in his harmonic language offer food for thought. Can we speak of redemption through art for a murderous composer in the twilight of his life?

In Chopin Late piano works, Edoardo Torbianelli matches once again the poetry of his pianism with the rigor of his scholarly investigations into the music he plays. Together with the booklet essay-writer, Jeanne Roudet, Torbianelli has considered afresh the music written by Frédéric Chopin in the last fifteen years of the Polish composer's life. To follow on from his collection, Torbianelli has recorded at Fondation Royaumont in France - playing on an 1842 Ignace Pleyel grand piano - Chopin's A flat Polonaise-Fantaisie, Op 61, the B minor Sonata Op. 58 and a selection of Mazurkas and Nocturnes for this new Schola Cantorum Basiliensis presented by Glossa. With this programme Edoardo Torbianelli is situating the compositional approach more directly within Chopin's Polish heritage; though he later went into exile the composer was present in Warsaw until just before the November Uprising in 1830. Unlike Berlioz and Liszt, it is argued, Chopin eschewed literature as direct inspiration and - again unlike Liszt - the Polish composer's piano music shares similarities in technique and performative style with the bel canto school of singing, the descendant of the art of eighteenth-century castrati and perpetuated in the 1800s by Italian singers as heard by Chopin himself in Paris. The resulting InchvocalityInch of Chopin's piano music finds echo in Edoardo Torbianelli's interpretations for a recording which can be considered both for it's fresh approach but also as a masterly reflection of the composer's genius.