Crosse / Francis / London Sym Orch / Lankester - Ariadne & Changes - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Managing to convey the Adagio and Allegro Op. 70 by Robert Schumann clearly on the double bass with piano makes huge demands on the interpreter. Capturing the wit and rhythmic charm, but also the plaintiveness without lamentation in the Double Bass Sonata by Karel Reiner is a challenge on this weighty instrument, which even for the smallest sound requires the greatest physical effort. The same applies to the solo piece InchReincarnationInch by Yumiko Nishida. After all, this premiere recording of a rebirth shouldn't be a tough or cumbersome event! The Brahms sonata on the other hand, which everyone has in their head in the original version for cello, must not create the impression that something is lost in the transfer from the cello to the double bass. Instead, it needs to add something new to the appeal of an old friend. And that scourge Giovanni Bottesini, who ultimately strikes fear and dread into the heart of every bass player or almost every bass player. Ryutaro Hei masters every task with bravura, not least thanks to his congenial partner at the piano, Yu Kosuge.

Mathias / De Peyer / Ellis / Npo / Lso / Atherton - Concertos [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/13/2007

English composer and pianist Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) has served as a professor at the Royal Academy of Music, the University of Sussex, and is currently Professor of composition at the University of Southampton and Composer in Residence at St. John's College Cambridge. His works for the piano are especially notable for their extreme technique demands. He is concerned with the political aspects of music, and believes that all music is programmatic to some degree. That is, a composition exists in not just the composer's mind, but inside a culture that reflects both the extra-musical and purely musical concerns of the composer. InchMy music contains many musics, but impure, misremembered, smudged and melted, torn apart yet not completely erased.Inch (Michael Finnissy) InchMichael's music is gnarly, gristly even- one senses keenly that it is the product of an intellectual yet instinctive wrestling with the very philosophy of music.Inch (Juliet Fraser)