Mammoth Trio - Mammoth Trio Contemporaneous - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Emma Ruth Rundle's forthcoming Engine of Hell is stark, intimate, and unflinching. For anyone that's endured trauma and grief, there's a beautiful solace in hearing Rundle articulate and humanize that particular type of pain not only with her words, but with her particular mysterious language of melody and timbre. The album captures a moment where a masterful songwriter strips away all flourishes and embellishments in order to make every note and word hit with maximum impact, leaving little to hide behind. 'I really wanted to capture imperfection and the vulnerability of my humanity,' Rundle says of the album's sonic approach. 'Here are some very personal songs; here are my memories; here is me teetering on the very edge of sanity dipping my toe into the outer reaches of space and I'm taking you with me and it's very f*ed up and imperfect.' Emma Ruth Rundle has always been a multifaceted musician, equally capable of dreamy abstraction (as heard on her album Electric Guitar One), maximalist textural explorations (see her work in Marriages, Red Sparowes, Nocturnes or collaborations with Chelsea Wolfe and Thou), and the classic singer-songwriter tradition (exemplified by Some Heavy Ocean). But on Engine of Hell, Rundle has opted to forego the full-band arrangements of her previous albums in favor of the austerity of a lone piano or guitar and her voice, which creates a kind of intimacy, as if we're sitting beside Rundle on a bench, or perhaps even playing the songs ourselves. It's an extremely up-close and personal confessional with a focus on the rich subtleties and timbre of Rundle's graceful performances

P.I. Tchaikovsky - Trios [COMPACT DISCS] Digipack Packaging date 09/13/2011

The pianist Ekaterina Litvintseva won critical praise for her solo album on Piano Classics (PCL10226) of piano music by Dora Pejacevic 'You owe it to yourself to make the acquaintance of Dora Pejacevic if you haven't done so already.' (Fanfare, May 2022) With her colleagues in Trio RoVerde, she now turns to the Croatian composer's chamber music. The Cello Sonata dates from 1913, the same year as Pejacevic wrote the first piano concerto by any Croatian composer. Like Brahms's First Cello Sonata and Elgar's Cello Concerto, it is cast in a moody E minor, with a yearning character are established from the outset by a long-limbed cantabile melody for the cellist. Pejacevic proceeds to develop a passionate dialogue between cello and piano through an assured handling of sonata form. The following sequence of miniatures for violin and piano evokes the world of the salon in their titles, but the Schumannesque warmth of the Romanze Op.22, from 1907, is replaced by a style at once more wistful and refined by the time of the Elegie, which she wrote in the same pivotal year (1913) as the Cello Sonata. From seven years later, the Meditation Op.51 makes no retreat into solipsism but paints a three-minute sketch of a new and uncertain world. From 1910, the C major Piano Trio returns us to safer ground. Pejacevic demonstrates a notable sensitivity in writing for a tricky combination of instruments strong melodic writing for the string instruments counterbalances the weight of the piano part, which is in any case deftly pointed and touched by the composer's experience as a performer. If Pejacevic's chamber music has not taken it's place in the standard repertoire of late-Romanticism, it is our loss, and one that an increasing number of performances and recordings such as this one are belatedly redressing.