Salzburg Chamber Soloists - Ci Divertiamo - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

Salzburg Chamber Solists Lavard Skou - Music for Strings [SUPER-AUDIO CD] Hybrid SACD date 07/08/2014

For their debut album on Resonus Classics, The Gould Piano Trio presents three Trios with strong American ties. Charles Ives' (1874-1954) only Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano is one of his major works is without question. Amy Beach (1867-1944) was recognized in her lifetime as one of the most acclaimed American composers. Her Trio, Op. 150, was composed in 1938 and is steeped in the developmental processes of late nineteenth century models while quoting two Inuit folk songs. Although born and educated in England, Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) wrote her Piano Trio as part of a chamber music competition in Pittsfield MA and has been described as the finest work in the genre by any British composer.

The c/o chamber orchestra is a collective of thirty young musicians from a dozen different countries. Playing without a conductor, the orchestra is dedicated to that particular collaborative process which is the essence of chamber music. For their first album, the members have chosen to highlight a genre more difficult to pin-point than one might think. It's very name, divertimento, implies that it is simply a diversion, light music for entertainment - but many of the best-known examples of the form transcend that definition. And as many composers have learned, even light-hearted music should be taken seriously humor requires a master's touch. The four works recorded here offer different perspectives on the genre, starting with Ibert's seven-movement suite in which the composer constantly plays with the listener's expectations. Some forty years before Ibert, his compatriot Émile Bernard composed a very different Divertissement. It is scored for double wind quintet, reminiscent of Mozart's divertimenti and serenades for winds. But even though the music is melodious and carefree, the debt owed by Bernard to the German romantic composers is never far from the surface. A very special case is Bartók's Divertimento for strings, composed just before the outbreak of World War II. The closing work on the album reunites the winds and strings of the c/o orchestra in a work written especially for this project by the American composer Michael Ippolito, who in his Divertimento pays full tribute to the contrast-rich nature of the genre.