Strauss,R. / Widor / Ames Quartet - QT Pno in C minor Op. 13/QT Pno in A minor Op. 66 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Since my first encounter with the Hathor Consort, it has been obvious to me that the sound of the viola da gamba complements the harmonic and melodic style of my compositions wonderfully well and with utter naturalness. The pieces on Aries Point therefore not only combine two musical eras, but also give the sound color of the viola da gamba a central place as a key compositional element. It's unique timbre influences the process of composition and improvisation and resonates in a completely new musical context. It's subtle intensity brings out textures which, in their turn, inspire jazz musicians to adopt new forms of melodic and sonic expression in the course of their improvisations. In jazz, the process of improvisation could also be called 'instant composing'. A central element is the variation of the themes and the interaction between the musicians. In composition too, the repeated variation of patterns - through changes in key, rhythm, note order - creates material that serves to weave the melodies and harmonies of the work. With the Aries Point project, I wish to introduce a wider public to the beauty and diversity of improvisation, that ancestral form which lies at the source of all musical expression. (Bastian Stein)

Winner of the 2011 Israeli Ministry of Culture Outstanding Ensemble Award, the Israeli Chamber Project brings together some of today's most distinguished young Israeli musicians for chamber music concerts and educational and outreach programs both in Israel and abroad. A dynamic ensemble comprising of strings, winds, harp and piano, the Israeli Chamber Project has quickly made a name for itself through it's passionate musicianship and creative programming. In North America, the Israeli Chamber Project has appeared at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Morrison Artists Series in San Francisco, and has been featured on NPR's Performance Today.

A radically systematic logic stunningly manifested itself quite early in the music of Richard Strauss. He avoided the instrumental genres, was attracted to the tone poem right from the very start, and worked toward the goal of making the opera his central focus. And yet his beginnings lay in chamber music, a fact demonstrated on this with two examples in new recordings. The Piano Trio No. 2 is lengthier than it's predecessor and very ambitious both in it's tonal register and execution. The formal norms - sonata form, song form, scherzo, and then another sonata movement - are upheld with completeness and elegance. The piano trio had a long line of tradition going back to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, but the composer who set standards in the middle of the nineteenth century is particularly clearly recognizable here in a model function Mendelssohn. Only about seven years passed between this trio and Strauss's only Piano Quartet, but in 1885 too he was still a very young composer. The quartet displays impressive advances in technique; now Strauss apparently could draw on all the compositional resources then available, and the higher virtuosic demands on the instrumentalists are also quite evident. Strauss attracted the greatest attention with his large- op. 13 lasting almost forty minutes, a work that even brought him a prize from the Berliner Tonkünstlerverein.