Streibig - Sequences Inquietes - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Gunther Herbig - Symphony 8 [COMPACT DISCS] date 08/21/2007

?Variations and salon miniatures by the father of the classical tradition in Russia - Mikhail Glinka's piano works lie in the shadow of his operas, romances and orchestral music but they share the distinctive voice, the brilliance and Franco-Russian accent of foundational pieces in the Russian classical tradition such as Ruslan and Ludmila. The works recorded here date from the 1820s to the 1840s, when there was no regular concert life or musical education in Russia and when the salon and the opera still formed the centres of musical life. Glinka models his keyboard writing accordingly on the forms immortalised by Chopin such as the waltz, nocturne and mazurka, and the variations on songs, popular Italian opera melodies. Viacheslav Shelepov opens this beautifully curated album with a delicious set of variations on Alyabyev's song The Nightingale, cast in a nostalgic E minor. The tiny, three-minute variations on Amid the Plain Valley (a Russian song) are entirely within the salon , and the Variations on a Scottish Song have a Mendelssohnian delicacy of texture, but the closing variations on a theme from Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi are evidently conceived with the concert stage in mind, and with the fingers of a virtuoso to embrace their exuberant writing. Viacheslav Shelepov intersperses these variations with one-off demonstrations of Glinka's mastery in whatever form he chose to address himself. The G major Barcarolle from 1847 deserves to take it's place alongside much more familiar examples by Chopin and Mendelssohn for it's memorable distillation of poetry and the tug of the gondolier's oars in it's rhythm. A D major Fugue works up a relatively sober theme to a satisfying climax out of proportion to it's three-minute duration. Also from 1847, the Prayer is much more dramatic and eventful than it's title would suggest, especially in this dynamically shaded a

The enigmatic beginning of Lisa Streich's portrait album in the series Edition Zeitgenossische Musik lays the cornerstone for a sound journey, oscillating between this world and the hereafter. In the liner notes, Rainer Nonnenmann describes an inventive musical cosmos, whose unity develops only of alleged contradictions InchLisa Streich's music has a captivating beauty, at once earnest and playful, strong and meaningful, physical, cruel and tender. It gives us much to feel and think about. It is multi-voiced, ambivalent, incongruous, poetic and profane, as fraught with contradictions as is life itself. It is music of this world, and yet it is not.Inch To create a wide musical spectrum, the Swedish composer uses a variety of instrumentation raging from duo, over ensemble and choir, to orchestra. The five pieces have been especially recorded for this album by ensemble recherche, hand werk and UT insieme vocale-consonante, among others. Different production conditions also correspond to the musical diversity While three of the album's compositions were recorded at regular venues, the recordings of the vocal works took place in the Cologne Cathedral and the Roman church of Santa Maria in Campitelli.