Various / Lien - Phonetix - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

The streets of eighteenth-century Madrid; a contaminated test-bombing site in Australia and a song from El Salvador provide some of the subject matter for this album by the United Strings of Europe (USE). Formed in 2012 by students at London's Royal Academy of Music, the ensemble brings together outstanding players from across Europe. Artistic director is the Anglo-Lebanese violinist Julian Azkoul, who leads from the violin, curates programmes and arranges music for the ensemble. For In Motion, USE's début recording, Azkoul has arranged Boccherini's celebrated and atmospheric evocation of the Nocturnal Music of the Streets of Madrid, in a version that updates the original's flirt with popular music. Far removed both geographically and in mood is Maralinga, Australian composer Matthew Hindson's powerful and haunting work featuring guest soloist Amalia Hall. The programme opens and closes with works for string quartet, composed some 180 years apart in Vienna and New Zealand respectively and heard in bespoke arrangements by Azkoul. Reflecting the ensemble's distinctive voice and multi-national heritage and the wide-ranging interests and stylistic versatility of it's members, In Motion is a roller-coaster ride of an album.

Kalevi Aho is one of today's most prolific composers of large-scale orchestral scores, including 17 symphonies and 32 concertos to date. Less well-known is the fact that he has also written chamber music, as well as an ever-expanding series of solo pieces - starting with Solo I for violin from 1975, the most recent in the series, for clavichord, is the 17th. Some of these pieces has originated as part of Aho's preparations when composing a concerto for the instrument in question, while others have been written for competitions, including Solo III for flute and Solo IV for cello on the present . This first volume of Solos gathers seven pieces in all, four of which have previously appeared as part of separate discs. Aho's Solos share the characteristic that they pose great technical, interpretative and often also physical challenges to the performer. Most of those heard here are performed by the musicians for whom they were written, including Hiyoli Togawa (Solo XII), Piet Van Bockstal (Solo IX), Simon Reitmaier (Solo XIV) and Marie-Luise Neunecker (Solo X).

Theobald Böhm revolutionised the flute in the middle of the 19th century. He changed it's form and mechanics and constructed it from metals, which gave the flute a more flexible sound and new tone colors while enabling a more brilliant technique. The new flute inspired many composers, particularly in France at the beginning of the era of Modernism, which brought with it a variety of new compositional styles. With this album, I first and foremost wanted to draw attention to the panoply of compositional styles and to demonstrate how profound and full of character this music is. I would like to transcend the limits of the original instrumentation for flute and piano with my own arrangements. I want to create an entirely new sound experience and, by using the expressive capabilities of string instruments, reveal the repertoire's full potential of colors. As such, the album offers a rich palette of styles and colors. (Nathanael Carré)