The Whole Music Experience

Paul Lewis, Jiřì Bêlohlàvek and BBC Symphony Orchestra Beethoven Complete Piano Concertos Harmonia Mundi For many listeners, hearing Beethoven’s music could feel triumphant, victorious, and invigorating. For other listeners, the German composer’s work might feel fraught with anger, frustration, and darker emotions that they would rather not address. But for all of us, Beethoven can lead us into our darkest places where we can heal our wounds and emerge triumphant. That’s the journey that most of Beethoven’s music represents, bordering on shamanic, raising the dead parts of ourselves, and liberating ourselves from our oppressors, both inner and outer. Beethoven’s 5 piano concertos prove no exception to this concept. Our musical shaman in this case is pianist (I’m assuming he’s English) Paul Lewis who in the realm of Beethoven, takes charge of this domain and plays the concertos with a sense of authority and mastership. You can feel the triumphant moments as well as the sen...

Arcanto Quartett Quatuors à cordes Debussy, Dutilleux, Ravel Harmonia Mundi I have mixed feelings about Aracanto Quartett’s Quatuors à cordes . I’m a fan of the French Impressionist composers, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy so I enjoy hearing their string quartets. While the composers employed some dissonance in their quartets, they also provided harmonic release. I cannot say the same for French composer Henri Dutilleux’s suite, Ainsi la nuit in which the composers brings no release to his listeners. It’s as if listeners are trapped in a desert of dissonance and punished by the shrillness of strings. Similar to a cat which can meow sweetly or caterwaul, string instruments can also provide its share of tension while playing dissonant passages. Granted the composer set out to express darker emotions and even the words “unsettling anxiety and sombre violence” appear in the liner notes to convey part of what the French composer aimed at expressing—the experience of night...

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) Staier and Sepec Robert Schumann Sonatas for Piano and Violin Harmonia Mundi From around the time of German composer Robert Schumann’s death in 1856 (and in his last years), to the 1960s, Schumann’s later works were considered inferior to his other works. After listening to Andreas Staier’s (forte piano) and Daniel Sepec’s (1780 violin) recording of Schumann’s later sonatas, I wonder about the brilliance of Schumann’s work prior to the 1850s. The music that flows off of Robert Schumann Sonatas for Piano and Violin sounds brilliant with marvelous sonorities coming from both instruments. Passages explode off of the disc—impassioned, blazing, while alternating with lyrical poetry. Schumann’s homage to JS Bach feels both endearing and clearheaded. So any nonsense about Schumann’s plight with depression and madness curbing his virtuosity rightfully should be discounted and ignored. On this recording, Staier dusts off an Erard forte piano (1837, Pari...

Anonymous 4 The Cherry Tree Harmonia Mundi Having sold 2 million copies of their 20 albums, there’s nothing anonymous about this vocal ensemble comprised of Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer and Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek. Anonymous 4’s popularity can be attributed to continuous glowing reviews of its live performances, albums, programs, and ethereal voices that blend seamlessly. Similar to Bulgarian women’s choirs, Anonymous 4 transports its listeners to other realms but with its repertoire of European and American early music—sung a cappella. The Cherry Tree features Christian ballads, hymns, carols, and songs from England, Ireland and America. This doesn’t surprise me since Anonymous 4 introduced early Americana music on its album American Angel which was released several years ago. After that album, the ensemble mysteriously broke up, only to reunite with the release of a greatest hits album, Four Centuries of Chant in 2009. What impresses me the most a...

Oran Etkin Wake up Clarinet! Motema Music Clarinetist Oran Etkin has taken his music to kids. Music not only helps children develop mentally, physically and emotionally, music education teaches children how to appreciate different types of music while preserving various music traditions for future generations. Not to mention that musicians reap rewards from teaching children music appreciation and musical language because they are in essence fostering their future concert goers and record buyers.  His children's album Wake up Clarinet! isn't a run-of-the-mill feel good children's CD, but has some educational components, such as learning about the timbre and range of a clarinet. “You know, everyone talks about music as a language-universal language,“ says Ektin (liner notes), “About five years ago, I started wondering what we are doing to make sure that children grow up to be fully fluent and comfortable inside this powerful language that can enable them to expre...