Horn Trios From Mozart To Piazzolla And Beyond (Volume 1) by Howard Wall, Elmira Darvarova & Thomas Weaver

HORN TRIOS from MOZART to PIAZZOLLA and beyond (Volume 1) is the first installment of a 2-volume compendium of horn trios from the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries – an amazing “anthology” of original and arranged repertoire for the trio ensemble of horn, violin and piano. This is not the kind of recording project consisting of the obligatory Brahms Trio Op. 40 in the company of two or three other much-recorded works. Presenting a 4-centuries double-disc album with just this First Volume, the artists explore a strikingly-interesting collection of diverse styles and genres, where even the sheer number of different nationalities of the composers (from 12 different countries) brings instant awe. Yes, the Brahms Horn Trio is included, as well as works by Mozart and Piazzolla (as the album’s title proclaims), but we also hear trios by composers from the United States, Canada, England, France, Liechtenstein, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Morocco.
Presenting no less than 8 world-premiere recordings in just this Volume 1, the album brims with rarities and contrasts, showcasing many works written specifically for these artists. Hornist Howard Wall, whose storied career includes not just his legendary reputation as a long-time member of two of America’s most prestigious orchestras – The New York Philharmonic and The Philadelphia Orchestra, but has also produced an impressive discography of chamber and solo discs, brings a symphonic dimension to his own arrangement of Piazzolla’s “Oblivion”, and an excitingly-speedy rendition of the Brahms Trio, as well as breathtaking interpretations of all other works. Violinist Elmira Darvarova is equally “at home” in Mozart (as a former concertmaster of The Metropolitan Opera, where she accompanied the world’s greatest singers in a multitude of Mozart operas) and in Piazzolla (having attained a Grammy nomination for one of her many Piazzolla albums), as well as everywhere else, possessing not just an incredibly strong and full tone, but also a magnificent level of sensitivity which fascinates with the limitless range of dynamics and sophisticated phrasing. Pianist Thomas Weaver, whose own horn trio mesmerizes with atmospheric moods (and is narrated by himself, reading Edgar Allan Poe’s Stanzas) and whose translucentlytextured playing has been hailed for his recent album of Hungarian composers (recorded together with Elmira Darvarova), shines in each piece with sublime virtuosity and fierce artistic commitment. This is a
“not to be missed” album release, anticipating the upcoming Volume 2 which will conclude this terrific project.

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FROM LISZT TO LIGETI – Elmira Darvarova, violin & Thomas Weaver, piano

A spectacular tribute to Hungarian-born composers, from the brilliant, award-winning, performers — Grammy nominated violinist ELMIRA DARVAROVA (first and only woman-concertmaster of The Metropolitan Opera) and pianist THOMAS WEAVER (professor at Curtis Institute of Music), the album “FROM LISZT TO LIGETI” brings an exceptionally-vivid narrative linking historic milestones in the legacies of a number of superb Hungarian-born musicians — composers and performers, who have so enormously contributed to enriching the world’s cultural treasure-trove. Liszt, Joachim, Bartók, Kodály, Hubay, Goldmark, Ligeti — they have all bequeathed us masterpieces to behold and cherish, throughout several centuries of showcasing, shaping, preserving and amalgamating national traditions and global influences through the prism of their own personal creative gifts. This album is a charismatically kaleidoscopic retrospective which traces the historic perspective of how uniquely-innovative artists such as Bartók and Kodály, built the cornerstones of their oeuvre by exploring, embracing, critically analyzing and then re-shaping Liszt’s ideals, and how Ligeti followed on the heels of Bartók and Kodály with his own ethnomusicological research, to create, still in his student days, a little-known Duo that he kept editing and crystalizing throughout his life and throughout his own various periods of transforming and modernizing, but then later returning to, conventionally-established expressive means, and how Joachim — as a muse to numerous music giants, such as Brahms, Liszt, Dvorák, Bruch, Robert and Clara Schumann — influenced and caused cataclysmic events without which the history of music would not have been the same. In addition to the best-known Hungarian-born composers Liszt, Bartók, Kodály and Ligeti, the inclusion of Joachim in this album as a co-author (not just dedicatee) of Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12” (in its version for violin and piano), makes sense historically not only because Joachim in his transcription radically transformed Liszt’s composition, but also because Joachim famously contributed to the creation of numerous gems by some of the greatest ever composers, such as: the violin concertos by Dvorák and Bruch (who published these works after Joachim helped in creating them) and Brahms’ First Piano Concerto (bearing Joachim’s hand-written corrections which elicited “thank-you” letters from Brahms, during the 4 years Brahms took to write that concerto). The inclusion in this album of the Hungarian-born composers Hubay and Goldmark is also well-justified, bringing up yet other interesting dimensions to the album’s narrative. The album’s deeply-considered collection explores the affecting lyrical gift of Goldmark, who, as the largely selftaught son of a synagogue cantor, followed his ingrained melodic instincts from growing up without riches among 20 siblings, to becoming Vienna’s leading composer (after the deaths of Brahms and Bruckner), teaching Sibelius and writing a mind-blowing violin concerto, a symphony championed by Sir Thomas Beecham and by Leonard Bernstein, and several operas, one of which was produced at The Metropolitan Opera in 1885, and three of which were presented in Vienna during Mahler’s leadership of the Court Theatre. Hubay’s unparalleled contribution as a historical “cross-roads” figure is also well-defined in this album, not only because of who he was — the son of an elite musician (who conducted the Budapest premiere of Wagner’s “Lohengrin”), a student of Joachim, a department head at Brussels’ Royal Conservatory (succeeding Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski), a chamber music partner of Liszt and of Brahms (performing with Brahms the world-premiere of Brahms’ D Minor Violin Sonata, and the world-premiere of Brahms’ Third Piano Trio), composer of numerous concertos, symphonies and operas (one of which was embroiled in a scandal reported 100 years ago by The New York Times), and the teacher of many illustrious star-violinists who became muses to Bartók, Kodály, Ravel, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Rebecca Clarke (among these violin prodigies were Bartók’s girlfriend Stefi Geyer, Eugene Ormandy of The Philadelphia Orchestra fame, and Joachim’s great nieces Jelly d’Arányi and Adila Fachiri, who not only inspired Bartók and many others, but also spear-headed the search for Schumann’s long-suppressed violin concerto, “cancelled” and hidden by its dedicatee — their great-uncle Joachim). The choice of Hubay’s well-known czardas “Hejre Kati” for inclusion in this album reflects the evolution and role of that genre in the history of Hungarian musical traditions — from the early roots of czardas stemming from verbunkos (used even by Haydn), to its controversial misappropriation by dilettante performers whose inflectional performing style was confused and misinterpreted by Liszt as original Hungarian folk melodies, to more tasteful artistically expressed concert-stage compositions (like Hubay’s “Hejre Kati”), to the eventual dethroning and demythologizing of the czardas by Bartók and Kodály, who discovered, revealed and incorporated the true authenticity of their home country’s original folk music. The album selections follow Bartók’s evolving from the student-composer of a traditionally-profiled, Romantically-influenced Andante and the mature creator of “15 Hungarian Peasant Songs” and “Rhapsody for Violin and Piano No.1” (embodying his scientific and artistic mission to reveal the exquisitely-uncontroverted authentic beauty of ancient folk melodies) to the transfigured innovator who elevated and transformed old rustic traditions, fusing them into new and progressive forms and rhythms, reaching out to impressionism and jazz (as depicted in Bartók’s “Dance in Bulgarian Rhythm No. 6”), and paving the way for Ligeti’s experimentalism, which, through multiple “back and forth” constructing and de-constructing,
reflected Ligeti’s never-ending search for artistic inspiration (this album presents the, recorded here only for the second time, recently-discovered Duo for Violin and Piano, which Ligeti never submitted for publication, but continued returning to, and working on.) The unusually-meticulous album notes cover the multi-dimensional, serendipitous and cross-pollinating nature of essential events and legacies, which endure and continue to fascinate us.

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Shadows The Unaccompanied Viola Sonatas of Günter Raphael – Gregory K. Williams, viola

Günter Raphael (1903–1960) was a prolific and versatile composer from a musical family, but because his music was banned in his lifetime due to his Jewish ancestry, his music did not gain commensurate recognition to the canon. Though he wrote for viola and other members of the string family, he is better known for his orchestral, choir, and organ works. As a performer, he was an organist, pianist, violist, and violinist. Gregory K. Williams first encountered the viola music of Günter Raphael in 2012 at a used bookshop in Dresden, Germany, where he discovered Raphael’s first unaccompanied viola sonata, op. 7, no. 1. Over the course of his career, Raphael wrote three unaccompanied viola sonatas, two romances, two sonatas for viola and piano (opp. 13 and 80), a Concertino for Viola and Chamber Orchestra, and duos for violin and viola as well as for viola and cello. Raphael’s works are compelling due to their provocative and wide-ranging harmonic language and their technical complexity. What makes his viola works fascinating is how the styles evoked reflect the works’ historical context and at the same time reveal a clear stylistic arc across his compositions. Shadows: The Unaccompanied Viola Sonatas of Günter Raphael is the American premiere recording of these works, as they have only been recorded and released in Germany to date. This recording also represents the first time that all three of Günter Raphael’s unaccompanied viola sonatas have been recorded and presented together.

Visit Gregory K. Williams

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“My Faith Stands Firm – Cristoph Graupner Cantanas for bass voice” – Michael Hix, baritone

Very often discussions regarding the composer Christoph Graupner (1683-1760) places him in comparison with J.S. Bach. If one has heard of Graupner, it is usually the bit of trivia that he was offered the Leipzig Thomaskirche cantor position before Bach. Of particular interest, however, is the vastness of extant material Graupner composed. There are scores for over 1,400 of Graupner’s church cantatas. Forty-seven of these are for solo bass voice with a variety of instrumental pairings. One can assume that the majority of these works were written for the bass (and composer) Gottfried Grünewald (1665-1739), whom Graupner knew in Leipzig and with whom he worked at the opera in Hamburg. Grünewald served as the vice-capellmeister in Darmstadt under Graupner from 1713 until his death. In addition to the forty-seven solo bass cantatas, Graupner also wrote seventeen duet cantatas for soprano and bass. Alongside the staggering number of cantatas, Graupner composed a wealth of instrumental music including keyboard works, more than 100 sinfonias, and a canon with 5,626 inversions. The sheer volume of this relatively unexplored repertoire is thrilling but also overwhelming, making categorization of Graupner’s overall musical style problematic. This recording, featuring cantatas and instrumental works composed between 1720 and 1745, offers the listener an introduction to Gaupner and an important, if small, piece in the larger puzzle that is Graupner’s life and work. It premieres Graupner to a wider music world largely ignorant of this talented and nearly unknown Baroque composer by baritone Michael Hix, Chair of the Department of Music at the University of New Mexico, praised by critics for his “expressive voice” and “commanding stage presence”, and whose research has brought Christoph Graupner to light through this album.

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