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Live at Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
 

OF MEAT AND LOLLIPOPS

A time there was when concert programmes comprised a merry medley of music high and low, the short and sweet alongside the longer and the lofty. That changed in the second half of the 19th century, when Richard Wagner and others introduced the concept of the “symphony concert”, usually in three weighty parts, namely an overture, a solo concerto and a symphony. With today’s emphasis on “music communication”, things seem to have gone full circle. More and more major orchestras are offering daytime concerts in which a meaty repertoire piece is placed alongside shorter works of the kind Thomas Beecham used to call “lollipops”.

The Tharice Ensemble thrives on such juxtapositions, as is evidenced by the programme recorded here. They also offer many of these smaller works in arrangements of their own. In historical terms, this is a thoroughly “authentic” approach, for it was a common practice until the 20th century began to insist on an often fictitious fidelity to a fixed text.

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THARICE VIRTUOSI

Liviu Prunaru, violin
Valentina Svyatlovskaya, violin
Bogdan Zvoristeanu, violin
Oleg Kaskiv, violin
Edgar Pujol, violin
Vlad Stanculeasa, violin
Sophia Reuter, viola
Ettore Causa, viola
Stanimir Todorov, cello
Pablo de Naverán, cello
Daniel Mitnitsky, cello

ENG
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Finghin Collins
 

One of Ireland's most successful musicians and significant musical ambassadors, Finghin Collins was born in Dublin in 1977 and, following initial lessons with his sister Mary, studied piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music with John O'Conor and at the Geneva Conservatoire with Dominique Merlet. His international career was launched by winning first prize at the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Switzerland in 1999. He has performed in recital and with major orchestras throughout Europe and the United States, as well as in the Far East and Australia. In October 2017, the National University of Ireland conferred on him an honorary Degree of Doctor of Music.

In 2019 Finghin performs in the UK, Denmark, the USA, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Turkey and undertakes an extensive Irish recital tour marking 20 years since his Clara Haskil Prize. The year 2020 will see solo, chamber and concerto performances of Beethoven across Europe to mark the composer's 250th anniversary, as well as many other projects and collaborations.

Over the past two decades Collins has retained strong ties to Switzerland, performing regularly at festivals and recital series, particularly in the western French-speaking part of the country. He has also maintained a close relationship with Claves Records, recording many award-winning CDs of music by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Stanford. A Chopin recital CD was released in September 2017, a co-production between RT? lyric fm and Claves Records.

Finghin Collins also makes a significant contribution to the musical landscape of his native Ireland, where he resides. Since 2013, he has been Artistic Director of Music for Galway, which will present the major classical programme of Galway 2020, European Capital of Culture. He is also the founding Artistic Director of the New Ross Piano Festival, which celebrates its 15th edition in 2020, as well as the founding co-Artistic Director of the International Master Course at the National Concert Hall in Dublin.

Mozart Piano Quartets
 

Mozart's Piano Quartets date from the mid 1780s - a period that also brought, among many other things, five of his major piano concerti (D minor K. 466; C major K. 467; E flat major K. 482; A major K. 488 & C minor K. 491), two important string quartets (including the Dissonance K. 465), and his opera Le nozze di Figaro.

While there were earlier incursions by less well-remembered figures into the piano quartet repertoire, it took Mozart to raise its status on to an unprecedented plateau. In his two quartets he found a way of giving each instrument - violin, viola, cello and piano - its rightful sense of independence.

According to the composer's own catalogue, the K. 478 Quartet was completed on 16th October 1785 and was among a number of works requested by the Viennese publisher, Franz Anton Hoffmeister, who was also a composer. In it Mozart treats his four instrumentalists as equals, with the concerto-like piano part well balanced against the continuously interesting string writing.

However, Hoffmeister, hoping for something to suit the amateur market, was dissatisfied with what Mozart submitted, complaining the music was too difficult and that the public would never buy it. He told the composer to write in a more popular vein or else he would neither print anything further of his nor pay him. The disgruntled Mozart responded, "Then I will write nothing more, and grow hungry or maybe the devil take me!" But he did write another Piano Quartet, completing it on 3rd June 1786. This time the more obliging firm of Artaria published it.

Pat O'Kelly

? Avec eux, le splendide Larghetto du KV 493 n'est pas la confession nostalgique d'une h?ro?ne d'op?ra, mais une r?verie l?g?re et presque bucolique, abord?e sans lenteur. Une aimable vitalit? et un plaisir d?nu? d'arri?re-pens?es colorent la verve des deux finales. Tout simplement. ?
Diapason No. 688, J?r?me Bastianelli - Claves, CD 3002

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? Apr?s deux sublimes disques Schumann, le pianiste irlandais reste fid?le au label suisse Claves pour graver un stimulant et ?mouvant r?cital Chopin. [..] Le soliste fait magnifiquement chanter son piano. En po?te, il est attentif ? la complexit?, la subtilit? et parfois le caract?re d?routant des rythmes de Chopin. Tourment? et puissant. ?
La Libert?, 21.10.2017 - Claves, CD 1719

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? Apr?s l'excellent disque Chopin de Pollini, voici une autre parution consacr?e ? l'ouvre du compositeur polonais, par Finghin Collins, qui m?rite d'?tre retenue en raison de la qualit? des interpr?tations. ?
ResMusica, Le 17 novembre 2017 par Maciej Chizynski - Claves, CD 1719

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? Collins's "Down among the dead men" is, again, a superbly muscular, confident account, even more so than Margaret Fingerhut's excellent 1989 Chandos disc, similarly paired with Stanford's No 2 (Binns has two orchestral works for company). Warmly recommended. ?
Gramophone, 2011 - Claves, CD 1101

FRE - ENG
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BACH: MATTH?US-PASSION
 

This recording was made in April 2019 at the Ernest-Ansermet Studio in Geneva, after five concerts in Switzerland during the preceding days. The desire to be as faithful as possible to the rhythm of the drama of the Passion and to the evidence of the musical sequences, which is easier to feel during a live performance than in front of the relative abstraction of the microphones, as well as a non-negligible time constraint (three and a half days in the studio for a work of 160 minutes), pushed us to record long takes, sometimes including up to 10 or 12 minutes of music, thus getting as close as possible to the feeling of a concert.

In concert, with small vocal groups, Gli Angeli Gen?ve systematically places the singers in front of the instruments regardless of repertoire, so as to give speech in music the most prominent place possible. When recording, since the audience's crucial role cannot be replaced by the microphones, we place ourselves in a large circle, all facing each other. We can see each other playing, singing, vibrating, breathing and reacting.

The idea of reaction is central to this work where, when the action of the story is suspended, it is immediately replaced by emotion and poetic as well as musical beauty that Matthew's story inspired in Bach and Picander. Airs as well as chorales. And within our circle we can react together, engage in dialogue, and see ourselves feel the drama and powerful affects that mark the work relentlessly. And then we can share the pleasure and sometimes the awe - so beautiful is the music - of being able to live all this together.

COVID-19 & CLAVES

Regarding to the actual situation due to the Covid-19 in the World and in Switzerland, we would like to inform you that Claves does all its possible to deliver orders as usual and does its best to continue producing music with its regular partners.

Unfortunately, the whole music world like a lot of other industries, is impacted by this situation. A lot of retailers are closed, distribution is perturbed, providers too.

You will maybe observe some delays these next weeks in the deliveries or in our answers depending on the international evolution of this crisis. We already thank you today for your understanding and your fidelity.

Obviously don''t forget that all our music could be listen online!

Take care of you and your family, we hope that the situation will come back to normal soon.

Your Claves team, Patrick & Raphael

Music for Viola & Chamber Orchestra

Thierry Scherz Prize Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad 2019

The wealth of music composed for the viola in the 20th century almost lets one forget the dearth of it in the 19th, which brought forth only two solo works of note: Hector Berlioz's Harold in Italy, a concerto commissioned by Paganini that sidelines the viola so much he refused to play it; and Richard Strauss's Don Quixote, in which the solo viola is relegated to the part of the Don's sidekick Sancho Panza. Sidelined and sidekicked - the viola's fate seemed a fulfilment of the oft-quoted line from Quantz's sometime flute treatise that "the viola is largely regarded among musicians as being of little significance".

It was only really in the 20th century that composers realised that the viola's status of an in-between instrument could actually be to its advantage. It's bigger than a violin, but tuned like a cello, and is both warmer in tone than the former, and much more agile than the latter. The viola then had the good fortune to become the preferred instrument of several important composers. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) briefly toyed with going professional on it; Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) went the whole hog and made a living from it in the Amar Quartet and as a soloist; and Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) too was a violist, though he kept his public performing activities to the piano and the podium.

(Chris Walton)
 

Read more in the booklet

FRE - ENG
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JOSEPH HAYDN
THE SEVEN LAST WORDS OF CHRIST
(Digital only)

This was the dream of the current director of the Claves label: to record his favourite work ever, in its original version and with a pioneer of Baroque interpretation, Ton Koopman.

One of Joseph Haydn''s most mature works, The Seven Last Words were commissioned by the Holy Cave Oratory in Cadiz, for its inauguration in 1786, on Good Friday.

Haydn told of the particular circumstances of the creation: in a church shrouded in black, the priest proclaimed each word and then prostrated himself during each sonata.

The work is surrounded by a meditative introduction and an apocalyptic earthquake. In the centre, seven slow movements in sonata form follow one another, in which we find the young Haydn''s Sturm und Drang vein and his maturity brought to light by his imminent London triumphs from 1791 onwards.

Ton Koopman, master of the complete recording of Bach and Buxtehude cantatas, often approached Haydn and his symphonies, but this is indeed the first time that he has recorded The Seven Last Words, together with an orchestra of great tradition, the Berner Symphonieorchester.

Translated from French by Isabelle Watson