The Great Cello Concertos: Dvořák, Schumann, Saint-Saëns, Elgar, Haydn...

SALES TEXT
Cellist Beatriz Blanco and pianist Federico Bosco follow the success of their first Odradek album with Of Love and War, a sumptuous programme of music by Nadia Boulanger, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Webern, Hindemith and Fauré, featuring mezzo-soprano Solenn’ Lavanant-Linke.

Of Love and War, partly inspired by Eduardo Galeano’s novel Days and Nights of Love and War, draws parallels between the isolation and pent-up passions of wartime and the experiences of the current pandemic. Much of this repertoire was composed around the time of the First World War, but also embraces broader themes of beginnings and endings, night and day, love and loss. 

Nadia Boulanger is celebrated as a teacher of great composers, but was a composer in her own right; her Three Pieces occupy a similar soundworld to that of Debussy, whose Cello Sonata is at the heart of the programme, and Fauré, whose song Les berceaux we hear in an arrangement for cello and piano. There are works by Webern that show us ‘before and after’ his early lessons with Schoenberg: the Zwei Stücke für Cello und Klavier of 1899, written when Webern was only 16, and the Drei Kleine Stücke, Op. 11 and Cello Sonata, both dating from 1914. The album discovers a softer side to Hindemith in his richly Romantic Three Pieces, Op. 8, and the whole recital is framed by glorious songs by Strauss and Debussy, performed by Solenn’ Lavanant-Linke.

15 - NADIA BOULANGER - 3 Pieces For Cello And Piano - I. Modere

Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, Sergei Rachmaninoff - 8D Binaural Sound - Music Therapy

Sergei Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18- I. Moderato - 8D Binaural Sound (8D Binaural Sound - Music Therapy)

Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30

Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 - I. Allegro ma non tanto (Remastered 2022, Version 1930)

Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 - III. Finale, Alla Breve (Remastered 2022, Version 1930)

Schumann: Cello Concerto, Op. 129 - Saint-Saëns: Cello Concerto No. 1, Op. 33

Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33: II. Allegretto con moto

Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33: I. Allegro non troppo

Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33: III. Allegro non troppo

Dvořák: Cello Concerto & Silent Woods

Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104, B. 191: I. Allegro

Dvořák: Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 104, B. 191: II. Adagio ma non troppo

A small, blue edition of Hart Crane's masterpiece, The Bridge, has been living in my library for decades. The thought of doing something musically with it popped into mind now and then, but I never quite mustered the courage to do anything with it.  However, during the days of coronavirus driven isolation, when the importance of human connectedness, so aptly symbolized by the image of the bridge, had been hammered into our consciousness, the time had come. 

For those so inclined, read the poem. The Bridge, over the course of its 15 chapters, is an attempt to capture the essence of America in the 1920s, as Crane experienced it. I think he succeeded in capturing the complexities of America - from its violent beginnings as the culture of native Americans was crushed by expanding European cultures to the crass commercialism that erupted at the turn of the century (and still exists, in spades, today), tempered by the buoyant optimism and hope for mankind in spirits like Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and the American transcendentalists. But above all, the poem relies upon the Brooklyn Bridge as a symbol of connectedness, spanning the myriad of events across time and geography that culminate in what we are, wherever we are, today.

Crane’s poem attempted perhaps too much.  The span of the Brooklyn Bridge became a symbol of everything connected to everything else – the past to the present, urban America to rural America, a vast dream of America from its pre-European existence to the bustling America of big, industrial cities and great railroads spanning the continent.

In this music, the solo viola, in its middle range, spans between the musical soundscapes that represent the images evoked by the poem.  It reaches between the low and high instruments, between the dark, swirling eddies of water beneath the bridge to the searing sunlight, piercing the harp-like cables of the bridge, while seagulls soar overhead.  It also is the voice of the poem’s protagonist, seeking redemption in a violent and crassly commercial world.

Scattered, like leaves, in the music, are apparitions from the past – a fragment of a melody from a court composer to Ferdinand and Isabella, a made-up Irish gig, bits of jazz and flashes of tunes from the 1920s that Hart Crane would have heard during his days in New York.
 


Van Winkle

Nicola Benedetti - Concerto for Violin and Strings in A Minor - III - Vivaldi [Clip]

Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff: The Piano Concertos and Solo Pieces

Morceaux de Fantasie, Op. 3: II. Prélude in C-Sharp Minor, "The Bells of Moscow"

Bach Transcriptions Vol.2

J.S. Bach - Arioso from Cantata BWV 156 - Leopold Stokowski

Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 33: II. Allegretto con moto

Jacqueline Du Pre

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