Best of the New York Piano Quartet

“The interpretation[s] by the New York Piano Quartet can only be described as 𝐞𝐱𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠.” – Joachim Wagner, amazon.de
 
“𝐌𝐚𝐡𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 … they project… diverse styles… with understanding and finesse.” – MusicWeb
 
“[𝐔]𝐥𝐭𝐫𝐚-𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐝, 𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐊𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐠𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐱 … the players dig into the music with alacrity, the strings often employing juicy vibrato and slides to emphasise the composers’ expressive points. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝.” – Gramophone
 
Now available through online and select physical retailers as well as all major digital streaming and download platforms.

In search of the “authentic” Mahler style…

This is cross-posted from Synaphaï.

A century ago, Ludwig van Beethoven was by near-universal consensus the most admired composer among lovers and performers of classical music; at the time, little if any consideration was given to the issue of “authentic” performance practice. Keyboard instruments of Beethoven’s era had for the most part been discarded in favor of what we know as the modern piano; orchestral wind, brass, and percussion instruments were similarly superseded by more evolved models. Conductors of the era, including Gustav Mahler, were prone to adjust orchestration to compensate for forces larger and quite different in sound than those of Beethoven’s era.

Today, there is a strong argument that Mahler occupies the pedestal that had been held by Beethoven during the transition from the 19th to 20th centuries, when his great champions included names such as von Bulow, Paderewski, Rachmaninoff, Weingartner, Toscanini — and, of course, Mahler himself. Likewise, there has been enormous change in orchestral instruments of every family, the biggest being the replacement of gut with metal in the string section, along with technical refinements to wind, brass, and particularly percussion instruments. Today’s orchestra sounds far different than that of Mahler’s era.

The fact that a small but artistically signifiant number of recordings of Mahler’s music were made during the acoustic and “shellac” (electrical pre-LP) recording eras — including several by artists who worked closely with Mahler — gives modern listeners the opportunity to hear these works as they had been sung and played during an era when, contrary to earlier assumptions, their reputation and popularity were on the rise until political and social upheaval – and war – swept Europe in the 1930s.

These early studio recordings, naturally, have given rise to speculation about whether or not it is possible to determine an “authentic” performance style for Mahler.

Several years ago, when I produced “The Music of Gustav Mahler; Issued 78s, 1903-1940” — the first comprehensive anthology of every commercially-issued Mahler 78s released between 1903 and 1940 and listed in Peter Fülöp’s exhausive Mahler discography — my intent was not only to present these recordings in the context of the era in which they were issued and in the best sound possible, but to also offer informed insight into historical, technical, and artistic facts surrounding these recordings in the form of thorough liner notes authored by Sybille Werner.

The set and the accompanying notes were not conceived to answer questions about “authentic” Mahler performance practice — nor for that matter do I believe an answer to the question exists, though one can discern that there were significant artistic and interpretive characteristics unique to the era, particularly in instrumental playing.   Additionally, one cannot ignore overall differences among authoritative studio recordings made by Mahler’s conducting colleagues and protégés: Bruno Walter, Willem Mengelberg, and Oskar Fried. Likewise, the voices of Leopold Demuth, Lula Mysz-Gmeiner, and Sara Charles-Cahier, three singers who had sung under Mahler’s direction, shed light not only to the composer’s music but the vocal style and tradition of Mahler’s world, along with the many other singers represented in the set.

I have in recent months received several inquiries about the future availability of the set. I have completed most of the technical work on a follow-up set that will include the remaining 78s and several important recordings issued during the early LP era, but good quality copies of two discs have proven elusive. I expect this situation to be resolved in the next few months, and am speaking with my strategic partners about a short run of the original set once the second volume is completed. 

The original run of “The Music of Gustav Mahler; Issued 78s, 1903-1940” — 1000 copies — was warmly received by the press, and my distributors sold out of the set within less than five weeks of its release date. Used copies that turn up on eBay and Amazon command insanely high prices.

Releasing the set as a digital item through online retailers has proven problematic, despite the dogged efforts of my worldwide distributor, Alto Distribution, and my outstanding digital aggregator, Entertainment One.

Some of the major players in digital music for direct sale and download, most notably iTunes, have introduced logistical obstacles that make it next to impossible to make sets with a large number of tracks available for download or streaming.

As a result, I have decided to make the entire set available through a small-scale strategic partner for purchase in lossless download formats: Apple Lossless for iTunes users and flac for most other listeners.

The original English-language liner notes and all German texts with English translations are included in .pdf format.

You can download the entire package here.

You can also stream the set if you are a subscriber to Qobuz. 

I will leave any conclusions concerning Mahler’s “authentic” style to you, the listener.

Violin Declamations from the Twilight of the Workers’ Paradise – Elmira Darvarova

Now available for download!
HD and CD quality from mEyeFi — click here!
Also on iTunes — click here!

An empire in collapse. A daring escapee.
A deeply personal program of music from a time of turmoil — and hope.

Violinist Elmira Darvarova was communist Bulgaria’s worst-kept artistic secret. News of the young virtuoso’s talent had circulated in the West during the 1970s — even coming to the attention of Jascha Heifetz. An artistic collaboration with legendary cellist János Starker led to her daring escape from Bulgaria. She emigrated to the United States, where she eventually became the concertmaster of the MET Orchestra and founder of the New York Chamber Music Festival. Darvarova has extensively recorded both classical and world music, championing scandalously underexposed works by such composers as David Amram, Amanda Maier, Franco Alfano, and Joseph Marx.

Violin Declamations from the Twilight of the Workers’ Paradise is her most personal recording to date — a program of solo violin works from the waning years of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union by composers, including several that had been denounced as dissidents in their own countries, whose music was exposing the cracks in the “glorious workers’ revolution” — but also expressing glimmers of hope. The program includes four world premiere recordings. Darvarova also includes a detailed essay on the music and a first-hand account of artistic life behind the Iron Curtain.

Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978): Sonata-Monologue for solo violin (1975)
Sylvie Bodorova (b.1954):Dža More – Gypsy Ballad (1990)
Grigory Zaborov (1935-1985): Improvisation (1978)
Afrodita Kathmeridou (b. 1956): Two Miniatures for solo violin (1978) — World Premiere Recording
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998): Praeludium in memoriam D. Shostakovich (1975)
Dmitri Smirnov (b. 1948): Two Fugues for solo violin, Op. 6 (1970)
Nikolai Badinski (b. 1937): Dialoghi per violino solo (1973) — World Premiere Recording
Elena Firsova (b. 1950): Fantasia for solo violin, Op. 32 (1985) — World Premiere Recording
Konstantin Soukhovetski (b. 1981): Postcard from the Edge (1990) — World Premiere Recording

Recorded on June 16 and 17, 2013 at Edith Chapel, Lawrenceville, New Jersey
Recording Engineers: John C. Baker and Samuel Ward
Edited by John C. Baker
Mastered by Gene Gaudette
Produced by Elmira Darvarova and Gene Gaudette

Visit Elmira Darvarova’s Web site and Facebook page
Visit Urlicht AudioVisual’s Web site and Facebook page

Urlicht AudioVisual UAV-5984 (783583260442)

Digital release date: Nov. 27, 2017

CD available in January 2018

Miranda Cuckson’s Invisible Colors – Available Now!

Miranda Cuckson has emerged in recent years as America’s leading exponent of new music for the violin.

Invisible Colors, her fourth recordings for Urlicht AudioVisual, features five virtuoso works for solo violin by three highly individualistic composers.

American master Elliott Carter‘s Four Lauds are portraits in music; in the composer’s own words, the works “intend to express gratitude to some of the musicians whose friendship has meant so much to me: Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, Goffredo Petrassi, Robert Mann, Ole Bøhn and Rolf Schulte.”

Carter himself commemorated Stefan Wolpe upon his death in 1972 with these words: “Comet-like radiance, conviction, fervent intensity, penetrating thought on many levels of seriousness and humor, combined with breathtaking adventurousness and originality, marked the inner and outer life of Stefan Wolpe, as they do his compositions.” Miranda plays Wolpe’s complete unaccompanied violin music –  the Piece in Two Parts for Violin Solo and Second Piece for Violin Solo – on this recording.

Brian Ferneyhough is a founding father of what has come to be called the “New Complexity” – a style integrating extended techniques with elaborate and intricate pitch and polyrhythmic notation. The two works included in this recording, Unsichtbare Farben and Intermedio alla ciaccona, are among the most daunting and challenging works in the solo violin repertoire.

Miranda co-produced the recording with Urlicht AudioVisual’s founding director Gene Gaudette. The recording was made in the performance space of National Sawdust in Brooklyn, NY,, one of the world’s leading venues for new music, jazz, and contemporary performance, and was recorded during April 2016 by audiophile engineer Sascha von Oertzen.

Invisible Colors is available in lossless download format (including high-definition FLAC and Apple Lossless packages with complete liner notes in .pdf format) from a number of digital outlets including meyefi.com.

The CD release is now available internationally, and the high-definition Audio Blu-Ray release will occur in January 2018.

Latin Grammy Nomination for desde Estudios a Tangos

Urlicht AudioVisual is pleased to announce that desde Estudios a Tangos, featuring violinist Elmira Darvarova and legendary tango pianist and arranger Octavio Brunetti, has been nominated for a Latin Grammy®!

The CD was released in September of last year, just days after Octavio’s unexpected death following a brief illness. We are humbled that this disc commemorates a greatly missed champion of tango music at the peak of his abilities in a partnership with one of his very favorite musical collaborators.

desde Estusios a Tangos

Ástor Piazzolla
6 Études tanguistiques • Introducción al Ángel • Night Club 1960 • Milonga del Ángel • Vardarito • Resurreccion del Ángel • Revolucionario

Elmira Darvarova, violin
Octavio Brunetti, piano

Recorded January 19, 2013 at Gill Chapel, Rider University, Lawrenceville, NJ
Engineered and edited by John C. Baker
Produced by Gene Gaudette

Urlicht AudioVisual UAV-CD-5991

Available from Amazon

‘Put Up Your Dukes!’

One of Amazon’s top classical reviewers, Ralph Lockwood, declares a winner:

[Violinist Elmira] Darvarova conquers all the challenges like a true “Champ.” Muhammed Ali’s famous boast to “float like a butterfly [so many suave and elegant moments!] and sting like a bee” (when punch and intensity are required) would be an apposite analogy.
This is a sheer KNOCKOUT performance!!
Come on all you Concertmasters out there: start twisting your conductors’ collective arms and batons to program this voluptuous and engaging concerto. There is an audience hungry for this music.

Order the CD directly from Urlicht AudioVisual – $14.99 [simpleecommcart_add_to_cart id=”8″]

Download the Apple Lossless Version – iTunes Ready, with full .pdf liner notes and cue sheet for non-Apples portables – $9.99 [simpleecommcart_add_to_cart id=”5″]

Download the FLAC Lossless Version – with full .pdf liner notes and cue sheet for most portables – $9.99 [simpleecommcart_add_to_cart id=”6″]

Download the mp3Version – iTunes Ready,better sound quality than Amazon or iTunes, with full .pdf liner notes and cue sheet for non-Apples portables – $9.39 [simpleecommcart_add_to_cart id=”7″]

Vernon Duke

Violin Concerto (1940-41)1
Sonata in D for violin and piano (1948-49)2
Etude for violin and bassoon3
Hommage to Offenbach2
Capriccio Méxicano2

Elmira Darvarova, violin

Scott Dunn, 1conductor and 2piano
1ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien
3Kim Laskowski, bassoon

Produced by Elmira Darvarova, Scott Dunn, and Erich Hofmann
Executive producres: Kay Duke Ingalls and Gene Gaudette
Co-executive producer: Nancy Burgin

Urlicht AudioVisual UAV-CD-5990

‘Deeply Loveable Music’

UAV-5986.cover.800Arts Desk reviews Pascal Rogé et ses amis | Poulenc:

There’s far more to this composer than breezy high spirits, and anyone encountering his music for the first time through this disc would get an unusually balanced impression of Poulenc. Les Biches and the Concerto for Two Pianos aren’t the whole story. … Excellent performances of deeply loveable music, captured in rich, velvety sound.

Read the full review here.

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Downloads available from Amazon and iTunes.

Our Mahler Box Makes the 2014 NY Times Gift Guide

UAV-5980.cover.600We are in the company of Anna Netrebko, Richard Strauss (as conductor), John Eliot Gardiner, Maria Callas, and Leonard Shure – and quite humbled by the honor:

This impressive collection of early — very early — Mahler recordings includes symphonies led by the likes of Bruno Walter, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Eugene Ormandy and Willem Mengelberg, often in interpretations more willful and changeable than we are used to today. Memorable weirdness comes in the form of dance-band arrangements of tunes from “Das Lied von der Erde” and “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.”
– Zachary Woolfe

The Music of Gustav Mahler  |  Issued 78s, 1903-1940
CD Edition: Urlicht AudioVisual UAV-5980
No longer available, limited to an edition of 1000 copies

World Premiere Recording of Vernon Duke’s Violin Concerto

Now Available Directly From Urlicht AudioVisual

Click here to buy

UAV-5990.cover.v4If you know the songs “Taking a Chance on Love”, “I Can’t Get Started”, “April in Paris”, “What Is There To Say”, or “Autumn in New York”, then you are already familiar with the music of legendary American songwriter Vernon Duke. As a popular songwriter, he collaborated with Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin, Ogden Nash, Sammy Cahn, John Latouche, and Yip Harburg, and wrote celebrated scores for Broadway and Hollywood.

What you may not know is that he was born Vladimir Dukelsky, admitted to the Kiev Conservatory at age 11, where he studied composition with Reinhold Glière and met his older colleague and lifelong friend Sergei Prokofiev. His family escaped Russia during the revolution and arrived in America in 1921, and within a year had befriended a musician named Jacob Gershowitz (you know him as George Gershwin), who persuaded him to Americanize his name and write for musical theater.

Duke gained fame and fortune as a songwriter, but continued to compose concert works and Russian poetry under his original name. His “serious” music, stylistically similar to that of his friend Prokofiev as well as Shostakovich, also contains flashes of the American style of Roy Harris, Peter Mennin, and their mid-twentieth century contemporaries, balanced with elements of the late Russian romantic style. And it is of such fine quality and compelling listenability that the neglect of these works is scandalous.

Urlicht AudioVisual is pleased to announce the world premiere recording of Duke’s Violin Concerto, along with Capriccio Méxicano and Hommage to Offenbach. Also featured are Duke’s Violin Sonata (commissioned by Roman Totenberg) and the Etude for Violin and Bassoon.

Diana Burgin, the daughter of Ruth Posselt (1911-2007), the distinguished violinist who performed the premier of Duke’s Violin Concerto, shared the following of her mother’s recollections about the work and its premiere:

Duke wrote [it] at the suggestion of Jascha Heifetz and completed the piano score in 1941. The full score was not finished until shortly before the premier performances, given in March 1943 at Symphony Hall in Boston by my mother, violinist Ruth Posselt with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and my father Richard Burgin at the podium. Duke had met my mother in late 1939 and greatly admired her playing. He attended her premier performances of violin concertos by Walter Piston (1940), Paul Hindemith (1941) and Samuel Barber (1942), which together had established her reputation as a major champion of contemporary American violin music. When Duke approached Posselt about introducing his concerto with the BSO, she responded with enthusiasm. [In a rather bitter prior episode for Duke, Heifetz had declined to premiere the work as it wasn’t “completely to (his) liking”; more to the point, Heifetz probably just didn’t want to pay the commission.] My mother received the manuscript of Duke’s concerto in early 1942, and that summer, played it (with piano) – “two times through” – for Koussevitzky, Duke and others at the conductor’s home in Tanglewood. The concerto aroused great enthusiasm, and Koussevitzky programmed the work for the BSO for the spring of the 1942-43 season.

Duke’s four other works for violin are equally appealing and listenable, including the late Hommage to Offenbach, a humorous and endearing three-movement suite for violin and piano that was discovered in the Library of Congress by violinist Elmira Darvarova while researching other works for this CD. Ms. Darvarova, a student of Yfrah Neaman, Henryk Szeryng and Josef Gingold, created a sensation as James Levine’s hand-picked concertmaster for the MET Orchestra – the only woman to have ever held that seat – and founded the New York Chamber Music Festival, now seen as the official “kick-off” of the New York concert season, in 2010.

She is accompanied at the piano and on the podium by dynamic American maestro Scott Dunn, arguably the foremost authority on Duke’s music for the concert hall, and a specialist in music by composers whose music straddles “traditional” concert works and music for film, television, and popular musicians. In addition to his position as Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, he has recently also led the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, and Oregon Symphony.

New York Philharmonic Assistant Principal Bassoonist Kim Laskowski is one of the most versatile musicians on the East Coast scene, whose playing can be heard on numerous television, radio, and film scores, and holds two platinum records for CDs recorded with the rock group 10,000 Maniacs.

The ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien is gaining international renown through its recordings and broadcasts, and defines itself in the grand Vienna orchestral tradition. Their eclectic repertoire runs the gamut from the central “classical” repertoire to contemporary works to music for Hollywood and European film. Their broadcast concerts and programs are heard not only on Austria’s ORF but throughout Europe.

Order the CD directly from Urlicht AudioVisual – $14.99 [simpleecommcart_add_to_cart id=”8″]

Download the Apple Lossless Version – iTunes Ready, with full .pdf liner notes and cue sheet for non-Apples portables – $9.99 [simpleecommcart_add_to_cart id=”5″]

Download the FLAC Lossless Version – with full .pdf liner notes and cue sheet for most portables – $9.99 [simpleecommcart_add_to_cart id=”6″]

Download the mp3Version – iTunes Ready,better sound quality than Amazon or iTunes, with full .pdf liner notes and cue sheet for non-Apples portables – $9.39 [simpleecommcart_add_to_cart id=”7″]

Vernon Duke

Violin Concerto (1940-41)1
Sonata in D for violin and piano (1948-49)2
Etude for violin and bassoon3
Hommage to Offenbach2
Capriccio Méxicano2

Elmira Darvarova, violin

Scott Dunn, 1conductor and 2piano
1ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien
3Kim Laskowski, bassoon

Produced by Elmira Darvarova, Scott Dunn, and Erich Hofmann
Executive producres: Kay Duke Ingalls and Gene Gaudette
Co-executive producer: Nancy Burgin

Urlicht AudioVisual UAV-CD-5990

CD release via Urlicht Direct
Download via mEyeFi and eMusic: November 18, 2014
Available in the US through retail, Amazon, and iTunes December 2, 2014