New Releases

Rey de la Torre

This CD restores to the catalog one of the most popular classical guitar LPs from the 50s and 60s. Originally recorded for Philharmonia in 1952, it was last released on a Nonesuch/Elektra LP. Also featured is Rey de la Torre’s studio recording of the Boccherini D Major “Fandango” Quintet (the premiere recording of this work, made in 1951). Also included is a live concert performance of Villa-Lobos’s Etude No. 11, issued for the first time. Born in Gibara, Cuba, in 1917, Rey was a child prodigy on the guitar, known as “El Niño”. At the age of 14, Rey’s parents sent him to Barcelona to study with the great guitarist, Miguel Llobet. The young artist was to spend two and a half years under Llobet’s tutelage and the triumphs that followed had the Barcelona critics comparing him not only to Llobet, but to Casals as well. This recital shows Rey at his best, and includes works that he gave the world premiere performances of- the compositions by Nin-Culmell and Orbon. The Boccherini Quintet recording is a real rarity- the first recording of this now-famous composition- and a recording that, mysteriously, was never released. In it, Rey is joined by the superb Stuyvesant String Quartet. This recording includes extensive essays about Rey de la Torre by his former student, Anthony Weller, and about the Stuyvesant String Quartet by producer Jay Shulman.

Bridge has also released this recording by the Stuyvesant String Quartet with Benny Goodman, clarinet: works by G.F. Malipiero, Debussy, Ravel and Alan Shulman; BRIDGE 9137

BRIDGE 9188

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

This fascinating disc features the lost generation of American composers, who took their inspiration from the German and French music of their continental teachers. Annotator Malcolm MacDonald writes that “their reputations were made in the early years of the 20th century- and subsequently were more or less discounted with the rise of a more aggressively ‘American’ school. Now that the brawling 20th century is over, it begins to be possible to see that these earlier American masters contributed a rich body of music which is possible to enjoy for its own sake, its skill and fine culture.” Of the four composers on this disc, Louis Coerne (1870-1922) is now the most thoroughly forgotten, though there was a time when he was among the most frequently performed American composers on either side of the Atlantic. In common with many others, Coerne found creative inspiration in the legends of King Arthur, of which the principal result was the symphonic poem, Excalibur, completed a year before his death. Edward Burlingame Hill (1872-1960) was an influential and respected composer, critic and teacher. Among his pupils at Harvard were Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Ross Lee Finney, Virgil Thomson and Randall Thompson. Hill’s early music shows the influence of Edward MacDowell, but his openness to French and other influences allowed him to forge a more distinctive idiom of his own as he matured. Stevensoniana, written in 1916-17, is subtitled “Four Pieces after poems of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses”. Fittingly, this charming work shows considerable delicacy of feeling and display’s Hill’s talents as an orchestrator. Horatio Parker (1863-1919) is mainly remembered today as the teacher of the great Charles Ives, though in his time Parker was one of the most famous and highly esteemed composers in the English-speaking world. Parker wrote two symphonic poems, A Northern Ballad and Vathek. Parker was attracted to Nordic and Celtic subjects, and in A Northern Ballad produced a sensitive and beautifully orchestrated work much in the folksy modal manner of Delius or Grieg. John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951) is probably the best known of the four composers on this disc. Carpenter’s Sea-Drift is inspired by the sea poems from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, and is an elegiac score with only occasional and brief climaxes. Annotator MacDonald points to its “phosphorescent coloring wholly appropriate to its subject matter.” Karl Krueger leads the Royal Philharmonic in this newly re-mastered recording.

These Royal Philharmonic/Krueger recordings are also available from BRIDGE:

Music of Hadley, Farwell, MacDowell, Herbert, Parker; 9124A/C (3 CDs) 
Edward MacDowell: The Symphonic Poems; BRIDGE 9089 
Music of William Grant Still, Amy Beach; BRIDGE 9086

BRIDGE 9190

Diabelli Variations

When composer and music publisher Antonio Diabelli invited a number of Viennese composers to write variations to a modest waltz theme of his own creation, no doubt he had little idea how the theme would be treated by Beethoven—and certainly not if he knew that Beethoven initially referred the waltz scornfully as a “Schusterfleck”—“cobbler’s patch”—for its bland repetitiveness. But Beethoven’s initial scorn somehow turned into creative frenzy, and he eventually ignored Diabelli’s request for a single variation, producing 33—nearly an hour’s worth of music. Diabelli published Beethoven’s masterful Op. 120 in 1823. The single variations of the remaining 49 composers—of which Melvin Chen performs examples by Hummel, Liszt, Schubert, Czerny, Moscheles and Kalkbrenner on this recording—were published separately in 1824.

Melvin Chen, a native of Tennessee, has been recognized as a major young artist, with performances throughout the USA and abroad. Mr. Chen was selected to be a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “Chamber Music Two” after completing one of the most brilliant and unusual academic careers in recent memory. Chen completed a doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University, and also holds a double master's degree from the Juilliard School in piano and violin, where he studied with Seymour Lipkin and Glenn Dicterow, respectively. Previously, Chen attended Yale University, receiving a B.S. in chemistry and physics. During his tenure at Yale, he studied with Boris Berman, Paul Kantor, and Ida Kavafian. Mr. Chen is currently on the piano faculty of the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where he also serves as associate director. He was previously a member of the piano faculty at the Yale School of Music.

Critic and annotator Keith Powers writes of “Melvin Chen’s adventurous reading of the Diabelli Variations (which) bears the mark of the great composer himself—fearless, eager for the extremes available in the score, yet rigorously true to the original."

BRIDGE 9189

Bennett Lerner

With this disc, Bennett Lerner embarks upon his survey of Claude Debussy’s complete music for piano- some 83 separate pieces that mark one of the great pianistic legacies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Included on this first volume are Book II of the Préludes, the Children’s Corner suite, and six other pieces, including the recently (2001) discovered Intermède, written in 1880.  Bennett Lerner is well known as a performer of new music and has premiered music by composers including Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Irving Fine, Marc Blitzstein, Roy Harris, Paul Bowles, Samuel Barber and Virgil Thomson.  Lerner’s primary teachers were the Chilean virtuoso Claudio Arrau, Arrau’s assistant, Rafael de Silva, the Cuban pedagogue German Diez, the American composer/pianist Robert Helps, and the Argentine virtuosa Arminda Canteros.  Mr. Lerner has lived in Thailand since 1990 and is currently a lecturer in the Music Department of Payap University in Chiang Mai.  

BRIDGE 9186

Fischer Duo

Born 19 months and 357 miles apart, Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt became the two pianistic giants of the 19th century and together changed the future of piano playing. This recording features the superb Fischer Duo in performances of all three of Chopin’s works for cello and piano, as well as the four cello and piano duos by Liszt, composed during the last twelve years of his life. The recital opens with Chopin’s final composition- the magnificent G minor Sonata, written in 1846. This was the last work Chopin played in public and the last work he would hear at his deathbed. Liszt wrote two versions of La Lugubre gondola for solo piano, one before his son-in-law Wagner’s death and one after. It is the second version that Liszt transcribed for cello and piano, and it was his preferred version of the piece. Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth is Liszt’s 1880 reconstruction of his beautiful song of the same name, named for the small island in the Rhine where Liszt spent the summers of 1841-43. After early attempts at solo piano polonaises while still in Poland, Chopin wrote the delightful Polonaise Brillante calling it “nothing more than a glittering trifle for the salon, for ladies.” Romance oubliée was originally a song and is Liszt’s 1880 transcription for cello and piano. The two Élégies were written in 1874 and 1877 respectively. These short works are both in three sections and are prime examples of Liszt’s more introverted side. The virtuosic Grand Duo Concertant was composed by Chopin in the popular ‘opera fantasy’ genre after themes from Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable. Founded in 1971, the Fischer duo has delighted listeners with performances described as “intense and persuasive” (Gramophone) “boldly imaginative” (Boston Globe), and “beautiful and intense” (The New York Times).

BRIDGE 9187

Music of Elliott Carter, Vol. 7

This highly anticipated recording, a Bridge co-production with the BBC, presents first recordings of four major Elliott Carter compositions, all composed within the past six years. Conducted by the distinguished British conductor, Oliver Knussen, these recordings tell the amazing tale of an American composer, well into his nineties, composing at the peak of his powers. Malcolm McDonald writes that “Carter is not far short of his own centenary, and continuing to produce highly complex, sophisticated scores with an energy that would hardly be conceivable even in a much younger man.” The composer traveled to London and Amsterdam to oversee the performance and recording of these four works.

Dialogues for piano and chamber orchestra was a BBC Radio 3 commission for the brilliant young British pianist Nicolas Hodges and is scored for piano solo and a chamber orchestra comprising 18 instruments. Carter writes that “Dialogues is a conversation between the soloist and the orchestra: responding to each other, sometimes interrupting one another or arguing.” Hodges, Knussen and the London Sinfonietta give a reading of electrifying intensity. Boston Concerto was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and is based on a William Carlos Williams poem, “Rain”, a verse chosen to convey the composer’s enduring love for his wife Helen, the dedicatee of Boston Concerto. Describing the diaphanous textures of this work, Bayan Northcott writes of Boston Concerto that “despite occasional deep sonorities, the whole work has a kind of distanced lightness, seeming to hover in mid air.” Carter’s Cello Concerto is a twenty minute span introduced by the soloist alone, playing a cantilena that presents ideas later to be expanded into a series of linked movements. The concerto is played by long-time colleague and valued Carter interpreter Fred Sherry who, during the composition of the work, consulted with Carter about the finer details of the cello writing. Scored for a large orchestra that frequently plays with intimately drawn orchestral textures, the Cello Concerto was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and was first performed by the CSO with Yo Yo Ma, cello soloist and Daniel Barenboim, conductor. Carter completed the concise 12 minute ASKO Concerto in January 2000 to a commission from the Asko Ensemble of Amsterdam and the recording on this disc is of its first performance in the Concertgebouw on April 26 of that year. The composer writes: “Although the music is in light-hearted mood, each soloistic section approaches ensemble playing in a different spirit.”

BRIDGE 9184

Andrew Rangell: Bach Recital

Andrew Rangell's latest recording is of J.S. Bach compositions, both large and small. Rangell's fascinating reading of the famous Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue will certainly raise eyebrows, with its pointed segmentation of the Fugue subject and its detailed portrayal of the roiling forces at work in Bach's singular masterpiece. The French Overture in B minor is Bach's final keyboard suite, with Rangell's intensely imagined reading providing a world of variety of articulation, coloration and ornamentation. The recording concludes with Bach's ever-popular, and buoyant Italian Concerto.

These recordings by Andrew Rangell are available from Bridge: 

Schubert recital: Moments Musicaux; Sonata in B-flat, D. 960; BRIDGE 9153 

Peruvian Honeymoon: music of Chopin, Wolff, Valen, Haydn and Stravinsky; BRIDGE 9154

Beethoven Recital: BRIDGE 9181

BRIDGE 9180

Volume 23

The latest release in Bridge’s Library of Congress series joins the Budapest String Quartet with one of their favorite pianists, Artur Balsam. The performance of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet is from a concert given in the Coolidge Auditorium on April 26, 1956. The Budapests and Balsam are joined by bass player Julius Levine in this lovely reading of Schubert’s masterpiece. The Franck Quintet, from a December 18, 1953 concert is given a reading of burning intensity by Balsam and the Budapests. Disc annotator Harris Goldsmith writes that “Balsam was a paragon- a marvel of relaxed professionalism; he was, as many of his colleagues and disciples attest, an instrumentalist of awesome facility and accomplishment and a sight-reader of almost unparalleled quickness. Hearing his masterly phrasing and luminous tone is sufficient aural testimony to place Balsam in the highest artistic echelon.” The restoration of these performances, released for the first time, was by Grammy-winning producer, Adam Abeshouse.

These Artur Balsam/Budapest String Quartet recordings are available on Bridge:

Rachmaninoff: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2; Trio Élégiaque, Op. 9; BRIDGE 9063
Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1, Op. 25; Schumann: Piano Quintet, Op. 44 BRIDGE 9110 
Hindemith: Sonata, Op. 11, No. 4; Brahms: Horn Trio, Op. 44; Shostakovich: Piano Quintet, Op. 57 BRIDGE 9175

BRIDGE 9185

American pianist Andrew Rangell is heard here in a program of five Beethoven sonatas, recorded at Boston’s Gardner Museum in 2004. Choosing some of Beethoven’s lesser performed sonatas, Rangell gives performances that display the pianist’s highly personal approach with this music. 

Writing about Rangell’s most recent New York recital, critic Charles Michener of The New York Observer wrote: “For me, the great discovery of the series has been Andrew Rangell...Mr. Rangell is an individualist. And such was his intensity–like the late Glenn Gould, he seemed to be propelled by an irresistible force–that the listener’s attention was riveted to the music.” 

These recordings by Andrew Rangell are available from Bridge: 

Schubert recital: Moments Musicaux; Sonata in B-flat, D. 960; BRIDGE 9153 

Peruvian Honeymoon: music of Chopin, Wolff, Valen, Haydn and Stravinsky; BRIDGE 9154

BRIDGE 9181

Interior Design

This disc presents premiere recordings of three works by the American composer, Steven Mackey. The disc features violin virtuoso Curtis Macomber on all three works, and documents the long relationship that Macomber has had with Mackey’s music. Macomber writes: “Much of what I find so successful in Steve’s music is that kind of willingness to explore the immediate, the vulnerable, the personal and sometimes the downright silly. He’ll tap from whatever source suits the moment, be it a naive children’s tune or some bluesy plaint. There’s an intelligence and a discerning judgement for proportion and scope, but it’s his audacious use of the vernacular that I particularly love and enjoy playing.” The three works recorded on this CD certainly indulge in the traits mentioned by Macomber, and benefit tremendously from the violinist’s committed, heroically played performances.

These Bridge CDs feature music by Steven Mackey and performances by Curtis Macomber: 
Steve Mackey: “Lost and Found” Music for Electric Guitar; BRIDGE 9065 
Music of Mario Davidovsky, Vol. 3; BRIDGE 9171

BRIDGE 9183

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