Four Centuries of Great Music April 7, 2024 New Classical Music Releases from 2024 Episode 1

Four Centuries of Great Music
April 7, 2024 New Releases Episode 1

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music we are beginning a series of episodes featuring recently released Classical Music.  All of the music you will hear in the series are from album released in 2024.  

We will be beginning with Music by Gabriel Faure, specifically his piano music.  

Gabriel Fauré lived through a time of great change in France. He was born into a country entrenched in tradition but by the end of his life had witnessed the arrival of radical new trends including the birth of modernism and the shifting of the centre of musical gravity from Vienna to his own city, Paris.

Delicacy, accuracy and precision are often cited as key elements of Fauré’s music, which has a reputation for understated elegance but is just as often passionate and disruptive. It was famously referred to by Aaron Copland as ‘intensity on a background of calm’. Like Beethoven, Fauré was afflicted by encroaching deafness with increasing age - a feature of his biography that influenced his later music.

Piano music ranks alongside chamber music and song as the most important genre in Fauré’s production. The composer spent 60 years exploring the piano and developing his specific philosophy of the instrument. In his piano music, the expressive rubs shoulders with the reserved, the spontaneous with the austere, violence with calm - sometimes within the space of a single bar. In his works for the instrument, the composer’s trademark clarity and concision are combined with sinuous melodies and tantalizing harmonic ambiguity.

Today we will be listening to his first 5 barcarolles of the 13 which he wrote during his lifetime.  These are


Gabriel Faure: Barcarolle No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 26
Gabriel Faure: Barcarolle No. 2 in G Major, Op. 41
Gabriel Faure: Barcarolle No. 3 in G-Flat Major, Op. 42
Gabriel Faure: Barcarolle No. 4 in A-Flat Major, Op. 44
Gabriel Faure: Barcarolle No. 5 in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 66


Lucas Debargue, piano
Faure: Complete Music for Solo Piano
Sony Classical

Next on this episode of new releases in classical music  is Sergei Bortkiewicz: Violin Sonata in G minor, Op. 26.   Sergei Bortkiewicz was born in Kharkiv Ukraine in 1877, was educated in St. Petersburg and in Germany.  At the start of the World War I he was deported back to Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire where he established himself as a teacher and pianist.   Following the Russian Revolution he fled to Constantinople in November 1919. Here he continued his teaching and performing He move back to Germany in 1922. Over the next decade he lived in Paris and Berlin, but the advent of the National Socialist regime left Germany and moved to Vienna in 1933 and taught at the Vienna City Conservatory.  He died just after his 75th birthday in 1952 in Vienna.

His  Violin Sonata in G minor, Op. 26 was  composed in 1922 and is in 3 movements: I. Sostenuto-Allegro dramatico; II. Andante and III. Allegro vivace con brio

Sergei Bortkiewicz: Violin Sonata in G minor, Op. 26
Sergei Bortkiewicz: Violin Sonata in G minor, Op. 26  - I. Sostenuto-Allegro dramatico
Sergei Bortkiewicz: Violin Sonata in G minor, Op. 26  - II. Andante
Sergei Bortkiewicz: Violin Sonata in G minor, Op. 26  - III. Allegro vivace con brio


Solomiya Ivakhiv, Violin and Steven Beck, Piano
UKRAINIAN MASTERS
Naxos Records



Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B-Flat Major, Op. 60
(arranged for piano, violin, and cello by Shai Wosner)
Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma
Beethoven for Three
Sony Classical

A very common practice in the 1800s was to arrange major symphonic works for small chamber ensembles, so people could play these works at home.  In that spirit Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, and Yo-Yo Ma asked pianist and arranger Shai Wosner to arrange Beethoven’s 4th symphony for piano trio.

It is in 4 movements:  I. Adagio - Allegro vivace;  II. Adagio;  III. Allegro vivace and IV. Allegro ma non troppo

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B-Flat Major, Op. 60  - I. Adagio - Allegro vivace
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B-Flat Major, Op. 60  - II. Adagio
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B-Flat Major, Op. 60  - III. Allegro vivace
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 4 in B-Flat Major, Op. 60   - IV. Allegro ma non troppo


We will close today’s episode of Four Centuries of Great Music with Gustav Mahler.  Although famous for his massive symphonies, he also wrote many popular arts songs.  Among those are his Ruckert-Lieder.  There are 5 songs in this collection

Gustav Mahler: Rückert-Lieder
Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!
Um Mitternacht
Liebst du um Schönheit
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

Sonya Yoncheva, soprano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal conducted by Rafael Payare

Richard Strauss: Ein Heldenleben Mahler: Rückert-Lieder
Pentatone Records