Noriko Ogawa, Musikkollegium Winterthur & Thomas Zehetmair – Richard Dubugnon: Klavieriana, Op. 70 & Chamber Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:05 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Born in 1968, the Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon writes music that has been described as “driven by a playful modern sensibility” (The New York Times). His work list includes all genres, from solo pieces to large orchestral works, such as the Helvetia Symphony, scored for the same forces as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. He has also written for smaller orchestra, however, and this recording is bookended by his two chamber symphonies. Chamber Symphony No. 1 was composed in 2013, and in his liner notes the composer admits to influences from Arnold Schönberg and Franz Schreker, as well as Olivier Messiaen: “if passionate gestures evoke the decadent Vienna of the turn of the 20th century, the overall harmonic colour remains quite “French”… Switzerland is, after all, half way between Vienna and Paris”’.
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Noriko Ogawa – Satie: Piano Music, Vol. 4 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:58 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
For the fourth instalment in her acclaimed Satie cycle, Noriko Ogawa has gathered music written for the stage – from the pantomime Jack in the Box (1899) to the ballet Relâche (1924) – one of Satie’s last works. Several of the pieces exist in different scorings, but the piano versions heard here are all Satie’s own. Throughout the programme, what comes across strongly is the influence of music hall and cabaret; composed in 1900, Prélude de « La mort de Monsieur Mouche » even offers a hint of the ragtime, one of the first appearances of the genre in European music.
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Noriko Ogawa – Satie: Piano Music, Vol. 3 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:20:32 minutes | 1,18 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Of all the enigmas that surround Erik Satie and his music, Vexations is probably the most enigmatic. A ‘theme’ in the bass, with two different harmonisations, to be played – according to an ambiguous note on the composer’s autograph – 840 times. That is at least how it has been interpreted since the first public performance, which lasted more than 18 hours and was organized by the composer John Cage in 1963. The precise time at which Satie wrote Vexations is uncertain, and although it is usually assumed to be intended for a keyboard instrument, that is also impossible to confirm. There are no known performances of it in the composer’s lifetime, and the single-page manuscript was only discovered after Satie’s death.
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Michael Collins & Noriko Ogawa – La clarinette parisienne (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:38 minutes | 1,08 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Up until around 1900 the clarinet repertoire was dominated by music from the German-speaking lands, largely due to the influence of three outstanding clarinettists. Inspired by Anton Stadler, Heinrich Bärmann and Richard Mühlfeld respectively, Mozart, Weber and Brahms composed some of the finest clarinet works ever written. But especially after the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French cultural establishment became increasingly concerned with cultivating a national voice of its own, and Michael Collins’s new release is a reminder of this.
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