Thomas Demenga – J.S. Bach Suiten für Violoncello (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:08:57 minutes | 2,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
The Swiss cellist (and composer) Thomas Demenga (*1954) is an artist on the world stage who defies classification: at once at ease in the most groundbreaking contemporary performances – we owe him many recordings of Cage, Holliger, Messiaen, Yun, Pärt, Zimmermann etc. – and in the classical repertoire, from Bach to Schubert, from Vivaldi to Mendelssohn, from Dvořák to Tchaikovsky. This is his completely new reading of Bach’s Suites, which he gives with an immense, almost-improvisational freedom, even if he respects the texts to the letter: it is all in the accents, the rubatos, the articulations and the phrasing that he gives his imagination free rein, as if the ink wasn’t even yet dry on these master-works. We are a long way, here, from some “cleaner”, more “classic”, “polished” readings from some great predecessors. But in reality, this music is sufficiently rich and ample to be seen from a thousand angles without losing any of its shine. Demenga, a disciple of Rostropovitch, Antonio Janigro and Leonard Rose, has entered a kind of pantheon, where he can bear comparison with any number of the greats. The deliberately rather low range which he has chosen lends greater depth and an uncharacteristically darker tone to his readings.
Read more
Thomas Demenga – J.S. Bach: Préludes & Sarabandes (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:28 minutes | 821 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM New Series
Swiss cellist Thomas Demenga returns to Bach’s suites. “To me, Bach is the greatest musical genius who has ever lived. His music is pure, sublime. It possesses something divine and each musician has a lifetime in which to discover new ways of interpreting it.” Demenga previously recorded the cello suites for ECM between 1986 and 2002, juxtaposing them with contemporary composition in albums that count as milestones in the early history of the New Series. This new double album however is devoted entirely to Bach and the six suites. Many years of playing and studying every aspect of them, from source manuscripts to different tempos, embellishments, fingerings and bowings, have brought Demenga to the heart of the music – which Bach himself described as the only goal. This new account of the music was recorded at the Hans Huber Saal in Basel.
Read more
Ernesto Molinari, Thomas Demenga, Marino Formenti, Peter Rundel, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln – Jarrell: …mais les images restent… (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:02:33 minutes | 559 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aeon
Michael Jarrell claims for himself the status of a craftsman. Well aware that mastery of his art is acquired in the long term, he has often felt the need to return to the same object, considered from a different angle, when he judges that he now possesses more efficient tools and can express his musical ideas with greater precision. Although he says he is fascinated by artists who constantly work at the same idea, he does not seek a reduction of this kind for himself, but rather moves from one work to another through a process of reactions. That attitude is illustrated by this new album in which works and performers intersect; and the artists here are the composer’s most loyal supporters. The arborescences and ruptures, the profundity of the multiple levels of interpretation we can perceive in the pieces on the programme of this disc, make us conscious of the multiplicity of the levels of meaning present in his music. Michael Jarrell’s training as a visual artist has probably honed his sensitivity to forms still further. The impact on him of Paul Klee’s ideas, notably concerning the relationships between forms and movements, is doubtless not foreign to the way he animates the materials with which he composes.
Read more