Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38058
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FREDERIC CHOPIN (1810 – 1849) – PIANO CONCERTOS
Concerto No. 1 for Piano & Orchestra in E minor, Op. 11
Concerto No. 2 for Piano & Orchestra in F minor, Op. 21

William Youn, piano

Nürnberger Symphoniker/Friedemann Riehle
William Youn (b. 1982) has been recognized as one of the most promising and unique pianist of the young generation. Born in Seoul, South Korea, Youn began playing the piano at the age of six.
After his studies in Korea and at the Walnut Hill School in Boston, Youn went on to study in Hannover, Germany, where he finished his musical education. From 2006 to 2009, Youn was awarded a scholarship to study at the renowned International Piano Academy at Lake Como where he worked with musicians such as Andreas Staier and Menahem Pressler. Youn is a prize winner at international competitions such as the Cleveland International Competition, the Concorso Alessandro Casagrande, the Shanghai Piano Competition, and was a finalist at the Busoni Competition, and the Concours Reine Elisabeth, Brussels.
Since his debut with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of eleven, he has appeared regularly as a soloist with Orchestras such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Staatsorchester Halle, the Belgian National Orchestra, and the Toronto Philharmonia, and has performed in world's most prestigious venues including the Lincoln Center (New York City), the Disney Hall (LA), the Palau de la Musica (Barcelona), and the Auditorio Nacional (Madrid).
Sony BMG Korea has released several recordings of him, including the Schumann Piano Concerto with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Label: COVIELLO CLASSICS SACD 30910
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FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY (1809 – 1847)
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 11
Symphony No. 5 in D major, Op. 107 "Reformation"

Aachen Symphony Orchestra/Marcus Bosch
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) managed the rare feat of already having composed twelve symphonies by the age of 15. These string sinfonias were never published with their own opus numbers, however, and are thus regarded as "substandard." The first "real" symphony with strings and winds dates from 1824 and was published as No. 1. A few years later Mendelssohn composed the symphony which was published only posthumously as his fifth – the 'Reformation' Symphony. Mendelssohn, who came from a Jewish family but was baptized as a Protestant, professes his faith in this work, particularly in the finale, with its quotation of Bach's chorale "Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Got” (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God).
Marcus Bosch and the Aachen Symphony Orchestra offer superb interpretations of the two works, whose origins are so close to each other – and allow fascinating insights into the musical development of the young Mendelssohn.

Label: BIS SACD 1604
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FELIX MEDELSSOHN (1809 – 1847)
Symphony No.3 in A minor, Op.56, ‘Scottish’
Symphony No.5 in D minor, Op.107, ‘Reformation’

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Litton
Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth in 1809, Bergen
Philharmonic Orchestra and their music director Andrew Litton have recorded a three-disc survey of the composer’s symphonies. This final disc in the series opens with the ‘Scottish’ Symphony (No.3), conceived during the composer’s visit to what was at the time regarded as the Romantic retreat par excellence, celebrated in literature as the retreat of solitary heroes amid the rugged Highland scenery. From Edinburgh Mendelssohn wrote to his parents: ‘At dusk we went today to the palace where Mary Stuart lived and loved… Everything there lies rotten and in ruins; the clear daylight shines right in. I think that today I found the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.’ It would take him many years to complete what was begun that day in 1829, however, for the symphony was not ready until 1842 – actually more than 12 years after the ‘Reformation’ Symphony, even though this carries a higher opus number. The reason for this confusing state of affairs is that Mendelssohn was less than happy with the work he wrote for the 1830 celebrations of the Lutheran Reformation, and therefore refused to let it be published in his lifetime. Both works contain references to their stated subjects – the Scottish-sounding ‘folk tune’ in the finale of the Third Symphony, the use of Luther’s chorale ‘Ein’ feste Burg’ in that of the Fifth – but they also share the musical lightness of touch and the inventiveness that have made Mendelssohn a favorite with concert audiences for close to two centuries. These qualities are mirrored in the performances of Litton and the Bergen PO, whose recording of Symphony No.2, ‘Lobgesang’, earlier this year was described in a review in Financial Times as ‘suitably glowing’, with its emphasis ‘on mercurial invention and spontaneity’.

Label: BIS SACD 1656
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FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797 – 1828)
Symphony No. 8 in B minor, ‘Unfinished’, D759
Symphony No. 9 in C major, ‘Great’, D944

Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Örebro/Thomas Dausgaard
In 2008, to great acclaim, Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra completed their 3-disc cycle of Schumann’s symphonies. Gramophone described it as ‘riveting’ while the German website klassik.com awarded it the claim of reference recording. The reviewer in Fanfare was struck by the excitement Dausgaard and company offered the listener (‘what a ride … with sawing violins smoking down to the bridge and timpani-like rifle shots’) while his colleague in International Record Review called the result ‘the most perceptive Schumann cycle in over three decades’. Together with a recording of Dvoøák’s Sixth and Ninth Symphony released in 2007 (BIS SACD 1566) the Schumann discs belong to a series entitled ‘Opening Doors’, in which Dausgaard makes a case for performing 19th-century symphonic works with a chamber-sized band. The turn has now come to Franz Schubert and his final works in the symphonic genre: the ‘Unfinished’ (Symphony No.8) and ‘the ‘Great C Major’ (No.9). Both of these are also the most celebrated of all Schubert symphonies, which makes it all the more ironic that the composer never had the opportunity to hear them performed. As for the Eighth, with its distinctive, mysterious opening, it is not known why Schubert didn’t complete it: a few jotted-down bars of a third movement is all that we have. The most likely explanation may simply be that Schubert remained unsatisfied with all of his attempts to match the degree of innovation achieved in the first two movements. The Ninth, on the other hand, does run its full course – and most gloriously so, with a Finale of exuberant festiveness. Unfortunately for the composer, the great (or, as Schumann put it: ‘heavenly’) length of the symphony and the technical demands it placed on the orchestra caused the only performance planned in Schubert’s lifetime to be cancelled. In 1839 the score was found among his papers by Robert Schumann, and received its first performance shortly thereafter by Mendelssohn conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra - eleven years after the composer’s death.

Label: BIS SACD 1823
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SCRIABIN: PRELUDE IN B MAJOR, OP.16 NO.1; J.S. BACH / GOUNOD: AVE MARIA; J.S. BACH: PRESTO FROM SONATA FOR SOLO VIOLIN IN G MINOR, WV1001; BRAHMS: WIE MELODIEN ZIEHT ES MIR, OP.105 NO.1; TRADITIONAL: LET’S BE HAPPY; RIMSKY-KORSAKOV: THE FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLE-BEE; KREISLER: LIEBESLEID; MESSAGER: SOLO DE CONCOURS; RACHMANINOV: VOCALISE; CHOPIN: NOCTURNE IN E FLAT MAJOR, OP.9 NO.2; SCHUMANN: DEIN ANGESICHT, OP.127 NO.2; MONTI: CSÁRDÁS; HILLBORG: THE PEACOCK MOMENT; MARTIN FRÖST: IMPROVISATION (BASED ON A THEME BY MALCOLM ARNOLD); CHAPLIN: SMILE; GÖRAN FRÖST: BRUDVALS FÖR KARIN OCH MARTIN; HENRYSON: OFF Pist; EDEN AHBEZ: Nature Boy

Martin Fröst, clarinet

A calendar filled with orchestral concerts and chamber recitals in many of the world’s most prestigious venues has given the clarinettist Martin Fröst ample opportunity to develop a wide range of encores, for every occasion. Known for the imaginatively themed concert programmes he devises with various musician friends, he has also explored a number of musical genres. These aspects of his artistry are both demonstrated on this constantly engaging disc, which includes immortal gems such as Rachmaninov’s Vocalise and Kreisler’s Liebeslied as well as pieces rather less usual in a classical context: Charlie Chaplin’s Smile and the klezmer traditional Let’s Be Happy rubbing shoulders with an improvisation over the Nat King Cole standard Nature Boy. Throughout the programme Fröst receives the expert support of the pianist Roland Pöntinen, a chamber music partner of long standing who has also been involved in devising many of the imaginative arrangements, for instance of Vittorio Monti’s Csárdás. Three other musical companions of Fröst’s make cameo appearances, with mezzo-soprano Malena Ernman joining the clarinet in the head-long flight of not one, but two bumble-bees. Torleif Thedéen’s cello sings a heartfelt Ave Maria above the gyrating accompaniment of Fröst’s clarinet, while Svante Henryson, also a cellist, plays in his own duo piece Off Pist, in which the clarinet and cello chase each other up and down alpine slopes. Martin Fröst’s spectacular career on disc began in 1995, with one of his first CD reviews, in In Tune Magazine, describing him as ‘A Swedish Clarinet Star’, and continuing ‘Fröst has everything – including genius’. More than 10 discs later his recording of Bernard Crusell’s three clarinet concertos caused the reviewer in French Classica-Répertoire to remark that ‘in every movement his playing hits upon the appropriate elegance, the perfect phrasing, the true colour, the required virtuosity, the necessary playfulness ... as he pursues his musical intentions all the way’ – a description that could equally well be applied to the present disc!.

Label: BIS SACD 1780
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Sebastian Fagerlund (b.1972): Döbeln – An opera in two acts (libretto by Jusa Peltoniemi)

Anu Komsi, soprano; Annika Mylläri, soprano; Lasse Penttinen, tenor; Sören Lillkung, baritone; Robert McLoud, bass
West Coast Kokkola Opera; Kokkola Opera Festival Orchestra / Sakari Oramo, conductor

Born in 1972, Sebastian Fagerlund has rapidly emerged as one of the most interesting Finnish composers of his generation. At the core of his style is a richly sonorous, swiftly flowing idiom that is multi-layered in texture but avoids modernism’s severity of tone. His rhythms are rich, sometimes clearly meteoric, sometimes capriciously syncopated and more freely shaped. To counterbalance the rapid currents and rhythmic vivacity there are delicate, lyrically emotional passages. His music has often been tinged with a feeling of drama even when the forces are purely instrumental, and the move to opera, for the first time here in Döbeln, is thus completely natural. The main character of the opera is a historic figure, the Swedish General Georg Carl von Döbeln, a hero of the 1808–09 war over Finland between Russia and Sweden. The plot incorporates actual events during the war, but mixes them with fantasies and hallucinations in a many-faceted emotional mosaic. As the composer writes in his own liner notes: ‘When I began to plan this work, the idea of a grand, epic and heroic war opera felt unnatural to me. I wanted to discover a story – and a way of realizing it – where drama could be combined with humour, without losing track of the serious subject: war and its effects on man.’ The libretto by Finnish writer Jusa Peltoniemi is partly in Swedish and partly in Finnish, and includes eleven characters, ranging from a hospital orderly to the King of Sweden. These roles are distributed among five singers, supported by fifteen instrumentalists: piano, string quintet, seven wind-players and percussionists. With these limited forces, Fagerlund conjures up a sound-scape which is rich in colour, variation and emotional intensity. The direction is in the highly competent hands of Sakari Oramo, conducting a cast of leading Finnish singers from the West Coast Kokkola Opera. The comprehensive booklet includes the full Swedish/Finnish libretto with a parallel English translation, as well as a presentation of the composer and his work in four languages: English, Finnish, German and French. Packaged in a cardboard slipcase, this title also includes a full colour leaflet with photographs from the first performance, which took place in 2009.

Label: CYBELE SACD 351101
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LOUISE FARRENC (1804-1875); Sonata No. 2 in A major Op. 39
LILI BOULANGER (1893-1918); Nocturne for Violin and Piano
PAULINE VIARDOT-GARCÍA (1821-1910): Sonatina in A minor for Violin and Piano (1874); Six Morceaux for Violin and Piano (1867)

Artists:
Annette-Barbara Vogel, violin; Ayako Tsuruta, piano

This new SACD release includes three important composers who lived between 1804 and 1918.