MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

CD REVIEW



Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


Buy through MusicWeb for 14.80/15.30/16.20 postage paid.
You may prefer to pay by Sterling cheque or Euro notes to avoid PayPal. Contact for details

Musicweb Purchase button

Chonguri
Sulkan TSINTSADZE (1925-1992)
Chonguri (2005) [1:23]
Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750)
(arr. Thomas Demenga)

Dal alte Jahr vergangen ist [2:27]
Herr Gott, nun scleuss; den Himmel auf [1:53]
Ich ruf’ zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ [3:36]
Meine Seele erhebet den Herrn [2:05]
Gaspar CASSADÓ (1897-1966)

Danse du diable vert [3:20]
Frédéric CHOPIN (1810-1849)

Nocturne in c-sharp minor Op. Post.(arr. Gregor Piatigorsky) [4:10]
Nocturne in E-flat Op 9 No. 2 (arr. Thomas Demenga) [5:04]
Gabriel FAURÉ (1845-1924)

Romance [3:56]
Aprés un rêve (arr. Pablo Casals) [3:00]
Berceuse (arr. Thomas Demenga) [3:22]
Anton WEBERN (1883-1945)

Drei kleine Stücke [2:20]
Zwei Stücke [4:53]
Franz LISZT (1811-1886)

La lugubre gondola [7:39]
Darius MILHAUD (1892-1974)

Vocalise-étude pour voix élevées [1:02]
Thomas DEMENGA (b. 1954)

New York Honk [2:14]
Thomas Demenga (cello)
Thomas Larcher (piano)
Teodoro Anzellotti (accordion)
rec. August 2004, Clara Wieck Auditorium, Sandhausen bei Heidelberg, Germany
ECM NEW SERIES ECM 1914 [56:53]


 


 

Chonguri is a collection of recordings that, in the listening, may well surprise some. We have here a series of works by composers familiar and unfamiliar, with the familiar in arrangements for the occasionally astonishing combination of accordion, piano and cello. The range of the works covers quite a large tract of musical terrain, from the Baroque to the Serialists to a freshly-penned piece by the cellist himself.

The programme starts with a short piece by the Georgian composer Sulkhan Tsintsadze, who is also a cellist. The piece, for solo cello, is named after and approximates, over its brief minute-and-change time-span, a Georgian traditional instrument, which is akin to a lute with a longer neck.. It’s a wonderful showpiece for chordal pizzicato, at times calling to mind a nylon-stringed, strummed Nick Drake song, and at others it is exotically spiced with folk-like colour. The piece leads almost effortlessly into the first of the Bach transcriptions. Das alte Jahr vergangen ist, as with so much of Bach’s music, shows itself to be most flexible to adaptation to different instrumentation - here for accordion and cello - with the accordion quite convincingly playing the role of a chamber organ. The arrangement, by Thomas Demenga, is sensitively done, with the cello taking the main melodic line, trading roles with the accordion for the following Bach piece, Herr Gott, nun schleuss’ den Himmel auf.

We shift abruptly to the more modern soundworld of Catalonian cellist-composer Gaspar Cassadó’s Danse du diable vert, whose sound is very much in the style of the French composers of the 1930s, or that of Polish Composer Alexander Tansman, whose various works have been reviewed here recently. The piece, scored for piano and cello, is certainly a wonderful encore, with rapid, fluid runs and moments of luxurious enjoyment. Here, the green fairy is no sinister spirit; we have a frenetic, driven dance of unbridled delight, which may have listeners combing for other recordings of works by this relative unknown.

On more familiar ground, there are two arranged nocturnes of Chopin, arranged for piano and cello. the first is Piatigorsky’s arrangement of the Op. posth. Nocturne in c-sharp minor, which comes across here as a languid beauty. The other, the Op. 9 Nocturne in E-flat is heard in Demenga’s own arrangement for piano and cello. More demure and stripped back than the orchestral arrangement that others may be familiar with, this piano-and-cello version keeps a better handle on the wistful innocence of the piece. The last of the Bach pieces is arranged by Demenga for cello and accordion, again with quite enjoyable results. The cello starts the material and hands it over to the accordion.

Overall, the progression of pieces is pleasant and sensitively-done, and the sound quality is all one could hope for and expect with ECM.


David Blomenberg

 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.