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             


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


 
REVIEW


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

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline


Rhapsodic Musings – 21st Century Works for Solo Violin
Esa-Pekka SALONEN (b.1958)
Lachen Verlernt (2002) [9:43]
Elliott CARTER (b.1908)
Four Lauds
Statement – Remembering Aaron (1999) [3:59]
Riconoscenza (per Goffredo Petrassi) (1984) [5:10]
Rhapsodic Musings (2000) [3:05]
Fantasy (1999) [5:00]
Augusta Read THOMAS (b.1964)
Pulsar (2003) [5:33]
John ZORN (b.1953)
Goetia (2002) [19:00]
Jennifer Koh (violin)
Academy of Arts and Letters, NYC June 2008 (Salonen and Thomas); January 2009 (Carter) and March 2009 (Zorn)
CEDILLE RECORDS CDR 90000 113 [52:00]

 

Experience Classicsonline



 
Fears that the ascetic isolationism of the contemporary solo violin muse will dwarf expressive responses are ill founded here. This is terrifically committed playing, the type of playing that explores these diverse works with real intensity and warmth of tone. It drives to the heart of things.
 
Not that there is over-much danger of aridity given the composers concerned. Esa-Pekka Salonen for example has constructed what is in effect a Chaconne in his Lachen Verlernt. His ‘serious clown’ demeanour in this piece is reflected in Jennifer Koh’s playing, in which she brings to bear a wealth of intensity and timbral variety. It goes so far as to confer Old World status on a contemporary work – and reveals it as harmonically and melodically alluring, especially in the incrementally fast passages towards the end.
 
Elliott Carter’s Four Lauds were composed over a sixteen year span and are dedicated to friends or colleagues. The first is for Copland, utilising a Copland theme, and remaining true to both men. The first of the sequence was actually that for Petrassi, written in 1984, and another beautifully apt commentary from one composer to another. The third, the one that gives the disc its title, was written for Robert Mann of the Juilliard Quartet. Its musing profile is strongly contrasted with the fast final Laud for Roger Sessions, in which Sessions’s chortles are a distinguishing feature of this witty and winning opus.
 
Augusta Read Thomas’s Pulsar has had commercial recordings. It’s a work where ‘the violin discovers its inner trumpet’ according to Paul Griffiths’s notes – high lying, lyrical, approachable but not, to me, especially distinctive. John Zorn on the other hand, scores with Goetia which was written for Koh. I won’t go into the gobbledegook about black magic and demons invoked by the title of the work – we’d be straying into Buffy territory – but the result is eight short pieces utilising the same ‘spell’ or incantation. Pitch transformation does the work here, and the writing is angular, flurried, pizzicato-flecked, slashing and otherwise invested with colouristic and rhythmic devices.
 
I should add that there’s an imaginative video by Tal Rosner to the Salonen piece which can be run in your CD-ROM computer drive, and it’s well worth watching.
 
The subtle aliveness of Koh’s playing means that she meets all these works head-on. She evokes their mysteries and narratives with great acumen, has been finely recorded, and proves a laudable ambassador for contemporary music.
 
Jonathan Woolf
 
 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






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.