An Introduction to the United Strings of Europe

In this podcast Raymond Bisha talks with Julian Azkoul, Director of United Strings of Europe, about how the group started, about their album, and about how they started recording for BIS label at the invitation of their legendary founder and producer Robert von Bahr.  It is hard to overstate how important Robert's unequivocal support was for the ensemble.  All that, plus music by Osvaldo Golijov, Olli Mustonen, Dobrinka Tabakova and Igor Stravinsky.

In Biber’s time, harmony was something cosmic, vibrating in a God-given resonance between human, instrumental, and celestial bodies. After all, the string instrument in early modern Europe was configured as a human body – with a neck, belly, and ribs to match. The Sonatas were therefore not only designed to delight, but also potentially to balm and heal; Biber described the sonatas as a kind of prayer for his patron's longevity and good health.

“I feel that you will achieve your greatest triumphs in [the symphonic] genre for I consider you to have precisely the properties that make a great symphonic composer. This is my firm belief.” Thus wrote Jan Sibelius in 1914 to his former student Leevi Madetoja. Raymond Bisha presents supporting evidence for that foresight in extracts from Madetoja's First and Third Symphonies and the Okon Fuoko Suite performed by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under John Storgårds.

The musical partnership of pianists Anna Geniushene and Lukas Geniušas, both esteemed prize-winners of major international competitions, is not just a testament to their flourishing solo careers and a shared musical heritage and philosophy. It is a profound expression of their deep emotional connection, a bond that resonates in their performances and captivates audiences world-wide. With their unique synergy, this husband-and-wife duo brings a fresh and thrilling perspective to the world of piano duos, setting them apart from their peers.

Joby Talbot has written music for several of Christopher Wheeldon's ballets including The Winter's Tale, the focus of this podcast, as well as Like Water for Chocolate and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.  In this podcast Joby talks about how he goes about composing music for a ballet and his ongoing collaboration with Christopher Wheeldon. The Opus Arte label has released all three of these ballets in a box set on both DVD and BluRay; they can also be streamed by going to the Royal Ballet and Opera website.

This podcast introduces a recently released, diverse programme of works for guitar trio bound by the common thread of music inspired by stories from literature, stage or screen. Performed by the Volterra Project Trio, the album's seventeen tracks take us from the rhythmic exuberance and tragic beauty of Bernstein’s West Side Story to the evocative poetry of childhood in Ravel's Mother Goose Suite. The presenter is Raymond Bisha.

In his album liner notes Behzod Abduraimov writes:  "I see this pairing as an opportunity to present two vastly different emotional and philosophical worlds within the same album.  I want to offer listeners a striking contrast: the depth and complexity of Prokofiev’s world against Shor’s more lyrical and accessible approach. Each piece reflects different facets of the human experience, and I believe there is value in sharing this diversity of sentiment, texture, and mood. I hope this pairing brings something refreshing and thought-provoking to listeners.

In his later years, Liszt increasingly pursued his favoured causes by using piano transcriptions of other composers' works; and his own symphonic poems appeared as transcriptions from the 1850s. In 1865 Liszt famously complained to Hans von Bülow that “I have better things to do with my time than transcribe, paraphrase, and illustrate, and from now on I will be more discriminating in this recreation.” This declaration, however, was not rigorously pursued, and the lucrative activity continued to support Liszt and his causes all his life. Raymond Bisha introduces a new album of Mozart and Donizetti opera transcriptions by Liszt, performed by Swiss-Russian pianist Konstantin Scherbakov, one of today’s most versatile and accomplished artists.

This project by Alon Sariel and the Kölner Akademie celebrates the versatility of the mandolin on the cusp of the classical period. However, the (hi)story of the mandolin in Vienna is surprisingly different from elsewhere in Europe, and in some cases we are still discovering new astonishing aspects. In contrast to the rest of Europe, Vienna seems to have almost completely ignored the popularity of the new Neapolitan mandolin type (four courses of strings over a movable bridge, tuned as the violin) in the 1760s and 1770s. When this popularity in the rest of Europe started to decline in the 1780s, Vienna suddenly joined the ranks of mandolin-loving audiences.

This podcast introduces two works by Karl Weigl (1881-1949), his Symphony No. 3 and the Symphonic Prelude to a Tragedy. Both were written at the beginning of the 1930s but then suffered from decades of neglect. Weigl drew on the sound world of late Romanticism, never abandoning this aesthetic in favour of more progressive contemporary trends. Happily, his distinctive style can now be savoured in these long-awaited world premiere recordings. Raymond Bisha presents.