Andreas Brantelid, Christian Ihle Hadland – Grieg & Grainger: Cello works (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:33 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Although they were born forty years apart on opposite sides of the world, Edvard Grieg and Percy Grainger have much in common. The aim to become pianists and composers more or less forced both of them to leave their native countries – Norway and Australia respectively – in order to gain access to the great central European tradition that so dominated musical life during the second half of the 19th century. Grieg enrolled at the Leipzig conservatory in 1858 and Grainger at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt in 1895, but their experiences were in many ways strikingly similar: both made progress as pianists, but neither of them found the German approach to the teaching of composition fruitful. Grieg’s strong attachment to Norwegian folk music made it difficult for him to compose in a way that conformed to the Germanic ideal, while Grainger some forty years later withdrew from the composition class at the conservatory in order to study privately. He too would find his greatest inspiration in folk music traditions, as exemplified in La Scandinavie for cello and piano, a suite of arrangements of Scandinavian folk songs. The two composers met in 1906, in London, and not surprisingly they got along famously. The meeting led to Grainger visiting Grieg in Bergen the following year, only two months before the older composer passed away. The Danish-Swedish cellist Andreas Brantelid and his Norwegian chamber music partner Christian Ihle Hadland have teamed up in this programme of cello works by the two composers, opening with Grieg’s celebrated Cello Sonata. They also include less well-known pieces, however, such as the composer’s arrangement of the Allegretto from his third violin sonata, and an Andante con moto intended as part of a never completed piano trio, in which they are joined by the violinist Lars Bjørnkjær. Discovered after Grieg’s death, the piece would have to wait more than 70 years before receiving its first performance.
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Andreas Brantelid – 48 Strings: Music for 1, 2, 4 & 12 Cellos (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:11:47 minutes | 2,51 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
The four cellist-composers in this recital share a common background: from musical families they played as soloists in outstanding orchestras, taught many students, and wrote music for the instrument that continues to challenge players of our own time with its virtuosity and intensity. In his 12 Caprices Alfredo Piatti fused dazzling technical demands with operatic drama, whilst David Popper’s Suite remains an admired piece for two cellists. Wilhelm Fitzenhagen’s Concert Waltzes for four cellos makes prolonged use of the upper register, and in contrast Julius Klengel’s Hymnus is a sonorously beautiful elegy for twelve cellists.
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Andreas Brantelid, Concerto Copenhagen & Lars Ulrik Mortensen – Times of Transition: Cello Concertos by C.P.E. Bach & Haydn (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:44 minutes | 1,20 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Naxos
The three cello concertos on this recording illustrate that fertile period in the second half of the 18th century when features of the Baroque were gradually replaced by the so-called galant style. Foremost amongst the composers inaugurating this change was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach whose Concerto in A major is a perfect example of the passionate and dramatic range that marked him out as a pivotal figure of his time. Haydn’s Concerto in C major modulates between older and newer styles, whereas his Concerto in D major is a Classical masterpiece, and a worthy companion to his greatest symphonies.
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