Composer: Lera Auerbach, Richard Beaudoin, John Cage, Olivier Messiaen
Performer: Daniel Kurganov, Constantine Finehouse
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Orchid Classics
Catalogue: ORC100182
Release: 2021
Size: 472 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Auerbach: Violin Sonata No. 3
01. I. Adagio tragico
02. II. Allegro marcato
03. III. Adagio pesante
04. IV. Allegro assai
Beaudoin: In höchster Not (In deepest need) for Violin & Piano
05. I. Feroce – Recitativo – Moderato
06. II. Poco maestoso – Largo
07. III. Andante – Più mosso – Largo – Prestissimo
08. Cage: Nocturne
Messiaen: Theme and Variations for Violin and Piano
09. Thème. Modéré
10. Var. 1, Modéré
11. Var. 2, Modéré, un peu vif
12. Var. 3, Modéré, avec éclat
13. Var. 4, Vif et passionné
14. Var. 5, Très lent
Soviet-born American Violinist Daniel Kurganov and Russian-American pianist Constantine Finehouse perform a stunning program of contemporary and 20th-century music by Lera Auerbach, Richard Beaudoin, John Cage and Olivier Messiaen. As Richard Beaudoin argues in his booklet notes, this program is characterized by the powerful sense of rhythm shared by these composers and the performers themselves.
Russian polymath Lera Auerbach uses rhythm in a rhetorical and unifying way in her dramatic Violin Sonata No. 3 (2005). Richard Beaudoin composed In höchster Not when he was a student of Michael Finnissy; during the work’s three contrapuntal movements the violin and piano are often independent, even out-of-sync. John Cage is known for his witty avant-garde experiments in sound and his Nocturne (1947) is written in fluid notation, allowing the performers considerable freedom in their interpretation so that every performance is truly unique. Olivier Messiaen’s rhythms were influenced by Indian music and are combined in his Thème et variations (1932), as with all his music, with a vivid sense of color.
Daniel Kurganov has been described in Fanfare Magazine as a musician of “smoldering intensity” with an “ingratiatingly idiomatic violinistic personality”.