Three Equal Voices: The Chamber Music of Louise Farrenc
Farrenc’s trios give the wind instrument, cello and piano distinct responsibilities. Their balance can be heard as a changing relation between three musical voices.
How a Jazz Quintet Finds a Common Language
Original compositions and a shared standard give a jazz quintet different ways to begin a conversation. The ensemble’s identity develops through what its players do with that common material.
A Landscape Made of Rhythm: Albéniz’s Iberia
In the first two books of Iberia, Albéniz builds musical places through pulse, register and layered movement. The piano supplies both the ground and the changing view.
Olivier Aubert and the Art of the Cello Duet
Loris Rossi and Giulia Libertini bring the music of Pierre-François-Olivier Aubert for two cellos to Da Vinci Classics. The recording is scheduled for May 2027. What happens when a cello has another cello for company? Two instruments of the same range can exchange a phrase almost imperceptibly. They can also separate into sharply distinct registers, […]
Poulenc: The Art of a Sudden Change of Light
Poulenc’s small piano pieces can alter their expressive distance in a few bars. Their brevity makes every change of touch and proportion matter.
What an Exercise Teaches the Ear
A technical exercise becomes musically useful when the player can hear what the movement is doing. Guitar practice offers a precise example of this exchange between hand and ear.
A Bar Line Is Not a Metronome
Frescobaldi’s instructions ask the keyboard player to hear changes of character within the written measure. The printed page leaves room for a carefully judged flexibility.
When Chant Becomes Memory
In Duruflé’s Requiem, an inherited chant becomes a way of shaping musical time. Its history remains audible inside a twentieth-century sound.
Smetana’s River, Reheard on the Harp
Hanuš Trneček’s transcription of Vltava raises a practical question: how can one instrument preserve the direction of a work conceived through orchestral contrasts?
Mortal Echoes: Poetry, Memory and the Art of Song
Thomas Erlank and Tinus Botha bring Wagner, Vaughan Williams and Richard Strauss into dialogue in a new Da Vinci Classics recording, scheduled for October 2027.