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Ulf Wallin, Roland Pöntinen – Schumann: The Violin Sonatas (2011)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:14:06 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Music Web International March 2012: “With highly impressive playing, sound and presentation it is hard to find fault with this excellent release”.
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Ulf Wallin – Pettersson: Concerto for Violin and String Quartet (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:09 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Between 1934 and 1949, Allan Pettersson, one of Sweden’s foremost composers of symphonies, wrote chamber works that differ greatly from his later production. With his Two Elegies, composed at the tender age of 17, Pettersson drew the enthusiasm of his teacher, who saw in him the makings of a composer. The Four Improvisations for string trio recall Bartók’s music with their rhythmic vitality. The Andante espressivo is more personal with its experimental melodic and harmonic leanings. After his forced return from Paris in 1939, where he had gone to study, Pettersson composed a tender and lyrical Romanza and, three years later, his only piece for solo piano, the elegiac and meditative Lamento.
The most important work on this recording is the Concerto for Violin and String Quartet, a harsh, dense work that places great demands on the musicians. Initially rejected by the critics, the work now appears almost unique in terms of its radical tonal language and experimental use of extended techniques.
For this recording, Ulf Wallin has brought together colleagues and friends to perform these lesser-known works, which nevertheless constitute an essential milestone in the career of the great Swedish composer.
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Ulf Wallin & Roland Pöntinen – Brahms: Works for Violin & Piano, Vol. 2 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:07:12 minutes | 1,22 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Ulf Wallin and Roland Pöntinen made their first duo-recording for BIS in 1991 and have released acclaimed recital discs ranging from Schumann and Liszt to Alfred Schnittke, by way of Schoenberg and Hindemith. With the present disc they bring their most recent project to a close: a recording of all the works by Johannes Brahms for violin and piano. These include not only the three well-known and -loved numbered violin sonatas, but also the Scherzo from the so-called F.A.E. Sonata and the composer’s own violin versions of the two sonatas for clarinet and piano. Wallin and Pöntinen open the present disc with Sonata No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 120, composed in 1894 for clarinet and transcribed for the violin a year later. As the clarinet part extends further down than the lowest note on the violin, Brahms made considerable revisions to the clarinet part, which entailed changes in the piano part, and consequently the printing of a new piano score. This is followed by the second and third violin sonatas, in A major and D minor respectively. Both works were composed during the summer of 1886 in Thun in Switzerland and are clearly related, even though they inhabit completely different expressive worlds.
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Ulf Wallin, Roland Pöntinen – Brahms: Works for Violin & Piano, Vol. 1 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:05:03 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Asked the question ‘How many sonatas for violin and piano did Johannes Brahms compose?’, many lovers of chamber music would probably answer three, and maybe also add their respective keys and opus numbers. When pressed, a number of them would also remember the so-called F.A.E. Sonata, a collaborative effort by the young Brahms, Albert Dietrich and their mentor Robert Schumann. But very few would probably think of the two Opus 120 sonatas, composed in 1894 for clarinet (or viola) and piano, but a year later published in the composer’s own version for the violin. As the range of the B flat clarinet goes a fourth lower than that of the violin, Brahms had been forced to make considerable revisions to the clarinet part – which in turned entailed changes in the piano part, and consequently the printing of a new piano score. The seasoned team of violinist Ulf Wallin and pianist Roland Pöntinen have now decided to record all the Brahms sonatas, and the results are being released on two albums, the first one including the first of the ‘official’ sonatas, No. 1 in G major, Op. 78, the F minor Sonata from Op. 120 and Brahms’s Scherzo from the F.A.E. Sonata. Wallin and Pöntinen round off the programme with transcriptions of two of Brahms’s more lyrical songs.
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Ulf Wallin, Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra, Christian Lindberg – Allan Pettersson – Violin Concerto & Symphony No.17 (fragment) (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:06 minutes | 1,17 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
In terms of genre, Allan Pettersson was uniquely single-minded: during his entire career as a composer (1953–80) he produced only a dozen or so works that were not symphonies. By name, Violin Concerto No. 2 is one of these, but it is fair to say that it straddles the divide. Pettersson himself remarked: ‘In reality my work was a Symphony for violin and orchestra. From this results the fact that the solo violin is incorporated into the orchestra like any other instrument.’ It should therefore not come as a surprise that Christian Lindberg has chosen to include this massive 53-minute work in his acclaimed and award-winning series of Pettersson’s symphonies, realised in collaboration with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. The concerto was written in 1977, 28 years after its predecessor, the Concerto for Violin and String Quartet (1949). In that work, written while Pettersson was still studying, the composer was experimenting with radical ideas that are not to be found in his later compositions. Concerto No. 2 is rather characterized by the central role given to one of Pettersson’s Barefoot Songs – a trait that appears in several other mature works. Throughout the score, the song ‘The Lord walks in the meadow’ provides motivic material but is also quoted extensively. The hugely challenging solo part was first performed by Ida Haendel in 1980, and is here taken up by Ulf Wallin, who with an extensive discography has already proved himself to be one of the most intrepid violinists of today. The disc closes with Pettersson’s last musical thoughts: a 207-bar long fragment generally regarded and referred to as a sketch for the composer’s Seventeenth Symphony. The fragment has been performed in public on one or two occasions, but it is only now that a wider public is given the opportunity to hear it.
Read more![Ulf Wallin, Ralf Gothoni, Tapiola Sinfonietta - Schnittke - Quasi una sonata / Suite in the Old Style / Concerto Grosso No. 6 (2006) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/06/09/7318590014370_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Ulf Wallin, Ralf Gothoni, Tapiola Sinfonietta – Schnittke – Quasi una sonata / Suite in the Old Style / Concerto Grosso No. 6 (2006)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:04:26 minutes | 552 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
Early on in his career, the violin became an immensely important instrument for Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998). He developed a remarkable skill in composing for the instrument, resulting in a number of highly successful works of which several have been gathered on this disc. During the 1960s, a time when the violin was not the preferred instrument for the avant-garde as it carried too much historical ballast, Schnittke used it as tool for experimentation developing polystylism, an incorporation of historical sources or techniques into a modernistic context.
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