From the Street by Ivana Gavrić

Leoš Janáček, Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev

Ivana Gavrić

From the Street

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Champs Hill
UPC: 5060212590275
Catnr: CHRCD 026
Release date: 01 September 2011
Buy

1 CD ✓ in stock	€ 19.95	Buy

Label
Champs Hill

UPC
5060212590275

Catalogue number
CHRCD 026

Release date
01 September 2011

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Ivana Gavrić made her debut on Champs Hill Records in 2010, when her playing described as "altogether of an extraordinary calibre" by BBC Music Magazine who also made her Newcomer of the Year in their 2011 BBC Music Magazine Awards.

Her second recording brings together works written between 1905 and 1912, by composers separated by nationality; but linked together in possibly the most exciting period in modern European culture.

Completing her survey of Janáčekʼs major solo piano works, Ivana puts On an overgrown path and the Sonata, 1. X. 1905 in the context of Ravelʼs Valses nobles et sentimentales and Prokofievʼs Sonata No. 2.

Ivana writes "Ever since my student years, the Ballets Russes have greatly fascinated me, in particular Prokofievʼs involvement with Diaghilev and the company. His second Sonata is a real statement by a young composer who has just formulated his style, full of his trademark soaring melodies and occasional sarcastic gestures."

At a similar time and as if in another world, Janáček was finding his unique style at his own pace. He uses Moravian folk melodies first in the opening numbers of the Path, and more confidently in the Sonata. His harmonies and textures develop, becoming far more daring and introverted in the later-composed and more obscure numbers of the Path. Like Prokofiev, melody was key for Janáček, although in a more fractured, febrile state.

"I have always been drawn to the brash, brass-like chords at the start of Ravelʼs Valses nobles et sentimentales" adds Ivana. "They open the work with such a rude gesture, later melting into more sensuous and quirky takes on the waltz which end in an epilogue: a hazy recollection of ʻthe night before.ʼ"

Artist(s)

Ivana Gavrić (piano)

Pianist ivana gavrić created a sensation with her debut disc In the Mists, winning BBC Music Magazine newcomer of the Year 2011 for ‘playing of an altogether extraordinary calibre’. Her ‘superlative’ (International Record Review) and ‘hypnotically compelling’ (BBC Music Magazine) second disc From the Street again enchanted critics and audiences worldwide. This album is her third collaboration with champs Hill records.
named Gramophone’s ‘One to Watch’ and BBC Music Magazine’s ‘rising Star’, ivana has performed on the major concert platforms in the UK including the Wigmore Hall, royal albert Hall and royal festival Hall, as well as across Europe, in canada, Japan and russia. attracting considerable praise for her interpretations of Janáček’s music in particular, ivana performed his concertino and LH-concerto Capriccio with the rPS award-winning aurora Orchestra, conducted by nicholas collon. ivana has also curated festivals dedicated to Janáček’s solo and chamber works.
With a broadening international solo career, ivana’s ‘beautiful sound, musical integrity’ (Gramophone) are often heard in regular live performances on BBc radio 3 and 4. also a dedicated chamber musician, ivana performed with violinist Maxim vengerov in 2007 as part of Live Music now, the outreach scheme established by the late Lord Menuhin. She has partnered colleagues on the concert platform in festivals in the UK and Europe, taken part in the iMS Prussia cove Open chamber Music Sessions and is an alumna of the Britten-Pears Young artist Programme. Outside the concert hall she is featured playing chopin and Beethoven in BBc2’s adaptation of The Line of Beauty, and Bach in anthony Minghella’s film Breaking and Entering.

less

Composer(s)

Maurice Ravel

Joseph Maurice Ravel was a French composer who is often associated with impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.
Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the Conservatoire Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity, incorporating elements of baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, Boléro (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. He made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.
As a slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas, and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies and only one religious work. Many of his works exist in two versions: a first, piano score and a later orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.

less

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev was born in the countryside of Ukraine. He studied from 1903 at the conservatory of St Petersburg, under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Anatoli Liadov among others. He was educated as a composer, pianist and conductor. Initially, he made a name for himself as a pianist. In 1918, he left the Soviet Union for the USA, but wasn't able to succeed, and he decided to move to Paris in 1920. His concert tours brought him back to the Soviet Union in 1927, who lured him back for good in 1936. Prokofiev died in march 1953, on the same day as Joseph Stalin.
Prokofiev is considered as one of the greatest Russian composers of the twentieth century, even though he wasn't a great innovator. He generally applied the strict classical forms and structures to his works and focused on a classical tonality, with a few exceptions of expressive dissonants and incidental bitonality. Yet, he is only explicitly neoclassicistic in his popular 'Classical Symphony', his first symphony composed in 1917. Many of his works show his humour, while his later works presented his darker, more serious side. One of his best known works is the musical fairytale Peter and the Wolf, which is popular among children all over the world.

less

Leoš Janáček

Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer and folklorist. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style. Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvořák. His later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis, first evident in the opera Jenůfa, which was premiered in 1904 in Brno. The success of Jenůfa (often called the 'Moravian national opera') at Prague in 1916 gave Janáček access to the world's great opera stages. Janáček's later works are his most celebrated. They include operas such as Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen, the...

Leoš Janáček was a Czech composer and folklorist. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic folk music to create an original, modern musical style.
Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research and his early musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvořák. His later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis, first evident in the opera Jenůfa, which was premiered in 1904 in Brno. The success of Jenůfa (often called the "Moravian national opera") at Prague in 1916 gave Janáček access to the world's great opera stages. Janáček's later works are his most celebrated. They include operas such as Káťa Kabanová and The Cunning Little Vixen, the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass, the rhapsody Taras Bulba, two string quartets, and other chamber works. Along with Antonín Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana, he is considered one of the most important Czech composers.

less