The Shepherd on the Rock by Julian Bliss

Various composers

Julian Bliss

The Shepherd on the Rock

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Signum Classics
UPC: 0635212042922
Catnr: SIGCD 429
Release date: 12 February 2016
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Label
Signum Classics

UPC
0635212042922

Catalogue number
SIGCD 429

Release date
12 February 2016

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

A lasting love affair with the clarinet amongst composers from the dawn until the dusk of the Romantic era (i.e. from Schubert to Strauss) is the key takeaway of this Signum release. In recognition, a trio of leading British soloists – clarinetist Julian Bliss, soprano Ailish Tynan and pianist Christopher Glynn – perform a sumptuous selection of the era’s chamber music by Brahms, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann and Richard Strauss. The program is centered around Schubert’s iconic The Shepherd on the Rock, virtually the final complete work that Schubert composed before his tragic death in 1828, age 31.

Romantische kamermuziek uitgevoerd door vooraanstaande Britse solisten
Een trio van vooraanstaande Britse solisten – klarinettist Julian Bliss, sopraan Ailish Tynan en pianist Christopher Glynn – voeren op dit album een luxueuze selectie kamermuziek van de Romantische componisten Brahms, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann en Strauss uit.

De kern van het programma wordt gevormd door Schuberts iconische Der Hirt auf dem Felsen, dat doet denken aan een miniatuurcantate. Het werk werd in 1828 gecomponeerd als bravourestuk voor de vermaarde operasopraan Anna Milder-Hauptmann. Het wijkt wat betreft zijn dramatische omvang en toevoeging van een obligate klarinetpartij af van Schuberts Lieder. De gedenkwaardige, elegante opening leidt naar een echt Schubertiaans middendeel, en het afsluitende allegretto loopt over in de stralende afwachting van de lente. Het zou het laatste complete werk worden dat Schubert voor zijn tragische dood op 31-jarige leeftijd zou componeren.

Artist(s)

Julian Bliss (clarinet)

Julian Bliss is one of the world’s finest clarinettists, excelling as a concerto soloist, chamber musician, recitalist, jazz artist, and masterclass leader. He has inspired a generation of young players and introduced a substantial new audience to his instrument. Julian started playing the clarinet aged four and went on to study in the United States at the University of Indiana and in Germany under Sabine Meyer, turning professional aged just twelve. In recital and chamber music he has played at most of the world’s leading festivals and halls, including Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Gstaad, New York’s Lincoln Center, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Verbier, and London’s Wigmore Hall. As a soloist, he has appeared with a wide range of international orchestras, including the Auckland...

In recital and chamber music he has played at most of the world’s leading festivals and halls, including Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Gstaad, New York’s Lincoln Center, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Verbier, and London’s Wigmore Hall. As a soloist, he has appeared with a wide range of international orchestras, including the Auckland Philharmonia, BBC Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Paris, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Sao Paolo Symphony and the Queensland Symphony.

Excellent reviews, record of the week spots and media attention flow from his recording output. In 2021, releases on Signum Records included Brahms Clarinet Sonatas with pianist James Baillieu, and an EP of Julian’s arrangements for clarinet of wind ensemble works by legends of the US band world John Mackey, Frank Ticheli and Eric Whitacre. Other albums include Mozart and Weber Quintets with the Carducci String Quartet; Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock with Ailish Tynan (soprano) and Christopher Glynn (piano); Steve Reich’s New York Counterpoint; Mozart and Nielsen’s Clarinet Concertos with the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

With the launch of Bliss Music in 2020, Julian’s arrangements of a selection of pieces for clarinet and piano have been made available as sheet music. These include Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata Op. 19, the third movement of which has been set as a Grade 6 piece on the new London College of Music clarinet syllabus.

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Christopher Glynn (piano)

Christopher Glynn is a Grammy award-winning pianist and one of the UK’s best- known accompanists and chamber musicians. He combines his performing life with the role of Artistic Director of the Ryedale Festival, where he has been praised by The Times as a ‘visionary’ and ‘inspired programmer’.
His recital partners have included Sir Thomas Allen, John Mark Ainsley, Benjamin Appl, Fleur Barron, Julian Bliss, Claire Booth, Ian Bostridge, Allan Clayton, Dame Sarah Connolly, Bernarda Fink, Dame Emma Kirkby, Steven Isserlis, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, Jonas Kaufmann, Dame Felicity Lott, Christopher Maltman, Mark Padmore, Ian Partridge, Joan Rodgers, Kate Royal, Kathryn Rudge, Nicky Spence, Bryn Terfel, Sir John Tomlinson, Robin Tritschler, Ailish Tynan, Roderick Williams and many others. He also performs with a wide variety of chamber ensembles, with choirs including The Sixteen, VOCES8 and the Eric Whitacre Singers, and on historic pianos with artists including Rachel Podger.
Recent highlights include performances at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Edinburgh and Aldeburgh Festivals, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Vienna Konzerthaus, Southbank Centre, BBC Proms and tours to Japan, USA, Canada, Brazil, China and South Asia.
In 2015, Chris founded a Lieder in English project to bring classical song to a wider audience, initially by commissioning Jeremy Sams to create new English versions of song cycles by Schubert, Schumann and Wolf, which have been performed widely and are being recorded for Signum Classics.
His many awards include the accompaniment prize in the 2001 Kathleen Ferrier competition, the 2002 Geoffrey Parsons Award and the 2003 Gerald Moore Award. He has made many acclaimed and ground- breaking recordings and in 2021 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music.

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Ailish Tynan (vocals)

Composer(s)

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer. Schubert already died before his 32nd birthday, but was extremely prolific during his lifetime. His output consists of over six hundred secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music. Appreciation of his music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works. Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers of the late Classical and early Romantic eras and is one of the most frequently performed composers of the early nineteenth century.
It was in the genre of the Lied that Schubert made his most indelible mark. Prior to Schubert's influence, Lieder tended toward a strophic, syllabic treatment of text, evoking the folksong qualities engendered by the stirrings of Romantic nationalism. Schubert expanded the potentialities of the genre like no other composer before.

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Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.
Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in C are among his most famous. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication which he jointly founded.
In 1840, Schumann married Friedrich Wieck's daughter Clara, against the wishes of her father, following a long and acrimonious legal battle, which found in favour of Clara and Robert. Clara also composed music and had a considerable concert career as a pianist, the earnings from which, before her marriage, formed a substantial part of her father's fortune.
Schumann suffered from a mental disorder, first manifesting itself in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive episode, which recurred several times alternating with phases of ‘exaltation’ and increasingly also delusional ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic items. After a suicide attempt in 1854, Schumann was admitted to a mental asylum, at his own request, in Endenich near Bonn. Diagnosed with "psychotic melancholia", Schumann died two years later in 1856 without having recovered from his mental illness.

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Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer is such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.
Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished.
Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Within his meticulous structures is embedded, however, a highly romantic nature.

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Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; his tone poems, including Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, and An Alpine Symphony; and other instrumental works such as Metamorphosen and his Oboe Concerto. Strauss was also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire. Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier, Elektra, Die Frau ohne Schatten and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; his tone poems, including Don Juan, Death and Transfiguration, and An Alpine Symphony; and other instrumental works such as Metamorphosen and his Oboe Concerto. Strauss was also a prominent conductor in Western Europe and the Americas, enjoying quasi-celebrity status as his compositions became standards of orchestral and operatic repertoire.
Strauss, along with Gustav Mahler, represents the late flowering of German Romanticism after Richard Wagner, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style.

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Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric Chopin is one of the greatest composers of the Romantic piano tradition. He was a master in making the small form great. His ballades, mazurkas, polonaises, preludes, etudes and nocturnes all belong to the most popular standard works for piano ever written. As a child prodigy, Chopin grew up in a middle class family, who lived among the literati of Warsaw. When in 1830 the November Uprising broke out in Poland, the twenty year old Chopin stayed in Vienna. He became an exile and never returned to his mother country. He eventually settled in Paris. He avoided public concerts, but he did like performing in small settings, such as salons and at home for his friends. This way, Chopin built a reputation as an exceptional pianist, teacher and composer.
Chopin brought a unique synthesis between the Viennese bravado and the French/English lyric style. Even though his pieces often are technically very demanding, the focus was always on creating a lyric expression and poetic atmosphere. He invented the instrumental ballade, and brought salongenres to a higher level with his many innovations and refinements.

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