NACO is going to release four double CDS packed with all four Robert Schumann symphonies, all four Brahms symphonies and they “will be glued together with music by Clara,” he said. This will include her piano concerto and her piano sonata performed by the Venezuelan pianist Gabriella Montero, a piano trio featuring members of NACO and her Romances for violin and piano with Angela Hewitt and Yosuke Kawasaki, NACO’s concertmaster. The latter has already been recorded. Shelley said there will be songs by Clara Schumann recorded as well.

(Ethan was a sub in the viola section for the NACO recording of Brahms Symphony No.1)

With this celebratory, Grammy-nominated and JUNO-winning release completing his 14-year tenure as Music Director of the TSO, Peter Oundjian conducts an exquisite Vaughan Williams program, supported by an all-Canadian cast of star soloists, recorded live at Roy Thomson Hall in November 2017.

In the program notes for the concert preceding the recording, Oundjian declared: "Ralph Vaughan Williams was possibly England’s most significant composer, and he is a personal favourite of mine. This [recording] presents some of his finest works, featuring soloists from the Orchestra as well as some of Canada's most notable solo artists, and the Elmer Iseler Singers…. The lyrical and engaging Oboe Concerto is rarely heard, but it is one of his most inspired works. Serenade to Music showcases his exquisite vocal writing, which also figures prominently in the ravishingly beautiful Flos Campi, so surprisingly scored for solo viola, choir, and chamber orchestra. The Piano Concerto is more dramatic, with a juggernaut opening and a brilliant fugal finale."

(Ethan was a sub in the TSO viola section for this recording project)

For Guggenheim Fellow composer Elena Ruehr the appeal of the string quartet lies in the ability of four instruments to express an infinite range of emotional possibilities, to communicate across time. Her six string quartets attest to her enthusiasm for musical time-travel: echoes of Perotin, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Dvořák, Schoenberg and jazz are there, but the musical language is purely her own. Elena’s Six String Quartets are a magnum opus, three of them commissioned by the Cypress String Quartet, two by the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, and one an ASCAP Award winner.

Included in this new 2-CD set - released internationally on May 6, 2016 on Avie Records - are original, extensive and insightful program notes written by Jan Swafford, author of "Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph." Jan Swafford's biographies of composers Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms have established him as a revered music historian, capable of bringing his subjects vibrantly to life. His magnificent new biography of Ludwig van Beethoven peels away layers of legend to get to the living, breathing human being who composed some of the world's most iconic music. Swafford mines sources never before used in English-language biographies to reanimate the revolutionary ferment of Enlightenment-era Bonn, where Beethoven grew up and imbibed the ideas that would shape all of his future work. Swafford then tracks his subject to Vienna, capital of European music, where Beethoven built his career in the face of critical incomprehension, crippling ill health, romantic rejection, and 'fate's hammer', his ever-encroaching deafness. At the time of his death he was so widely celebrated that over ten thousand people attended his funeral.This book is a biography of Beethoven the man and musician, not the myth, and throughout, Swafford - himself a composer - offers insightful readings of Beethoven's key works. More than a decade in the making, this will be the standard Beethoven biography for years to come.

More Information on CSQ-AVIE releases: Avie Records website

Antonín Dvořák: Cypresses | String Quartet No.13 in G Major, Op.106

The acclaimed Cypress String Quartet plays the cycle of miniatures, inspired by unrequited love, from which the ensemble takes its name. More than three decades after writing Cypresses, Dvořák had turned from lovesick to homesick; a masterful demonstration of the intimate conversation of chamber music, the G major Quartet is also a song of thanksgiving for the composer’s return from the US to his native land. Previous discs from the CSQ have been praised by Gramophone for the ensemble's "intoxicating and lyrical" playing and "sheer instrumental mastery."

SUMMARY:

Award-winning composer Elena Ruehr’s AVIE debut, Averno (AV 2263), introduced three of her big and bold works for choir and orchestra. For her follow up, Ruehr scales down to intimate solo and chamber works for strings and piano, all with references to older music in some way. Baroque elements infuse Klein Suite for solo violin, Prelude Variations for viola and piano, and The Scarlatti Effect for piano trio. The three movements of the jazz-tinged Second Violin Sonata, are dedicated to people who have influenced Ruehr’s work: her composition teacher William Bolcom, jazz teacher Eddie Russ, and Oscar Peterson whom Ruehr met on New Year’s Eve 1980. Adrienne and Amy was written in honour of the pioneering American composer Amy Beach and her biographer Adrienne Fried Block. The virtuosic and lyrical title track for solo cello was inspired by Nobel Prize-winner Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani school pupil and education activist. Boston-based Ruehr, whose wide-ranging works are performed from coast to coast, teaches at MIT. Last year she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Following three acclaimed releases for AVIE surveying works by Dvořák, Schubert and contemporary Americans, the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet turns to the seminal string quartets of Beethoven, performing the five quartets from the composer’s middle period. Formed in 1996, the Cypresses added Beethoven to their repertoire early on. Their signature sound, which is clear and transparent, built up from the bottom register and layered like a pyramid, lends itself beautifully to the Middle String Quartets – the three “Rasumovskys,” the “Harp,” and the “Serioso.”

Included in this new box set - released internationally on November 11, 2014 on Avie Records - are original, extensive and insightful program notes written by Nicholas Mathews, professor at UC Berkeley.
Download Liner Notes Here (.pdf) / (.doc)

When people discuss the greatest contributions to the arts in Western civilization, names such as Shakespeare, da Vinci, and Beethoven inevitably arise. Proponents for Beethoven cite his five late quartets, which were the final works that he completed. In this three-disc set, reissued here on Avie Records, May 6 2016, the Cypress String Quartet brings a fresh voice of humanity and clarity to these monumental works.

The final disc completed for this set includes Beethoven's String Quartet in E-flat Major, Opus. 127 and his String Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132. These performances were recorded at Skywalker Sound by engineer Mark Willsher and produced by Cypress first violinist, Cecily Ward.

The Cypress String Quartet (Cecily Ward, violin; Tom Stone, violin; Ethan Filner, viola; and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello) is pleased to announce that on May 13, 2014 AVIE Records will release their new album Schubert: String Quintet and Quartettsatz, recorded in collaboration with the Quartet's good friend and renowned cellist Gary Hoffman in January 2013 at Skywalker Sound.