David Grimal

David Grimal, Les Dissonances – Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No.1 & Symphony No.5 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 5, 2023 · Comments off

Les Dissonances made its first recordings for Ambroise-Naïve, the critical success of which led to the birth of its own label in March 2014.
To celebrate its 10 anniversary, the orchestra’s new Shostakovich album, recorded live at the Opéra de Dijon, is presented complete with an extended tribute piece by Xavier Phillips in memory of his mentor, Mstislav Rostropovich, dedicatee of Shostakovich’s two cello concertos. It follows the label’s high production and design values, offering the disc as part of a hardbound book containing detailed programme notes, Phillips’ essay, artist biographies and monochrome photographs.
“My memories are of an immensely gifted pedagogue, whose advice could be very diverse in nature. With me his approach wasn’t really focused on the instrumental dimension. It was above all a way of talking about music, with images, impressions, sensations, anecdotes. He shed new light, he showed you things, he made you think”. –Xavier Phillips

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Alexandre Gattet, Les Dissonances, David Grimal – Mozart: Oboe Concerto & ‘Gran Partita’ (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · June 6, 2023 · Comments off

Oboe Concerto in C major K314: All his life, Mozart (1756 – 1791) was an indefatigable traveller, especially during his childhood and youth. On 22 September 1777 he left Salzburg with his mother, en route for Augsburg, Mannheim and then Paris, with a view to obtaining a secure position and a regular income. The first reference to the Oboe Concerto appears in a letter from Leopold Mozart to his son dated 15 October 1777: ‘. . . if you had a copy of your oboe concerto, Perwein might enable you to make an honest penny in Wallerstein.’ The oboist Perwein had left the service of Archbishop Colloredo of Salzburg to take up a post in Wallerstein; his departure had led to the engagement in April 1777 of an Italian virtuoso, Giuseppe Ferlendis, for whom this concerto was initially conceived.

On 4 November Mozart answered his father. During his stay in Mannheim, he had discovered among the members of one of the nest orchestras of the day a small community of outstanding musicians who were to become his friends, including the Konzertmeister Cannabich and the first oboe Ramm. Mozart related that he had made the acquaintance of the oboist, ‘who plays very well and has a delightfully pure tone. I have made him a present of my oboe concerto . . . and the fellow is quite crazy with delight. I played this concerto to him today on the pianoforte at Cannabich’s, and although everybody knew that I was the composer, it was very well received! Nobody said that it was not well composed, because the people here do not understand such matters . . .’ (The last sentence is of course sarcastically intended.)

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Les Dissonances & David Grimal – Chausson, Ravel, Enescu (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · May 23, 2023 · Comments off

The works of George Enescu, a Romanian composer nurtured on the musical traditions of his country, also has deep roots in the French musical world of the early twentieth century. This disc explores that twofold ancestry, which made Enescu, an outstandingly charismatic personality, a veritable bridge between Romania and France.

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David Grimal – Poulenc, Stravinsky, Prokofiev: Violin sonatas (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · April 2, 2023 · Comments off

Three sonatas, three composers, three different universes, but three pieces dating from the same period, the 1930s and 1940s, between the rise of the totalitarian regimes and the Second World War and written for the same forces, a violin-piano duo.

It was the Paris Opéra that saw the 1928 premiere of the ballet Le Baiser de la fée (The Fairy’s Kiss), which Igor Stravinsky concocted from pieces by Tchaikovsky. Movements from this neo-classical score were rearranged in part four years later, with the help of the violinist Samuel Dushkin, under the title Divertimento.

Having returned to his native country, which had become the USSR, Sergei Prokofiev began composing his First Violin Sonata in 1938 for the legendary David Oistrakh, its dedicatee. The work was not to be completed until 1946, and Oistrakh played its two Andante movements at Prokofiev’s funeral.

In the meantime, Francis Poulenc had conceived his own Violin Sonata in occupied Paris in 1942-43 with input from the great violinist Ginette Neveu, who premiered it at the Salle Gaveau in June 1943 with Poulenc at the piano.

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David Grimal – Bach: Sonatas & Partitas (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · April 2, 2023 · Comments off

David Grimal performs in the world’s leading venues, including Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Vienna Musikverein, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Berlin Konzerthaus, the Wigmore Hall in London, the Zurich Tonhalle, Lincoln Center in New York, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, the Ferenc Liszt Academy in Budapest, the Victoria Hall in Geneva, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the National Concert Hall in Taiwan and Bozar in Brussels.

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Viktoriia Vitrenko, David Grimal, Luigi Gaggero & Niek de Groot – György Kurtág: Scenes (Scenes from a Novel, Op. 19, Eight Duos for Violin and Cimbalom, Op. 4, Seven Songs, Op. 22, In memory of a Winter evening, Op. 8, Several Movements from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s Sudelbücher ‘Scrapbooks’, Op. 37a & Hommage à Be (2019) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · February 24, 2023 · Comments off

Viktoriia Vitrenko, David Grimal, Luigi Gaggero & Niek de Groot – György Kurtág: Scenes (Scenes from a Novel, Op. 19, Eight Duos for Violin and Cimbalom, Op. 4, Seven Songs, Op. 22, In memory of a Winter evening, Op. 8, Several Movements from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s Sudelbücher ‘Scrapbooks’, Op. 37a & Hommage à Be (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:22 minutes | 1,11 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © audite Musikproduktion

In the history of music, György Kurtág is a figure apart. Born in Hungary in 1926, he stood aside from the great ideological movements of his time and created his own personal language in solitude, thinking of music as he put it, “as an ongoing search”. But while doggedly independent, he was also a man of culture whose language developed in the shadow of two great teachers: Bartók and Beethoven, the former following on largely from the latter. A champion of the small form, Kurtág also drew inspiration (when he wasn’t revisiting them explicitly) from Bach, Schubert and Schumann.

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David Grimal, Philippe Cassard & Anne Gastinel – Beethoven: Ghost & Archduke Trios (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 8, 2022 · Comments off

Philippe Cassard, Anne Gastinel and David Grimal present these two Beethovenian masterpieces. The chosen approach is one of colour and generosity. On this astonishing disc we meet a Beethoven come down from his pedestal, who is human and even jovial. Where so many others offer rigidity of discourse and fussy sonorities, the three musicians illuminate these metaphysical pages with the finesse, freshness and grace of the aquarellist.

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Les Dissonances, David Grimal – Beethoven: Violin Concerto & 7th Symphony (2010) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 8, 2022 · Comments off

„Faced with such an enormous choice of recordings of the Beethoven concerto, this one at least has a unique selling point in new cadenzas composed for David Grimal by Brice Pauset. Although they remain within the bounds of propriety, that for the first movement is unusual in its inclusion at its mid-point of an orchestral role with solo piano. Otherwise the performance, taken from a Dijon concert in 2010, is a rewardingly fresh reading of the printed score. Maybe the central Larghetto is a little slow, but the whole account has an unhurried feel, and Grimal’s long lyric lines are shaped with beauty and much affection.“ (David Denton, theStrad)

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David Grimal – Ysaÿe: Six Sonatas for solo violin, Op. 27 (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · December 8, 2022 · Comments off

David Grimal’s first recording for La Dolce Volta contains the Six Sonatas for unaccompanied violin by Eug`ene Ysa”ye, an extraordinary violinist who played in his era a role compa- rable to that of Niccol`o Paganini. They constitute peaks of virtuosity that few violinists can even contemplate tackling.

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Les Dissonances, David Grimal – Piazzolla, Vivaldi: Les quatre saisons (2010) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · October 17, 2022 · Comments off

This recording by French violinist David Grimal and the chamber orchestra Les Dissonances has a specific goal in mind: proceeds from its sale benefit the homeless through microcredit projects, and the group has performed live concerts for homeless audiences on the street. This unique enterprise should give buyers a strong incentive to purchase the album on its own, but what of the musical content in itself? There are lots of recordings of the Vivaldi Four Seasons violin concertos paired with the Cuatro estaciónes porteñas, or Four Seasons of the Port City (Buenos Aires), tangos by Astor Piazzolla, but this one is unusual in several respects. One is that the Piazzolla works are presented in the “arrangements” by Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov, which are really closer to recompositions than arrangements. Desyatnikov transforms the works into violin-and-orchestra pieces, which is really foreign to their essence. On top of that, he adds quotations from the Vivaldi concertos; his versions are specifically designed for performance in this combination. Grimal and Les Dissonances add a new wrinkle of their own: instead of having the Piazzolla/Desyatnikov seasons follow the Vivaldi concertos, they put the Piazzolla first. This actually works pretty well; the Piazzolla/Desyatnikov pieces, with their suggestions of motives from the Vivaldi, work well as introductions. The group doesn’t quite have the nerve to lead with Piazzolla/Desyatnikov, though, so there’s one tango (Primavera porteña) left over at the end. That disturbs the symmetry of the whole, and the Vivaldi performances, with their mushy sense of tempo, are no great shakes. None of this detracts from the originality of the whole project, in both social and musical terms.

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Les Dissonances, David Grimal – Brahms: Symphony No. 4 & Violin Concerto (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 10, 2022 · Comments off

Les Dissonances, David Grimal - Brahms: Symphony No. 4 & Violin Concerto (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download

World premiere: the Fourth Symphony of Brahms without a conductor. Les Dissonances reinvent the musical practice through a participatory organization where all share the same artistic standards. Violin and orchestra are one, the interpretation of the work being carried both by solar violin David Grimal and intense listening to the structure of the work by all the musicians. The unique sound of this record is based on the use of period instruments by Les Dissonances, all brilliant soloists from major European orchestras.
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David Grimal, Hans-Peter Hofmann and Les Dissonances – Bernstein & Schnittke (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · September 2, 2022 · Comments off

David Grimal, Hans-Peter Hofmann and Les Dissonances - Bernstein & Schnittke (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/88,2kHz] Download

David Grimal, Hans-Peter Hofmann and Les Dissonances – Bernstein & Schnittke (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:14:14 minutes | 1,32 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Les Dissonances

Concerto Grosso no.1: The USSR of the Cold War, then of the Perestroika era, saw the appearance from the 1960s onwards of a generation of composers born under Stalin (Denisov, Schnittke, Gubaidulina) who were at once dependent on his system, obliged to produce music ‘for the people’ ( lm scores, occasional and patriotic pieces), and motivated by the need to call it into question. More and more ‘dissident’ scores travelled clandestinely to the West to be performed, thus offering platforms for Soviet artists beyond their national frontiers. With the aim of channelling potential contestation, the Union of Soviet Composers organised events dedicated to modern music that received considerable attention. Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998), initially banned but subsequently impossible to ignore, found in these events a way of having his music played in the USSR. He was especially committed to the Moscow Autumn festival, at which he premiered many of his major works in collaboration with leading conductors and soloists (Gidon Kremer, Natalia Gutman, Gennady Rozhdestvensky).
With this work, Schnittke inaugurated in 1977 a series of six concerti grossi for different solo instruments. In the first of the cycle, the composer weaves the discourse between the interventions of the two solo violins, the harpsichord, the prepared piano and the string orchestra. He deploys the bases of his ‘polystylism’ by paying tribute to the Baroque roots of the genre through the use of the harpsichord and the heading of each movement: Prelude, Toccata, Recitativo, Cadenza, Rondo, Postlude. Unlike the neoclassicism of, say, Stravinsky, Schnittke conveys his relationship with history through a technique of ‘collage’ of atonal elements, popular music (the tango of the Rondo), his own lm music, and passages exploring micro-intervals.
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Les Dissonances, David Grimal – Beethoven: Symphony No. 3; Schubert: Symphony No. 8 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Studio Masters By admin · August 26, 2022 · Comments off

Les Dissonances, David Grimal - Beethoven: Symphony No. 3; Schubert: Symphony No. 8 (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz] Download

Les Dissonances, David Grimal – Beethoven: Symphony No. 3; Schubert: Symphony No. 8 (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:09:31 minutes | 679 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Les Dissonances

Symphony no.3 in E flat major op.55, ’Eroica’: During the summer of 1802 in Heiligenstadt, Beethoven sketched, among other works, his Third Symphony, the composition of which took him a year. On 26 August 1804, he wrote to his publisher Härtel to announce the dispatch of ‘a new grand symphony’: ‘The title of the symphony is really Bonaparte . . . – I think that it will interest the musical public.’ Beethoven had long passionately admired the Consul Bonaparte, but he was to hate the Emperor Napoleon I equally passionately when he learnt of his coronation on 2 December 1804. His pupil Ferdinand Ries portrays the scene: ‘He ew into a rage and cried out: “He too is nothing but an ordinary man!” . . . He went to the table, seized the title page from the top, tore it up completely and threw [the score] on the floor.’ And so the work became a ‘Heroic Symphony to celebrate the memory of a great man’, acquiring the subtitle ‘Eroica’ for posterity.

At the first performance on 7 April 1805, the work impressed the audience with its extraordinary dimensions for the time in terms of duration and breadth, especially the opening Allegro con brio in sonata form, the recapitulation of which is announced by a dramatic dissonance between the strings and the horns. The Marcia funebre widens the palette for the expression of feeling, from the affliction of the theme in the minor mode to the brighter mood generated by the modulations into the major. The Finale is no longer content to play the role of a brief, lively conclusion, but leads us through a rich itinerary of variations on a theme that Beethoven took from his ballet Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus (The Creatures of Prometheus). Yet the first listeners rejected the work, which they deemed too long and muddled, reproaching it for the very thing that has subsequently gained it its renown: for disturbing the ambient Classicism and throwing the gates of the Romantic era wide open.

Symphony no.8 in B minor D759, ’Unfinished’: In 1823, Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828) received the Diploma of Honour from the Styrian Music Society of Graz. In return, he sent his friend Josef Hüttenbrenner, a member of the society, a new work dedicated to it and dated 30 October 1822. Passing from Josef’s hands to those of his brother Anselm, the manuscript lay forgotten in a bottom drawer until it resurfaced in March 1860. Josef Hüttenbrenner mentioned in a letter to the musician Johann Herbeck that his brother ‘possessed a treasure in Schubert’s in B minor symphony, which we consider the equal of the great C major Symphony, his instrumental swansong, and of any of Beethoven’s symphonies – only it is unfinished’. It is to Herbeck that we owe the resurrection of the work and its first performance in 1865.
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