Various Composers - The 12 Seasons (David Aaron Carpenter)

Information

• Astor Piazzolla - Estaciónes porteñas
• Alexey Shor - Four Seasons of Manhattan
• Antonio Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, Op. 8

David Aaron Carpenter, viola

Salomé Chamber Orchestra

Date: 2016

Label: Warner Classics

https://www.warnerclassics.com/release/12-seasons

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Review

Couplings of the ‘seasonal’ sets by Vivaldi and Piazzolla have proliferated in concert and on record since Gidon Kremer commissioned Leonid Desyatnikov to write an orchestration of the latter, specifically to accompany the former. For this CD, David Aaron Carpenter has gone one better, adding a set by Russian–American composer Alexey Shor. Although purportedly about Manhattan, Shor’s predominantly melancholic music has more than a whiff of the shtetl about it; only the concluding Spring section allows a view of the proverbial silver lining in an otherwise overcast sky. Shor is composer-in-residence with the Salomé Chamber Orchestra, the New York-based ensemble founded and led by the three Carpenter siblings. His music is perfectly tailored to the band’s considerable strengths, prominent among which is David Aaron Carpenter’s sensuous sound, which is consistently beautiful throughout his instrument’s range and proves especially sweet in its uppermost register.

Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires is performed in Desyatnikov’s arrangement, with slight adjustments of the solo part for the viola, the colour of which ideally suits this wistfully nostalgic music. Conversely, Vivaldi’s solo violin part suffers when performed with the inevitable octave transpositions, brilliant as the playing per se indisputably is: in Spring’s slow movement, the solo viola and the orchestral viola part do get in each other’s way, and Winter’s homely interlude is similarly compromised.

The recording quality is excellent but its balance is partial to viola player Carpenter, occasionally to the detriment of orchestral detail. Cellist Mihai Marica contributes idiomatic solos to Piazzolla’s Autumn and Winter. Each of the Salomé members is on his or her collective toes, bringing Piazzolla’s rhythms and the virtuoso string writing throughout to exhilarating life.

-- Carlos María Solare, The Strad

More reviews:
https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-12-seasons-vivaldi-piazzolla-shor-mw0002921398

https://www.amazon.com/12-Seasons-David-Aaron-Carpenter/dp/B01B71XIQI

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David Aaron Carpenter is an American violist and was the first Prize Winner of the 2006 Walter W. Naumburg Viola Competition. Growing up in Great Neck, Long Island, he studied at the Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, Italy’s Accademia Chigiana, Switzerland’s International Music Academy, and the Verbier Festival Academy. Among his teachers are Pinchas Zukerman, Roberto Diaz, Seiji Ozawa, Nobuko Imai and Yuri Bashmet. Since 2003 Carpenter has been performing with leading musicians and orchestras in the United States and Europe. Along with his two siblings, the trio perform as The Carpenters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Aaron_Carpenter

http://davidaaroncarpenter.com/

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