Look no further for this year's song of the summer, it's Elinor Frey's latest release, Complete Cello Sonatas by Angelo Fiorè. An ideal combination of relaxation, inspiration, and discovery, Frey combines this unknown Italian cellist and composer with her colleagues for nonstop listening pleasure. Recorded here for the first time are nine of his cello works: three Sonatas, two Sinfonias, and four Trattenimenti. WBAA's John Clare spoke to Elinor about the Passacaille Records offering.
It's a release that you can put the top down, turn up the volume, and listen all summer long! Find out more about this new release and Elinor here. Be sure to listen to WBAA Classical on 101.3FM and online at WBAA.org for new releases!
Fascinated with the cello’s origins and the creative process of new music, Elinor Frey plays both period and modern instruments. Her debut album, Dialoghi, is titled for the solo piece written for her by Steven Stucky. Her other recent release on the Belgian label Passacaille, Berlin Sonatas with Lorenzo Ghielmi on fortepiano, was nominated for a Juno award for Best Classical CD, Solo & Chamber Music and won the 2015 Québec Opus Prize for Early Music CD of the year. Her first Baroque CD, La voce del violoncello, was praised for its “careful scholarship and brilliant layering of moods and tempos” (Toronto Star) and for the “honest, reflective beauty of her music making” (Strings). Her performance of this program was the winner of the public prize at the 2013 Utrecht Early Music Festival Fringe.
Frey’s honours include a US-Italy Fulbright Fellowship where she studied baroque cello with Paolo Beschi, the SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship, American Musicological Society, and Canada Council for the Arts grants facilitating her work on Italian cello music. In recent seasons she has performed with Les Idées hereuses, Il Gardellino, Ensemble Caprice, Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, Arion, Theatre of Early Music, Les Violon du Roy, and Arion, as well as with her quartet, Pallade Musica, grand prize winners of the 2012 Early Music America Baroque Performance Competition and second prize winners in the 2014 International Van Wassenaer Competition in Utrecht. Frey holds degrees from McGill, Mannes, and Juilliard.