ALBÉNIZ Danzas españolas. Pequeños valses. Mazurkas de salon • Guillermo González (pn) • NAXOS 8.572196 (69:42)
Isaac Albéniz wrote some of the defining piano music of the Spanish school. By and large, this is not it. This disc, the third in Naxos’s Albéniz series, is devoted to salon music composed early in the composer’s life. At the time, he was known as a piano virtuoso who also gave lessons to young ladies to whom he dedicated many of his salon pieces, including all six of these mazurkas.
Premonitions of the mature Albéniz may be glimpsed in the Danzas españolas, which shares a pleasant lilt, usually in habanera rhythm, and the composer’s predilection for a melodic line in three against a languid accompanying figure in four. The pieces resemble Granados’s later set of Spanish Dances in their occasional underlying hint of melancholy, but those in Albéniz’s set are neither as formally diverse nor as pianistically challenging as are those of his slightly younger contemporary. Chopin is the predominant influence in the sets of waltzes and mazurkas. Once again the results, while mellifluous and polished, are no comparison to the works of the Polish master in terms of ingenuity and memorability.
González, a noted Albéniz specialist, has the kind of muscular technique necessary to tackle Iberia and the late masterpieces, but lacks delicacy in this refined repertoire. There would be no whispering or throat clearing in his salon! Overall, this is a pleasant collection but unrepresentative of the composer’s most exciting work. If you are curious about the antecedents of Iberia, it is worth a listen.
Mallorca - Seville - Granada - Co?rdoba - mentioning these cities conjures up memories and imaginations that are associated with the magic of Spain. Nobody knew better how to capture these pictures in music than the piano virtuoso Isaac Albe?niz. The American- Italian guitarist Stephen Marchionda who lives in Spain, a renowned interpreter of Spanish music, lends new colours to this musical declaration of love.
Stephen Marchionda resides in Barcelona and is a proven expert in the field of Spanish music. This production is his second release on MDG, once again in the finest 2+2+2 SACD technique, which makes the listener feel that he or she is there in person. A fine and opulent result!
Great piano composers did not confine themselves to writing piano sonatas. Many of them wrote dances, too: minuets, sarabandes, gavottes and particularly waltzes. The tradition of great composers writing and arranging dances starts with Bach and Rameau, encompasses Mozart, Schubert, Brahms and Tchaikovsky and ends with Maurice Ravel, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, whose Waltz No. 2 is regularly played on German classical radio stations. The only problem was that these dances were too easy for the virtuoso pianists, which is why some of these artists turned unassuming minuets waltzes and polkas into glittering virtuosic pieces which could be played only by professional pianists. One of the greatest pianists of all time was also a great arranger of music, Leopold Godowsky. This American virtuoso of Polish extraction arranged hundreds of pieces by other composers, especially works by Chopin and the waltz king Johann Strauss, and turned them into sparkling studies and encores, that test the technique and stamina of even the most accomplished player. The Viennese pianist and Beethoven pupil Carl Czerny, for generations the specter of all piano students and today remembered for his etudes, is also the composer of a charming arrangement of Franz Schubert’s bittersweet mourning waltz. Catherine Gordeladze, a native of Tiflis, Georgia, today lives and works out of Frankfurt, Germany. Ms. Gordeladze studied the piano in her native Georgia, Frankfurt and Weimar and is the winner of prestigious prizes and competitions. She has been playing with renowned orchestras in major concert venues all over the world. The artist gives piano recitals in many countries and is also much sought after as a chamber music partner. In her award-winning albums, which have been praised by critics and the public alike, the pianist concentrates on challenging virtuoso pieces apart from the mainstream repertoire.
Uta Weyand’s latest album is devoted to music from the year 1892, played on an instrument made that same year. It recreates a very specific historical moment where the instrument and the music can be seen and heard as contemporary. German-born pianist Uta Weyand comes from a musical family. The daughter of a choir conductor and an organist, she grew up with choral music and the organ repertoire. During childhood she expressed her extraordinary musical talent not only at the piano, but also excelled at the violin, voice, and music composition. The Post and Courier (South Carolina) predicted her success, stating, “Weyand is a pianist of genius, who should have a long career.” And the Nuremberg News confirmed, “…especially admirable is her amazing ability to make the great Steinway sing and wrest many captivating colors from it.” After her studies in Freiburg (Germany), Baltimore, and Madrid, with Elza Kolodin, Vitaly Margulis, Leon Fleisher, and Joaquín Soriano, Ms. Weyand has had great international success, giving numerous piano recitals and appearing with orchestras in most European countries, Russia, Brazil, Cuba, and the United States.
Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez / Kellermann, Karlsen, LPO, Norrbotten NEO
BIS
SACD
$21.99Jan 01, 2021
Inspired by Miles Davis’s legendary album Sketches of Spain, this project intend to conjure up Spain ‘as if through a prism - as a concept rather than a place’. Guitarist Jacob Kellermann and conductor Christian Karlsen worked with hyped young composers Francisco Coll and Pete Harden, who have each contributed a concertante work for guitar and ensemble. With Turia, Coll has returned to his roots – the dried-out river that once flowed through his (and Rodrigo’s) hometown Valencia. He has described it as his most ‘flamenco-colored’ work so far, intended to ‘evoke the light and the respective shadows’ of Spain. Turia is followed by two classics of Spanish music: Manuel de Falla’s Homenaje for solo guitar and Evocación by Isaac Albéniz, here in Karlsen’s atmospheric arrangement for ensemble. The last word on the disc goes to British composer Pete Harden. His affinity to jazz and non-classical tradition shine through Solace and Shimmer, which is based on the same chords that underpins Rodrigo’s Adagio. Kellermann enjoys strong support by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (in Concierto de Aranjuez) and the seven members of Norrbotten NEO.
REVIEW:
Kellerman has everything the Concierto de Aranjuez needs: excellent technical skills, singing tone, impulsiveness. His nail tone is relatively soft, not hard-edged; his timbral contrasts are heard more with vibrant fingertip tone. And the London Symphony has the horsepower as well as the fine soloists— especially the wonderful English horn in II—to make this a reading to remember.
The piano works by Isaac Albeníz range from indisputable masterpieces to highly enjoyable salon music, the composer painting with bright Spanish colours as well as the hues of Classicism or Romanticism. On eight previous volumes, Miguel Baselga has guided listeners through the music of his compatriot, earning acclaim from reviewers worldwide: ‘pianism of the highest order’ (MusicWeb-International); ‘berauschend agil und rhytmisch spannungsgeladen’ (PIANONews); ‘un pianista elegante y refinado’ (CD Compact). With the assistance of Albeníz scholar Jacinto Torres, Baselga has been able to access rare editions and scores, and his exhaustive series includes the Marcha militar by a nine-year-old Albeníz (Vol. 7), as well as the four books that make up the celebrated Iberia (Vols. 1-4) and the composer's only two scores for piano and orchestra (Vol. 6). On the present disc Baselga offers us the chance to hear the last of the three Improvisations, transcribed from a phonograph recording made by Albeníz in 1903. A large part of the programme is from the late 1880s, however, a period during which the composer was a fixture at the fashionable salons of Madrid, and composed works in which the influence of composers such as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin is often evident. Recuerdos de viaje, one of the best-known works from the period, nevertheless displays the Spanish flavours that were to become one of the distinguishing features of the music of Isaac Albeníz.
Issac Albeniz, the pre-eminent Spanish composer was a prolific composer, especially of piano music. Presented here is a collection of his works performed by the celebrated pianist, Martin Jones. Included in this collection are pieces that were left unfinished at the time of Albeniz’s death and completed by Martin Jones. Martin Jones has been one of Britain’s most highly regarded solo pianists since first coming to international attention in 1968 when he received the Dame Myra Hess Award. The same year he made his London debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and his New York debut at Carnegie Hall, and ever since has been in demand for recitals and concerto performances on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a prolific recording artist and his many major projects include the complete solo piano works of Mendelssohn, Brahms, Debussy, Grainger, Stravinsky, Korngold, Szymanowski, Granados, Guastavino, Mompou, Ernesto Halffter, Joaquin Nin, Has Gál, Jean Françaix, Jean Roger-Ducasse, and Alan Richardson.
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REVIEW:
Altogether this is a well stocked and representative survey of Albéniz's colourful and imaginative piano music and Martin Jones is as always a convincing advocate; I am always impressed with character and panache that he brings to all that he plays. The liner notes are informative though are in English only. A marvellous collection of the best of Albéniz' piano music.
In June of 1922, a cultural fiesta took place on the grounds of Granada’s Alhambra palace, organized by Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca. The aim of the event was to preserve the ‘purity’ of flamenco art and the opening performance was given by 29-year-old guitarist Andrés Segovia. Ironically, Segovia played de Falla’s Hommage to Claude Debussy (featured on this album) – a work which can hardly be described as pure flamenco. But this can be seen as symptomatic of an important trait in the music of 20th-century Spain: Certain composers defended what they believed to be a noble, gallant and Castilian ideal, while others embarked on an quest to restore the ‘lost purity’ of the peasantry, but embracing Modernism and Impressionism as stylistic tools in order to do so. This is demonstrated on Franz Halász’s new disc, which provides a context – Milán’s Pavanes from the 16th century, Fernando Sor’s ‘Malbroug’ Variations from 1827 – while juxtaposing later works that embody the described, conflicting attitudes. This makes for a colorful and varied program, taking in highlights in the guitar literature such as Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra as well as Joaquín Turina’s Guitar Sonata, here recorded – for the first time – from a copy of Turina’s original manuscript, and not Segovia’s published version with numerous changes. The winner of a Latin Grammy, Franz Halász is a highly acclaimed guitarist who here also makes his own contribution to the repertoire of his instrument, with his own arrangements of de Falla and Isaac Albéniz.
REVIEW:
This varied, highly atmospheric album of Spanish guitar music gives Halasz the opportunity to use a multiplicity of stylistic elements, and his sense of dramatic progression is particularly impressing. Joy of playing, love for the instrument and the music, are further essential components of his interpretations, making this a valuable and attractive recording.
In an exciting collaboration, guitarists Adam del Monte and Mak Grgic journey through the wide landscape of Spanish and Latin American music. With brand new arrangements they explore classics of Iberian Romanticism from Albeniz and Granados as well as promoting the vivid ethnic rhythms of Ginastera and the beautiful filmic nostalgia of Carlos Gardel, master of the tango-song. The bittersweet poetic richness of Hector Stamponi is balanced by del Monte’s own original flamenco dances, which take the genre into vivid new directions. Adam del Monte and Mak Grgic make up Duo Deloro, who are in the vanguard of the new Classical/Flamenco movement.
Albeniz: Piano Music - Espana; Deseo; Zortzico; Yvonne En Visite!
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Nov 11, 2014
Volume 6 of this complete edition focuses in the main on Albéniz’s richly varied, early salon style. + It includes the dazzling Chopin influenced Vals Champagne, the Estudio de concierto which rivals Liszt for virtuosity, and the famous Tango from España: Seis hojas de Álbum, a set which conjures up Spain in its rhythms, harmonies and sense of drama. + Written a year before the composer’s death, Yvonne en visite! includes a humorous scene during a pupil’s reluctant performance, while the Marcha militar is Albéniz’s earliest work, composed at the age of eight.
Albéniz: The Complete Piano Music / Baselga, Lü, Tenerife Symphony Orchestra
BIS
CD
$89.99Aug 06, 2021
The piano works by Isaac Albéniz range from indisputable masterpieces to ravishing salon music, the composer painting with bright Spanish colors as well as the hues of Classicism and Romanticism. On nine discs, originally released between 1998 and 2017 and gathered here, Miguel Baselga guides listeners through the music of his compatriot, earning acclaim from reviewers worldwide: ‘pianism of the highest order’ (MusicWeb-International); ‘berauschend agil und rhytmisch spannungsgeladen’ (PIANONews); ‘un pianista elegante y refinado’ (CD Compact). Composed between December 1905 and January 1908, only a year before the death of Albéniz, Iberia is the crowning achievement of the composer’s genius. Marking a high point of the post-romantic piano literature, this collection of ‘12 nouvelles impressions’ was to serve as an endless source of inspiration for other composers throughout the twentieth century, admired by Debussy and Messiaen, who called it 'the marvel of the piano'. Baselga’s exhaustive series places Iberia in its proper context, and with the assistance of Albéniz scholar Jacinto Torres, he has been able to access original editions and scores, including rarities such as the Marcha militar by a nine-year-old Albéniz and the composer's two scores for piano and orchestra. We are also given the opportunity to hear three improvisations, transcribed from a phonograph recording made by the composer in 1903.
REVIEW:
Miguel Baselga was the first and (I believe) only pianist to have recorded Albéniz’s complete solo piano works, a project encompassing nine CDs. The cycle has been reissued in a boxed set, together with each individual release’s original booklet. It remains a significant catalog milestone.
As a stylist, Albéniz covered all bases, from unabashedly salon-like trifles and flashy neo-Lisztian fare to the Iberia Suite’s astonishing originality and labyrinthine complexities. Since Baselga wanted each disc to represent different aspects of Albéniz’s musical personality, he cunningly divided Iberia’s four parts across the first four volumes, aiming to give lesser-known masterpieces like the wild and woolly La Vega and tender Barcarola Op. 202 their due.
The two concerted works (the Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rapsodia Espanola) also receive impressively fresh and well-balanced readings. And for those who can’t get past the faded sound of Albéniz’s three 1903 improvisations preserved on private cylinders, Milton Laufer’s painstakingly notated editions will be revelations, especially in Baselga’s inspired hands.
In all, Baselga’s combination of technical brilliance, exuberant temperament, and tonal imagination yields consistently idiomatic and enjoyable results. A must-have for serious aficionados of Spanish piano music.
"Essentially, in the incredible ease and naturalness of his pianism, in the unassuming simplicity and absorption of the man, Backhaus was much the same artist and personality then. And he was far from unknown. Even before he won the Rubinstein Prize in 1905, Backhaus was internationally celebrated as a prodigious virtuoso. [...] Backhaus never failed to win a succès d'estime among professional musicians. They always knew his qualities, always marveled at his instrumental perfection, his titanic mastery that scorned every complexity, his unsurpassed freedom and endurance. There was never a time when Backhaus could not toss off any or all of the Chopin études or the Brahms-Paganini variations with an imperturbable calm, an implacable security that left one open-mouthed. Not everyone, for only the pianists really knew what was happening before their eyes and ears, knew how to measure such achievement. There they all sat, in breathless astonishment and envy and despair. [...] Backhaus was a shy, unaffected, recessive personality whose sensational capacities were so unsensationally projected that lay audiences remained totally unconscious of his fabulous accomplishments." (Gerhard Melchert)
REVIEW:
This 10-CD box brings us not only concert recordings of works closely associated with him but also early piano roll and studio recordings, including the first complete recording of the Chopin Etudes and a variety of other short pieces.
Backhaus's technique has been praised by many critics, but his scintillating virtuosity in the shorter pieces on CDs 1 and 2 nevertheless came as a revelation to someone who mainly knows him from his later years. These are technical display pieces, and Backhaus plays them to the hilt.
The most impressive piano rolls are of two Liszt pieces (La Leggierezza and a Mendelssohn paraphrase) and of a very difficult arrangement of a Delibes waltz by Dohnanyi. The sparkling virtuosity here is breathtaking.
CD 3 has the 24 Chopin Etudes. They have been reissued repeatedly, but this was a nice opportunity to hear them again. They remain one of the best recordings of these challenging pieces, and the sound is quite good. Backhaus's seemingly effortless technical mastery without musical superficiality is spellbinding. He was the rare German pianist who excelled in Chopin.
The Beethoven sonatas on discs 6-8 come from two recitals: Carnegie Hall, 1954 (8, 25, 17, 26, 32), with four encores, and Carnegie Hall, 1956 (5, 14, 29), with four different encores. The performances have all the hallmark qualities of Backhaus: They are unfussy, straightforward, and totally convincing.
Turning now to the major concertos, there are two recordings here of Beethoven's Fourth, one with the New York Philharmonic under Guido Cantelli (Carnegie Hall, 1956) and the other with the Suisse Romande under Ferenc Fricsay (Montreux, 1961). They are almost identical in their timing. The sound of the Cantelli recording is boxy, and piano and orchestra are tightly integrated. With Fricsay the sound is better, but the piano is more prominent, drawing attention to the soloist. Backhaus's well-nigh definitive interpretation exhibits superb phrasing, articulation, and dynamics, rhythmic precision, virtuosity without showiness, little rubato, and close coordination with the orchestra.
Not only has this collection been largely cobbled together from previous releases, but CDs 9 and 10 each have less than 40 minutes of music, so there could have been additional recordings of this splendid artist. I already mentioned one omission of information. Some Beethoven sonatas have numbers in the booklet, but others don't. Here a date is duplicated; there a track number is wrong. I wonder how reliable the dates are (see Mozart concerto above). But the booklet essay by Gerhard Melchert is good and includes photographs of the artist at different stages in his career as well as reproductions of newspaper articles and of personal notes or dedications from Brahms (when Backhaus was 10), Arthur Nikisch, Moriz Rosenthal, and Rachmaninoff.
. It struck me that Rachmaninoff and Backhaus have a lot in common. They had a superlative technique; they played serious major works as well as small showpieces (not Backhaus in his later years); their playing was unmannered and unsentimental, brilliant but never superficial; they played hardly any chamber music; they did not teach; and they were very private individuals (especially Backhaus, about whose private life little is known). There is a famous anecdote about Rachmaninoff who, when asked who he thought were the great living pianists, replied, "Well, there is Josef Hofmann and there is myself" and then fell silent. He should have added Backhaus.
Every piece on this album by pianist Romain Nosbaum has a reference to the Portuguese word 'Saudades'. It embodies the desire for a place (Adios a Cuba, Asturias), the soul, the human being (Alma Brasiliera) or popular manifestations. The music usually has a close connection to dance and is very much connected to the human emotional world. Romain Nosbaum is an individualist among the pianists of his generation. Without airs and graces, but with modesty and passionate devotion, he is solely focused on music. Both the grand gesture and sheer brilliancy have no meaning to him - instead, his playing stands out through intelligence, subtle individuality and technical perfection. The subtlety and immediacy of his pianistics encourage Romain's repertoire, which focuses on the romantic piano literature as well as music of contemporary composers. A universal interest in 'tradition and innovation' expresses itself not only soloistically, but also through his activities as a passionate chamber musician. Thus, he regularly performs as a vocal accompanist with artists such as his sister Véronique. He is also a member of the Random Trio, which comes with the colorful instrumentation of flute, violoncello, and piano. Moreover, Romain is very involved in interdisciplinary projects such as Claude Mangen's staging of Schubert's Winterreise, Giorgio Mancini's live choreography A nima, or the musical readings of texts by Vaslav Nijinsky and Michel Houellebecq together with actor Christian Berkel and pianist Kevin Tamanini.
"The Tres temas de recuerdos are inspired chapters of memory that Jaume Pahissa (1880-1969) composed for guitar in 1938 in Argentina, evoking nostalgia for his distant Catalan homeland that he was forced to leave in 1937 owing to the Spanish civil war. Besides their meditative beauty, these pieces also offer us the inspiration for the title of this release, similarly prompted by 'recollections'. This is expressed, in fact, through a programme that to a great extent embodies the special role played by 'memory', thanks to various pieces that engender emotional reference within the collective imaginary. Pieces that are deeply rooted in the conscience of those who love the guitar and it's close association with it's most representative historical figures. Alongside these pieces inspired by memory, their composers and their arrangers, and the symbolic reality that each of them reveals, I have added other works, perhaps less familiar to the public at large. These are instead linked - more or less openly - to my more personal references, associated with the passing of my own experience; so these too, on account of their individual peculiarity, are included as part of the Temas de recuerdos that I am proposing here, in the hope that they can also become such for the listener. That is, I attempt to understand the reason for this more personal association in certain pieces that are particularly suitable for the purpose, by exploring them from within: like reflecting oneself in one's own reiterated sonic presence, almost wishing to find a secret account of the steps of one's own story. The hope is to unveil within the identity of these themes the birth of an unforeseen source of affection for our own life." (Stefano Grondona)
In the latest volume of this critically admired series, a number of rarely heard pieces from Albéniz’s first compositional phase can be savored. They were composed between 1881 and 1892 and reveal the variety and flair of which he was capable, even in the smallest of musical forms, such as the delightful mazurkas. The Siete estudios (Seven Studies) are no mere exercises – rather they fuse the color of Iberian music with the rigor of Central European traditions. Les Saisons is an evocative portrait of the seasons and can be seen as a forerunner of the impressionistic writing that would soon appear in French music.
