Search results: Search results
46 results
Products
-
-
-
-
SaleEberl: Rediscovered - 3 String quartets, Op.13 / casalQuartett
Solo Musica · Apr 2022CD$20.99$10.49 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 4, Piano Concerto Op. 61a / Parrott, Brautigam, Norrkoping Symphony
BIS · Nov 2009SACD$21.99 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Beethoven: Symphonies in Piano Duet, Vol. 4 - Nos. 1 & 6 / Uys, Schoeman
SOMM Recordings · Oct 2023CD$20.99 -
-
-
-
-
SYMPHONIES 1 & 5 PIANO DUET
Eberl: Rediscovered - 3 String quartets, Op.13 / casalQuartett
Riisager: Violin Concerto & Etudes
Beethoven Transformed, Vol. 1 / Boxwood & Brass
Beethoven: The Piano Concertos / Höhenrieder
| Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano works occupy a special place in Margarita Höhenrieder's artistic work. In a certain sense, this is almost "logical", since she herself is part of a very special Beethoven lineage: her teacher Leon Fleisher was a student of Arthur Schnabel, who in turn studied with Theodor Leschetizky, who had learned his piano playing from Carl Czerny. And Czerny was a student of Beethoven! |
TRIOS
Mozart: Requiem, Piano Version for 4 Hands / Strassburg, Appell
The supreme work of the most extraordinary man: this is what the composer Johann Adam Hiller called Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Requiem", which is now being released by GENUIN in an unusual arrangement. The piano duo Kerstin Straßburg and Jurgen Appell have recorded for the first time the astonishing four-hand piano version of the Mozart Requiem by Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and teacher of Liszt. The choral parts, vocal solos, and all the orchestral parts have been incorporated into the piano part, allowing the polyphonic beauty of Mozart's work to emerge in a kind of concentration with unimaginable clarity. The world premiere recording of this version on CD also contains the moving Amen fugue to the "Lacrymosa", which the New York pianist Robert D. Levin reconstructed from fourteen bars of Mozart's handwriting discovered several years ago.
Beethoven: Complete Works for Piano Trio, Vol. 6
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas / Immerseel
Beethoven: Complete Works for Piano & Cello
Beethoven: Complete Works for Cello & Piano / Berger, Hohenrieder
Cramer: 10 Piano Sonatas
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 4, Piano Concerto Op. 61a / Parrott, Brautigam, Norrkoping Symphony
In 1806, Beethoven composed two concertos - the Fourth Piano Concerto followed by the Violin Concerto Op. 61. In both cases the composer soon returned to the works to produce new versions, and it is these later versions that are presented here. At the public première of the Fourth Piano Concerto in 1808, Beethoven performed the piano part very 'capriciously' according to his pupil Carl Czerny, playing many more notes than are to be found in the printed edition. A clear indication of what Beethoven played comes from his copyist's orchestral score, in which the outer movements contain annotations in the composer's hand. These have been transcribed by Beethoven scholar Barry Cooper who, in his insightful liner notes, describes this rarely recorded 1808 version as 'strikingly inventive' and 'more sparkling, virtuosic and sophisticated than the standard one'. In the case of the Opus 61 concerto, Beethoven succeeded in writing what many consider to be the quintessential violin concerto. Less well-known is the fact that soon after the first performance, Beethoven produced an arrangement of the solo part for piano, modifying the violin part slightly in the process. When the work was first published, it was as a concerto for violin or piano. Worth noting is that although Beethoven did not compose any cadenzas for the violin, he did so for the piano version. The one for the first movement is especially striking, in that it includes a part for timpani, reminding us of the timpani solo that begins the entire work. Ronald Brautigam and the Norrköping SO under Andrew Parrott have received acclaim for two previous discs of Beethoven's works for piano and orchestra: 'These well-known works emerge as if freshly minted' wrote International Record Review about Concertos Nos. 1 and 3, while the German magazine Piano News hailed the release of No.2 and the youthful Concerto WoO4 as 'a magnificent recording in which Brautigam demonstrates his stylistic expertise, and which shows what a splendid pianist he is.'
DANCE FANTASIES
Beethoven: Symphonies, Vol. 1 / Uys, Schoeman
| SOMM Recordings announces the launch of a major six-volume series of Franz Xaver Scharwenka’s transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies featuring the label debut of the Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman Piano Duo. Formed in 2010, the Duo began their in-concert exploration of Scharwenka’s four-hand Beethoven transcriptions in 2015 and now bring that experience to disc for the first time. Volume 1 includes the premiere recording of Scharwenka’s piano duet transcription of Symphony No.3, the ever-popular Eroica, and Debussy’s two-piano arrangement of Robert Schumann’s Six Studies in Canonic Form. As Robert Matthew-Walker’s booklet notes reveal, Scharwenka had a direct line to Beethoven, having been taught by Franz Kullak, who was tutored by Carl Czerny whose own teacher, in turn, had been Beethoven himself. A composer of no mean stature in his own right, Scharwenka’s transcriptions were once widely admired, making masterpiece symphonies available to every home with a piano. Possessing, says Matthew-Walker, “significant qualities which are often overlooked today”, his Eroica transcription receives ardent, eloquently persuasive championing by Schoeman and Uys. Scharwenka wasn’t alone in exploiting new developments in piano technology. Robert Schumann’s Six Studies in Canonic Form made use of the then novel ‘pedal-piano’ (a standard piano with an additional bass pedal-board) even as he was looking back stylistically towards his idol, Bach. Debussy’s arrangement for two pianos adroitly accommodates Schumann’s original to “rescue this fine music from the obscurity of the pedal-piano repertoire.” Born in Cape Town and a Royal Academy of Music Associate, Tessa Uys has an impressive reputation as a concert and broadcasting performer, appearing at major venues throughout the world. Her multi-prize-winning South African compatriot Ben Schoeman also has a busy international profile and is currently a senior lecturer in piano and musicology at the University of Pretoria. |
Beethoven: Symphonies in Piano Duet, Vol. 4 - Nos. 1 & 6 / Uys, Schoeman
SOMM Recordings is happy to present the fourth release in the planned First Recordings of the complete Beethoven Symphonies in the legendary edition for piano duet by Xaver Scharwenka, continuing a direct connection to Beethoven via his teacher Franz Kullak who studied with Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny, played by the ‘wholly exceptional’ duo of Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman.
This new CD couples Beethoven’s Symphonies 1 & 6 ‘Pastoral’ together with Busoni’s brilliant Concertino BV88 on a theme of Mozart K. 459, for Two Pianos. Extract from the Duo’s recent Gramophone Blog: We would like to highlight our personal historical connection to this music – particularly the Zeitgeist of Berlin, the city where Scharwenka lived and worked. Tessa’s mother Helga Bassel was a concert pianist who also hailed from Berlin, and in the 1930s had to seek refuge in Cape Town. She was indeed fortunate to be able to leave Germany accompanied by her Blüthner grand piano and her collection of piano music which included Scharwenka’s duo transcriptions of the nine Beethoven symphonies.”
Previous releases in this ground-breaking set have received outstanding reviews: ‘Uys and Schoeman play marvellously...SOMM’s fine sonics do justice both to the performers and to their superbly regulated Steinway model D concert grand’ (Classics Today); ‘I was immediately struck by the orchestral quality of their sound – this is an exhilarating account’ (Rebecca Franks, BBC Music Magazine); ‘The result is stunning...these are two superb pianists who breathe through all this music as if they were one’ (Gramophone); ‘In a pure state...the work’s argument has a drivenness and gloriousness that seems to define what a musical argument might be...’ (The Sunday Times); ‘This is undoubtedly superb musicianship throughout’ (Musical Opinion). This new recording is fully up to the superlative standards with which this most gifted of piano duo’s previous recordings have been acclaimed. SOMM is proud to continue this unique integral series of world premiere Beethoven releases.
Mozart, Hummel, Mendelssohn / Daria Gloukhova
HUMMEL Piano Sonata No. 3 in f. Fantasy after Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. MOZART Fantasy in c, K 475. Piano Sonata in F, K 332. MENDELSSOHN Andante with Variations • Daria Gloukhova (pn) • CENTAUR 3080 (55:54)
As a critic, you tend to notice that some labels produce consistently dull and uninteresting releases while others, for whatever reason, are consistently interesting and stimulating. Happily, Centaur is one of the latter companies. Nearly every Centaur release I’ve received for review is fascinating in one way or another, and some of them have replaced other longstanding reference recordings on my shelves.
If this disc doesn’t supplant any other in my collection, it is only because I have no other music by Hummel. Daria Gloukhova is a pretty young woman, 24 years old, and apparently so dedicated to Hummel that she has his family crest, name, and dates of birth and death tattooed on her left arm. I must admit that kind of scares me, but her playing is so absolutely mesmerizing that I forgive her whatever tattoos she chooses to inflict on herself, now or in the future. Go for it, girl! Whatever makes you play like this, I’m all for it!
She is similar to historically informed performers in that she plays in a straightforward rhythmic style, with no deviations for rubato. She differs from them in that she plays a modern piano, yet with such a tightly knit, cohesive style that you listen to her, mesmerized, from start to finish. We all know Hummel as a great pedagogue, like Carl Czerny, but are perhaps less familiar with him as a composer. This sonata and fantasy make a strong case to reconsider his worth; this is interesting music, half in the style of Mozart and half in the style of Beethoven, yet not really sounding like either. One wonders if someone would be charitable enough to finance a recording of Gloukhova playing some of his eight piano concertos, or perhaps his piano quartet and quintet. Gloukhova brings the same combination of warm tone, springy rhythm, and exceptional musical cohesiveness to Mozart’s Fantasy K 475 and Sonata in F. I’ve never heard Mozart played with such a combination of headlong excitement and dark, brooding colors. Gloukhova will completely change your perceptions, and expectations, of Mozart. Even the “lightweight” Sonata in F, played with delicious élan by Ronald Brautigam on BIS, sounds darker, moodier, more smoldering here in Gloukhova’s interpretation. This is a young woman who curries no favor with the modern tendency toward emotional detachment in her playing—she seems incapable of playing anything without going at it full bore. Her technique is absolutely dazzling, yet though, especially in the allegros, she seems to gobble up notes like Pac-Man, technique is not an end in itself but always, for her, a means to expressing the exultation or feeling she encounters in the music.
Hummel’s fantasy on Mozart’s Figaro is exceptionally imaginative, breaking up the components of “Non più andrai” into fragments in the introduction and then, after statement of the theme, running through virtuosic changes and variants in a most imaginative way, including a switch to minor for the bridge and a relaxation of tempo for further variants. The return to strict tempo does not mean a return to major, however, as Hummel keeps moving in and out of minor keys as well as numerous key changes. Gloukhova balances all this like an army of angels dancing on the head of a pin, her playing extraordinarily neat and, in this piece, playful as well.
Mendelssohn’s Andante with Variations receives a warm, glowing reading of its opening statement, then her by-now familiar condensation of pulse and smoldering, flowing legato in the variations. It should be reiterated that, for all her forward momentum, Gloukhova never plays anything in a shallow manner, which for me is the mark of a true artist. I can only hope that she goes far in her career; I’ll certainly be looking for her name on future releases.
FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley
