Carl Czerny’s instructional exercises may be his lasting legacy but there remain numerous largely forgotten pieces that reveal important elements of his compositional range. The four Romantic Fantasies named after Sir Walter Scott’s famous Waverley novels are piano duets of epic breadth. In them Czerny ingeniously develops popular Scottish melodies, including the use of the ‘Scotch snap’, to generate a vivid programmatic quality that explores numerous genres. Scherzos, fugal passages, chorales and marches are all featured, and raise the music – full of beauty, virtuosity and unpredictability – to orchestral proportions.

REVIEW:

Though the majority of Czerny's more than 800 works were for solo piano, there were also works intended for use in public concerts, such as the four Romantic Fantasies for piano duet composed in 1832. Each is of sizeable proportions and based on a novel by Sir Walter Scott, Czerny having been an avid reader. They used the stories that were recounted in Waverley, Guy Mannering, Ivanhoe and Rob Roy, and in his thematic material he appropriately used Scottish and English traditional melodies. Technically they are highly demanding, particularly in the many mercurial passages for the right hand of the ‘Primo’ pianist, and proved a very testing time for Pei-I Wang in Waverley. The second Fantasy, in a mood of quiet suspense, leads to the military atmosphere that opens Ivanhoe, and finally he cast Rob Roy as a weighty finale. Mid-way through the disc the North American-based duo exchange places, Samuel Gingher becoming the ‘Primo’, the young duo here offering World Premiere Recordings made in 2019. A discovery that has given me considerable pleasure.

– David's Review Corner (David Denton)

Winner of the prestigious Premio Venezia prize, Vincenzo Maltempo 'rides high among many young and gifted Italian pianists.' (Gramophone, January 2015). His recordings on Piano Classics have won critical acclaim for their technical finesse and musical sensitivity. His latest release is a timely one, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth in Bonn with the two major variation sets and the ever-elusive, whimsical Bagatelles which have taxed the hands and imaginations of all the greatest pianists. All the works here derive ultimately from the composer's instincts as an improviser and thinker at the keyboard: playing continually with ideas both physical and intellectual, working them over and around the body of the instrument that was his own principal medium of expression. The Op. 34 variations marked a seachange in the composer's treatment of his form, sharing the expressive reach of his sonatas and concluding with an ambitious fugue. Even the Eroica Variations, however, give little notice of the visionary transformation wrought upon an upbeat but modest waltz, sent to him by his publisher Diabelli, in his final work in variation form. They occupied Beethoven on and off for five years, during which time he explored every possibility of the theme and of variation-form itself. The result is, in the words of Alfred Brendel, 'the greatest of all piano works.' Here and in the final Bagatelles we find Beethoven challenging even the outer limits of his own prodigious imagination as well as the fingers of his performers and the minds of his listeners. Amid the cavalcade of Beethoven releases in 2020, Maltempo's new album is a big event.

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To mark the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, Russian born arranger Paul Struck has arranged two of the composer’s great mid-period chamber masterpieces for soloist and string ensemble. Expanding the sonorities of the ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata – Beethoven’s most important chamber work for violin – allows the sonata’s concertante quality to emerge in a new light. The Cello Sonata No. 3 equally succeeds in conceiving the piano part for ensemble, while exploring fullness of sound and maintaining transparency of texture.

Brilliant Classics has already published all 88 of Domenico Cimarosa’s keyboard sonatas in their commonly encountered appearance as harpsichord pieces (BC95027), as well as an album of 30 sonatas in arrangements for guitar (BC94172). He may still be better known as a composer of comic opera, for masterpiece such as Il matrimonio segreto, but this new album of the sonatas in versions for organ celebrates the variety and adaptability of Cimarosa’s idiom and demonstrates why he was so lionized in his own time. The painter Delacroix preferred Cimarosa’s music to Mozart’s. Stendhal wrote that he would rather be hanged than be forced to state which of the two he preferred. Even the notoriously partial Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick lavished praise on Cimarosa’s wonderful facility, inventive compositional strokes and refined taste, and Goethe, no less, directed several productions of his operas. Perhaps Cimarosa’s sheer fluency has told against his posthumous reputation: where to begin with 88 attractive sonatas? In his own booklet introduction, Andrea Chezzi explains that he has reviewed all of them and chosen 21 which seem particularly suitable for performance on the organ. He has ordered them to alternate slow and fast pieces, made marginal adjustments such as a few pedal doublings, and recorded them here on a historically appropriate instrument by Andrea Boschini (before 1755) and Giovanni Cavalletti (1814), located in the Sanctuary of the Beata Vergine dello Spino, Brugneto di Reggiolo, in the Italian province of Reggio Emilia. Andrea Chezzi’s previous recordings for Brilliant Classics have attracted glowing reviews, such as the Op.1 harpsichord sonatas by Baldassare Galuppi: ‘The performance by Chezzi is bold and decisive… with music that can excite the imagination, performed with grace and style by Chezzi. It also shows that Galuppi is more than just a pretty operatic face.’ (Fanfare)

The opera Faniska, which premiered at the Kärntnertor Theatre in Vienna in 1806, is said to have been enthusiastically received by both Haydn and Beethoven. The libretto is available in German and Italian, and is based on the melodrama Les Mines de Pologne by the Nancy-born French playwright René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt. The action takes place in Poland, from where the first recording of the opera also comes. Zamoski, the Baron of Sandomir, orders his henchman Oranski to kidnap Faniska, the wife of the Baron of Rava, Rasinski. Faniska is taken to Zamoski's castle. Various attempts to free her fail. After being imprisoned with her husband, the couple finally manage to escape with Rasno's help. Rasinski's soldiers attack the castle, Zamoski is killed, Oranski is captured and put on trial. Faniska is sometimes called an opéra comique, but more often (and more accurately) an opera in three acts or even a 'grand heroic opera'. Like Lodoïska, Faniska is a typical example of the 'rescue opera' genre. Cherubini invested all his melodic talent in this work. Compared to Lodoïska his talent has clearly gained in quality. Natalia Rubis sings the technically difficult title role very sensitively and with a beautifully led but somewhat tight voice. Krystian Adam remains all too pale as her husband Rasinski. In the role of Rasno Piotr Kalna's singing is rather strained. The supporting roles are more or less well cast. With only one really good voice, that of bass-baritone Robert Gierlach as Zamoski, the vocal side is somewhat weak. On the other hand, Lukasz Borowicz is all the more impressive as the conductor. He puts a lot of lightness and transparency into the orchestral part, which he controls admirably, enlivening it with many details. Because Cherubini's score is so imaginative and so closely connected to the drama, this counts for a lot.

The Amsterdam-based period violin and keyboard ensemble, Duo Belder Kimura, make their Resonus Classics debut with a comprehensive and compelling survey of the complete works for violin and keyboard by C.P.E. Bach. Rising star violinist Rie Kimura and prolific keyboardist Pieter-Jan Belder combine to breathe new life into these remarkable and challenging jewels of the early violin and keyboard repertoire.

William Steinberg conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This rare material, filmed in color, represents some of the earliest televised concerts with of Steinberg with the BSO, restored using the greatest care and state-of-the-art techniques.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is considered one of the most influential composers of all time. The child prodigy would become the author of some of today's best loved instrumental works, and a true king of sung drama. La Betulia liberata KV118/74c, the only oratorio he ever produced, was written by a relatively young Wolfgang whose potential is immediately obvious, even in his mid-teens.

La Betulia liberata, rarely performed or recorded, was commissioned by Don Giuseppe Ximenes, Prince of Aragon, in 1771 while Mozart was undertaking a tour of Italy with his father, Leopold. The text, by Pietro Metastasio, is based on the story of the Book of Judith, which appears in the Apocrypha of the Bible, and the oratorio is written in a seria style. The work also showcases the beginnings of a composer who would become famous for his employment of dramatic contrast and characterisation, as well as providing a psychological insight to his characters through the music. Two highlights are undoubtedly Nos. 11 and 14; in the former, the noblewoman Amital compares the plight of Bethulia to the desperation of a ship in a storm, portrayed in the music, and in the latter, Amital's changing mood is perfectly depicted as arrogance turns to docility -- a forerunner to Mozart's more challengingly unstable female protagonists, Donna Elvira and Vitellia.

The recording boasts a wealth of critically acclaimed vocalists. They are accompanied by the Coro e Orchestra dell'Oficina Musicum, directed from the harpsichord by Riccardo Favero.

Other information:
- Recorded September 2006, Chiesa della Scalabrini, Bassano del Grappa, Italy.
- The only "modern" recording available as a single issue!
- Mozart wrote this oratorio, his only one, in his mid-teens, and his genius was immediately evident in the dramatic choruses, moving arias and instrumental brilliance of this early masterwork.
- Excellent line up of soloists and Italian orchestral forces and conductor.
- Extensive liner notes and synopsis in the booklet.

C.P.E. Bach: Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu

Classical Music

This two-disc release from 2011 features C.P.E. Bach Flute Concertos performed by Eckart Haupt. 15 works in all.

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Classical Music

On March 23, 1783, an important concert took place in Vienna, playing a considerable role for Mozart’s reputation in the imperial capital, where he had resided since 1781. It is obvious that Mozart wanted to be herad in both what he had composed prior to his move to Vienna, as well as I his more recent works. From the Salzburg repertoire, he borrowed the ‘Haffner’ Symphony. To this he added the long concertant movement for wind instruments from the ‘Posthorn’ Serenade. Here we also find two piano concertos, one from Salzburg and one which was composed likely for this specific occasion. Several arias are also included from his earlier operas. The Millenium Orchestra with Jodie Devos and Sebastian Wienand have painstakingly recorded this release to mimic this historic concert, so that the listener can rediscover this monumental night as if they were there.

BIS ecopak Yevgeny Sudbin has previously recorded Beethoven’s piano concertos – releases which have received international acclaim, for instance on the website ClassicsToday.com: ‘A Beethoven experience you will not want to miss.’ For his first disc featuring solo works by Beethoven, Sudbin has chosen the two final sonatas and the Six Bagatelles, Op. 126 – late works written between 1821 and 1824, just a couple of years before the composer’s death. There are numerous anecdotes that testify to the fact that Beethoven was highly temperamental. But in his liner notes to this disc, Sudbin writes of another, contrasting side to the composer: ‘warmth, generosity and wisdom – with unexpected outbursts of cheeky humour – are also unmistakably among Beethoven’s qualities and particularly evident in the works on this recording’. If Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas form one of the most important collections of works in the history of music, then the final ones belong to his crowning achievements. Various musicians and musicologists have commented on them, hearing a hard-won triumph of the spirit in the great fugue of the final movement of Op. 110, and interpreting Op. 111 – and especially its second movement, the famous Arietta – as a last farewell. The set of Bagatelles was composed only months after Beethoven had completed his monumental Ninth Symphony. It became the last work for piano to be published in his lifetime, and together the six brief pieces form a distillate of a lifetime of writing for and playing the piano.

Friedrich Kuhlau's Luluis the Danish 'Magic Flute'. Long unavailable on record, this foundational work in the repertoire of Danish comic opera can be enjoyed once again in a historic broadcast performance from 1956. Remastered from original radio tapes and never previously issued, this performance represents the Danish sing-spiel tradition at it's most delightful. Five bonus tracks pay testament to Launy Grøndahl's sympathetic partnerships with the finest Danish singers of his day. Volume 7 will have concerto by Beethoven and symphony by Schubert, scheduled for late 2021 Summer release.

Leopold Kozeluch (1747-1818) was born in Bohemia but spent his professional life in Vienna, where he became a famous musician and composer, for a time even eclipsing Mozart’s fame. The sonatas included in this second volume have 3 or 4 movements, of the same scope as Haydn’s sonatas. They are written in the Galante Style, with easy flowing melodies, featuring a highly developed keyboard virtuosity in the abundance of scales, arpeggios, runs in thirds and sixths, repeated notes and tremolos. Jenny Soonjin Kim plays a fortepiano (Kozeluch preferred fortepianos to harpsichords). The first volume of the complete Kozeluch Sonatas was praised by the press for its spontaneity, keen sense of the style and effortless and brilliant technique.

Today’s conception of bel canto is mainly founded on the beautiful and brilliant virtuoso arias of La Sonnambula, L’Elisir d’Amore, and the like; this recording introduces another, much lesser-known facet: bel canto da camera. Ariettas by two Italian 19th c. composers Mauro Giuliani and Girolamo Crescentini, neither counted among ‘bel canto’ greats such as Bellini and Donizetti, reveal the “subtlety of the human soul much more deeply,” argue the artists, “than in the brightest operas arias.”

Following CD releases for Sony Korea and ARS Productions, the first of pianist William Youn’s CD series of Mozart’s piano works was released by Oehms Classics in 2013, and honored with the Pizzicato Supersonic Award (Luxembourg). Now, Oehms Classics and William Youn proudly present the second album in their Mozart series. The press has praised the Korean pianist William Youn (b. 1982) as a “genuine poet” with a “bravura technique of touch”. In 2011 he was honored with the Bavarian Art Promotion Prize in his chosen home city of Munich.

Agustin Barrios Mangore was one of the greatest guitar virtuosi of his time and something of a pioneer in making recordings, which he began as early as 1910. His compositions offer a lexicon of technical and expressive devices for the guitar, from both the South American and European traditions. This penultimate volume in the series offers the scintillating Estudio No. 6 which demonstrates some of the composer's finest artistic characteristics such as poignant treble melodies and a mastery of harmonic progression. Other works include examples of the Paraguayan polka, the Zamba, Creole airs, the Serenata and many other pieces attesting to Barrios's inexhaustible individuality and variety. Celil Refik Kaya was awarded First Prize at the JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition in 2012 and has since received multiple awards from several prestigious American guitar competitions, as well as the Rising Young musician of the Year by the Donizetti Classical Music Awards in Istanbul in 2017. Kaya has performed in the most prestigious concert halls and festivals around the US and Turkey, including Carnegie Hall, the Frick Collection Museum, NYCGS, Round Top, Brevard and Ankara International Music Festival, as well as numerous radio and TV broadcasts throughout the US and Turkey. Kaya is also an avid composer, with his chamber and instrumental works being performed throughout the US, Turkey, South Korea, and Australia.

Andreas Speer writes of this new album: “A soft knock at the door. Who is it? Could it be? - Hopefully it is! - Hidden feelings, longings arise, a sense of who and what it could be, and then the door opens, and it's him – rather than crashing in he enters cautiously, and the reality is even sweeter and more beautiful than imagined - Please excuse me giving rein to such unrestrained romanticism, but these are pretty much the associations running through my mind as I listen to this recording. The tapping motif in the timpani and the singing lover are as one: Beethoven's Violin Concerto is chamber music. Daniel Gaede plays unaffectedly without any soloistic pretensions and on the same wavelength as the Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra under Wojciech Rajski. As a prelude rather than an encore, the three brothers in spirit, Daniel, Thomas and Sebastian Gaede play the Serenade op. 3.”

Classical Music

Classical Music

For it's eighth volume, Haydn2032 invites us on a musical journey that takes the Balkan route. Of all the 'Viennese Classical School', Joseph Haydn is certainly the composer closest to folk music, first because he spent his early years in the countryside and also because, unlike his colleagues who worked in the urban centres of the Habsburg monarchy, Haydn was in contact with Croats, Roma and Hungarians throughout his life. These influences were omnipresent in his music, to the delight of Prince Nikolaus I Esterházy and his guests, but by some accounts were not to the taste of many music theorists in Germany. Haydn gave his Symphony no.63 in C major the title of 'La Roxolana', from the famous sixteenth-century sultana who was the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent after having been his slave. As usual, Giovanni Antonini, who is reunited here with Il Giardino Armonico, juxtaposes Haydn's music with that of another composer. The natural choice here was Béla Bartók, who is represented by his Romanian Folk Dances, composed in 1917.

For this new recording, violinist Peter Hanson, one of the most prominent period instrument players of his generation, turns his attention to Mozart’s extraordinary and innovative output of sonatas for violin and piano. Hanson is joined by acclaimed keyboard player and regular collaborator Andrew Arthur in this programme of four sonatas (K. 301, K. 304–5 & K. 454), each of which was dedicated to an exceptional woman of the time, with the aristocratic dedication of the ‘Kurfürstin’ sonatas for the Electress Maria Elisabeth Auguste of Sulzbach (K. 301–6) and K. 454’s dedication to Regina Strinasacchi – a performer of particular talent who gave the first performance with Mozart at the piano. For this album, a stunning copy of an original Walter fortepiano is used as well as a striking Guadagnini violin bearing pure gut strings.

"Every so often, you come across a performance that renders you powerless to resist, that sweeps you away with it, that reminds you of why you fell in love with music in the first place" (The Globe and Mail)Tafelmusik is thrilled to present its live recording of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony — the final work in the orchestra’s complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies, which began 18 years ago. With the September 30, 2016 release, Tafelmusik makes history as the first North American orchestra to have recorded all nine Beethoven symphonies on period instruments. The recording took place February 4 through 7, 2016, during a series of sold-out, critically acclaimed public performances in Toronto’s Koerner Hall, with conductor Bruno Weil leading the combined forces of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Chamber Choir, and guest soloists Sigrid Plundrich, soprano; Mary-Ellen Nesi, mezzo-soprano; Colin Balzer, tenor; and Simon Tischler, bass-baritone. “We approach the Beethoven concerts and recording as if they were the very first performances, as though the music had been composed yesterday. This is the real thing — there’s no sense of routine with Tafelmusik musicians and everybody’s playing with a full heart and a full soul and spirit. That is the secret to a great performance,” stated Maestro Weil, who marks the 25th anniversary of his first collaboration with Tafelmusik this year.

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, CORO Connections is delighted to present Ian Watson and Susanna Ogata’s acclaimed complete exploration of the Sonatas for Fortepiano and Violin in one stunning boxed-set edition. All 10 sonatas, performed exclusively on period instruments, from the epic ‘Kreutzer’ to the sublime ‘Spring’ feature in this four volume set. “The music's moody outbursts and vivacity come fully alive in elegant readings that are attentive to quicksilver changes in dynamics and articulation...the Sonata No. 4 in A minor is darkly played, their 'Kreutzer' Sonata brilliant and stormy.” (The New York Times) “There's something positively gleeful about the way the pair deliver the opening gambit of Op. 30 No. 3, and the same sonata's Haydnesque finale practically swings.” (Gramophone) “Their trim, alert reading of Op.24 arguably provides their most effective and expansive vehicle yet...it combines an appropriate sense of idiom with an abundance of vitality, sensitivity and insight, and furnishes Beethoven’s textures with a clarity rarely achieved.” (The Strad)

Known as St Cecilia Mass, Haydn’s fifth Missa is the longest and most complex setting of the Latin Mass text. Rich in elaborate contrapuntal interweaving and with a duration of more than one hour, it reveals Haydn the opera composer. The present recording of a concert, performed in 1982 in the Ottobeuren Basilica with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir under the baton of Rafael Kubelik, is still considered a reference recording of the work. Niccolò Jommelli’s Mass in D major and his Te Deum were both written during his time at Charles Eugene’s Württemberg court, where he is said to have held the highest paid musician post in Europe. The Württemberg court loved French music and at the same time the virtuoso Mannheim school. These, together with Jommelli’s Italian roots, also shaped the composer’s stylistically diverse sacred oeuvre. The Te Deum with a brief length of not even a quarter of an hour, was frequently played even up until the early 19th century.

Throughout his life, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart repeatedly devoted himself to the genre of the accompanied piano sonata. He wrote the earliest works at the age of eight, to perform them either with his sister on the harpsichord and himself on the violin or with his father, the famous violin teacher, and sitting at the harpsichord himself. Leopold Mozart himself assured his son in a letter that he would count him among the best violin players in Europe - the composer himself preferred to see himself as a piano virtuoso and (of course) above all as a 'compositeur' who had a lot to say. The works recorded here also move within this area of tension. If the violin still plays a clearly subordinate role in the youth sonatas to the brilliant harpsichord part, which also leads in the cantabile slow movements, this distribution of roles changes over the time in favor of the violin. In the 'middle' phase of Mannheim, the renunciation of the violin would mean a painful loss, and in the later Vienna sonatas there is finally a true partnership between the two instruments with equal rights. The joyful virtuoso part is still reserved for the piano.