On their latest CD, the Linos Ensemble offer new discoveries and rewarding additions to the chamber repertoire: works by Friedrich Kalkbrenner (1785-1849), reputed to be one of the most gifted pianists of his time. + The piano, played here by Konstanze Eickhorst, plays a leading role in both the sextet and septet, and both chamber works in large part offer an enormous wealth of tone colors and manifold opportunities for register shifts. + They are complemented by his fantasy for piano on the Scottish song “We're A' Noddin” (1823), in which he expresses his romantic enthusiasm for Scotland.

Kalkbrenner was a very prolific composer and published nearly 200 opus numbers, mostly dedicated to his instrument (but his catalogue also includes three operas, a Stabat Mater and the cantata Die Zwingburg). The three Piano Sonatas Op. 1 that open the list of his compositions were published around 1807, when Kalkbrenner was just twenty-two years old, and are the works with which the German composer debuted in front of his audiences. They are a very clear calling card, where credentials and promises are manifest.

Kalkbrenner: 3 Piano Sonatas, Op. 4