Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

"Howard Shelley has made a project of recording Hummel’s eight piano concertos. This C-Major concerto is the composer’s first mature work in this genre, written in 1809—the same year that Beethoven wrote his “Emperor” concerto. There are surface resemblances between the two concertos. In their outer movements, we catch a whiff of the military parade ground (if not the battlefield). The middle movements are long-breathed songs of limpid beauty. Of course, the difference between the two is that Beethoven’s concerto is surprising and innovative, while Hummel’s is (for the most part) safe and rather predictable. Let’s face it, though: aren’t there times when you are relieved by things that are safe and predictable?

The Rondos brilliant date from approximately 1814 and 1822, respectively. Each is just over 16 minutes long. The first one is musique pour les dames, and the second is based on Russian folk material. (Hummel was touring Russia when he wrote it.) If the relatively lengthy C-Major concerto (34:49) is a panoramic canvas, these two works are concertos in miniature—perfectly formed, thoughtfully appointed, and precise... Shelley’s performances, leading the London Mozart Players from the keyboard of a Steinway concert grand, do not attempt to make Hummel into the firebrand that he was not. This is stylish, always genteel playing, reminding us that Hummel was a young protégé of Mozart. Although Hummel’s slow movements sometimes anticipate Chopin, particularly in the decoration of the piano part, that sort of pre-Romantic freedom is not emphasized here. The musicianship overall is small-scaled, but not disappointingly so. Chandos’s engineering is bright, and Derek Carew’s booklet notes are informative."

Raymond Tuttle, FANFARE

Recorded in: St Silas The Martyr, Kentish Town, London 1-2 April 1998 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Jonathan Cooper Richard Smoker (Assistant)

Howard Shelley and the London Mozart Players present the latest in his series of Hummel works for Chandos and on this occasion shows a less-known side to Hummel's compositional style: that of dance-composer. All three works receive their premiere recordings with this release.

The first instalment in a new series, Hummel's Masses,Opp 77 and 111. These are choral Masses and with Hickox's magnificently drilled Collegium Musicum 90 forces, there is never a moment when you miss the presence of solo voices. Gramophone Award for the best Choral recording of the year 2003.

Classical Music

Franz Hummel was the first composer after Beethoven to use Anton Diabelli’s famous theme as the basis for an extended solo piano work. + These variations are like a humorous, tongue-in-cheek chronicle of music, and some stylistic quotations offer a challenge, as in a musical quiz, to guess who could possibly have written which variation. + Angela Cholakian is regarded as one of the most passionate and original pianists playing the romantic and contemporary literature. + With phenomenal technique she effortlessly puts into practice all that her obsessive imagination demands of her.

I felt it was necessary to dedicate a new anthem to the Bavarians, to express their liberality and the modern Bavarian way of life. The rhymed verses that I have set to music are based on a few lines jotted down by King Ludwig Ii, who resembled today's view of the imaginative Bavarian in an astoundingly prophetic way.' - Franz Hummel.

Franz Hummel is widely acclaimed as one of Europe's most original composers. He began his career as a virtuoso pianist, performing in concert throughout Europe and the USA. Two new compositions - Hatikva and Fukushima - are here performed by Elena Denisova, Giora Feidman and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.

At the suggestion of his friend and patron of the arts Roland F.O. Hercher, the composer Franz Hummel has written 33 Variations on a small waltz. Its substance is pieced together from casual sequences of letters and cryptic alphabet mutations drawn from the Christian and surnames “Roland F.O. Hercher and Sieglinde Pirzer”, in order to create a suitably lyrical model, reminiscent of a quiet summer evening on Roland‘s terrace, that offers plenty of scope for variations. Although Hummel has always held a poor opinion of programme music, he found himself in a difficult situation: in this piano work, he wanted to characterize the two people linked in the theme in each single number and thus came into conflict with his often all too enthusiastically proclaimed rejection of extra-musical programmatic elements. “Fortunately, at the age of eighty, one is old enough to bend a few wizened rules of life from time to time with late adolescent satisfaction. Work on the composition becomes more and more pleasurable and the imagination increases, if one simply throws one‘s ideologies overboard.” - says the composer. With an enthusiasm that is all his own, the talented 18-year-old piano virtuoso Christoph Preiss not only learned the “Hercher Variations” by heart in a very short time but also recorded them on album right away with wonderful effortlessness. The inspiration and accomplishment with which he presents the piece, that is anything but easy, is immediately convincing.