Classical Music

Classical Music

When Kamilla Schatz plays the violin, she becomes one with her instrument; she revels and sings”- with these words the Berliner Togesspiegel hailed the debut of Swiss violinist Kamilla Schatz at Berlin’s Philharmonie Concert Hall. Since then, she has appeared as a soloist with the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, the SWR Symphony Orchestra Freiburg/Baden-Baden, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and the Basel Symphony Orchestra. She performed as a chamber musician at the Berliner Festwochen, and the Lucerne Festival. Since 2017 she has been the artistic director of the ‘Laudinella’ Cultural Centre in St. Moritz. She is joined here by pianist Benjamin Engeli, one of the most versatile musicians of his generation. His career as a soloist and chamber musician has taken him to venues across the world, and he has performed with such orchestras as the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony and Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. Here they present Violin Sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven as well as his variations on ‘Se Vuol Ballare’ from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.

Classical Music

In addition to their unwavering respect for each composer's text (often involving an exhaustive scrutiny of manuscripts and original editions) ,Serkin's interpretations were distinguished by a unique brand of austere, even severe, intensity and directness. The palpable concentration and nervous energy of his playing was melded to a compelling sweep and authority and a constant pursuit of the long line. Rarely if ever did the forward motion of a piece sag or lose focus in Serkin's hands. His immersion in the essence of every work was total, as was his abhorrence of showmanship or display. 'What he hears within him is unsurpassed in purity and nobility; and what he feels is felt with the utmost sincerity and selflessness,' wrote Abram Chasins in 1957. The present compilation focuses on Serkin's 'middle period,' pre-stereo solo Beethoven recordings as documentation of his approach to that composer in familiar sonatas that often appeared on his recitals. *NOT FOR SALE IN THE USA*

With the present release, the Orchester Wiener Akademie and its conductor Martin Haselböck continue the Resound Beethoven series, performed on period instruments and scrupulously respecting the orchestral layout of 200 years ago. Volume 6 is devoted to the Eighth Symphony, premiered in 1814, and the Piano Concerto in D major op.61a, first performed in 1808. Beethoven made this piano arrangement of his Violin Concerto at the request of fellow composer and music publisher Muzio Clementi, who wished to publish it in London. The recording featured here took place in the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Old University) in Vienna, where many important works by Beethoven received their first performance. The Austrian pianist Gottlieb Wallisch, well known for his authentic interpretations of Beethoven’s music, is the soloist in this rarely performed concerto.

Classical Music

This selection includes an explanatory commentary of this opera, written by Thomson Smillie and narrated by David Timson.

Classical Music

Classical Music

BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas: No. 30; No. 31; No. 32 • Penelope Crawford (fp) • MUSICA OMNIA 0308 (64:30)


Although Ann Arbor-based Penelope Crawford is widely regarded as one of the leading American fortepianists, she has made relatively few recordings for an artist of her stature. Blame it on the vicissitudes and dog-eat-dog nature of the record business, I guess. Her reputation is built largely upon live concerts, both solo and chamber music, also as a result of her many years of teaching at the University of Michigan and at the summer Baroque Performance Institute in Oberlin, Ohio. Rare as the concerts are, they are eagerly awaited events attended by her many friends, fans, and former students.


Aside from Crawford’s chamber-music recordings, I know of only two solo discs on the Titanic and Loft labels, and these appeared as long ago as the early ’90s. Since 2002, Boston-based Musica Omnia and its director, Peter Watchorn, have been quietly rectifying that situation by recording Crawford and the Atlantis Ensemble—Jaap Schroeder is the violinist of this group—in performances of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. The present CD is the first newly recorded solo disc from Crawford to be issued on Musica Omnia, and it’s a winner.


I don’t normally take notice of cover art, but in this case the painting reproduced on the booklet cover ( Der Watzmann by Caspar David Friedrich) is worth mentioning. In the spirit of Friedrich’s fanciful Alpine landscape, the title Magnificent Landscapes has been appended to the CD, and this is an apt description of both the music and the playing. Beethoven’s three final sonatas are some of the densest, thorniest music around; they require a pianist with flawless technique and consummate interpretative skills. Penelope Crawford has these qualities in spades, as we shall see.


The instrument used in this recording has a fascinating story. The six-and-a-half-octave grand piano was built by Conrad Graf of Vienna around 1835, presumably for a noble Swedish family. That’s where it turned up at auction in 1940; a retired schoolteacher was motivated to outbid another family when she heard that the instrument was going to be converted into a dining room table! Eventually the piano made its way to the United States, where it was acquired by Edward Swenson, who restored it to playing condition. Crawford purchased the instrument in 1994.


The instrument has a wonderfully warm, well-balanced sound, with nary a trace of action noise—at first, you might not recognize it as a fortepiano. The upper treble is voiced down ever so slightly, which shifts the tonal balance toward the middle and lower registers. The characteristic crisp dampening and treble woodiness of a Viennese fortepiano are there; some find these qualities objectionable. I prefer to think of it as furnishing the ideal tonal characteristics for late Beethoven. Just as the brilliance of a Steinway is ideal for Ravel, Prokofiev, and Rachmaninoff, the subtle richness of a Graf is the exact quality needed for Beethoven (and Schubert and Schumann).


Just for fun, I compared Crawford’s rendition of the three last sonatas with that of Ronald Brautigam on BIS, not yet reviewed by Fanfare as of this writing. Usually one associates American pianists with fire and brilliance, European pianists with warmth and Innigkeit— to make a sweeping generalization for which there are many, many exceptions. But in this case the tables are tuned: Brautigam’s characteristically fast tempos and brighter-sounding fortepiano gloss over the deeper aspects of the music at times, whereas Crawford achieves the kind of depth of expression that one expects from a Wilhelm Kempff or Artur Schnabel. A perfect example is the final movement to op. 109, marked by the composer Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung . You know that when Beethoven demands “the most heartfelt expression,” the pianist must deliver, and Crawford achieves some of the most deeply considered, soulful fortepianism that you’re likely to hear. Using subtle modifications of dynamics and articulation, plus the Moderator stop at one point, she provides a finely shaded example of how late Beethoven should be played. The amiable A?-Major sonata and the dramatic C Minor benefit in equal measure—simply stunning.


The piano is recorded fairly close up but quite believably. Handsome packaging, including an excellent essay on the music, completes the picture. If you haven’t guessed by now, this is my preferred version by a country mile.


FANFARE: Christopher Brodersen

Classical Music

The pairing of the two works on this album is unique in that one comes from the dawn, the other from the dusk of Ludwig van Beethoven’s career. Indeed, whereas the composer wrote the Quintet for winds and piano, Op. 16 when he was only 26- the talented young man also excelled as a successful pianist- he did not finish his String Quartet Op. 130 until a year before his death. The Edding quartet proposes here the original version of the work, with the Grosse Fuge, op.130, as final. The direct comparison of these two works on the same disc intelligently sheds light on the fantastic distance the composer covered between these two points in time. Two years after their successful Schubert album, which was warmly received by the press and public, the Edding Quartet and Northernlight felicitously join together once again on the same album to give new readings of these masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire. Having become major interpreters of the Classical and Romantic repertoires, the two ensembles offer expert performances, refined and precise, of two of the German composer’s finest scores.

Nearly twenty years after their acclaimed Beethoven Symphonies recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique returned to this repertoire for the first time last year, in a tour that took them to London, Philadelphia, Washington and New York. The concert in Carnegie Hall was broadcast live by WQXR, who kindly agreed to make the recording available to us to release on our label.

Sir John Eliot’s Gardiner’s reading of these familiar pieces highlights their revolutionary origin. Performing on period instruments, the ORR brings light, clarity and brisk energy, as well as a warm and genuinely thrilling sound.

The album contains a 36 pages booklet with original notes by BBC presenter and music journalist Stephen Johnson.

"The Allegretto was sinuous and haunting, the finale joyously visceral. And from fate’s knock at the onset of the Fifth Symphony, Mr. Gardiner wrought Beethoven fresh and strange, with gutsy, brash and rasping instrumental voices united in triumph." – The New York Times

Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 "Choral"