Classical Music

Classical Music

One of the most versatile and compelling musicians of the modern day, pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman boasts a vast repertoire ranging from the Baroque era to contemporary compositions. Feltsman regularly performs as a guest soloist with the best symphonies in the US and abroad, and has garnered acclaim at the most prestigious music festivals across the globe. Feltsman has recorded extensively during his career, including albumsof works by Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, and more. This three disc set features works by virtuosic piano composer Robert Schumann. This release follows Feltsman’s well-received “Album for the Young,” also featuring works by Schumann.

Robert Schumann wrote four symphonies: These four orchestral works are closely linked to the development of his career. The first and the third symphonies somewhat eclipse the other two works. Marcus Bosch and the Cappella Aquileia explore the nuances of his music on this recording. Since it's foundation in 2011, the Cappella Aquileia has stood as a special orchestra for the artistic reputation of the Heidenheim Opera Festival. Top musicians from all over Germany and beyond meet regularly in the festival city of Heidenheim. The Cappella Aquileia is characterized by extraordinary quality, stage presence, the joy of the musicians for what is special about their collaboration and uncompromising attention to detail. The orchestra of the Opera Festival and it's founder and artistic director Marcus Bosch perform in chamber symphonic line-up and are inspired by the performance practice of the time of it's creation an unobstructed view of classical and romantic orchestral music.

For over 60 years, repeated efforts have been made to capture on sound carriers Robert Schumann's Complete Works for Piano solo, a fascinatingly broad and varied spectrum ranging from highly virtuosic pieces for the concert hall and valuable literature for teaching purposes. This attractive and yet challenging assignment was not always approached with the necessary intellectual rigor, quite apart from any purely artistic shortcomings, and so none of these sets can justly be deemed "complete". Schumann had published a string of works (Impromptus op. 5, Davidsb�ndlert�nze op. 6, Etudes symphoniques op. 13, Concert sans Orchestre or Sonata in F minor op. 14 and Kreisleriana op. 16) in two more or less divergent versions, so that it is highly questionable whether an edition can be labelled "Complete Recordings" if it only contains one of those versions or worse still, makes a misguided attempt to combine two of them. Meanwhile, works that were published at remote locations or remained unpublished, along with fragments that could easily be completed without resorting to audacious speculation, have hitherto been taken into account only in exceptional cases. The first true complete recording of Robert Schumann's works for piano solo on in 15 volumes, played by Florian Uhlig, seeks for the first time to offer imaginative compilations on album (e.g. "Robert Schumann and the Sonata", "The Young Piano Virtuoso", "Schumann in Vienna", "Schumann and Counterpoint", "Variations") containing all original works for pianoforte written between 1830 (Abegg Variations op. 1) and 1854 (Ghost Variations) according to the newest critical editions and/or first editions. Several of these albums include premiere recordings. The booklets by Joachim Draheim, who discovered and/or edited a number of the works, shed light on the biographical and musicological background to the works thus coupled.

The insatiable demand for sheet music for domestic use in the 19th century meant that popular works were widely disseminated in piano duet form. Robert Schumann's own arrangements of the 'Spring' Symphony (in collaboration with his wife Clara Schumann) and the Fourth Symphony balance playability and fidelity to the original with tremendous skill. Clara considered the Fourth Symphony to be 'another work from the innermost depths of Robert's soul', a symphony that has become one of the most quintessential of the Romantic era. This is a highly collectible set of Schumann's works in arrangement for piano duet, appearing here in world premiere recordings for versions of symphonies arranged by the composer himself along with his wife Clara. Vol. 1 (8.572877) was considered 'extremely well done' by Fanfare. Vol. 2 can be found on 8.572878, Vol. 3 included the Third Symphony 'Rhenish' and is on 8.572879, while Vol. 4 (8.572880) which was considered a 'handsome account off our symphonic works' by the Audio Video Club of Atlanta, and of the Second Symphony: 'The whole work works extremely well in this arrangement; it is also interesting to compare the details which are brought out by the arrangement - Clara and Robert clearly knew exactly what they were doing. I am very much looking forward to the next volume'.(MusicWeb International)

Making their debut on Resonus with a ravishing programme of 'Songs of Love and Death' by Robert Schumann is the critically acclaimed duo of baritone Simon Wallfisch and pianist Edward Rushton. Alongside what is perhaps Schumann's best-known Wanderlieder song series, Dichterliebe, Op. 48, from 1840, this distinguished pairing have explored two further series from Schumann's notoriously productive 'Liederjahr' of 1840 - his Op. 35 setting of twelve poems by Justinus Kerner, and the F�nf Lieder, Op. 40, containing four songs by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. Simon Wallfisch is one of Britain's most sought after Baritones, at home on the opera and concert stage. In 2017, Simon made his Wigmore Hall debut live on BBC Radio 3. He has a growing catalogue of song recordings with Nimbus, Lyrita, Delphian and Resonus record labels. Born in London into a musical family, Simon Wallfisch studied cello with Leonid Gorokhov and voice with Russell Smythe at the Royal College of Music between 2000 and 2006. During his studies in London, he was awarded several prizes including The Georg Solti Foundation, Emmy Destinn Foundation, Giuseppe Di Stefano Competition Sicily, The DAAD, Countess of Munster Trust, The English Speaking Union and the Royal Overseas League "Young Singer of Promise" 2005.

José Pizarro and David Aijón, because of the chosen instrument and their interpretative approach, show us a very different Schumann from the norm, but possibly closer to how this might have sounded during the composer‘s lifetime: less concert-like and markedly intimate and domestic, quite distant from modern sounds and manners and, therefore, revealingly historical.

There are many biographies of Robert Schumann, but none that gives a real voice to his music - and the life and the music of this great Romantic composer were connected in a particularly subtle way. This new release in the successful series of BR-KLASSIK audio biographies contains approximately 150 excerpts from Schumann's works; carefully interwoven into his life story, they give voice to his inner world. The mysterious "inner voice" that Schumann noted down in the score of his Humoreske op. 20 thus becomes the motto of this audio biography. "Unknown songs I had never heard flowed through my heart - songs that sounded to me like ghostly voices." It was this passage from ETA Hoffmann's Kreisleriana that inspired Schumann to write his own Kreisleriana op 16. In February 1854, the composer himself heard such voices - and this marked the start of a journey that would culminate in the mental asylum. Schumann's "inner voice" thus represents not only his romantic sensitivity but also his fragile and volatile psyche. Of course, this ten-part audio biography also devotes a lot of room to the relationship between Robert and Clara - probably the greatest "romantic novel" of music history. Nothing is exaggerated, however; it is all based on the original sources, which are dramatic and touching enough in themselves. Outstanding actors including Udo Wachtveitl (narrator), Matthias Brandt (Schumann) and Brigitte Hobmeier (Clara) contribute, alongside further narrators, to all the fascinating sounds and colours of this audio biography. Performers such as John Eliot Gardiner, Eric Le Sage and Christian Gerhaher guarantee the highest quality in the musical excerpts, which also feature several rarities. The audio biography is rounded off by a new live recording of the "Spring Symphony" with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, conducted by Mariss Jansons.

Several attempts have been made over the last sixty years or so to record all Robert Schumann's works for solo piano, a fascinating cosmos full of variety that ranges from extremely virtuosic pieces for the concert hall to valuable literature for piano tuition. This attractive but difficult quest has unfortunately been marked by a lack of the necessary care, not to mention purely artistic deficiencies, so that none of the releases deserves the name "complete recording". Since Schumann published several works in two more or less different versions, it is not legitimate in a "complete recording" to include only one of the versions, let alone to amalgamate two of them. Moreover, works published at remote places as well as unpublished works and fragments that could easily be completed without too much speculation, have so far been taken into account only in exceptional cases. Florian Uhlig's 15-album set is the first genuine complete recording of Robert Schumann's works for solo piano. On albums sensibly concentrating on different themes, the pianist for the first time attempts to present all the original piano works between 1830 (Abegg Variations op. 1) and 1854 (Theme and Variations in E flat Major), using the latest critical editions and/or first editions. Several of those releases include first recordings. The introductory notes written by Joachim Draheim, who has discovered and/or edited a number of the works, throw light on the biographical and historical backgrounds of the respective groups of works.

G. SCHUMANN Symphony in b. Serenade for Large Orchestra, Op. 34 • Christoph Gedschold, cond; Munich RO • CPO 777464 (73:32)


Having struck pay dirt with another of its exhumations, Georg Schumann—see review of his piano trios in 35: 5—CPO, label of the Long Lost Composers Society—here resurrects Schumann’s Symphony in B Minor and his Serenade, op. 34. Georg Alfred Schumann (1866–1952) is yet another composer that can be added to the list of blue-ribbon winners produced under Carl Reinecke’s tutelage at the Leipzig Conservatory, and the term “blue-ribbon” is not used metaphorically. In 1886, still a student at the conservatory, Schumann composed this B-Minor Symphony, and when he entered it in an orchestral composition competition two years later it took first prize out of 57 entries. It’s doubtful that the award so swelled his head that he actually appended the subtitle, “Prize-winning Symphony” to his score, but CPO does, treating it as if it were a cognomen like “Pathétique” or “The Inextinguishable.” “Oh, have you heard my Symphony in B Minor, the ‘Prize-winning?’”


Schumann’s symphony lends itself to easy description; it’s the Sixth Symphony Mendelssohn might have written had he lived. No disparagement is meant by that. Mendelssohn is the score’s model and its main influence; as much is admitted by the liner note. Even though Mendelssohn was long dead by the time Georg Schumann came to compose his symphony, it’s no surprise that the young composer would pay tribute to the deceased master. It’s both a reflection of Schumann’s youth and the conservative musical training and values fostered by Reinecke and the Leipzig Conservatory, not to mention the reverence accorded Mendelssohn in the very halls of the conservatory he had founded.


While there’s little originality in its pages, Schumann’s symphony is a beautifully written score; its four conventionally laid out movements are filled with tuneful melodies and a mastery of harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration that confirm it as a composition of consummate craft, if not necessarily one of great art. Certainly it can give pleasure and be appreciated by anyone who enjoys mid-19-century Romantic period orchestral works.


The Serenade for Large Orchestra, written around the turn of the century—it was premiered in 1902—is, unsurprisingly, more venturesome in style and musical vocabulary. It’s also unusual in that while more or less adhering to the formal layout of a serenade, the piece is actually a tone poem in five movements, each movement depicting a tableau in the tale of a rejected lover. But if this leads you to expect music of a forlorn, downcast mien, you’re in for a surprise. Schumann’s model now seems to be Richard Strauss’s tone poems. The score is filled with what Schumann describes as “opponents” and “ridiculers” who chirp and chatter away apparently scolding and mocking the lover for whatever he did that got him booted out of the boudoir. The musical effect is not dissimilar to, though nowhere near as barbed as the carping critics in, Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben . Schumann was probably familiar with Strauss’s tone poems, but neither his talent nor his ambition rose to Strauss’s levels of orchestral extravagance and exhibitionism.


Christoph Gedschold leads the Munich Radio Orchestra in convincing performances. I wouldn’t call either the symphony or the serenade a deathless masterpiece, but if you’ve grown a bit jaded listening to the same Romantic period symphonies and tone poems over and over again, here are two new additions to the recorded repertoire that will temporarily relieve your boredom. Recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Philippe Herreweghe and the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra explore the tormented world of Robert Schumann. Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4 plunge us into the psychological tangles of the composer's mind, reflecting his relentless struggle with melancholy and depression. In these two seminal works, a slow and somber introduction unveils the main motifs that will unfold throughout, before culminating in an emphatic and optimistic finale. The director from Ghent (and former psychiatrist) pHilippe Herreweghe manages to grasp the full complexity of this cathartic process leading us from darkness into light. He delivers a lively and urgent interpretation of these romantic masterpieces, confirming his reputation as an unrivalled performer of the German repertoire.

Several attempts have been made over the last sixty years or so to record all Robert Schumann's works for solo piano, a fascinating cosmos full of variety that ranges from extremely virtuosic pieces for the concert hall to valuable literature for piano tuition. This attractive but difficult quest has unfortunately been marked by a lack of the necessary care, not to mention purely artistic deficiencies, so that none of the releases deserves the name "complete recording". Since Schumann published several works (Impromptus op. 5, Davidsb�ndlert�nze op. 6, Symphonic Studies op. 13, Concert sans Orchestre or Sonata in F Minor op. 14 and Kreisleriana op. 16) in two more or less different versions, it is not legitimate in a "complete recording" to include only one of the versions, let alone to amalgamate two of them. Moreover, works published at remote places as well as unpublished works and fragments that could easily be completed without too much speculation, have so far been taken into account only in exceptional cases.

Clara Schumann n�e Wieck (1819-1896) has gone down in history as a pianist rather than as a composer. The reasons for that have nothing to do with the quality of her compositions but rest on her decision to stop composing after the death of her husband Robert Schumann. Prevailing attitudes to women were moreover not conducive, as the following entry in her diary shows: "A woman is not expected to have any desire to compose." Yet Clara Schumann did have a desire to compose and had the ability to do so, even if she resorted to performing on the piano instead. She composed an astonishing amount, considering that her performing career and bringing up eight children left her hardly any time for steady work. Limited to piano compositions, songs and a piano trio, her oeuvre tends to fall into two groups: virtuoso works - including a very promising early piano concerto - written for her own concert requirements, and works which confront the Romantic aesthetics, like her piano trio, songs and piano romances.

Margarita H�henrieder writes of her new release: "After just a few notes on this exceptionally fine Pleyel grand piano in Kellinghusen, north of Hamburg, in a collection of Eric Feller's, I found myself plunged into a different century. This pianoforte was built in Paris in about 1855 and professionally restored using historical materials and methods. It is absolutely uniform with the instrument that Chopin possessed, and is of typically French elegance - in sound as well as in appearance. It reflects the soul of the Romantic era. Apart from that, it offers an authentic testimony to the sound of the instruments that Fryderyk Chopin and Robert and Clara Schumann played. Clara's father, Friedrich Wieck, gave his daughter a Streicher grand, built in Vienna. Personally, I saw this Pleyel as the ideal instrument on which to play the works of Robert and Clara Schumann as authentically as possible while also matching as precisely as possible the exacting demands they place on piano technique. The constant aspiration in today's music world towards ever larger and more versatile instruments and architecturally and acoustically challenging auditoria meant that I was in search of a convincingly authentic sound for compositions written in and around the 1830s, while also looking out for a suitable performance location - comparable to a mid-19th-century salon and differing from today's concert halls."