Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Horszowiski Trio debuts on Avie with the complete piano trios by Robert Schumann, music that the ensemble is as passionate about as the composer's Romantic works exude. Schumann's works for piano trio were written within a decade of each other yet represent three distinct periods in the composer's life, the emotional span of the four works reflected in Schumann's all-too-short 46-year life span. Years of friendship have sealed a deep bond between the members of the Horszowski Trio, which in turn has led to performances of exhilarating expressive freedom. Grammy-nominated violinist Jesse Mills first performed with Raman Ramakrishnan, founding cellist of the award-winning Daedalus Quartet, when they were children at the Vermont-based Kinhaven Music School. Years later they met pianist Rieko Aizawa who was the last student of the trio's namesake, the late, legendary pianist, Mieczyslaw Horszowski. Since their debut in 2011 at New York City's Rockefeller University, the Horszowski Trio has performed throughout North America, Asia, and India. The programmes on the trio's extensive 2019 touring schedule, which include a Wigmore Hall debut, feature Schumann's expansive works. Based in New York City, the Horszowski Trio is Artists-in Residence at the Longy School of Music of Bard College.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The two towering masterpieces of the piano quintet genre on this disc were written seventy years and a thousand miles apart, but for all this, they are closely related – Marina Frolova Walker.

Signum artists Peter Donohoe and the Sacconi Quartet join forces to bring piano quintets by Sergey Taneyev and Robert Schumann in their latest album. Their performances of Taneyev’s spectacular Piano Quintet in early 2020 were received with universal acclaim. This resulting album recording felt inevitable, coupling the Taneyev with Schumann’s earlier quintet, itself of such significance to Sergey Taneyev.

V 3: PIANO WORKS

Combining communicative performances with engaging programming, this release is dedicated to Schumann's music for cello and piano - works that were written after a period devoted almost exclusively to the piano, and whose aim it was to extend musical knowledge and practice. Teaming up once again to deliver consummate readings of these works are the seasoned Duo Dillon-Torquati, both of whom enjoy busy international careers. The release is a worthy follow-up to their previous two for Brilliant Classics (Gr�tzmacher's transcriptions of Schumann's piano and vocal music, 94060; Liszt's complete works for cello and piano, 94150) and provides a fascinating insight into the esteem with which composers and performers have responded to each other's music. Recorded 23-24 July 2012, Fondazione Spinola Banna per l'arte, Banna, Italy. An original program featuring works for cello and piano by Schumann, arrangements of works written originally for other instruments. Schumann himself left the choice of instrument open for some of his works: the clarinet, oboe and cello often changed roles. The Romanzen Op. 94 were originally for oboe and piano, but work very well played on the cello, as arranged by the famous 19th century cellist Gr�tzmacher. Also the violin sonata Op. 105 fares excellently through the golden, melancholy sonorities of the cello. Schumann lived his whole life under the spell of the great Johann Sebastian Bach, and as a tribute to Bach's genius Schumann added a piano part to the famous Cello Suites. This is the second issue of Schumann transcriptions for cello by the duo Francesco Dillon/Emanuele Torquati.

Written with typical haste in just five days - 12-16 September 1851 - and burning with the fire of inspiration, Schumann's First Violin Sonata Op.105 expresses the composer's interior tension with particular clarity, moving between the drive and doubt which he encapsulated with two mock-literary archetypes, Florestan and Eusebius. All three violin sonatas date from the years shortly before his breakdown, attempted suicide and subsequent committal to the asylum at Endenich where he spent his last days, forbidden to compose and deprived of his beloved Clara's company. That is not to say that the first two sonatas are in any way weak works, even if Schumann himself commented with the deadpan irony usually more associated with his young friend Brahms, 'I don't care for the first violin sonata, so I wrote a second, which I hope has turned out better'. Whatever the motivation, it is certain that Schumann, in spite of his fragile psychological condition, found creative energy to complete another impassioned chamber work in a very short time. As in the first sonata, in this work the febrile expressive and introverted language seems to escape from the typical style of the salons to a restless expression even in the slow movement, where violin and piano converse in an incessant and obsessive way. This is even more true of the densely polyphonic Third Sonata, which perhaps more than the previous two reveals the demons at Schumann's shoulder, but the composer's particular gift for the swift movement of chamber music lifts all the sonatas from the intricately circular movement which afflicts the heavier textures of other late music for larger forces such as the Mass. The pianist Marco Venturi contributes fine booklet notes to this new recording, in which he is partnered by Andrea Cortesi; this is their second recording for Brilliant Classics, following a disc which could hardly be more different in tone or aesthetic, of music by Philip Glass, Giya Kancheli and Erkki-Sven T��r (BC94814). These wonderful violin sonatas, written a few years before his death in an asylum, belie the dictum that "Schumann started as a genius, and ended as a talent". These are works by a passionate genius, highly original, full of feverish energy, childlike wonder and contemplation. Included are the sonatas Op.105 and 121, as well as the posthumous sonata in A minor WoO27. Played with total commitment, in imaginative and improvisatory style, true to Schumann's flights of fancy and romantic spirit, by two Italian musicians, Andrea Cortesi and Marco Venturi, who recorded to international critical acclaim works by Kancheli, T�ur and Glass for Brilliant Classics (BC94814).

With a flourishing international concert career and an acclaimed discography, Freddy Kempf has become firmly established among the top pianists of today. His very first disc, at the age of 22, was a Schumann recital that made reviewers around the world sit up and take notice.

Kempf now returns to Schumann, with these three solo piano works. The Études symphoniques is one of Schumann’s most imposing piano works and is played here in its 1852 version, with the additional five variations (later published by Brahms) and the third and ninth études from the 1837 edition. This really gives the listener an opportunity to hear this work in all its glory. 

REVIEW:

There is real beauty to Kempf's sound, especially in the lyrical moments of the Fantasiestucke, and careful, intelligent voicing of the very contrapuntal Etudes Symphoniques...there's also rewarding flair which never seems to exist for its own sake, but pursues a larger total impression.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

PAPILLONS PIANO SONATA NO. 3