The first true complete recording of Robert Schumann’s works for piano solo on 17 albums (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.

In the days before sound recording, orchestral music was often arranged in versions for piano duet as a way for the public to hear, play and enjoy music by the great composers of the day. As a result, the number of arrangements made available soon exceeded that of original piano duet compositions. Robert Schumann, who loved to play duets together with his wife Clara, often supervised and occasionally created many of his own arrangements in the form. This is the penultimate album in this seven-volume series containing all of Schumann’s orchestral works arranged for piano duet. Mariko and Volker Eckerle founded the Eckerle Piano Duo in 2006. The cleverly conceived concert programs of the German-Japanese duo are very popular with critics and audiences alike. Along with central works of the piano duet repertoire, the Eckerle Piano Duo regularly plays rarely heard pieces and works together with other musicians, actors and ballet companies.

Myrtle and Rose- the title taken from the Heinrich Heine poem which Robert Schumann set as the final song of his Liederkreis, Op. 24- features two of Robert Schumann’s most beloved song cycles (the other being Liederkreis, Op. 39) along with several rarely-recorded songs by his wife Clara. The album beautifully captures the artistic partnership of tenor Kyle Stegall and fortepianist Eric Zivian, who first collaborated at the Valley of the Moon Music Festival in Sonoma, California. Stegall’s “lovely tone and ardent expression” (The New York Times) and Eric Zivian’s original 1841 Rausch fortepiano from Vienna- built exactly when the songs were written- combine in these inspired and illuminating interpretations. “a gentle tone that melted the hearts of all” (OperaWire) “the last word in low key virtuosity” (San Francisco Classical Voice)

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REVIEW:

This little recording has a great deal worth recommending. The gentle singing of tenor Kyle Stegall and the circumspect but active accompaniment by Eric Zivian are strong points. The program is elegant. The real star of the show, however, is not Stegall or Zivian, but Zivian's period piano, an 1841 instrument by the Viennese builder Franz Rausch. Many historical performances featuring pianos from this period use French or English models, and the name of Rausch is not much known. However, it fits this music admirably, producing a subtle, silvery tone that brings out the poetry without retreating into the background. Continuing credit to the Avie label for uncovering distinctive little-known performers.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

By 1845, only two years before his death, Mendelssohn at 36 was an eminent 'establishment' figure—but one whose creative imagination no longer had its first freshness. I entirely agree with the American sleeve-note writer that the Quintet's crowning glory is its slow movement, "an elegaic Adagio in D minor, remarkable especially for the way Mendelssohn uses his small ensemble to suggest deep contrasts of light and shadow". And though the elves and sprites of the Scherzo, marked Andante scherzando, sound a little middle-aged in comparison with their nimbler cousins in the Octet and other earlier marvels, they are certainly not without charm. In the active flanking movements Mendelssohn's motivation seems impersonal, like a return to eighteenth-century delight in superlative craftsmanship per se. Here the Guarneris and Zukerman greatly help the composer with their urgent drive. Some of the tremolo down below emerges just a bit hard in the first movement, but their assualt on the finale's con fuoco counterpoint makes for an exciting finish. They find the grace for the Scherzo, and the expressive intensity for the Adagio.

-- Gramophone [2/1980, reviewing the original LP release of the Mendelssohn Quintet]

SYMPHONIES 3&4

Nino Gvetadze finally takes on Robert Schumann’s music, a repertoire we think she is especially fit to. She chose three great works from the golden years 1838-9. Three different works, but all with strong autobiographical connections. Nino is one of Challenge pivotal artists and this is her third release on Challenge, after the successful Chopin (CC 72768) and Scott (CC 72819). BBC Music Magazine: There's always a sense of a musing, meditative intelligence exploring their layers of meaning in the very act of playing, as if she is spontaneously creating the Music under her fingers.

Attractive chamber music performed in a warmly conversational style with a little-known romantic rarity thrown in.

Listening to a good chamber music performance should be like eavesdropping on a mutually sympathetic conversation. Here, that conversation is between kindred spirits for whom musical phrasing and mellifluous tone production are evident priorities. Even when playing quietly, Stephen Hough exhibits an acute sense of tonal colour. Try from, say, 2'23'' into Brahms's finale, where he posits the main idea and his colleagues respond with like minds. Hough's transcription of Schumann's 'Traumerei' might, at first glance, seem like a somewhat old-fashioned appendage to an otherwise enterprising programme. And yet the musical result - where Michael Collins holds the main melody line until near the end of the piece, when Steven Isserlis takes over just for a couple of bars - is utterly captivating.

If the Brahms is 'the fruit of profound maturity' (to quote Isserlis's often entertaining booklet-note), Schumann's four Marchenerzahlungen - performed here with a cello in place of the original viola - combine forcefulness with a certain fragility. For example, the Lebhaft und sehr markiert second movement opens emphatically, then skips off in heady abandon before settling to a mood where the two elements - dark resolution and aerial fantasy - combine. As with so much late Schumann, Marchenerzahlungen seems at pains to make its point without knowing quite why. Therein lies its pathos and peculiar fascination.

The third major component in this well-planned romantic programme is by Lvov-born Carl Fruhling (1868-1937), a gifted composer who, according to Isserlis, partnered celebrated artists of the day and died in poverty. Many of Fruhling's works still await discovery (literally, as no one knows their precise whereabouts) but the Trio recorded here is full of lovely things. Yes, it is eclectic - Collins and Isserlis cite Wagner as an influence, whereas Hough prefers Grieg - but anyone with an ear for Chausson, Korngold, Godowsky or Kreisler is bound to love it. Again, I would quote the finale as an ideal sampling point, especially 5'25'' where Isserlis bows a wistful motive and Hough responds with music that momentarily edges towards Liszt's 'Vallee d'Obermann'.

A highly imaginative programme, one that is characterized above all by fine balancing - musically, interpretatively and technically.

-- Rob Cowan, Gramophone [1/2000]

A special triple album of great Romantic works by one of the world’s most accomplished pianist specializing in works of that era. These stunning performances of Busoni’s Chaconne (after J S Bach) and Berg’s Sonata are receiving their first release; the other tracks were previously issued by Bayer and have been newly remastered. Schliessmann is a unique interpreter, never afraid to find a new expression and always searching for the heart of the music and the composer’s inspiration. On their initial release these recordings attracted great accolades: American Record Guide said: “The best pianist I know at entering the world and expressing the awareness of the German romantics. There is something personal and unique about Schliessmann's Schumann. It does not sound like anyone else's. He is better than any other pianist I have heard.” High Performance Review said of his Scriabin: “This is the most imaginative playing one has heard yet - on the level of Richter, Michelangeli, Wild, Gould - the highest order of artistry.”

On this release, father and daughter duo Lars and Isabelle Vogt perform German ballads and melodramas. Lars Vogt is one of the most sought after and versatile musicians of our time. He has performed in all the major classical venues of the world, often in collaboration with the most illustrious conductors of our day, including Sir Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Robin Ticciati, and Christian Thielemann. As conductor, Vogt himself was appointed Music Director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Gateshead (UK) from 2015 to 2020; he is currently Music Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. Born in 2002 in Berlin, Isabelle Vogt cultivated a passion for theater and drama since early childhood, and today she remains faithful to her vocation in a multitude of activities. In 2013, in Berlin, she star-ted attending the Goldoni Drama School, where she now teaches. Isabelle has participated in a number of theater performances in her native city (with the companies Theaterkollektiv Dokumentartheater Berlin, Theater 28, Grips Theater Youth Club, and others), and she has played roles in television series produced by Sky and Amazon Prime. She has also appeared as narrator in radio feature productions recorded and broadcast by Deutschlandfunk.

The Lied or art song, in contrast to the folk song, came into full flower at the dawn of the Romantic era about 1810 in Germany. The art song really was a largely German phenomenon, known in French (le Lied) and English (the Lied) by its German name. It is Franz Schubert, Robert and Clara Schumann, and Johannes Brahms who represent the landmarks and reference points for the composition of Lieder in the German-speaking territories. Soon after the arrival of phonographic recording at the end of the 19th century, they began to sing into the record companies’ recording horns – so that the earliest sound recordings of this Edition date back as far as the year 1901. The duty of the Lied composer, declared the arch-Romantic Schumann, is “to embroider the poem with its more delicate features in a finer musical fabric”. Altogether, Schumann wrote more than 260 Lieder for single voice before his life unraveled in 1854.

Acclaimed as China’s ‘premier interpreter of Bach’ by International Piano Magazine, the Chinese pianist Yuan Sheng has gained international recognition through his performances in the US and China, among many other countries. The New York Times praised Sheng’s performances of Bach as ‘models of clarity, balance and proportion’. His discography on Piano Classics includes several of the composer’s major cycles such as the Goldberg Variations (PCL0042) and Partitas (PCL10126) which have won critical acclaim for their agile rhythms and sensitive touch, informed by a profound understanding of the music’s origins for harpsichord and the expressive potential of its transfer to the modern piano, which he now passes on to students as a professor of piano at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. This depth of study and beauty of sound, informed by intensive study with Rosalyn Tureck, also mark out his newly recorded interpretations of five major piano cycles by Robert Schumann, who along with Chopin did more than any other composer to expand the horizons of the piano in the early decades of the 19th century and position it as the supreme articulation of a Romantic composer’s ambition in the hands of a single performer. Thus the present album makes an essential complement to Yuan Sheng’s extensive collection of Chopin’s work (including the Ballades, Impromptus, Preludes and 20 Nocturnes: PCL0049) issued by Piano Classics in 2013.

Among the works of Robert Schumann, the four symphonies represent the highs and lows of the composer’s life unlike any others. They were composed between 1840 (shortly after his marriage to Clara Schumann) and 1853 (at which point his mental health problems were becoming clearly apparent). They were, at least, where the first symphony is concerned, a leap into the unknown for the young composer who until then had focused on piano and Lied repertoire. In the coming years, Schumann’s life was a series of short, carefree episodes that alternated with considerably longer period marked by pressing worries – recognition often gave way to criticism and rejection. These were the composer’s personal circumstances when writing the four symphonies. The approach of Roger Norrington, whose artistic credo is the faithful rendition of a composer's intentions, becomes all the more important when considering Schumann’s background as well as the epoch in which he lived and worked. During Norrington’s thirteen years as chief conductor of the former Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (which merged with its sister orchestra from Baden-Baden to form the SWR Symphonieorchester in 2016), he adhered to historically informed performance practice, applying the characteristics of period style to the modern symphony orchestra.