Organist Lukas Hasler presents Gold, a radiant debut album featuring his own transcriptions and arrangements for organ. What began five years ago with a fascination for Mozart's G major Sonata in Edvard Grieg's two-piano version grew into an artistic journey into the transformative world of transcription. Hasler discovered in the organ an instrument capable not only of recreating orchestral and pianistic textures, but of reshaping them into something entirely new. To capture this vision, he turned to the iconic Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, whose expressive possibilities and glowing acoustics inspired both the selection of repertoire and the album's title. Gold offers a rich spectrum of colours and styles, from the jubilant brilliance of Bach's Sinfonia (in Dupré's vibrant transcription) to the tender intimacy of Schumann's Romance, recorded here for the first time on organ. Hasler brings theatrical flair to Lemare's arrangement of Carmen Fantasy, profound stillness to Beethoven's "Moonlight" Adagio, and symphonic vitality to Bruckner's Nullte Scherzo, while Mozart's G major Sonata - filtered through Grieg's imagination and Hasler's own artistry - bridges Classical clarity and Romantic warmth. Rachmaninoff's stormy Prelude, Lefébure-Wély's sparkling Boléro, and the playful, genre-bending Vienna Calling complete a programme that celebrates invention, personality, and the golden richness of the Viennese organ sound.
Baker: Piano Concerto "From Noon to Starry Night" / Hamelin
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Oct 13, 2017
Award-winning and much decorated composer Claude Baker here entwines his evocative soundworld with the powerful imagery of two great poets. Recorded in its premiere performance with Marc-Andre Hamelin as soloist, the Piano Concerto ‘From Noon to Starry Night’ draws on and amplifies the structures and meanings of five poems by Walt Whitman, expressing the heroism and darkness of war, exuberant celebrations of nature and a wistful ‘remembrance of things past.’ Aus Schwanengesang is a memorial piece that expands and ‘re-composes’ the poignant Heine Lieder from Schubert’s song cycle with oblique and multi-layered references.
Alkan: Concerto For Solo Piano, Etc / Marc-andré Hamelin
Music and Arts Programs of America
CD
$18.99Mar 27, 2001
Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik, 1/93; Gramophone nomination as best recording of the year in its class, 1993. '...monumental (and genuinely virtuoso) reading of Alkan's Concerto for Solo Piano. This truly phenomenal recording will surely remain a yardstick in Alkan performances for many years to come...' -Michael Stewart in Gramophone '...the outstanding pianistic event of the year...Marc-André Hamelin [is] a superman of the piano and a titanic presence in concert.' -Adrian Corleonis in Fanfare '...blazing conviction and superhuman virtuosity. One of the great piano recordings of the century...' -Donald Manildi in American Record Guide