SCHUMANN Waldszenen, Op. 82; Symphonische Etüden, Op. 13; Arabeske, Op. 18 • Martin Helmchen (pn) • PENTATONE 5186 452 (SACD: 60:52)


Martin Helmchen is a name which is probably new to no one: He has won numerous awards (including first prize in the Clara Haskil Competition in 2001), has worked with numerous illustrious orchestras, among them the Deutsche Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, and various chamber orchestras around Europe, with such master conductors as Marek Janowski, Philippe Herreweghe, Valery Gergiev, and Bernhard Klee. He has partnered in chamber music recitals with Boris Pergamenschikow, Heinrich Schiff, Gidon Kremer, Christian Tetzlaff, Daniel Hope, and Lars Vogt, among many others. He is, in other words, a fabulous instrumentalist. And that is clear from the current recital.


The opening Waldszenen is for me the highlight of the disc. Here Helmchen is calm and reserved for the most part: The Eintritt here acts as not just an entranceway into the piece, but into the program as a whole. Oddly, when comparing it to Volodos’s version on his live recital from Vienna, Volodos seems to shade more sweetly than does Helmchen, but Helmchen does not see the piece in the same way: Here he captures an amazing simplicity akin to the C-Major Prelude in Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book I. His continuity of sound is entrancing. Verrufene Stelle evokes perfectly the odd, almost twisted quality of those ill-reputed places which Schumann musically describes so perfectly. Of course the highlight for most people is the strange and enigmatic Vogel als Prophet . While there is hardly a pianist out there capable of attaining the magical atmosphere of this piece as well as Alfred Cortot did, Helmchen does as admirable a job as many. The chorale-like middle section sounds as odd in this performance as it should, stopping the piece in midtrack, appearing and then disappearing just as quickly. The Symphonische Etüden, performed here with the five Anhang variations interspersed throughout the cycle, works well: The extra variations seem as though they truly belong to the cycle. It is far more satisfying to hear them this way than performed together at the conclusion of the opus proper. Here Helmchen alters his sound to fit his conception of the work. This is no longer light-hearted fare. This is as heavy and brooding as Schumann gets. And perhaps Helmchen here plays the work a bit too poised, too “normal” for my tastes. I tend to like my Schumann ever more schizophrenic in its rhythmic intricacies and eccentric in its numerous sforzandi . Helmchen plays the work a bit lighter than I would like, making it sound almost like Mendelssohn, yet there are moments when this works beautifully: Etude III and even Variation V sound as though they are lost parts of Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses here. The C-Major Arabeske brings us back to the light-hearted world of the opening, acting as both conclusion and encore. The pianist plays it simply: smooth, flowing, and tender. With bonus SACD quality sound, PentaTone has done it again. This one’s a keeper.


FANFARE: Scott Noriega

A very fine and enjoyable set...just delightful—a balm to your soul.

Julia Fischer and Martin Helmchen’s interpretation of Schubert’s music for violin and piano has been highly successful from the onset, and now returns in an affordable stereo re-issue. The release uniquely features Fischer as a pianist in the Fantasia for Piano Duet D. 940. She had previously performed as a pianist in concert, but this was her recording debut. Julia Fischer and Martin Helmchen are among the most outstanding instrumentalists of their generation, and both have a vast Pentatone discography.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

Julia Fischer and Martin Helmchen’s interpretation of Schubert’s music for violin and piano has been highly successful from the onset, and now returns in an affordable stereo re-issue. The release uniquely features Fischer as a pianist in the Fantasia for Piano Duet D. 940. She had previously performed as a pianist in concert, but this was her recording debut. Julia Fischer and Martin Helmchen are among the most outstanding instrumentalists of their generation, and both have a vast Pentatone discography.

REVIEWS:

German-Slovak Julia Fischer, who nearly opted for a career as a pianist, now shines in the constellation of top young violinists. She and her gifted pianist, Martin Helmchen, capture the sunny nature of the three youthful sonatinas, where the challenge is not primarily technical but musical: how to maintain their buoyant charm. The late Rondo Brillant D895, on the contrary, has a dark portentousness in the opening andante, while the exuberant, somewhat repetitive allegro presents a greater virtuosic challenge. These outstanding players respond with persuasive vigour and freshness.

-- The Guardian

On Vol. 1:

Helmchen is adept at pinpointing the crucial harmonies… and his touch is unusually sensitive… Fischer similarly manages to combine restraint with warm expression, and the occasional moments where she plays with more abandon - as in her dramatic first entry in D385 and the ebullient Minute of D403 - stand out the more effectively.

-- Gramophone

On Vol. 2:

☆☆☆☆☆  A magnificent account of this inspired work [the F major Fantasy]...It's a challenging piece...yet Fischer and Helmchen present as fine as any account on disc...They are a marvellous team, evidently giving each other ideas as they go along.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Characteristic Schubert, played with penetrating subtlety by the two young Germans Fischer and Helmchen...The CD ends with the D940 Fantasia for piano duet, with Fischer partnering in a powerful performance: one moment fiery, the next caressing. And all such heavenly music.

-- The Times of London

Composed in 1944 and first performed at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 26 March 1945 by Yvonne Loriod, this is the second great pianistic cycle by Olivier Messiaen: a major work indeed, not only in the composer's oeuvre but in the entire repertoire for solo piano. As we know, it's origin is in the faith and spirituality of Olivier Messiaen, who described it as: 'The Contemplation of the Child-God in the cradle, and the gazes fixed upon Him: from the inexpressible Gaze of God the Father to the multiple Gaze of the Church of love, also taking in the unheard Gaze of the Spirit of joy, the tender Gaze of the Virgin, of the Angels, of the Magi, and of those creatures that are immaterial or symbolic (Time, Extreme Height, Silence, the Star, the Cross).' He continues: 'It is a complex of sounds destined for perpetual variations, pre-existing in the abstract as a series, but very concrete and easy to recognize by their colours: a steely grey-blue traversed by bright red and orange, a mauve-tinted violet spotted with leather-brown and encircled in deep purple.' The vision of this work transmitted by Martin Helmchen - a great piano virtuoso who is himself marked by a strong sense of spirituality - is another substantial contribution to the Messiaenic monument.

Classical Music

2020 saw the release of the first installment in this three-album traversal of Beethoven’s violin sonatas – a disc which has garnered distinctions such as Choc de Classica and Cum Laude (Luister), with performances that ‘wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit’ (Gramophone) in ‘recordings that are conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ (BBC Music Magazine). As Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen open the second disc, they do so with the iconic Spring Sonata, Op. 24. Completed in 1801, the work proved immediately popular with a second edition appearing only months after the first publication. There were also numerous arrangements for a variety of forces – including a song based on motifs from the sonata’s slow movement. Soon after completing Op. 24, Beethoven began work on a set of three sonatas of which the first two are included on this album. Musically the Op. 30 sonatas continue the development that had begun with the Spring Sonata towards a contrast-rich, symphonic style. Beethoven originally planned to end the first and shortest of the three with the expansive movement that later became the finale of the great Kreutzer Sonata. As this would clearly have ruined the proportions of the work, he eventually replaced it with a set of variations. Closing this album is the second sonata of Op. 30, in C minor. It is the most important of the set; a genuine Grande Sonate in four movements, and an early example of Beethoven’s ‘heroic’ style.

REVIEW:

This is one of the most responsive partnerships I’ve heard in these sonatas, and I’ve heard some really outstanding ones. The togetherness of these two artists in precision of timing and harmonic vibration in matters of phrasing and dynamics is an amazing thing to experience.

-- Fanfare

The pianist Martin Helmchen has now joined Alpha for several recordings. Acknowledged as one of the leading pianists of his generation, an eminent interpreter of the German repertoire, Helmchen will explore various periods and composers (including Messiaen!), but Beethoven will have a preponderant place in his forthcoming recording projects. Before the complete concertos, planned for 2020, he tackles the Diabelli Variations, ‘a climax in the life of a pianist’. He sees these variations as ‘a voyage to the very heart of the infinity of human feelings and moods, by turns profound, philosophical, satirical’. He regards the cycle as a visionary work that heralds future developments in music, containing the first stirrings of twentieth-century minimalism, atonality and abstraction. This recording is the end result of a long personal association and numerous concerts; a powerful version in which each variation emerges as a masterpiece in its own right.

Martin Helmchen embarks on a complete recording of Schubert's piano sonatas, with four double albums to be released between now and 2028, the bicentenary of the composer's death. He has waited until he was in his forties to embark on this adventure because, in his view, an artist needs maturity to meet the challenges posed by the radical contrasts in Schubert's sonatas: "constant virtuosity that is never needlessly complex, set against sober interiority, the exuberant joy of the Landler, and bouts of dramatic madness". Recording a complete body of work also meant studying the scores carefully and tackling the question of the movements left unfinished by the composer, should we stop at the precise point where Schubert stopped composing simply because Schubert either ran out of time or did not have enough money to buy music manuscript paper? Helmchen has chosen to complete these movements, inspired by the recordings and above all the analyses of the eminent pianist Paul Badura-Skoda. This first volume presents sonatas composed between 1815 (Schubert was 18) and 1825. The entire cycle has been recorded on a Bosendorfer piano at the Kronberg Academy.