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

The German soprano Juliane Banse has sung the Lieder of Brahms, Schubert, Wolf, Ullmann, Strauss, Schumann, Loewe and Berg, earning a reputation for both the quality of her interpretations and the warmth of her timbre. She and her regular partner Martin Helmchen, who has just joined Alpha, have chosen to record Paul Hindemith’s song cycle Das Marienleben, composed in 1923 and revised by the composer in 1948. The piece is a bewitching, sometimes disturbing cycle whose texts, taken from the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke, retrace the life of the Virgin Mary. Fifteen poems, fifteen episodes tinged with mysticism and lyricism. They proved to be the ideal inspiration for Hindemith, whose compositional style here draws on both the power of Wagner’s operas and the subtle nuances of Debussy.

Following a first recording on Alpha devoted to Brahms which garnered much praise – ‘real duo playing’ said Gramophone, while Classica discerned ‘shared music making . . . a world full of nuances and subtlety, boundless sonic imagination (Marie-Elisabeth Hecker), playing of rare intelligence (Martin Helmchen)’ and awarded the disc a ‘Choc’ – the duo is reunited. Its new programme features two summits of chamber music: Schubert’s famous Arpeggione Sonata – named after a now obsolete instrument that was a cross between the guitar and the cello – and his no less celebrated Trio no.2 D929, which achieved even greater popularity thanks to Stanley Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon. In the latter, the duo is joined by an eminent musician with whom they enjoy playing, Antje Weithaas, ‘one of the great violinists of our time’ (Fonoforum) and also one of the teachers most sought after by the young generation. For example, she taught Tobias Feldmann, the young violinist recently signed by Alpha.

Highly regarded as soloists as well as chamber musicians, Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen are also known for an unostentatious and selfless musicianship which never obscures the music they are performing. When they started their collaboration in 2018, it was with the aim of playing and recording Beethoven's 12 violin sonatas. A series of recitals at prestigious venues and festivals was followed by the first recording sessions, which took place in September 2019. Enjoy the results!

Frank Peter Zimmermann is widely regarded as one of the foremost violinists of his generation. Martin Helmchen has established himself as one of the most prominent pianists of the younger generation. 

REVIEWS:

How elegantly unforced these works come over today. Zimmermann’s sound is light, flexible, and finely shaded, with Martin Helmchen delivering effortless virtuosity. The opening of the First Sonata brings an unleashing of exuberant energy, while the opening of the Second is the epitome of mercurial high spirits. These recordings are conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing.

– BBC Music Magazine

They’re never afraid to express themselves poetically or to linger over an expressive moment. Yet there’s a briskness and momentum about all four performances. These performances wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit, and I suspect that Beethoven would have rather enjoyed the result.

– Gramophone

Previous installments of the Beethoven sonata cycle from Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen have met with wide acclaim. Described as ‘conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ in BBC Music Magazine, the albums have received a Choc in Classica and the recommendation of German website klassik.com, respectively. This the third and final volume brings together Beethoven's last three works in the genre, composed between 1801 and 1812. The center-piece is the ninth sonata, the famed ‘Kreutzer Sonata’. 

Beethoven’s piano concertos are a precious source for understanding the history of the practice of this instrument, which, in the early nineteenth century, permanently replaced the harpsichord in the hearts of composers. Thus one can still hear the gallant influence of Mozart in the First Concerto (1795-1800), whereas the Fourth (1805-06) reveals the introspective personality, at once vigorous and generous, of a Beethoven at the height of his artistic maturity. In the second installment of his recording of the complete concertos, the German pianist Martin Helmchen performs these two contrasting works with Andrew Manze and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

200 years ago, on May 26th 1821, today's Berlin Concert Hall was inaugurated as “Königliches Schauspielhaus”. Destroyed as “Preußisches Staatstheater” during World War II, the building, located in eastern Berlin, was rebuilt during GDR times and reopened as “Konzerthaus” in 1984. The premiere of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz on June 18th 1821 was a highlight of the opening year. The work became his most popular opera and one of the key works of the 19th century. A few days later, the composer (who died at the age of only 40 in 1826), had another piece premiered at the “Königliches Schauspielhaus”: his brilliant Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra op.79.

This year the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, with its principal conductor Christoph Eschenbach, will be celebrating these historic events. Weber holds a special place in the life of the great German conductor and pianist, as Der Freischütz was the first opera he saw at the age of ten. Eschenbach is being joined in this program, which combines overtures, arias and the famous concert piece, by two artists who reside at the Konzerthaus Berlin and are also Alpha artists: soprano Anna Prohaska and pianist Martin Helmchen.

REVIEW:

Martin Helmchen gives real substance to the Konzertstück by incorporating the profusion of flashy runs and roulades into long-breathed, expressive phrases, and also in the way he renders details exquisitely yet without exaggeration. Eschenbach and the orchestra deserve credit, too, for they match Helmchen's deft touch and broad colour palette. Note, too, how the strings' spectral tone immediately sets the frightful scene Aennchen paints in her Act 3 Romanze. Soprano Anna Prohaska is a marvellous storyteller, although it's her viscous legato that impresses most.

– Gramophone

German pianist Martin Helmchen continues his journey through Beethoven’s piano concertos with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Andrew Manze. In the Third Concerto, published in 1804, Beethoven seems to be moving away from the Mozartian model and inaugurates his ‘middle period,’ using the minor mode to depict a distress and heartache that are certainly not unconnected with the famous ‘Heiligenstadt Testament,’ which he wrote in 1802 to record his growing deafness. Martin Helmchem is joined by two partners with whom he performs a great deal of chamber music- violinist Antje Weithaas and cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker- to record the Triple Concerto, also written during the composer’s so-called ‘heroic’ period.

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