Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

A gaping hole in the flute repertoire opened during the first half of the nineteenth century. It was not until the genial Theobald Boehm carried through his technical improvements on the transverse flute, formerly imperfect but now endowed with radiant sound, that this instrument once again was able to interest composers. The FlautoPiano Duo with Helen Dabringhaus and Fil Liotis surprises us with a program brimming with wit and virtuoso lightness and featuring none other than Ludwig van Beethoven. Here Beethoven’s Serenade is of course a must. The master himself supervised the arrangement for flute-piano duo of one of his few works assigning a challenging part to the flute; by then a highly sought-after composer, he evidently had no time to perform this task on his own. Beethoven’s authorship of a Sonata, possibly from his Bonn period, is steeped in legend; this uncommonly witty and nimble work offers us a very different picture of this composer. Theobald Boehm, who as a virtuoso constantly sought new repertoire for his steadily developing instruments, also arranged demanding works with great skill. His version of the Adagio from Beethoven’s famous Piano Concerto No. 1 sheds magnificent light on it from the perspective of High Romanticism and assigns the solo piano’s very substantial tasks to the now highly versatile flute. The equally versatile Helen Dabringhaus succeeds in rendering all of the above with great skill. She masters the virtuosic parts with sparkling lightness but also is able to retreat into tonal beauty – for example, as the discreet accompanist of her piano partner Fil Liotis. The program also includes Beethoven’s Horn Sonata in a contemporary arrangement and the playfully virtuosic Duo for two flutes from 1792 by the twenty-two-year-old composer (here with Vukan Milin) – which makes this lovingly produced Super Audio CD a very special windfall for the Beethoven Year.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Four Experts - it was with this headline that the press welcomed Vol. 10 of the encyclopedic Haydn series by the Leipzig String Quartet. Now the ensemble from Saxony doubles our pleasure with all six quartets from Opus 17 on the two CDs of this attractive box expanding our Haydn quartet horizons to include his earlier works. The result is uncommonly rewarding inasmuch as light is shed on a highly interesting developmental advance from divertimento mirth to mature chamber music and straight into the formative years of a revolutionarily new musical genre. For it was first through Joseph Haydn that the string quartet was crowned the king of chamber disciplines. Four instruments performing as equal partners but in different registers mean that the music has to focus on the essentials; no instrumental tricks might help it over possible compositional longueurs. But Haydn's music of course does not at all need such assistance. The ten years of experience that Haydn had gathered in this genre are heard in his Opus 17. The form is clearly more concentrated; instead of creating an entertaining medley of catchy melodies, he limits himself to a few themes from which he develops a movement or an entire quartet. The extraordinary skill of the instrumentalists available to him in Esterhaza inspired him to craft the sparkling passages that repeatedly flash across his scores. The absolutely great moments in this collection also include many a slow movement - for example, the Adagio from No. 3, which takes the listener into harmonically remote fields. In the careful hands of the four top musicians from Leipzig these rarely heard quartets develop a fascinating appeal that could not be more charming.

Classical Music

Classical Music