Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

On this unique record, Paul Badura Skoda performs three different versions of Schubert’s final Sontata in B-flat major. Each of these versions is performed with a distinct sound on three different pianos: an 1826 Graf fortepiano, a 1923 Bosendorfer and a 2004 Steinway grand.

Three events were decisive for Paul Badura-Skonda’s beginnings: Furtwangler and Karajan hired the still unknown musician for their concerts in Vienna in 1949. By standing in for the sick Edwin Fischer at the Salzburg Festival in 1950 he became an international star. Major tours as a soloist followed. Further highlights in his career were his first tour of Japan, where he appeared in Tokyo alone 14 times, and the first, highly successful tour through the Soviet Union in 1964, which was followed by many other tours. In 1979, Paul Badura-Skoda was the first Western pianist to perform in China after the Cultural Revolution. In the Mozart jubilee year 1991, he played the cycle of all Mozart’s sonatas in Paris, Vienna Munich, Madrid, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc. Paul describes his performance of the B minor Sonata by Franz Liszt from March 29, 1965 in the Carnegie Hall in New York as “one of the most inspired achievements of my career as a pianist.” To confront a perficious and nasty critique two weeks before in the same venue, Badura-Skoda played as unleashed, with an enormous energy, fuelled in part by internal fury. This concert recording which is to an extent owed to that heat of the moment is being published now, featuring a second interpretation of the same Sonata, a studio recording made in the Mozartsaal of the Vienna Konzerthaus six years later. This version is more controlled and, in the calmer passages, more internalized and contemplative than the New York interpretation. Let it be up to the listener to decide which of the two versions is the preferred one.

The great pianist Paul Badura-Skoda presents two milestones of piano literature and the most important works by Franz Schubert in this genre: the monumental ‘Wanderer Fantasia’ in C, D760 and the unfinished and posthumously published Sonata in C, D840 ‘Reliquie’. Paul Badura-Skoda’s intensive study of Schubert’s oeuvre and the preserved fragments of the third and fourth movements as well as of Viennese Classicism in general led to this completion of the great sonata, kept entirely in Schubert’s style so that the transitions take place flowingly and no stylistic ruptures can be discerned.

If Joseph Haydn played a major role in the development of the symphony and string quartet, he was also and no less the virtual creator of the classical keyboard sonata. In wealth of musical invention and diversity of forms his sonatas surpass those of even Mozart and Beethoven. Although mostly less demanding technically, they are by no means easier to interpret. Their relatively modest demands in the way of virtuosity are more than made up for by the greater creative contribution they require from the player. Especially in the sonatas of his early and middle periods Haydn allowed considerable leeway to the interpreter in matters ranging from choice of ornaments to virtual invitations to interpolate free cadenzas. An intriguing challenge, but many pianists nowadays do not know how to cope with it. Schooled in later traditions, they cling to the printed text, never daring to make the contribution the composer took it for granted he could expect from the performer. Still, if Haydn placed considerable reliance on the player’s personal creative talent this never meant a blanket permission to alter the musical sense by changes foreign to the style of the time. In this release, legendary Viennese pianist Paul Badura-Skoda has recorded five piano masterworks by Joseph Haydn, on the occasion of the bicentenary of his death. His fortepiano from his own collection, which has been used for this recording and was built around 1790, is the most appropriate instrument available today for interpreting Haydn’s music.

Paul Badura-Skoda is not only a world renowned pianist, but is also a Schubert expert. For this release, Badura-Skoda presents Schubert’s Sonata in D major D 850 “Gastein Sonata”, and 3 Klavierstucke D 946. This is Badura-Skoda’s 13th CD with GENUIN.

Classical Music

Once again, GENUIN combines old and new recordings by the Austrian piano grand seigneur Paul Badura-Skoda to form an unparalleled unity. Mr. Badura-Skoda’s recording of Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata, op. 106 – the Master’s fourth-from-the-last sonata – is almost 40 years old, made in 1976; it is combined here with Beethoven’s last three sonatas, the op. 109-111, recorded in late 2013. As always, one of the great pianists of our time rounds this program out by contributing extensive, thoughtful and well-considered texts for each work in the accompanying booklet.

Jean Fournier (1911-2003) was a French violinist and professor of classical music. Fournier’s intonation, while lean, was gentle on the ear. He made an impressive career for himself. He was a soloist with some of the great French orchestras as well as with celebrated international ones. Concert tours took him to many of Europe’s centres of culture (Belgium, Germany, England, Italy, Ireland, Yugoslavia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Spain), as well as to North and South Africa, India and the Far East. In addition to his solo work, Fournier was above all an excellent chamber musician. Together with his wife, the French pianist Ginette Doyen (1921-2002), he performed duets for violin and piano. In the 1950s he founded a brilliant piano trio together with the Italian cellist Antonio Janigro (1918-1989) and the Austrian pianist Paul Badura-Skoda (1927-2019). In addition to his active concert activities Jean Fournier also made many recordings. This 10-album compilation is testament to the violinist’s diversity. It includes recordings such as the Sonatina No. 5 op. 32/1 for solo violin by Jean Martinon (1910-1976), and of course numerous duet works (many of them with his wife Ginette Doyen), piano trios (usually together with his trio partners Antonio Janigro and Paul Badura-Skoda) and violin concertos by Mozart or the Double Concerto op. 102 by Johannes Brahms with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra under Milan Horvat (Mozart) and Hermann Scherchen (Brahms).

For many decades the orchestras of the German broadcasting service SWR have worked together with many famous musicians from all over the world, including the outstanding pianists selected for this collection, among them Clara Haskil, Jörg Demus, Paul Badura-Skoda, Alicia de Larrocha, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Géza Anda. Furthermore, Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (1903–1991) is regarded as one of the supreme keyboard masters of the 20th century and must feature in any comparative survey of performances of the central repertoire from Beethoven to Brahms. Annie Fischer (1914–1995), a pupil of Ernst von Dohnányi later went on to make some legendary recordings with Otto Klemperer. Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) polarized the music scene by embracing the parallel worlds of classical music and jazz in equal measure. He was not only one of the most brilliant pianists of the 20th century with regard to tone and technique, but also one of the wittiest and most musically competent. For decades Wilhelm Kempff (1895–1991) was seen as the leading interpreter of German music from Beethoven and Schubert through Schumann and Liszt to Brahms.