Tag: piano
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PROGRAM NOTES: SIMON TRPČESKI
Program Notes: Simon Trpčeski Schubert: 16 German Dances, D. 783 (Op. 33) So indelibly is the name Johann Strauss embedded in our consciousness as the purveyor of Viennese dance music that we tend to forget such music existed well before the Waltz King appeared on the scene. Not just minor, forgotten figures like Pamer, Faisatenberger…
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PROGRAM NOTES: BENJAMIN GROSVENOR
J. S. Bach: Five transcriptions Benjamin Grosvenor opens his program with a series of piano transcriptions, a genre that was wildly popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, then went out of fashion, and is now making something of a comeback. Transcription – the transferal from one medium to another – is as…
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PROGRAM NOTES: AUGUSTIN HADELICH
Robert Schumann: Violin sonata No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105 Schumann wrote both of his completed sonatas for violin and piano in 1851. His wife Clara played the piano parts at their public premieres with violinists Ferdinand David (No. 1 in 1852) and Joseph Joachim (No. 2 in 1853). Though frequently recorded, these…
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PROGRAM NOTES: STEPHEN HOUGH
Frédéric Chopin: Nocturnes, Op. 27 The nocturnes are Chopin’s most intimate and personal utterances. Some are wistful, some reflective, some melancholy, some faintly troubled and some serenely joyful. All are sensuously beautiful, suffused with elegance and deeply poetic impulses. During Chopin’s lifetime they were his most popular pieces. Twenty-one survive, the first written when…
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PROGRAM NOTES: MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN
Alban Berg: Piano sonata, Op. 1 “Among the most auspicious Opus Ones ever written,” was Glenn Gould’s assessment of Alban Berg’s piano sonata. Berg wrote this work in 1907-08 while studying with Arnold Schönberg. Originally it was intended to have three movements but, after completing the first, Berg found that “for a long time nothing…
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PROGRAM NOTES: BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV
Franz Schubert: Piano sonata in A major, D. 664 (Op. 120) Scholars lack definite evidence for the date and place of composition of Schubert’s early A major sonata, but most are willing to grant that most likely he wrote it during the summer of 1819 while vacationing in Steyr in Upper Austria. He wrote to…
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PROGRAM NOTES: PAUL LEWIS
Paul Lewis performs the Late Schubert Sonatas The year of Schubert’s death, 1828, saw the birth of an extraordinary number of masterpieces from the pen of this master lyricist: the “Great” C major Symphony, the Mass in E-flat, the String Quintet in C, thirteen of his finest songs, and the final trilogy of great…
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PROGRAM NOTES: ANDRAS SCHIFF PERFORMS BACH
J. S. Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier One of the monumental landmarks in the history of music, Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier (the WTC for short) has come to represent the “Old Testament” of the pianist’s repertory (Hans von Bülow) and his “daily bread” (Robert Schumann). “For more than 250 years,” states Davitt Moroney, “Das wohltemperierte Clavier has…
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PROGRAM NOTES: ERIC OWENS, BASS-BARITONE
Eric Owens’ recital divides neatly into two halves – a German half and a French half, with the final song a true rarity that bridges the geographical and cultural divide. The German songs (Lieder) all tend to be of a dark, serious or melancholic nature, while the French songs (mélodies) are lighter, even airy and…
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ANDRÁS SCHIFF: ON PLAYING BACH AND THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER
Senza pedale ma con tanti colori (Without the pedal but with plenty of colours) Playing J. S. Bach’s keyboard music on the modern piano, pianists are confronted with various fundamental questions. The answers to these are never simple. For example: what is the “correct” instrument for the Well-Tempered Clavier? The clavichord, the harpsichord, the organ,…