Franz Peter Schubert

“The Belcea Quartet throw every fibre of their beings into the most vivid projection of the masterpieces they undertake” (The Independent),

The Belcea Quartet has added three late masterpieces by Franz Schubert to their impressive discography on EMI Classics: the Quartet in D Minor ‘Death and the Maiden’, the Quartet in G Major D887 and the sublime String Quintet in C Major with Valentin Erben of the Alban Berg Quartet as the second cellist.

The Quartet in D minor ‘Death and the Maiden’ is one of two large-scale string quartets that Schubert composed in 1824. The subtitle refers to his famous song of the same name, the melody of which he used here as the basis for a set of variations in the second movement. The G Major Quartet of 1826 was the composer’s 15th and final string quartet. Its emotional and technical challenges were such that only the first movement was performed in public during Schubert’s lifetime and he was unable to find a publisher for it. The Quartet was first performed in its entirety in 1850 and was first published the following year.

The String Quintet in C Major dates from the last months of Schubert’s life, in 1828. The addition of the cello makes for a rich texture and powerful sound where needed but not to the exclusion of exquisite, soft, ethereal sections. Corina Belcea-Fisher, first violinist of the Belcea Quartet said, “It is a great challenge to capture all the varied emotions of the piece, emotions that can switch from one second to the next. It has been a great privilege for us to explore this work with Valentin (Erben), to be able to draw from his resources and his knowledge.”

From November 2009 until January 2010, the Belcea Quartet and Valentin Erben will make an extensive tour of Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany and Holland with a programme that includes the Schubert String Quintet. Their tour features a concert at London’s Wigmore Hall on December 10th.

The Belcea Quartet was established at the Royal College of Music in 1994 and has since been coached by the Chilingirian, Amadeus and Alban Berg Quartets. It is the Associate Ensemble at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Quartet in Residence at Bucharest’s Atheneum Concert Hall.

The Quartet’s engagements regularly take them to such prestigious international venues as Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Brussels’ Palais des Beaux Arts, Lisbon’s Gulbenkian, Zurich’s Tonhalle, Stockholm’s Konzerthuset, Paris’ Châtelet and Opera Bastille, Milan’s Sala Verdi, New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, and to festivals throughout Europe. In the UK they regularly appear at the Edinburgh, Aldeburgh, Perth, Bath and Cheltenham festivals, and at the Wigmore Hall, where they were the Resident String Quartet from 2001 to 2006.

Leading instrumentalists with whom they collaborate include Thomas Adès, Piotr Anderszewski, Natalie Clein, Michael Collins, Imogen Cooper, Valentin Erben, Isabelle van Keulen, Paul Lewis and Yovan Markovitch, as well as singers Ann Murray, Simon Keenlyside, Lisa Milne, Anne Sofie von Otter, Angelika Kirchschlager and Ian Bostridge.

The Belcea Quartet has recorded exclusively for EMI Classics since 2001 and won the Gramophone Award for best Debut recording that year. Subsequent recordings for EMI include Schubert quartets (E-flat Major D87, Quartettsatz D703, A Minor D804 ‘Rosamunde’), Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet with Thomas Adès and Corin Long, Brahms’s String Quartet Op. 51 No. 1 and String Quintet Op. 111 with Thomas Kakuska, Fauré’s La Bonne Chanson with Ian Bostridge, a double disc of Britten’s string quartets, Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ and ‘Hoffmeister’ quartets, and, most recently, the complete Bartók quartets, for which the Quartet was named Chamber Music Ensemble of the Year by Germany's prestigious Echo Klassik Awards and nominated for a 2008 Gramophone Award.

"The Belcea Quartet play with fire in their blood … their performances are never short of thrilling.” (The Scotsman)

Composed in 1827 and first performed privately for members of Schubert's circle, Die Winterreise initially received a mixed reception. Now acknowledged as the greatest song-cycle ever penned, the work, here played in the original keys, it receives a profound and probing reading from tenor Mark Padmore and pianist Paul Lewis, and marks the launch of their Schubert triptych.

"Schubert couldn't be better served…Padmore's great gift, apart from his prodigious technical ability,whether to float a line with perfect legato or to enter pianissimo at the top of his range, is to sing from the soul." The Evening Standard

Pianist Imogen Cooper follows her critically acclaimed ‘Schubert Live, Volume One’, with the second 2-CD release in her ongoing series of Schubert’s late piano music, recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Imogen Cooper’s Schubert Live, Volume One (AV2156) was a runaway success both critically and commercially. An already highly respected artist found her profile, both in the media and at retail, raised to new heights. Imogen continues her exploration of Schubert’s late piano music with the second volume in her ongoing series for AVIE, recorded live at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Her selection for Volume Two reflects the public appetite, in the late 1820s, for shorter piano pieces, which resulted in Six Moments Musicaux, D780 and Four Impromptus, D 935. Even the publisher of Schubert’s G major Sonata, D894, described the work as a ‘Fantasy, Andante, Menuetto and Allegretto’, knowing that marketing the work as individual character pieces would generate healthier sales.

Extensive booklet with notes on each work by Ate?s Orga.

A must-have for lovers of chamber music.

‘Oistrakh plays with the authority we know so well, Knushevitsky, who has a part of predominant importance and sometimes of great difficulty, mostly plays beautifully, and Oborin is excellent. The ensemble of the soloists is superbly good.’ Gramophone reviewing the Beethoven Triple Concerto conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent in 1959

For a quarter of a century from its foundation in 1940, the Oistrakh Trio was the premiere ensemble of its kind in the Soviet Union. All three members were close friends, having trained and studied together during the Stalin years.

They blossomed in the comparatively more relaxed Khrushchev period, championing the great Austro-German and Slavonic repertoire for piano trio.

Never afraid to speak out against injustices in the USSR, they championed composers who were suffering under the oppressive regime – hence the movement from Shebalin’s Trio included on this set. The recordings date from 1947 to 1958, and capture this extraordinary group of musicians at the top of their game.

Schubert’s evergreen Arpeggione Sonata is coupled with new arrangements by Pieter Wispewey of the great Fantasy in C or 1827 and the Duo in A of 1817. The latter two were written for the violin, and the sonata for the now extinct arpeggione.- a hybrid guitar/cello instrument.

The much anticipated second album from Pieter Wispelwey for Onyx.. His debut recording for the label of the Walton Cello Concerto (4042) was received with critical acclaim.

He was already noted as a recitalist, and “a talent to cherish” as far back as 1989. Since appearing in La Scala in 1998 he has performed recitals all over the world, his repertoire including: Schubert, Schumann, Strauss, Brahms, Fauré, Wolf and Mahler. He has also recorded many English songs. Gramophone describe him as the finest baritone singer of Lieder this country has ever produced.

In Simon's own words “I've probably got around 15 years, and think I can see the end of the tunnel. I've done most of the roles that suit me and some, like Papageno, I'll never want to drop…” “In Wagner I shan't go beyond Wolfram in Tannhauser. I know there's Beckmesser, but I'm afraid it's not a role that excites or fascinates me. I'll never get tired of the stand-and-sing roles like Germont in Traviata and Posa in Don Carlos - parts where you really have to act with your voice and pin the audience to their seats with inflexion, nuance and colour. I probably shan't sing Billy Budd again… and am moving down from Pelleas to Golaud. The two new roles I'm most excited about are Wozzeck and Rigoletto, which are both great theatre and call on a huge palette of colours. Wozzeck in particular, is a mountain any baritone wants to climb…”

The artist writes “I feel the French word ”Voyageurs” best covers, in a single word, the many facets of the traveler…….. Making these various aspects of traveling in the broadest sense of the word, audible is the goal of my selection of these works.” Recorded live at the Vienna Musikverein.

After his Bach concertos, a classical bestseller in both France and Germany, the young French pianist David Fray brings his unique sensibilities to Schubert. David Fray has already declared his particular affinity with Austro-German music, and after two CDs featuring Bach (and a DVD featuring him in Bach concertos) he now turns to the early Romantic era and Schubert, with a programme of the six Moments musicaux D780, the four Impromptus D899 and the Allegretto in C minor D915, recorded in Berlin.

His approach to the music is typically questioning and illuminating. “At the piano,” he told the French magazine Pianiste, “I try to make music like a conductor, not just as a pianist. I approach the score as if it is a reduction of a symphonic work. The piano constitutes a way of getting nearer the heart of the music. How do you balance the voices? How do you find a progression in a movement? How do you put the polyphony in place?… It’s much more interesting to study Bach’s approach to the orchestra in the Magnificat or the Christmas Oratorio than to read books on how to play Bach on the piano. Each time I approach a new score, I ask myself how the composer would have written it if he hadn’t decided on the piano. Take Schubert’s first impromptu, for instance: it starts like a reduction of an orchestral score: a tutti chord and then the melody is presented on its own, as if on a flute. Then the winds take up the theme before the strings make their entry. Most of the work comprises three or four independent lines which sing together – a cello ostinato, counterpoint harmony in the violas, say, and the winds above it.”

His recording of Bach concertos, released last November, has now sold over 40,000 copies in France and Germany, singling him out as a pianist to watch. The French magazine Le Monde de la musique said: “The interpretation is always generous, enthusiastic and rich in contrasts. The fast movements appeal with their healthy energy, exuberant humour in their finales and lyricism throughout. No moments of tension stiffen the pianist’s phrases and he gives free rein to the sound,” while the German news magazine Spiegel described Fray as “perhaps the most inspired, certainly the most original Bach-player of his generation … He discovers more psychological depth, more well-rounded stories and more refined emotions than his colleagues … His approach is lyrical, flexible, elegant and instilled with a cultivated bel canto aesthetic.”

To the present-day listener one of the most notable aspects of European concert music in the 19th century is the degree to which it became far less the preserve of the Church and the ruling classes. Many composers working in the early years of the century, Beethoven among them, were, to a lesser or greater extent, still working as employees of the Church or the wealthy aristocratic classes. This system of patronage was soon to break down and the role of the composer took on a more professional and academic character. The new-found freedom, and the advent of Romanticism in the arts as a whole, revitalised music throughout Europe; composers began to experiment with new forms, making their music more personal and innovative. This change of musical climate is clearly illustrated in this 17-CD set made up of works from most of the great composers of the time.