Robert Schumann

Schumann's music is descriptive and poetic. He was, after Wagner, surely the most important writer of musical commentary among the musicians of his time, while his piano cycles like Papillons, Davidsbündlertänze, Carnaval, Kinderszenen and Kreisleriana couple personal feelings with poetic aspects.

For about ten years, up to op. 23, Schumann wrote exclusively for the piano; it had been his instrument from the time of his youth, an affinity he shared with his later friend Frédéric Chopin, who was born in the same year as he was.

The opus numbers of the four works on this CD follow directly upon one another, having been written in the same short period (1838/39); in spite of their differences in form, length and content, they have much in common.

The Violin Concerto by Johannes Brahms is for performers and audience alike one of the loveliest, most challenging examples of the genre. It was with this work that Arabella Steinbacher gave her debut in the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein in December 2007, the same hall where the composer himself had conducted on occasion. Arabella Steinbacher’s debut was accompanied by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under its chief conductor Fabio Luisi, who are also to be heard on this live recording in Schumann’s Fourth Symphony. Both this symphony and the Brahms concerto were dedicated to the leading violin virtuoso of the second half of the 19th century, namely Joseph Joachim. The work soon began a triumphal procession through the concert halls. Thanks to Joachim’s numerous famed successors, it would be impossible to imagine the violin repertoire today without it.

Arabella Steinbacher won the Joachim Violin Competition in Hanover several years ago, which was a starting point of her current international career. She is furthermore a worthy representative of the violin style that is celebrated in Brahms’s concerto, a style that is virtuosic without virtuosity becoming an end in itself. Thanks to her much-praised brilliant, precise tone, the listener remains aware throughout that the solo part never recedes completely into the background, even where the orchestra unfolds its most expansive symphonic arguments – such as in the presentation of the work’s themes and in the sensitive orchestration of the first and second movements. Arabella Steinbacher fully savours the works’ variety of colour and climax. In the brilliant cadenza of the first movement and in the highly spirited third, she draws on an embarrassment of virtuosic riches which is masterly.

Henk Neven studied with Maarten Koningsberger and Margreet Honig at the Conservatory of Amsterdam where he graduated cum laude in 2003. In 2002 he received a diploma cum laude from the New Opera Academy. He followed masterclasses with Graham Johnson, Graham Clark, Rudolf Jansen, Hartmut Höll, Jard van Nes and Robert Holl.

He was awarded a Borletti-Buitoni Fellowship in 2009, and is a BBC New Generation Artist 2009-2011.

Henk Neven has performed at the BBC Proms and at the Wigmore Hall. He also has a busy career in the opera houses of Europe, including Leporello in Don Giovanni in De Doelen Rotterdam, Patrocle in Iphigénie en Tauride by Gluck at La Monnaie in Brussels, Ottokar in Der Freischütz in Theater an der Wien, Mercutio in Roméo et Juliette at De Nederlandse Opera and Gralritter in Parsifal in Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

As a recitalist he will appear with Hans Eijsackers in de ‘Vocale Serie’ of Het Concertgebouw, La Monnaie Brussels and de Beurs van Berlage Amsterdam.

This is his debut recording, and he has selected Lieder by Carl Loewe to programme with Schumann’s Liederkreis op22, repertoire he loves performing. Neven is a major new vocal talent.

Born in Vienna in April 1902, the cheery-looking Josef Krips seems to have been pre-destined to achieve eminence in the Viennese classics. He recorded with both, the Wiener Philharmoniker and the key London orchestras for Decca in the 1940s, 50s and 60s and the interpretations have genuine expressive power while remaining devoid of exaggeration or affectation.

Here we have Krips giving us the First and Fourth symphonies, respectively of Brahms and Schumann. With the Wiener Philharmoniker he whips up an almost uncontainable sense of thrill in Brahms’s First. ‘I wrote the Symphony in that first flush of spring which carries a man away even in his old age, and comes over him anew every year’ wrote Schumann of his First Symphony. Krips’s way with the work is unforced and natural, and of his two recordings of Schumann’s Fourth (in 1952 and 1957), the second is included here.

This issue forms part of a series of five reissues devoted to the art of Josef Krips.

Recording producers: John Culshaw (Brahms No. 1); Victor Olof (Brahms No. 4); James Walker (Schumann No. 1); Christopher Whelan (Schumann No. 4);

Balance engineers: James Brown (Brahms No. 1); unidentified (Brahms No. 4); Ken Cress (Schumann No. 4); Gordon Parry (Schumann No. 4)

Recording locations: Sofiensaal, Vienna, Austria, October 1956 (Brahms No. 1); Kingsway Hall, London, United Kingdom, April 1950 (Brahms No. 4), October 1956 (Schumann No. 4), May 1957 (Schumann No. 1)