Robert Schumann

The new "Liaisons" Series is a double-portrait series. It always combines two composers in order to explore more thoroughly their musical worlds, the way they inspired and were inspired by, as well as to find their common denominators and bring them closer to each other. Through a thorough analysis and a careful choice of composers and their compositions on each CD, the "Liaisons" - Series offers a bright spectrum of variety and challenges the listener with every release anew. Lazic, a composer as well: his arrangement of Brahms’ Violin Concerto for piano and orchestra will see its world premiere with Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano in October 2009.

Wunderlich was one of the most unusual and captivating tenors of the last fifty years. In his tragically short career, he displayed an extraordinary musical versatility. This recording was made with his longtime friend and accompanist Hubert Giesen and includes Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Schubert 6 Songs.

Sviatoslav Richter represents the summit of pianistic achievement: his incredible virtuosity and strength, his vision of structure and form, the range of emotion he was able to express on his instrument in concert and on disc have never been surpassed.

Now, for the first time, all nine of the solo and concerto LP-recordings he made for Deutsche Grammophon have been gathered into a single box-set at budget price. All of these recordings have been in the DG catalogue since they were made; if they’re not still at top price, they’re in The Originals series.

It started in 1956 with a Schumann recital and ended in 1962 with a recital recorded live on tour in Italy. In between there were five concerto LPs (including Rachmaninov’s Second, Tchaikovsy’s First with Karajan, the Schumann and Prokofiev’s Fifth) and two more mixed recitals. Here they are, faithfully reproduced in their original couplings (newly mastered) and with original artwork in mini-LP format. The CD booklet (in the style of the The Martha Argerich Collection) has masterly new liner notes by piano expert Jeremy Siepmann, who manages to capture the essence of Richter the man and musician, as well as furnishing precise annotations on each of the albums in turn.

An essential box-set for all serious lovers of piano music.

Since his first release for Virgin Classics, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations in 2000, Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski’s has produced a catalogue which ranges from Bach and Mozart, through more Beethoven to Chopin, Szymanowski and Webern, and which includes several prizewinning recordings.

Both intellectual and inspirational, Anderszewski has said of musical interpretation: “One can speculate endlessly about the right ingredients, the perfect combination but the essential question remains unanswerable, lying far beyond the limits of the cleverest and most refined argument. And yet one goes on searching and, while realising that the search is about everything, the essence may yet reveal itself in the most unexpected way.”

This new release captures live performances by Anderszewski at a very recent recital – December 2008 – in New York’s legendary Carnegie Hall. The critic of the New York Times made clear that this was an exceptional musical experience.

After a performance so intense and draining, the notion of encores almost seemed superfluous. But Bartók’s Three Hungarian Folksongs from the Csik District had a welcome earthiness”

Anderszewski repeated the programme in Chicago shortly afterwards, and the response of the Chicago Sun Times was at a similar level of enthusiasm:

“There is something deeply comforting about the kind of perfection that Polish-Hungarian pianist Piotr Anderszewski brought to his program of Bach, Janácek and Beethoven … Perfection is a relative term when it comes to art, of course. There are myriad but equally valid ways to play a Bach partita or Beethoven sonata … Different artists plumb different facets in a piece of music, and listeners can only benefit from hearing what each one has managed to unearth.

But during the two hours or so that they are onstage, artists like Anderszewski manage to create a universe that seems utterly complete unto itself. There is a sense of inevitability in their performance, a feeling that the true essence of a composer's intentions has been discovered. Especially when our daily lives are battered by forces beyond our control, it is reassuring to spend an afternoon in a world of such richly calibrated balance.“

“It can be hard not to wax hyperbolic when confronted with the pianist Piotr Anderszewski’s sensitive touch and potent imagination.” New York Times

‘Russia is old, Russia is vast, Russia is mighty. But her advance in art, letters and music is comparatively recent’. So wrote Joseph Lhévinne in 1917. Mikhail, Glinka emerged along with Pushkin, Turgenev and Tolstoy in the early 1800s and was to become the father of Russian music. At the same time as Glinka was establishing himself as the first nationalistic composer of the nation, the first great pianist-composer settled in Moscow - the Irishman John Field. Field can lay claim to not only inventing the nocturne, but also to laying the foundation stone of what would become the great piano school of Russia. The latest students of this great tradition are very much with us today: Lugansky, Kissin and Demidenko can all be found in this set.

This remarkable 25CD survey of some of the great Russian pianists of past and present follows the tradition from those who can, through their teachers, trace a direct lineage to Clementi, Field, Beethoven, Czerny, Henselt and Liszt. The Rubinstein brothers Anton and Nikolai established the St Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories, and from the 1840s, Russia started to produce the first of the great virtuosos.

Great names such as Neuhaus and Horowitz are to be found in this set, as well as Richter, Gilels – both with three CDs each – Berman, Ashkenazy, Pletnev, Gavrilov and many more. Other names (Konstantin Igumnov, Viktor Merzhanov, Yakov Zak) may be less familiar to Western ears, but will offer fascinating perspectives on the developing school of Russian pianism, and the subtly various approaches to phrase and timbre within it.

The repertoire ranges from Russian warhorses such as the First Piano Concertos by Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev to intimate salon pieces such as Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons, including rarely heard works such as Kabalevsky’s set of Preludes. The monumental concertos by Brahms, Beethoven and others are well represented, as are the litmus tests of Classical and Romantic piano literature: there are several contrasting versions of Liszt’s B minor Sonata and Beethoven’s Sonata No.32.

A fabulous survey of some of the greatest pianists of the past century and more to emerge from the great Russian tradition of piano playing and teaching. A must for all lovers of the piano.

Of historical interest – many recordings are rare, and have been hitherto been unavailable on CD.

Comprehensive booklet with detailed notes on every pianist and the recordings.

EMI Classics is pleased to announce the release of a joint recital by the legendary pianist Martha Argerich and Gidon Kremer, one of today’s most original and compelling violinists. The concert was recorded live at Berlin’s Philharmonie in December 2006. The repertoire features Schumann’s Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 in D minor and Kinderszenen, as well as Bartók’s Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 and Sonata for Solo Violin. Two encores, Fritz Kreisler’s Liebesleid and Schön Rosmarin round out the release.

“A summit of two musical giants,” wrote the Abendzeitung München, reviewing the concert. “They are chamber music’s dream couple […] The way they communicate musically cannot be surpassed by any other current duo” said the Münchner Merkur. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung summed up the concert with the words “chamber music is alive.”

Interviewed in the film, Gidon Kremer muses about his decades-long partnership with Martha Argerich: “The paradox is that, even though we are not a couple in love, we speak an intimate language through our music of the kind that is usually only spoken between couples in love. It is even possible that, through our music, we can become even more closely entwined than a couple in love can be.”

At first sight, Robert Schumann and Béla Bartók might not appear to have much in common. Schumann represented the German romantic tradition and favoured rich, full harmonies, while Bartók sought to escape from that sound world, his music tending toward “extremes of delicacy or sparseness, or of complexity or roughness, as his vision dictates.” Yet the two composers do have much in common: both were pianist-composers in whose output their own instrument retains a central place yet both had the ambition to reach out and embrace every musical genre; both Schumann and Bartok maintained a strong interest in music education and both promoted the status of music in the wider cultural sphere.

Schumann’s second sonata, in D minor Op. 121, composed in 1851, was dedicated to Ferdinand David, the dedicatee of Mendelssohn’s E-minor Violin Concerto. After Schumann’s death, the sonata was often performed by Joseph Joachim with the composer’s wife, Clara, at the piano. Kinderszenen dates from 1838, a period in which Schumann concentrated on music for solo piano. Kremer comments, “I love listening to Martha from backstage. I love the way she masterfully recreates the fragility of Schumann’s Kinderszenen. It is simply a heart-stopping experience.”

Bartók completed the first of his two violin and piano sonatas in December 1921 and the second the following year. He dedicated both to Jelly d’Arányi, a brilliant young violinist whose playing thrilled him and with whom he fell in love. In both sonatas Bartók treats the two instruments as independent but complementary – they do not share material, as the violin and piano would do in classical duo sonatas. In November of 1943, Bartók met Yehudi Menuhin when he came to play the First Sonata for him, prior to a performance. This meeting inspired the composer’s Sonata for Solo Violin, which Menuhin premiered at Carnegie Hall the following year. Although its structure is traditional and it recalls the first Bach solo sonata, having a fugue as a second movement and a fast triple-time finale, its constant rhythmic inventiveness gives the work a sense of improvisatory freedom.

For the first time, this budget priced 6 CD collection re-presents Segovia’s highly-prized recordings made for American Decca in the 1940s and 1950s, when he was arguably at the height of his powers. Here are the first six albums released by the label in that now legendary series, presented for the first time in original LP couplings and with their striking original-sleeve artwork: Andrés Segovia Guitar Solos; An Andrés Segovia Recital; An Andrés Segovia Concert; An Andrés Segovia Program; An Evening with Andrés Segovia; Andrés Segovia Plays…

Many of these 80+ tracks are appearing on Deutsche Grammophon for the first time. The set has been newly remastered, with a minimum of intervention, from original tapes or tape copies of original glass masters. Like the best whisky, Segovia’s art is unfiltered on these CDs. The results reveal a new intimacy and delicacy in these six classic recitals that are wholly captivating.

The package: Mini-LP sleeves (front and back), CD booklet (in the style of the The Martha Argerich Collection) has new liner notes by Segovia expert Graham Wade comprising introduction and annotations on each of the albums, with colour minis.

ONYX is proud to present an exceptional Schumann recital by the outstanding Austrian baritone Florian Boesch. The recital consists of the greatest Heine settings, the op24 Liederkreis, plus many of the great Romances and Ballads including Belshazzar (Belsatzar). Boesch is rapidly becoming known as one of the most truthfully dramatic lieder interpreters of our day, and made a sensational debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005 with Martineau.

Florian Boesch studied in Vienna with Robert Holl. In 2003 he made his operatic debut with Opernhaus Zürich as Papageno, and is now working with many of the world’s greatest conductors including Gergiev, Bychkov, Harnoncourt, Herreweghe, Viotti and Adam Fischer.

Despite his opera work he is perhaps unusual in devoting much of his time to lieder with performances at London’s Wigmore Hall, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Edinburgh Festival, Mozarteum Salzburg, Wiener Konzerthaus, Palais des Beaux-Arts Brussels, the Schubertiade Festival Schwarzenberg.