SACDs - Schumann

With a flourishing international concert career and an acclaimed discography, Freddy Kempf has become firmly established among the top pianists of today. His very first disc, at the age of 22, was a Schumann recital that made reviewers around the world sit up and take notice.

Kempf now returns to Schumann, with these three solo piano works. The Études symphoniques is one of Schumann’s most imposing piano works and is played here in its 1852 version, with the additional five variations (later published by Brahms) and the third and ninth études from the 1837 edition. This really gives the listener an opportunity to hear this work in all its glory.

IRR said of Kemp’s most recent release on BIS (BISSACD1940) ‘Kempf is consistently imaginative, attentive to details, technically adroit and emotionally committed’.

A legendary suite of interpretations from Svjatoslav Richter. He played Schumann primarily in the seasons 1955-71, his tormented spirit indentifying with another lost poetic soul.

On this Hybrid SACD of music for clarinet and piano, the piano parts have been arranged for strings by Geert van Keulen. The well-known pieces given this unusual treatment are Brahms’ Sonatas, opus 120 Nos. 1 and 2, and Schumann’s Fantasistucke, opus 73. The performers are the soloist Arno Piters and members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam. Born in 1980, Arno Piters studied clarinet with Jan Cober and Willem van der Vuurst at the Maastricht Conservatory, where he earned an honours diploma. He then went on to study with George Pieterson at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and was again awarded an honours diploma. Piters has been a member of the National Youth Orchestra of the Netherlands, the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and the European Union Youth Orchestra, where he performed under such conductors as Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink and Vladimir Ashkenazy. He has made solo appearances with the Residentie Orchestra and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, among others.