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FRANZ SCHMIDT - The Piano Album
Karl-Andreas Kolly, piano
Franz Schmidt was not only a brilliant cellist, but also a gifted pianist who mastered almost the entire piano repertoire with ease. Nevertheless, he had a kind of love-hate relationship with the piano. His great love was the organ. However, this did not prevent him from writing numerous works for the left hand (Beethoven Variations, Piano Concerto in E-flat major, Quintets). All of these were commissioned by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. For two-handed piano, on the other hand, Schmidt left behind only one composition. It is the melancholic Romance, which he dedicated to his English teacher Geoffrey Sephton in 1922. Karl-Andreas Kolly: 'The fact that I have nevertheless decided to set three of Franz Schmidt’s organ works for piano has primarily to do with my great passion for his music. And also a little with my hope that in a piano version, his organ works could possibly reach an additional audience.'
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MIKLÓS RÓZSA
DEUTSCHE STAATSPHILHARMONIE RHEINLAND-PFALZ · Gregor Bühl
Miklós Rózsa feared that success as a film composer might overshadow his reputation as a composer of classical concert fare. He was right: Three Oscars and 17 Academy Award nominations will do that to you. The two worlds were strangely incompatible and forced Rózsa into what he called his “Double Life” – both the name of one of the films for which he won an Oscar and the title of his autobiography. But the three orchestral works presented here, from his early, middle, and late phase Miklós Rózsa feared that success as a film composer might overshadow his reputation as a composer of classical concert fare. He was right: Three Oscars and 17 Academy Award nominations will do that to you. The two worlds were strangely incompatible and forced Rózsa into what he called his “Double Life” – both the name of one of the films for which he won an Oscar and the title of his autobiography. But the three orchestral works presented here, from his early, middle, and late phases, are a charming introduction to discovering that second side of his.
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#bruckner24 Symphony #1 (1868) 'Linz'
BRUCKNER ORCHESTER LINZ · Markus Poschner
By his own reckoning, Bruckner began his career as a professional composer when he was thirty-nine years old. With a mere exercise for a symphony under his belt – the unnumbered one in F minor – he was now ready to write his first true symphony. The world was not. First performed in 1868 in Linz – badly – the work flopped and was put aside until nine years and five symphonies later, when it was gently adjusted. A subsequent performance in 1884 was Bruckner’s “most successful Viennese performance to date”, prompting, perplexingly, a thorough revision that would be the 1891 “Vienna” version. This recording uses the unadulterated 1868 “Linz” version.
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GIJA KANCHELI
Elisaveta Blumina · Hartmut Schill · Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie
It was never even an unofficial club of composers like the Russian “Mighty Handful” or the French “Les Six”. And yet, there are striking commonalities among a group of Soviet composers all born in the 1930s. They were hailed from ethnic minorities in the Russia-dominated Soviet Union and they defied the cultural-political directives which eventually led them to find a post-ideological musical language – guided by a personal faith – that enchants listeners to this day with its unique beauty. Giya Kancheli, born in Tbilisi in 1935, is one of them. A fellow composer called him “an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist – a restrained Vesuvius.” The works on this disc – for and with the piano – display exactly that side of his: To be able to make time seemingly stand still… while continuing to dance.
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#bruckner24 Symphony #5
ORF VIENNA RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA · MARKUS POSCHNER
Among Bruckner’s Symphonies, the Fifth is his contrapuntal masterpiece; the grandest until the Eighth. The tour-de-force of a finale gives us an idea of what the finale of the Ninth might have been like. Its magnificent dark and halting opening with the descending bass line – so effectively recalled in the finale – is inimitable. Although long available only in a disfigured version by Franz Schalk, it is also distinct for never having been the subject to revision or, perhaps, even doubt on the part of Bruckner – who never heard it performed with an orchestra. And yet, when Bruckner wrote this masterpiece, he was still far from establishing himself as a composer in Vienna and his spirits were as low as ever, writing a friend that “my life has lost all joy and delight – in vain and for nothing.” A radiant pinnacle from amid darkness.
