Böhm was reported to have told the Wiener Philharmoniker towards the end of his life "I loved you as one can only love a woman". Listening to this boxset, capturing the Concertgebouworkest at the peak of its powers (between 1935 and June 1941), still at a commendable level (between July 1941 and 1944) before having to rebuild from the ashes of war (1945 to 1947) to finally come back to the highest level (1949-1950), the careful auditor has history in the making unfolding with its drama, its joys, but essentially its incommensurable beauty.
This outstanding release is first to couple music by the sister and wife of two great Romantics – incredibly gifted women who were also fine composers, whose music has remained little-known for almost 175 years.
SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the second volume of Romantic Revolution, a revelatory exploration by pianist Michael Dussek of the musical relationship between his ancestor, Jan Ladislav Dussek, and Fryderyk Chopin. Volume II focuses on music composed during the period 1789 to 1846 spanning the early years of Dussek’s compositional career and the final years of Chopin’s.
The first fortepiano recording of a collection belatedly gaining recognition beyond pianophile circles as a major keyboard cycle of late Romanticism.
Andrea Lucchesini has called Franz Schubert’s late piano works his "recent great love". Now he acts out this love in three Albums for audite – masterful performances by the renowned Italian pianist whose interpretations are informed by his expertise in Beethoven as well as musical modernism.
The name of Wilhelm Kempff is not usually included in the company of the great Chopin pianists of the past and present. Artists such as Rubinstein, Argerich, Moravec, Ohlsson, Cliburn, and others are far more likely to be mentioned as eminent interpreters of the great Polish composer's challenging music. Kempff, who died in 1991 in his ninety-sixth year, was usually associated with the composers of his own Germanic background. When he tackled Chopin he often generated a stir. This release is a reissue of performances from 1958 that will surely bolster his controversial reputation in this repertory, a reputation of an outsider, an individualist who chose to go his own way and eschew traditional approaches.
Ronald Smith is best remembered as the pianist who reintroduced the complex, but fantastic compositions of Charles-Valentin Alkan to the world in the 1960s, some 90-120 years after they were first written and 40 years after Alkan's previous great champion, Ferruccio Busoni, had died. Smith received his first piano lessons from his mother and when he entered school, others recognized his talent as well.