19th Century Music, Vol. 22, No. 3

After eight discs with the 32 numbered sonatas, and a ninth comprising the early sonatas and sonatinas, Ronald Brautigam now embarks on the second leg of his traversal of Beethoven’s complete music for solo piano. In this volume he gives us the complete Bagatelles, and includes not only the three sets published during Beethoven’s life time, but also thirteen further pieces composed throughout Beethoven’s career, between 1795 and 1825. Some of these pieces, most famously ‘Für Elise’, are sometimes referred to as Bagatelles, others simply as Klavierstücke and several of them are only known by their tempo markings.

What a pity that Vol. 3 of string quartets by George Onslow (1784-1853) is the last in the survey. It may just be the best of the three, including Onslow’s great early C minor quartet op. 8, and two other top-notch specimens overflowing with melody, excitement, and power. If you’re new to Onslow, this program is the perfect introduction to his variegated talents and expressive aims. The Mandelring Quartet is a spirited and persuasive team playing from the heart; three members of the quartet are siblings and their father was an Onslow scholar.

With this 29th volume in the Romantic Piano Concerto series we commence a cycle of three CDs that we hope will include all eight of Moscheles' piano concertos. It also marks the start of our exploration of concertos from the earlier part of the 19th century, which we have so far rather neglected.

Louise Farrenc was one of the most respected pianists and composers in the 19th-century Parisian music scene, and her four sets of Études are her most important compositions for piano. Beautiful melodies and distinctiveness of character have made the Études, Op. 26 the most popular set, but all of these pieces are full of grace and charm alongside their didactic usefulness in their references to the styles both of Farrenc’s musical ancestors and her contemporaries. The Greek pianist Maria Stratigou is one of Louise Farrenc’s greatest exponents and makes her Grand Piano debut with these exquisite rarities.

This is listed as the final installment in the Eroica’s Mendelssohn quartets series. It also happens to come on the heels of two brand new complete sets—one from the preeminent Emerson Quartet, the other from the pacesetting Pacifica Quartet. Comparisons to these ensembles, though probably unavoidable, are not particularly apt or instructive, for the Eroica is a period-instruments group dedicated to interpretations of 19th-century Romantic works that reflect as closely as possible the performance practices that would have been in vogue at the time the music was written.

Georges Onslow (1784-1853) was a highly respected and much-played composer of chamber music works in the 19th century. Hailing from the highest English aristocratic circles, he spent his life in France and was fortunate never to have to compose for his livelihood. His music was not only highly valued by Beethoven, and its originality and ingenuity also impressed one of the most ambitious young string quartets that we could win for our production of the quartets op. 9, 1 and 3 and op. 47: the Mandelring Quartett.

Both Anton Arensky and Sergey Taneyev belong to the generation of Russian composers who came to prominence at the end of the 19th century, midway between Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. With its expansive themes and wonderfully elegiac mood, Arensky’s Piano Trio No. 1 is dedicated to the memory of cellist Karl Davydov. The subtle use of counterpoint in Taneyev’s Piano Trio in D major reveals his expertise in combining earlier techniques with the emphatically Romantic style that both composers inherited from Tchaikovsky. These two masterpieces summarize the development of the piano trio genre in Russian music of the 19thcentury, and subsequently laid the foundations for its further evolution.