Alexander Brenner Houses

Vytas Brenner was a German born Venezuelan pianist, keyboardist and composer. His career started in the late 1960s and released his first album in 1973. His music took Latin American rhythms, as well as from unique Venezuelan tradition and combined them with Progressive Rock, to create delightful Symphonic prog, with elements of fusion, space rock and acoustic folk.

Vytas Brenner was a German born Venezuelan pianist, keyboardist and composer. His career started in the late 1960s and released his first album in 1973. His music took Latin American rhythms, as well as from unique Venezuelan tradition and combined them with Progressive Rock, to create delightful Symphonic prog, with elements of fusion, space rock and acoustic folk.

This is a thrilling performance, which, like the Tchaikovsky Symphony, shows the indisputably high level of the Stuttgart Philharmonic."" (Pizzicato LU) The Stuttgart Philharmonic, founded in 1924, is in its 6th year under the busy Israeli conductor Dan Ettinger. His regular work at almost all of the leading opera houses in the world makes his approach to the melodies of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff just about perfect."" (American Record Guide) The present album is a showstopping production of Tchaikovskys Fourth Symphony paired with Rachmaninoffs Piano Concerto No. 2. The featured soloist in the concerto is Alexander Korsantia, one of the leading pianists of our time. He has been praised for piano technique where difficulties simply do not exist. (Calgary Sun). His recordings of works by Beethoven, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, and Copland have won multiple awards.

Eduard Nápravník is hardly a household name, but he was one of the most important figures in nineteenth-century Russian music. As conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre—one of the finest opera houses in Europe, which became the Kirov Theatre—he worked with many of the most important composers of the day, including Tchaikovsky and ‘The Five’. He composed four operas, and many works in a range of genres, including four symphonies and the two works for piano and orchestra on this disc. His A minor Piano Concerto (1877) begins with a striking reference to the ‘Dies irae’ of Verdi’s Requiem, and is a work of tremendous energy and lyricism, with a nocturne-like slow movement and a dance-like finale. "Fantaisie russe (1881) is based on three Russian folk tunes, and is infectious in its melodic richness and thrilling in its virtuosity.