Christian Poltéra Ronald Brautigam

Born in the vicinity of Cologne, only two years after and some sixty km distant from Beethoven, Johann Wilhelm Wilms was once a musical force to be reckoned with. In Amsterdam, where he lived from the age of 19, his music was actually performed more frequently than Beethoven’s at one period, and his orchestral works were played in such musical centres as Leipzig. Besides chamber music and solo sonatas Wilms composed several symphonies and solo concertos (for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and cello) as well as piano concertos for his own use, five of which were published between 1799 and 1820.

Christian Poltéra, 1977 in Zürich geboren, erhielt Unterricht bei Nancy Chumachenco sowie Boris Pergamenschikow und studierte später bei Heinrich Schiff in Salzburg und Wien.

Between 2003 and 2015, Ronald Brautigam recorded all of Beethoven’s music for solo piano – a huge undertaking resulting in a grand total of 15 highly acclaimed albums. Choosing to perform the works on the fortepiano, Brautigam began with a sonata cycle which caused one reviewer to talk of a challenge to ‘the very notion of playing this music on modern instruments, a stylistic paradigm shift.’ In 2010, after nine albums of sonatas, he went on to record the composer’s variations, bagatelles and other piano pieces – a staggering array of works ranging from a Bagatelle lasting 11 seconds to the monumental Diabelli Variations, and from a charming Rondo in C major composed by a 13-year old Beethoven, to what is often referred to as the composer's ‘Last Musical Thought’, an Andante maestoso dated 1826.

This is the ninth installment in Ronald Brautigam's series of the complete piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As on previous discs, Brautigam whose 'muscular yet sensitively nuanced command of Mozartian discourse' (BBC Music Magazine) is supported by Die Kölner Akademie under Michael Alexander Willens.

The glowing richness of Sharon Bezaly's tone is immediately striking. It may be something of an acquired taste compared to the greater coolness of many of her contemporaries but it proves seductive in this enterprising programme. The Schubert Variations take as their theme the tragic 'Trockne Blumen' from Die schöne Müllerin.

During the eighteenth century the cello gradually emerged from the anonymity of the continuo group, and by the beginning of the Romantic era the instrument had become an indispensable tool for composers. Robert Schumann, who had himself taken cello lessons, was very fond of it, describing is as a ‘beautiful instrument’; and Johannes Brahms, who acquired considerable skill as a cellist, praised its ‘masculine, serious character’. It is therefore to be hoped that neither composer would object to Christian Poltéra’s sensitive adaptations of their works. Schumann and Brahms wrote three violin sonatas each, both choosing D minor as the key of one of them.

Since 2007, cellist Christian Poltéra has recorded a number of acclaimed discs for BIS, of less often heard concertos by composers such as Othmar Schoeck, Frank Martin and Samuel Barber, as well as contemporary classics including Henri Dutilleux’s ‘Toute un monde lointain…’. Across the world, reviewers have been bowled over by Poltéra’s effortless technique, but even more so by his communicative skills and beautiful sound, typically using adjectives such as ‘glowing’, ‘lyrical’, ‘ripe’ and ‘singing’.

As one of the finest pianists of his era and an improviser of genius, Ludwig van Beethoven’s preferred vehicle for musical exploration was the piano. His earliest composition, from 1782, was a set of piano variations and he continued to compose for solo piano until the last years of his life. His interest in the concerto form diminished as his deafness forced him to retire from performing. Nonetheless, with his five piano concertos composed between 1788 and 1809, Beethoven not only achieved a brilliant conclusion to the Classical piano concerto, but also established a new model for the Romantic era: a sort of symphony with obbligato piano which remained a reference point well into the beginning of the twentieth.

SOMM Recordings explores one of the most significant partnerships in 20th-century British music with Façades, an album of piano-accompanied songs and music for four-hand piano by William Walton and Constant Lambert. Façades takes its title from Walton's era-defining "entertainment", heard here in arrangements for four-hand piano of its two orchestral Suites by Lambert - regarded by Walton as the definitive reciter of Edith Sitwell's nonsense verses.