Déchiffrer Schumann

Peu à peu, grâce à l'imagerie cérébrale, les scientifiques parviennent à dessiner les contours de notre conscience… Après s'être intéressée au "Ventre, notre deuxième cerveau", la réalisatrice Cécile Denjean se livre à une passionnante exploration du cerveau à travers les méandres de la conscience. Première partie.

There are very few good pianists, many average ones, and only one Martha Argerich.Under the guidance of the formidable Italian pianist Vincenzo Scaramuzza, Martha Argerich experienced success early, at only 7 years old, when she gave her first concert at the Teatro San Martin in Buenos Aires, where she played Mozart's Concerto n20 by Mozart, and Beethoven's Concerto n1. After emigrating to Europe at the age of 14, she was tutored by a number of greats, including Fiedrich Gulda in Vienna - her primary tutor, with whom she studied for 18 months - as well as Nikita Magaloff in Geneva, and Arturo Benedotto Michelangeli, who she sought out during a crisis of confidence when she hit 20, despite already being an international star for years.

Kun-woo Paik (born March 10, 1946 in Seoul) is a South Korean pianist. He has performed with multiple orchestras, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic.

Devoted to Robert Schumann, this release includes Martha Argerich's iconic recording of the piano concerto conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the Scenes from Childhood, and many pieces of chamber music with high-ranking soloists, such as Renaud and Gautier Capuçon, Nobuko Imai and Sergei Nakariakov.

His 15th album with Signum Classics, the Welsh pianist, Llŷr Williams, brings a profound musical intelligence to his work as soloist, accompanist and chamber musician. His new album of Robert Schumann works explores a selection of works that span a substantial part of Schumann’s life, including Papillons Op. 2 (written while he studied law at Leipzig University) all the way up to Faschingsschwank aus Wien published in 1841. Llŷr Williams’ long and successful collaboration with Signum Records includes the 8-disc box-set ‘A Schubert Journey’ (2020), the 12-volume ‘Beethoven Unbound’ (2018), a ‘Wagner Without Words’ double album (2014) and highlights from Liszt’s ‘Années de pèlerinage‘ (2012).

During their long collaboration (1997 - 2019) Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra developed a project they named ‘Opening Doors’, performing orchestral works from the Romantic era with the smaller-than-usual forces of a chamber orchestra. Due to the often revelatory results of this approach, the team went on to present at concerts around the world and on several recordings.
This box set brings together an important chapter of the project: Robert Schumann’s orchestral music, symphonies as well as overtures. In addition to his four symphonies - including both versions of No. 4 - this collection presents the Zwickau Symphony, an early, unfinished work from 1832-33, as well as a divertimento-like sequence of movements, Overture, Scherzo and Finale.

Within the realm of Romantic piano music, where new discoveries are constantly just around the corner, the contribution of Robert Schumann has always played a major part. True, he cannot rival the aura of Chopin’s works, of which Ignaz Friedman asserted that not only had Chopin opened the piano with them, he had closed it again. (Schumann paid his own tribute in his reverent review of Chopin’s op. 2 of 1831, the Variations on Mozart’s “Reich mir die Hand, mein Leben”). Nor did Schumann embed in the history of piano playing such milestones of technical mastery and manual dexterity as Liszt who – inspired by Paganini’s concerts and enabled by the double-escapement action developed by Sébastien Erard in 1821 – had practically reinvented the instrument by the time he wrote his Etudes d’exécution transcendante in 1837. And neither the sprightliness of Felix Mendelssohn’s keyboard idiom nor Charles-Valentin Alkan’s exaltation of virtuosity are characteristic of Schumann’s piano music, even if he proves in his Abegg Variations op. 1 (1830) and his Toccata op. 7 (1832) that he brilliantly commanded both approaches to the instrument.