Yes, it sounds crazy to make yet another recording of Schubert's Trout Quintet a "reference recording", particularly given the number of really good ones already in circulation. Never mind. There is no finer performance available, and certainly none better recorded: gorgeous, perfectly natural sound whether in regular stereo or SACD surround-sound. So what makes this performance so special? First, and speaking generally, this has got to be one of the most shapely, elegant, and effortlessly flowing versions ever committed to disc.
Start with the sound: Berlin Classics here offers chamber music recorded in a chamber like the ones for which it was intended. Israeli clarinetist Sharon Kam, along with German pianist Martin Helmchen (there's something that wouldn't have been so common until recently) and cellist Gustav Rivinius, performs Brahms' three late chamber masterpieces for clarinet in the Siemens-Villa in Berlin, not the studio it sounds like but a genuine villa in Berlin's swank Lichterfelde neighborhood.
Previous instalments of the Beethoven sonata cycle from Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen have met with wide acclaim. Described as ‘conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ in BBC Music Magazine, the discs have received a Choc in Classica and the recommendation of German website klassik.com, respectively. This the third and final volume brings together Beethoven's last three works in the genre, composed between 1801 and 1812. The centre-piece is the ninth sonata, the famed ‘Kreutzer Sonata’. The title page of the first edition described the sonata as ‘written in a highly concertante style’ and it does indeed surpass everything that had previously been written in the genre, in terms of scale as well as technical and compositional complexity.
2020 saw the release of the first instalment in this three-disc traversal of Beethoven’s violin sonatas – a disc which has garnered distinctions such as Choc de Classica and Cum Laude (Luister), with performances that ‘wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit’ (Gramophone) in ‘recordings that are conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ (BBC Music Magazine).
This disc is a direct competitor to Schumann, Dvorak: Piano Concertos - Paolo Giacometti and in even in terms of artists employed they are comparable: both have young and up-coming pianists accompanied by less familiar orchestral/conductor partnerships. In the end, this release is more succesfully artistically, honours split with regard to sonics. Whilst there is little competition for the Dvorak (although what exists is heavyweight), the same cannot be said of the Schumann concerto (even on SACD) and Helmchen has many illustrious names to compete against.
German pianist Martin Helmchen continues his journey through Beethoven’s piano concertos with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Andrew Manze. In the Third Concerto, published in 1804, Beethoven seems to be moving away from the Mozartian model and inaugurates his ‘middle period’, using the minor mode to depict a distress and heartache that are certainly not unconnected with the famous ‘Heiligenstadt Testament’, which he wrote in 1802 to record his growing deafness. Martin Helmchen is joined by two partners with whom he performs a great deal of chamber music - violinist Antje Weithaas and cellist Marie- Elisabeth Hecker - to record the Triple Concerto, also written during the composer’s so-called ‘heroic’ period.
As the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethovens birth approaches, and following a much-admired version of the Diabelli Variations (Alpha 386 Gramophone Editors Choice), Martin Helmchen has decided to record his complete piano concertos in the company of musical partners with whom he has a special affinity, Andrew Manze and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. They devote this first volume to the Concertos nos. 2 and 5, giving lovingly polished performances of these two masterpieces of the piano repertory. Composed even before Concerto no. 1, the Second Concerto was premiered in Vienna in 1795, when Beethoven was only twenty-five years old, but underwent several revisions before being published in its final version in 1801.
Previous instalments of the Beethoven sonata cycle from Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen have met with wide acclaim. Described as ‘conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ in BBC Music Magazine, the discs have received a Choc in Classica and the recommendation of German website klassik.com, respectively. This the third and final volume brings together Beethoven's last three works in the genre, composed between 1801 and 1812. The centre-piece is the ninth sonata, the famed ‘Kreutzer Sonata’. The title page of the first edition described the sonata as ‘written in a highly concertante style’ and it does indeed surpass everything that had previously been written in the genre, in terms of scale as well as technical and compositional complexity.
2020 saw the release of the first instalment in this three-disc traversal of Beethoven’s violin sonatas – a disc which has garnered distinctions such as Choc de Classica and Cum Laude (Luister), with performances that ‘wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit’ (Gramophone) in ‘recordings that are conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing’ (BBC Music Magazine). As Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen open the second disc, they do so with the iconic Spring Sonata, Op. 24. Completed in 1801, the work proved immediately popular with a second edition appearing only months after the first publication.