Following his successful Handel album, Martin Stadtfeld releases "Piano Songbook", his first album entirely with his own arrangements of themes from well-known classical works, as well as ten short "piano songs" of his own. On the one hand, the album contains 20 short pieces that refer to well-known melodies of classical works, among others by Bach, Mozart, Handel, Vivaldi, but also by Dvorák or Beethoven.
The many years Martin Stadtfeld devoted to studying the music of Johann Sebastian Bach are now also bearing compositional fruit. On his new CD he presents his own arrangements and works, which are closely linked with Bach’s musical cosmos.
Martin Stadtfeld's new double album "Baroque Colours" presents a colorful sound panorama of the Baroque - with original works from Bach to Rameau as well as his own arrangements of well-known Baroque hits and unknown musical gems.
At the end of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic put paid to public concerts,
Martin Stadtfeld posted a number of brief musical Advent greetings on his social media platforms that were designed to cheer and entertain his fans. The experience of sharing these pieces with others and their reaction to his music have encouraged him to record a new album, Christmas Piano. But there is nothing thoughtlessly spontaneous about this collection of Advent pieces. Rather, it is the logical successor to his last album, Piano Songbook, which featured a mixture of arrangements of his personal favourites and some of his own compositions. At the same time, it is the outcome of a period in his life – not just as a musician – when he was obliged to stop what he had been doing, a period, finally, that demanded that all of us should demonstrate a greater degree of calm and contemplation than is usual in our lives. This idea finds particularly compelling expression in Christmas Time, a new cycle of piano pieces that Martin Stadtfeld has written. In eleven atmospheric miniatures he gazes back on the past and recalls Christmas celebrations from his own childhood.
Since his first release for Virgin Classics, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations in 2000, Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski’s has produced a catalogue which ranges from Bach and Mozart, through more Beethoven to Chopin, Szymanowski and Webern, and which includes several prizewinning recordings.
In the early 1950s Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau began what would become a long and distinguished career as one of his generation’s foremost Bach interpreters. By 1981, when he and his wife Julia Varady made this recording for Philips, his declining vocal abilities apparently didn’t prevent him from continuing to deliver the kind of infectious, exuberant performances that established that reputation and endeared him to so many listeners.