Nicolas Castin

For years, Beijer and Van Poucke have performed repertoire by Mozart and Schubert: their first recital took place at Amsterdam's Bethaniënklooster in 2012 and other concerts have followed regularly since. During the corona pandemic, the pianists decided to turn their focus to some of Mozart's four-handed sonatas. They did a number of performances with them and recorded three sonatas for this album: KV 358, KV 497 and KV 521.

“And the violin dances Furiant, carried away by an irresistible ardour”. Beyond the intrinsic character of gypsy music, which constantly moves back and forth between melancholy and joy, dance is the obvious thread running through this album. It creates a bond through its intensity and infinite rhythmic contrasts, revealing a wide range of emotions. One dance can contain an entire life, with its laughter, its tears, its perpetual movement, its ruptures, its unpredictability in the passage from one emotional state to another…

Under the artistic direction of Nicolas Altstaedt, this multi-award winning series in collaboration with the Lockenhaus Festival continues to bring to light great works of chamber music by composers who are already well known or still awaiting discovery. Schoenberg was in his early seventies when he composed his String Trio op. 45 in 1946, completing it after suffering a terrible heart attack. He told Thomas Mann that the trio reflected his physical and psychological condition of that period. The composer Constantin Regamey, born in Kiev in 1907, is little known. A Swiss of Polish descent, he was also a pianist, music critic and writer, who was appointed lecturer in Indian philology at Warsaw University in 1936. He joined the Polish Resistance in 1942 and it was at this time that he wrote his Quintet for clarinet, bassoon, violin, cello and piano.

La Catena d Adone was first performed in 1626 and marked the arrival of opera in Rome. With all the characteristics of the genre, a pastoral tale in one prologue and five acts, it chronicles the tumultuous love lives of Adonis, Apollo, Venus, and Falsirena. The frivolous and sensual even erotic tone is placed in sharp contrast with Christian morality in a perfectly mastered Recitarcantando style supported by a wealth of instruments. Besides being a world premiere recording, the opera inaugurates the arrival of a very young conductor to the Alpha catalog. Nicolas Achten is also a director, singer, and player of theorbo, harpsichord, and harp, and follows the path set by great musical pioneers such as Vincent Dumestre and Pablo Valetti.

The Lockenhaus International Chamber Music Festival is regarded as one of Austria’s most prestigious festivals: it was created by the violinist Gidon Kremer to offer a new vision of chamber music and the opportunity to create musical exchanges in an intimate setting. The cellist Nicolas Altstaedt succeeded Gidon Kremer in 2012 and now continues the spirit of the festival. For this first recording in partnership with Lockenhaus, he is joined by experienced partners, including the Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang, the Hungarian violinist Barnabás Kelemen, the German pianist Alexander Lonquich – whose Schubert double album was recently released on Alpha (Alpha 433) – and the British violist Lawrence Power. Together they have selected two works, the Piano Quintet of Béla Bartók, a demanding composition, rarely performed even though it is considered an intensely personal work, and the String Trio of Sándor Veress, a former student of Bartók.