Traumerei Schumann

The ECM New Series debut of Myung Whun Chung features the widely-celebrated conductor as pianist. Recorded at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice, in July 2013, the album marks the first occasion that Chung has recorded solo. In a performer’s note, he describes the album as a gift for younger listeners, as well as a personal thanks to those who share his love of this music. Chung’s touch and sensitivity for dynamics cast a new light on familiar pieces – by Debussy, Chopin, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Schumann and Mozart - as they are experienced in a gently flowing sequence which also serves to highlight affinities between the compositions.

This is a dazzling recital, taped live at Carnegie Hall in November 2003–complete with applause. Lang Lang's virtuosity is almost frightening: the Liszt "Reminiscenses du Don Juan" is a showpiece when played "normally." Here, Lang plays it to its extremes, with soft passages amazingly soft and subtly delineated and the bigger moments heaven-thundering.

The Down with Romanticism project is the brainchild of two questing musicians — cellist, David Eggert, and fortepianist, Gili Loftus — and is the culmination of over a decade of artistic collaboration. Following meticulous archival research and immersions into the soundworld of the early days of the recording era, they have embarked on an experimental approach to explore forgotten dimensions of playing 19th century music. Their performance showcases flexibility of tempo and rhythm, elasticity of intonation and pitch, generous use of portamento, flexible alignment of the pianist’s right and left hands and heightened individualistic expression like you’ve never heard before, but that were once standard for music of this era — all on two beautiful period instruments.

Metier Records, the new-music label of Divine Art Recordings Group, has a fascinating new recording bringing together music by Robert Schumann and Tristan Murail. The album, to be released in June 2019, will be titled ‘Une rencontre’ (‘An encounter’) and is a meeting of Romantic and contemporary music, climaxed by the premiere recording of Murail’s ‘revisit’ to Schumann’s Kinderszenen, a transcription written especially for the cello soloist Marie Ythier.

The 5-string cello is more than simply the trade-mark of Matthias Michael Beckmann; it is his artistic credo and his message.

Ashley Wass, a veteran pianist, educator, and chamber musician, boasts a rich career spanning three decades. Former Deputy Head of Keyboard Studies at the Royal Northern College of Music and a Professor at the Royal College of Music, he co-founded Mash Productions and directed the Lincolnshire International Chamber Music Festival for over a decade.

"The Russian violinist Mischa Elman (1891-1967) was born in the Pale of Settlement and is regarded by many as the original ‘Fiddler on the Roof ’. He produced one of the most glowing sounds ever made on the violin, and was known in his lifetime as ‘the violinist with the golden tone’.

This is a dazzling recital, taped live at Carnegie Hall in November 2003–complete with applause. Lang Lang's virtuosity is almost frightening: the Liszt "Reminiscenses du Don Juan" is a showpiece when played "normally." Here, Lang plays it to its extremes, with soft passages amazingly soft and subtly delineated and the bigger moments heaven-thundering.

To follow up on a monumental project, his last acclaimed recording of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, Daniel Barenboim has chosen for his new album an intimate and very personal program of his favorite encores, recorded at the Pierre Boulez Hall in Berlin during the lockdown.

This new recording, featuring Schumann’s Carnaval Op. 9, Kinderszenen Op. 15 and Edna Stern’s own first recorded composition, is a portrait of Schumann in all the energy of his youth.