Chamber Music

Alexander Borodin - Chamber Music Vol. III
Kinsky Trio Prague / Prazak Quartet
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 250 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Praga Digitals # PRD/DSD 250 288 | Country/Year: Czech Rep. 2011
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

…This disc offers music that is appealing if not top-drawer, and I recommend it, especially to those wishing to complete their collection of Borodin’s chamber music or explore his early efforts as a composer.

E.T.A. Hoffmann was a ‘man for all seasons’. In addition to composing music, he was an illustrator, writer, and attorney who attained a position on the Court of Appeals in Berlin. His primary legacy is in the area of German literature. He wrote many novels and stories concerned with supernatural elements and their impact on humans. Hoffmann’s most famous writings are the stories on which the French composer Jacques Offenbach based his opera "Tales of Hoffmann".
When I read a Hoffmann story, I think of the supernatural operas of Carl Maria von Weber, not Hoffmann’s most well known opera "Undine". The fact is that Hoffmann’s reputation as a composer is slight, and recordings of his works are infrequent. Even during his own lifetime, he had great trouble getting his music published.

This world premiere recording documents one of the most exciting discoveries in classical music in recent times. Displaying Schmitt working in both the symphonic and chamber mediums, this disc presents a musical portrait of this multifaceted 18th century German Dutch master composer…

Alexei Lubimov is a Russian pianist who also plays fortepiano and harpsichord. In his early years he studied at the Moscow Central Music School, and in 1963, entered the Moscow Conservatory, where he studied with Heinrich Neuhaus and Lew Naumov. He developed a strong interest in Baroque music and 20th century modernist works. Lubimov gave the Soviet premieres of many western compositions, including pieces by Charles Ives, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, Terry Riley, Pierre Boulez, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, which brought censorship from the Soviet authorities.

A monograph on the chamber music for guitar by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is not a new operation, nor is it particularly original: the numbers of works that the Maestro be-queathed to the six strings significantly occupy the entire last season of the Florentine composer’s life and work. It was evident in his perception that “chamber music would be the salvation of the classical guitar”.