Chamber Music

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.

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…

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.

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”.

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854–1921) was a student at the Conservatory in Cologne from the spring of 1872; it was at this time that he got to know the Siegburg district judge and arbitrator Johannes Degen (1826–1902), an excellent singer and violinist, who gave regular chamber concerts in Siegburg at which he played in his own string quartet. Humperdinck, whose talent he had astutely spotted, was the pianist and composer he had been looking for. For his part, the young music student saw his admission to Degen’s chamber-music circle as an opportunity for regular performance; in return, he wrote whatever Degen requested. Humperdinck’s tally of 13 chamber compositions represents a relatively small part of his oeuvre (beside his six operas and about 80 Lieder, along with stage music and choral works).