Fantasie

Internationally renowned and award-winning pianist Hyewon Chang makes her Navona Records debut on FANTASIE REFLECTIONS, a carefully crafted collection of fantasias from Mozart and Schumann effortlessly brought to peak form. Chang’s fluent attention to temperance in Mozart’s Fantasia in C Minor (K. 396) captures improvisational elements and collaborative effect in Maximilian Stadler’s completion of the 1782 composition. So too does Chang treat the wide range of captivating themes nestled in the folds of Fantasia in D Minor (K. 397) with equal musicality and assurance; the same for Fantasia in C Minor (K. 475), a pinnacle of Mozart’s repertoire given new breath in an unwaveringly grand iteration. Rounded out with Schumann’s Fantasie in C Major, a staggering journey into the innermost impassions, dedications, and toils of the composer himself, FANTASIE REFLECTIONS comes as a masterful recording to be long-lauded by dedicatees of Mozart and Schumann alike.

For its very first disc with harmonia mundi, the duo formed by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy offers us three closely related works: Schubert’s celebrated Fantasy, his Divertissement à la hongroise, full of contrasts between bursts of energy and enigmatic mists, and Leonid Desyatnikov’s Trompe-l’œil, written specifically ‘to echo’ the Fantasy. An intriguing hall of mirrors.

For its very first disc with harmonia mundi, the duo formed by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy offers us three closely related works: Schubert’s celebrated Fantasy, his Divertissement à la hongroise, full of contrasts between bursts of energy and enigmatic mists, and Leonid Desyatnikov’s Trompe-l’œil, written specifically ‘to echo’ the Fantasy. An intriguing hall of mirrors.

For its very first disc with harmonia mundi, the duo formed by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy offers us three closely related works: Schubert’s celebrated Fantasy, his Divertissement à la hongroise, full of contrasts between bursts of energy and enigmatic mists, and Leonid Desyatnikov’s Trompe-l’œil, written specifically ‘to echo’ the Fantasy. An intriguing hall of mirrors.

For its very first disc with harmonia mundi, the duo formed by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy offers us three closely related works: Schubert’s celebrated Fantasy, his Divertissement à la hongroise, full of contrasts between bursts of energy and enigmatic mists, and Leonid Desyatnikov’s Trompe-l’œil, written specifically ‘to echo’ the Fantasy. An intriguing hall of mirrors.

Not much is known of the life of Giacomo Gorzanis, born around 1520, and died in 1579; he was almost certainly blind, probably from birth, judging from the note written in his Third Book for lute published in Venice in 1564 ("I, blind" and "I, deprived of light"); he was probably a very famous lutist, going by the note on his First Book of lute in 1562 lauding his"long experience over many years with the lute", and he probably also sang at the court of Archduke Charles II of Austria, if the note in his Second Book of Neapolitan songs of 1571 is to be believed: "the memory I retain, as your humble servant, and the true affection I bear for you."

Viktoria Mullova and Alasdair Beatson present their first release with Signum Classics. Performed on a period-style fortepiano and gut strings, the works presented on this recording span the final decade of Schubert’s life. Beginning with the Sonata in A of 1817, its lyrical, wistful opening giving way to a Viennese joy and exuberance.

Schubert had been dead for seven years when, in 1838, the 27-year-old Liszt returned to Vienna for the first time since his childhood, when he had been taken to see Beethoven by his teacher Czerny an, perhaps apocryphally, been blessed by a kiss from the old man.

The concept of “Der Wanderer” (the wanderer) had a lifelong fascination for Franz Schubert. The idea of an eternal journey towards happiness or a better life, albeit unattainable, was close to his romantic heart. The same may be said of Franz Liszt, who, mutatis mutandis, shared Schubert’s wanderings and quest for an ideal. No wonder that Liszt was one of the first to recognize Schubert’s genius, playing his works in his concerts and transcribing songs for piano solo.
This new recording presents Liszt’s arrangements of Schubert’s great Wanderer Fantasie (adding some Lisztian pianistic touches to this already demanding tour de force), an Impromptu and several of the songs, most of them linked to the “Wanderer” theme.Played by Italian pianist Giovanni Doria Miglietta, whose recording of the complete piano music by Earl Wild for Piano Classics received excellent reviews: “extremely well played..possibly my favourite piano disc of 2014..” Classical Net.