Only Piano

The three composers represented here do not stand at the forefront of the history of Danish music, but all three of them have in at least one respect secured themselves a position for which they will be remembered. As the first and only Dane, Otto Malling wrote a textbook on orchestration (1894), Ludvig Schytte published the collection ì45 Sonatinas and Execution Piecesî, which has been a sine qua non for anybody learning to play the piano in Denmark, and Siegfried Salomon wrote the opera Leonara Christina (1926), which includes one of the greatest hits in Danish opera, ìThere are Three Cornerstonesî, for many years a regular feature of Radio Denmarkís request programs, sung by Tenna Kraft. The romantic virtuoso concerto has never been highly thought of in Denmark.

You're going to love this disc. It does everything this wonderful series of "Romantic Piano Concertos" is supposed to: present captivating repertoire in excellent performances. Christian Sinding was a notoriously spotty composer when working in large forms. After all, if you live well into your 80s writing tons of music along the way, but remain famous for one three-minute piano miniature ("Rustle of Spring"), then something's not right. That said, this youthful concerto offsets its tendency to ramble with an abundance of fresh, enjoyable tunes and fistfuls of pianistic fun and games. When the melodies are so attractive it's impossible to deny Sinding his right to dwell on them at length.

Musical institutions have their funny ideas, and the quirk of the Prague Conservatoire in the 1880s was that if you were an instrumentalist you couldn't be a composer, too (evidently no one had told them about Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin et al). At his father's insistence Léhar was enrolled as a violinist, but his real interest lay in composition. He took a few secret lessons from Fibich and had the opportunity to play his D minor sonata to Dvorak, who urged him to give up the violin and switch to the composition classes. But Léhar senior was adamant and Lèhar is to be considered as practically a self-taught composer.

“In Juon’s piano trio”, as the members of the Boulanger Trio find, “we plunge into the most profound recesses of the soul. Everything acquires existential significance. This work truly captivates us: so much occurs within such brief moments”. This is where our performers find a bridge that connects Juon’s kaleidoscopic tone poem with PETER TCHAIKOVSKY’s colossal Piano Trio, op. 50, a musical epitaph for pianist and conductor Nikolai Rubinstein, who had been Tchaikovsky’s friend and mentor.