Schumann Piano Complete Works

Winner of the Prix de l Académie Charles Cros, this set brings together Robert Schumann s complete works for solo piano. This great cycle benefited from having been recorded in the unique acoustics of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, by Jean-Marc Laisné. Sales of the 13 CDs comprising this set have exceeded 20,000 copies around the world. This complete recording is now acknowledged as a reference and, at the same time, an important step in the artistic life of pianist Eric Le Sage.

While it is always wonderful to have a recording of Schumann's early C minor Piano Quartet coupled with his mature E flat major Piano Quartet, the result of that coupling is usually only half a disc of listenable music. Because while the E flat major quartet is surely one of the masterpieces of the repertoire, the C minor quartet is, as its composer once sadly described it, "botched." The reason for this is straight-forward. The E flat quartet written when Schumann was 32 has the passion of youth joined with the technique of maturity, while the C minor quartet written when the composer was 19 has the passion of youth expressed without temperance – or indeed, competence.

Winner of Prix de l'Académie Charles Cros, this set brings together Robert Schumann's complete works for solo piano. This great cycle benefited from having been recorded in the unique acoustics of La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, by the same recording engineer, Jean-Marc Laisné.

The first true complete recording of Robert Schumann’s works for piano solo on 17 albums (in 15 volumes), played by Florian Uhlig, seeks for the first time to offer imaginative compilations on album (e.g. “Robert Schumann and the Sonata”, “The Young Piano Virtuoso”, “Schumann in Vienna”, “Schumann and Counterpoint”, “Variations”) containing all original works for pianoforte written between 1830 (Abegg Variations op. 1) and 1854 (Ghost Variations) according to the newest critical editions and/or first editions. Several of these albums include premiere recordings. The booklets by Joachim Draheim, who discovered and/or edited a number of the works, shed light on the biographical and musicological background to the works thus coupled.

Robert Schumann - Complete Works for Violoncello and Piano
Klaus Storck, Violoncello / Aya Ishihara, Piano
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 255 MB | Full Artwork: 101 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: MDG "audio.max" # 903 1544-6 | Country/Year: Germany 2009
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic

"The years spent by Robert Schumann and his Clara in Dresden were a time of perfect happiness, and in 1849 the composer, like a teenager, presented his dearest with a Romanze pervaded by intense passion. An outstanding recording of Schumann’s complete works for violoncello and piano from this time transports us up to the couple’s seventh heaven. The Schumann specialist Aya Ishihara plays Clara’s role at a Steinway grand piano (1901), and her experienced duo partner Klaus Storck is heard as the emotionally profound cellist playing an Italian “Spiritus Sorsana” cello (made in 1730 in Cunei)…"

This collection of Schumann’s “complete works for piano and orchestra” is more complete than usual, with the inclusion of two conjectural reconstructions: one from sketches, the other from a combination of sketches and a reworking of an existing solo piano piece. Excluded is the piano arrangement of the Konzertstück for four horns, which Joachim Draheim’s excellent booklet notes are adamant has no connection with Schumann, either Robert or Clara.

Een driedubbele cd met het integrale werk voor cello en pianoforte van Ludwig Van Beethoven, dat is het resultaat van de intense muzikale samenwerking van celliste France Springuel en pianist Jan Vermeulen. De twee begonnen drie jaar geleden samen te musiceren en de muzikale klik die beiden toen voelden, deed hen besluiten om het repertoire voor cello en piano aan te pakken. Eerst waren er twee Schubertcd's, dan volgde Schumann, en nu is er dus Beethoven. De sonate voor cello en piano is in feite een uitvinding van Beethoven zelf.

Many of Liszt’s works were transcribed for other instruments; both by the composer himself and other musicians. These hauntingly beautiful pieces for cello and piano were originally written for piano solo or the voice. They are from the final period of his life and are the product of his old age and his quest for spirituality. Far from the virtuoso brilliance of his earlier works, their intense and romantic melodies express melancholy and desolation, the sparse textures and harmonic instability daringly looking forward to the twentieth century.

The perfect case of a pianist who sounds completely relaxed in the studio and, because of that, manages to balance assertiveness and poetry in ideal proportions. Gerhard Oppitz is a penetrating Brahmsian, bracing in the youthful works, quietly confiding in the later ones.