Viertel

Within the extensive repertoire of the German composer Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), music for cello and piano occupies a considerable position in terms of both quantity and quality. Hindemith was primarily a violist and conductor, but his wide-ranging interests led him to experiment with a great variety of instruments both as composer and player, making him a de facto multi-instrumentalist. Among his favourite instruments, the cello always occupied a special place in his activities, among other things because of his collaboration with his brother Rudolf, an excellent cellist.

With this disc, Austrian pianist Hardy Rittner takes time out from his series of recordings of the complete piano music of Brahms to record the complete piano music of Schoenberg. The stylistic leap is not as far as some might think, because while Schoenberg went on to "invent" atonal and serial music, he was born into late Romanticism, and his earliest music is clearly written in that style. This stylistic development is demonstrated in Schoenberg's seven published works for solo piano: the atonal Opp. 11 and 19, plus the serial Opp. 23, 25, and 33a and 33b, as well as his early Drei Klavierstücke. No matter what the style, Rittner makes a strong case for each work.

Consummation. This is what the piano music of Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951) and Franz Schubert (1979-1828) have in common, the bridge that Thomas Larcher brings to this welcoming solo recital, his first for ECM. To underscore this point, he shuffles Schönberg’s Klavierstücke op. 11 with Schubert’s posthumous Klavierstücke D 946. By turns halting and didactic, the opening pairing opens into the fresh air of Schubert’s precisely syncopated revelry. The contrasts between the two composers are obvious to the ear, but to the heart Schönberg is an extended exhalation to Schubert’s inhalation. Where Schönberg plots slow, jagged caverns, Schubert runs furtively above ground in the sunshine. Yet both seem so urgent to tell their stories, offering lifelong journeys from relatively young minds.