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1 CD -
4509-90696-2 - (p) 1994
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Robert
Schumann (1810-1856) |
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Piano Concerto in A minor,
Op. 54 |
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29' 39" |
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- Allegro affettuoso |
14' 24" |
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1
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- Intermezzo: Andantino
grazioso |
5' 09" |
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2
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- Allegro vivace |
10' 01" |
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3
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Violin Concerto in D minor |
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32' 46" |
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- In kräftigem, nicht zu
schnellem Tempo
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15' 31" |
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4
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- Langsam
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4' 49" |
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5
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- Lebhaft, doch nicht
schnell |
12' 22" |
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6
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Martha
Argerich, Piano |
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Gidon
Kremer, Violin |
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Chamber
Orchestra of Europe |
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt, Dirigent |
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Luogo
e data di registrazione
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Stefaniensaal,
Graz (Austria):
- luglio 1992 (Piano Concerto)
- luglio 1994 (Violin Concerto) |
Registrazione
live / studio
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live |
Producer
/ Engineer
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Wolfgang
Mohre / Helmut Mühle / Michael Brammann
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Prima Edizione CD
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Teldec
- 4509-90696-2 - (1 cd) - 62' 34" - (p)
1994 - DDD |
Prima
Edizione LP
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When two
Poles dance a polonaise...
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The
present recording brings
togheter two concertos by
Robert Schumann: the famous
and ofteplayed Piano Concerto
and the more rarely performed
Violin Converto, a work whose
reception history is beset by
legends and curious attempts
to interpret it. Margarete
Zander was
on hand during preparations
for live recordings of both
concertos and spoke with
Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gidon
Kremer.
Both concertos demand a great artist
to interpret them, while offering
the soloist only very
limited opportunities to display his
virtuosity. "You need an outstanding
interpreter with a virtuoso
technique," Nikolaus Harnoneourt
explains. “If he
only wants to show off his artistic
abilities and earn some cheap applause,
he should look for something else to
play."
The opening movement of the Piano
Concerto op. 54 was
originally intended as a separate
work. In spite of its prestigious
first performance in 1841 as a
“Fantasia for
Piano with Orchestral
Accompaniment", with Schumann's wife, Clara, as
soloist and Felix Mendelssohn
as conductor, no publisher
showed any interest in taking on the
work. Four years later Schumann
returned to the piece and reworked
it as a piano concerto, adding an
intermezzo and finale to the
existing fantasia.
In doing so, he not only reused
individual themes but retained the
fantasia's chamberlike
character.
The soloist has to ensure that the
writing remains transparent and, at
the same time, support individual
orchestral voices. In consequence,
he enters into dialogue in the first
instance not with the orchestra as a
whole but with individual
instruments or groups of mstrumenn
An additional, and no less
delightful, novelty is the solo
writing for
the cellos in the
Intermezzo. It is
the soloist's role effectively to bear
the weight of the works outer substance and ensure its
inner tension and
to communicate that substance and
tension to the orchestra. This
requirement on Schumann's part is
also clear from the cadenza, which,
written out in full, gives no scope
to any personal display of
gymnastics on the soloist’s part.
Designed to be
virtuosic in nature, it also forms
the musical high point of the work.
The result, according
to Schumann, is “something between
symphony, concerto and grand sonata".
For a long time, legend had it that
the Violin Concerto
in D minor was unplayable
and that it was not, in any case,
one of the better works of a
composer who, at the time of its
composition, was already suffering
the first signs of madness. This was a view
to which Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim, no
less, gave active support. Not until
1937 was it possible to arrange the
first performance of the piece, an
initiative due in no small measure
to the then head of the music
section of the Prussian State
Library, Georg Schünemann.
Both Yehudi Menuhin
and Georg Kulenkampff expressed an
interest in giving the first
performance, but Menuhin's Jewish extraction
ruled him out of court as far as the
Nazi authorities were concerned.
The myth that the work was
unplayable proved tenacious,
particularly in
relation to the third movement. The
tempo heading, “Lively, but not
fast” and Schumann's metronome
marking of one crotchet = 63
struck many soloists as simply too
slow and, therefore, not conducive
to a show of
virtuosity. As a result,
Kulenkarnpff had the bizarre idea of
inviting Paul Hindemith
to revise or, more accurately, to
simplify the third movement, so that
he would be able to perform it at a suitably
fast tempo. Nor was Kulenkarnpff
alone in thinking like this. The
same idea lies behind the solution
of taking the second movement very
slowly and the third as quickly as
possible, a solution that has become
something of a tradition in
interpretations of the work.
Harnoncourt adduces
good reasons for taking the final
movement (described in the score as
a polonaise) at a
slower tempo: “On the subject of the
Polonaise, there is a letter to
Schumann from Joseph
Joachim: ‘If only I could play you
your D minor Concerto. I’ve now got it more
under my fingers than I had rn Hanover;
where, to my intense annoyance, I
had to play it at the rehearsal in a
way that was unworthy of you. [...]
The 3/4 time signature now sounds
much more imposing.
Do you still remember laughing and
expressing delight when we said that
the final movement sounds like
Kosciuszko and Sobieski starting to
dance a polonaise. So
imposing.”Kosciuszko was a Polish
freedom fighter, while Sobieski was
the Polish king, John III, who
liberated Vienna during
the Turkish siege at the end of the
seventeenth century. In other words,
Schumann has two very grand
characters dancing a polonaise here.
Very few people know
what a polonaise was like at that
time. I’ve a quotation here relating
to Chopin's teaching methods - and it sums up
exactly the sort of ideas on which
Schumann was drawing: "I know
for a fact that Chopin expressly
recommended his pupils to count six
to a bar when they were studying
polonaises and the time-signature
was 3/4.” In
other words, they should count in
quavers. in this way he showed that
he wanted the
tempo taken at exactly the same
speed at which it was taken when
dancing: with pride and grandeur. Of
course, it isn`t easy to play it
like this and it doesn't conform to
people's
traditional picture of a concerto’s
final movement. People think that
this is the time for the grand solo
gesture - in Austria we call it the
Außi-Schmeißer [literally, "music at throwing-out
time"] - which is how the
majority
of final movements in solo concertos
are conceived. But that's not the
case here.”
Gidon Kremer describes his
music-making in this way: "To make music
demands that you merge vnth the music. Not every
artist or every listener is capable
of this, but
there are still a few; thank God,
who can do so, and I admire them.” When practising,
Kremer seeks inspiration solely in
the autograph score. In consequence,
there is always "an exhilarating
feeling about sitting in front of
the music that Schumann himself
wrote". Schumann's
Violin Concerto has been part of his
repertory since 1980, but until now
no one has undertaken the experiment
with him of playing the third
movement at the speed prescribed by
Schumann. Yet Kremer
insists that "what matters is not
the metronome marking but the basic
idea. Schumann prescribed completely
unambiguous tempi.
If you respect them in the first and
second movements, why not also in
the third? Why should he have made a
mistake in the third movement?" A striking
argument in favour of the slower
tempo is Kremer's observation that
"there isn't a single note
that isn’t playable. At this tempo
every bar is playable".
Gidon Kremer is one of Scburnanns
most passionate advocates: “For me, Schumann
is significant because he was a
genius and because he committed
many of his
most brilliant
ideas to paper almost without
thinking about them. With Schumann,
it`s not a question of developing
every musical
idea. What you find, instead, are
very often ideas pure and simple,
which are developed without much thought. But
these naked ideas or naked impulses are so
brilliant that they are sometimes
more powerful than the most carefully composed piece
of music by Brahms. Each of his
works contains such brilliant ideas.
Schumann was able to draw on such an
incredibly powerful inner world - a
world that perhaps also destroyed
him."
Translation:
Stewart Spencer
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Nikolaus
Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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