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!"#!$%&#'()*+,,-./0,12!!"!3$()*4,5,6,1*787**#79$#9$'**:2!'*;<**;=>,*$ the performers’ four hands to become dangerously close with the relentless persistence and fortissimo of a Cullan Bryant and even overlap rather than kept safely apart. mechanical engine. In the second section, the momentum Cullan Bryant is among the most active collaborative pianists in New York, maintaining a schedule of over seventy 2 CDs Every aspect of the “great fugue” poses significant dissipates into a murmuring pianissimo. Returning to the recitals a year worldwide. He has performed with many world-class artists including Emanuel Borok, Misha Keylin, BEETHOVEN AND challenges, from defining its forbidding dimensions to its main key, the third section abruptly returns fortissimo, and Oleh Krysa, Midori (Japan tour 2002), Peter Rejto, Paul Tobias, members of the Amati, American, and Borromeo virtuosic realization. While an overture often introduces an its energetic iambic rhythm dominates the remainder of the Quartets, members of the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, NYC Ballet, Boston opera or a dramatic work, here it substitutes for a prelude work. Evocations of frivolity and evanescence are and Detroit Symphonies in such venues as Merkin and Alice Tully Halls, Metropolitan Museum and Detroit’s HIS TEACHERS and contains all the thematic material for the fugue. The interrupted by recollections of the second section, the Orchestra Hall. He made his Carnegie Hall début in 1992 in recital with violinist Patmore Lewis. Cullan Bryant began fugue, a chorale fugue of the type that Beethoven had overture and the opening subject. Marshalling the re- playing at the age of two. At eleven he toured Arkansas and Texas including televised recitals. Awards include the studied with Albrechtsberger, reframes the boundaries of sources of his training and intuition, and reflecting a Leschetizky International Competition, National Arts Club NY, Memphis Beethoven Competition, ARTS Competition Music for Piano, Four Hands form by converging with the theme and variations. lifetime of challenges, Beethoven communicates urgency, and a certificate of outstanding citizenship from Arkansas’ governor. He studied with Robert Goldsand and Artur Originating in the overture, the stark and probing resilience and self-realization in his final transcription, a Balsam at Manhattan School of Music. melody that accompanies the fugue subject repeatedly monument to mankind. returns transformed. The first section of the fugue begins © 2009 Joshua Gilinsky Dmitry Rachmanov Cullan Bryant and Dmitry Rachmanov has appeared at venues such as New York’s Carnegie Hall, Washington DC’s Kennedy Center, London’s Barbican and South Bank Centres, and Beijing Concert Hall. Hailed by the press in Europe and America, Dmitry Rachmanov, Piano Rachmanov has explored a range of repertoire on modern and period pianos. In collaboration with Cullan Bryant he has given a series of complete Beethoven sonatas as well as the composer’s four-hand works, and his performances have featured sonata cycles by Schubert and Scriabin. Rachmanov has collaborated with the Manhattan Philharmonia, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Ukraine National Symphony and National Orchestra of Porto, and he has recorded for the Omniclassic, Master Musicians and Vista Vera labels. He studied at the Moscow Gnesins School of Music, and graduated from Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music. He serves as chair of the keyboard department at California State University, Northridge. Maria Ferrante The American soprano Maria Ferrante has appeared with numerous opera companies, festivals and orchestras throughout Europe, Japan, the United States and the Virgin Islands. She is a vivid recitalist and has researched and recorded nineteenth-century American vocal song. C M Y From left to right: Dmitry Rachmanov, Cullan Bryant and Maria Ferrante Photo by Christopher Greenleaf K 5 8.572519-20 6 8.572519-20 !"#!$%&#'()*+,,-./0,12!!"!3$()*4,5,6,1*787**#79$#9$'**:2!'*;<**;=>,*# Beethoven and his Teachers: Music for Piano, Four Hands One area of intense scrutiny in Beethoven scholarship mahogany with the innovative una corda pedal for significant composers overlapping Beethoven’s lifetime. (1804) light, but not insignificant: “the last…is so great concerns the composer’s education and its impact on his increased control over softer dynamics. Even though he Neefe undoubtedly played a rôle in exposing Beet- it can be called the March of the three Marches.” Their CD1 53:03 CD2 39:21 identity as an artist. In the twentieth century the scholar accumulated cutting edge Érard, Graf, and Broadwood hoven to Mozart. He prepared piano-vocal scores of publication the year before the first Napoleonic invasion Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) Ludwig van BEETHOVEN Alfred Mann helped disseminate studies of counterpoint pianos, he continued to explore new models. He may have Mozart’s important operas except The Magic Flute from of Vienna is extremely timely. The performers convey the Sonata in D major, Op. 6 (1797)† 6:24 1 Six Variations in D major on the Air Ich denke made by Ludwig van Beethoven with his principal critically welcomed the rare and beautiful pianos played which The Six Easy Pieces (1793) for four hands are appropriate atmosphere on the Tröndlin piano, imitating 1 Allegro molto 3:00 dein, WoO 74 (1805)‡* 5:42 teachers in Vienna, Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809) and on this recording, a Caspar Katholnig (ca. 1805-1810) selected and arranged. Each aria, duet, trio and excerpt a military band with full winds and brass, and a range of 2 Rondo: Moderato 3:23 Franz Joseph HAYDN (1732–1809) Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (1736-1809). On an early from Vienna and a Johann Nepomuk Tröndlin (ca. 1830) from both Finales sympathetically realizes Mozart’s percussion. The piccolos and oboes, the fanfares and Christian Gottlob NEEFE (1748–1798) Divertimento in F major, Hob. XVIIa:1, journey to Vienna, Beethoven played and improvised for from Leipzig, both from the Frederick Collection in elegance and simplicity. The setting of Papageno’s famous beating of field and bass drums are easily imagined. Sechs leichte Stücke (Six Easy Pieces) from Il Maestro e lo Scolare (The Master and the Pupil) W.A. Mozart, but no formal pedagogical relationship Ashburnham, Massachusetts. These highly esteemed “birdcatcher” aria interpolates a full-fledged variation for Beethoven began his Six Variations (1805) at lessons Mozart’s opera Die Zauberflöte (1793)† 14:58 (c.1766–1768)† 16:31 ensued. Beethoven also undertook secretive lessons with instruments produce distinctive sonorities and a wide each repeated stanza. Embellishment in the five other for Countesses Josephine Deym and Therese Brunsvik, 3 Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja 4:18 2 Theme and Variations 13:22 Johann Schenk and informal sessions with Antonio Salieri. range of dynamics due to their action and pedal excerpts reflects an idiomatic rendering of eighteenth- composing four variations in 1799 and adding two in 1803. 4 Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen 2:36 3 Tempo di menuet 3:08 Mann, however, emphasizes Beethoven’s strict training in mechanisms. All of the pieces except the Drei Märsche century performance practices and the opera’s dramatic Among four-handed works this presentation of the first 5 Soll ich dich, Teurer, nicht mehr seh’n 2:03 species counterpoint, rule-based exercises in which and the Grosse Fuge are performed on the Caspar colours and form. stanza of Goethe’s Nähe des Geliebten (“Ich denke dein”) Ludwig van BEETHOVEN melodies are composed against a given line. Katholnig, an instrument on which Beethoven’s friend and In a cheeky and contradictory letter to Simrock (1794), as an accompanied vocal theme is perhaps unique and 6 Das klinget so herrlich 1:17 4 Grosse Fuge in B flat major, Op. 134 (1827)† 16:53 7 Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen 3:58 Early performance training certainly influenced colleague Johann Nepomuk Hummel most likely played, Beethoven accuses the publisher of engraving the Eight certainly rarely performed. The transformations that follow 8 Klinget, Glöckchen, klinget 0:46 Beethoven’s instinct for instrumental composition. In according to Edmund Michael Frederick. Variations without consulting him, yet hesitates to assume express a range of associations, including a loquacious Bonn he received violin and keyboard instruction from Many trends overlap from the eighteenth into the that any steps have actually taken place. The composer first pair of variations, the third peaceful and contemp- Ludwig van BEETHOVEN his strict if not severe father, Johann, a tenor whose local nineteenth century: among them, the pre-classical then demands Simrock withhold the Variations because lative, emphatic reiterations in the fourth, a bittersweet 9 Eight Variations in C major on a Theme by contacts intermittently continued the lessons. But Beet- Empfindsamerstil, Weimar classicism and the romantic more important works would soon appear. Made melan- fifth variation, and the joyous triumph of the sixth. Count Waldstein, WoO 67 (1794)‡ 9:51 hoven’s first significant composition instructor was the Sturm und Drang. The prelude and fugue, a remnant of the choly by chromatic inflections, the C major variations are Haydn’s Divertimento: Il maestro e lo scolare in F Johann Georg ALBRECHTSBERGER organist and composer Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748- baroque, receded as a predominant keyboard genre, while based on an unassuming theme by Beethoven’s benefactor major (1766/67)