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ClassicsToday - Ronald Brautigam - David Hurwitz Review

This disc is a gem, yet it's also one of those releases that you might overlook in the deluge of new, and frequently marginal, titles each month. But that would be a mistake, and if you enjoy keyboard music of the classical period, from C.P.E. Bach to Mozart and Haydn, then you will certainly want to hear this recital. Joseph Martin Kraus (a.k.a. "the Swedish Mozart), like his illustrious colleague, had an almost exactly contemporaneous and equally short life. He was born in 1756 and died in 1792. His music was much admired by his contemporaries, including Haydn, both for its formal mastery and progressive tendencies, both of which are very much in evidence in the two major works here, the Piano Sonatas in E major and E-flat major.

Composed in the late 1780s, these sonatas are large-scale pieces as advanced as anything that Haydn and Mozart were turning out at the time. The E major work lasts nearly half an hour, and in its size alone it anticipates the large early sonatas of Beethoven. Both pieces have three movements, one of which is a big theme and variations (the finale in the E major sonata, the middle movement in the E-flat piece). Ronald Brautigam plays this music with uncommon ebullience and enthusiasm, in particular characterizing these lengthy variation sets with unfailing intelligence and imagination. This, combined with the bright, sweet timbre of his fortepiano, gives the music the same immediate appeal that typifies his Haydn piano music cycle.

The other pieces are less important but nevertheless exude charm and personality. Both the Rondo in F major and the Scherzo con Variazioni are relatively substantial single movements, and the Swedish Dance will pique the interest of folk-music enthusiasts--its principal tune sounds remarkably like a sort of simplified Haydn rondo. The other two pieces, Zwey Neue Kuriose Menuetten and the Larghetto, are both tiny chips from the master's workbench. This is one of the most purely delightful discs of classical keyboard music to come along in quite a while, a discovery whose musical substance far exceeds its curiosity value. [7/26/2006] --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

MusicWeb Review - Fortepiano w/ Ronald Brautigam Joseph Martin KRAUS (1756-1792) Complete Piano Music Sonata in E major (VB 196) (ca 1787/88) [26:03] Sonata in E flat major (VB 195) (1785) [22:25] Rondo in F major (VB 191) [7:17] Scherzo con variazioni (VB 193) [9:01] Swedish Dance (VB 192) [3:25] Zwey neue Kuriose Menuetten für Clavier (VB 190) [1:51] Larghetto (VB 194) [0:39] Ronald Brautigam (fortepiano) rec. August 2003, Őstrĺker Church, Sweden. DDD BIS-CD-1319 [72:06]

I have recently spent some enjoyable time with Brautigam’s fortepiano recordings of Mozart’s solo complete piano music. I have now been delighted to see that these performances are played on another instrument by Paul McNulty, this time based on an early 1800s example by Walther & Sohn. The sound is a little brighter than the instrument used for the Mozart, slightly more silvery, but with an equally attractive colour and depth. Listeners who may have been put off by creaky old recordings of fortepianos in the past will be reassured to hear such beautifully made and tuned modern reproductions. These are the sounds of the past brought into the present as richly and accurately as those which issue so beguilingly from period music boxes, unchanged in many generations.

Joseph Kraus is a name which to me stands for the highest quality in both imagination and craftsmanship. This collection of his surviving piano music is quite up to the expected standard. Kraus has been describes as ‘the Swedish Mozart’, and listening superficially one can hear what is meant by such a glib comparison. Lovers of Mozart will certainly find the works on this disc to their taste, but they will also find themselves asking the question: ‘what is it that makes Kraus different?’ Detailed analysis no doubt reveals numerous variations between the two composer’s fingerprints when it comes to their piano writing. Mozart was an opera composer, and so many of his melodies could so easily become arias. Kraus has something more in common with Haydn and C.P.E. Bach, with often less outspokenly lyrical themes, occasionally a more quirky approach to tonalities, major-minor relationships, cadence formation, moments of counterpoint and variety in his use of the left hand. In the end, you find yourself asking ‘what would Mozart have done?’ and almost invariably coming up with something tangibly different to Kraus – making Kraus Kraus, and not merely a pale imitation of Mozart.

Taking the Scherzo con variazioni as an introduction we get all of the expected virtuoso fireworks which might have appeared in an improvisation over such a theme. There are witty pauses and flights in unexpected directions, conversations between left and right hands, expressiveness in the minor key and plenty of idiosyncratic piano writing; a description of which could easily apply to a far later composer – but still existing within the strictures of the classical idiom. The same is true of the Rondo in F, which gives more of a sense of the relationship and influence of C.P.E. Bach, while at the same time being a showpiece for Kraus as a virtuoso communicator – keeping the crowds happy with a grin and a wink from behind his keyboard.

The two Sonatas are works of substance and great intrinsic interest. The CD opens with the slightly later Sonata in E which stakes its claim to be at the top of the heap of late 18th century keyboard sonatas in terms if its intricacy and technical intensity. Just taking the first minute or so of the second Adagio movement the mind is sent on a journey which is hard to grapple with on first hearing. A deceptive, simple opening theme is almost immediately challenged by rising figures, followed with dissonances and resolutions which seem to pop out of nowhere. 30 seconds in and the opening theme is already being subjected to Brahmsian minor key torture in the lower register, answered in the higher, and tailing off with a plangent descent which could end anywhere, and indeed introduces a hefty remoteness of key which has the brain grasping for straws of familiarity – immediately granted with further variations and diversions on and around the opening theme (in the new key). There is plenty of advanced musical thinking going on here, reaching deeply into Beethovenesque territory.

The marginally earlier Sonata in E-flat posses an innocence and openness of character, characterised by largely two-part piano writing and much elegance and lyricism. The central Andante con variazioni has the most adventurous and romantic character of the three movements, reminding me a little of Chopin’s variations on Rossini.

It almost goes without saying that Brautigam revels in the effectiveness of this music on such a marvellous instrument. His effortless technique brings out all of the charm and, where necessary, the passion to Kraus’s sometimes remarkably adventurous piano writing. The recording is placed in a Church acoustic with a generous reverberation. This helps the atmosphere, without detracting from the all-important detail in this music. I congratulate Bis’s engineer Ingo Petry on the sound of this recording: one has the feeling one is being given a one-to-one private recital, seated a comfortable distance from the piano, but still able to see every bead of sweat on the player’s forehead. I find myself increasingly drawn to the fortepiano sound, and be warned - modern instruments can end up sounding quite flat and dull by comparison. Dominy Clements AllMusic Review by Uncle Dave Lewis - Brautigam - no * rating given Joseph Martin Kraus, the German-born Swedish composer who was an almost exact contemporary of Mozart, is primarily known as a late classical symphonist of extraordinary importance, and heretofore this is where recording of his output has been concentrated. On Bis' Joseph Martin Kraus: The Complete Piano Music, pianist Ronald Brautigam comes to terms with the slim amount of keyboard music that belongs to Kraus, a cycle previously addressed on Naxos by pianist Jacques Després on a modern instrument. On the Bis, Brautigam uses a reproduced Walther & Sohn fortepiano built by Paul McNulty, an 1802 instrument that has a sound almost indistinguishable from that of a modern piano, except for its more limited range and shorter decay time. This seems to suit Kraus' keyboard music, which is rich in ideas but spindly in texture, a bit better than a modern instrument. Likewise, Després interpretations of Kraus' music sound read through at times and betray a sense of less than complete familiarity. This is not a challenge for Brautigam, who clearly knows, and loves, these willful and eccentric pieces of Kraus.

The main keyboard works of Kraus are his two piano sonatas, in E and E flat, respectively, which are gigantic in size in the context of the 1780s when they first appeared, and are equal to some of Beethoven's sonatas in terms of ambition and emotional intensity, although are still longer than most of them. Brautigam emphasizes speed in this music, which is a good thing because that is what one needs to make the hair-raising harmonic content of it work. Després' interpretations are clunkier and halting, particularly in the Scherzo con Variazioni, which takes him almost four minutes more to play than Brautigam. With all of the speed in this music, and the sound of this instrument, one might be well-advised to take Joseph Martin Kraus: The Complete Piano Music in at least three doses as after awhile it may seem like it's all going past in a blur. Nevertheless, this is great eighteenth century keyboard music, and for the moment, there is no one playing it better than Brautigam. Bis' sound, as usual, is superb.

Fanfare - Jerry Dubins - Jacque Després J. M. KRAUS Rondo in F, VB 196. Piano Sonatas: in & , VB 195; in E, VB 196. Scherzo con variazioni, VB 193. Larghetto, VB 194. Swedish Dance, VB 192. 2 neue kuriose Minuetten, VB 190 • Jacques Després, pn. • NAXOS 8.555771 ( 79:17)

I have to admit that prior to receiving this CD for review, my only exposure to the music of Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792) had been a recording of three of his symphonies and an overture, also on Naxos. I found them pleasant listening, but eminently forgettable. Naxos seems to be making quite a meal of Herr Kraus, having already released four volumes of his symphonies under the title “The 18th Century Symphony,“ which appears to overlap a similar cycle begun in the mid-1990s by Capriccio. One can also find a smattering of other Kraus offerings, including some flute , a violin concerto, and two or three of his sacred concerted choral works. Of German birth and education, Kraus ended up spending most of his very short life in Sweden, where he was associated for a time with the court of Gustav III, then becoming and director of the Royal Academy of Music in . He is exactly contemporary with Mozart, living only one year longer. On the evidence of what is heard here, at least insofar as Kraus's writing for piano is concerned, we have a composer who was well acquainted with the Alberti bass accompaniments and 4-3 appoggiatura or suspension cadences that are so prevalent in Mozart's keyboard works; but that is about as far as I would care to take the comparison. What we are dealing with here is a composer who is of Mozart's proto-generation, a formative period in music history that has alternately been referred to as Rococo and pre-Classical. It includes figures such as Vanhal, Dittersdorf, Cannabich, Leopold Hofmann, Karl Stamitz, and Leopold Koželuch. It is hard for me to imagine anyone being captivated by this music for any great length of time. Some of it frankly sounds quite trivial and trite, like a child's beginning piano exercise, with bare-sounding textures and a preponderance of passages in open parallel octaves. Some of it makes me nervous, as for example the Adagio movement from the E-Major Sonata, which seems to proceed fitfully from one unrelated idea to another, shifting keys, tempos, and “affects“ spasmodically. I couldn't help but think that there was more than a little C. P. E. Bach in Kraus's “affective“ manner. Only the concluding Andante con variazione from the E-Major Sonata, the most substantial movement here at 12:20, strikes me as having any meaningful developmental coherence. 1 was prepared to say that this CD of Kraus's piano music might make an interesting study for those interested in where Mozart came from. But I'm not convinced that this is where Mozart did indeed come from. In a 1990 collection of writings entitled “Music Sounded Out: Essays, Lectures, Interviews, Afterthoughts,“ pianist Alfred Brendel made an observation that permanently altered my thinking about Mozart. He maintained that to understand Mozart we had to understand that his temperament was not that of an Austrian composer but of an Italian. Shortly after reading that, I had a chance encounter with the piano concertos of Giovanni Paisiello (1740-1816), who also wrote over 100 operas, and the verity of Brendel 's comment suddenly hit home. Mozart may have been born in Austria and lived out his all-too-brief life in Vienna, but he was suckled at the breast of Italian opera. If you want to know where Mozart really came from, musically speaking, have a listen to Paisiello and Pergolesi (1710-1736!). My earlier comment, then, that Kraus was a composer of Mozart's proto-generation may have been misleading, for not only is this music not pre-Mozart, it possesses too few of the attributes to have ever become Mozart. It is simply not on the same temperamental wavelength or evolutionary trajectory. Canadian pianist Jacques Després, who plays a modern Hamburg Steinway for this recording, does his level best to sing where Kraus grunts. I commend him heartily for devoting his considerable talents to music that is not very likely ever to attract a large following. It's the sort ofthing that one might listen to once or twice out of curiosity to hear what a 25-watt bulb was doing at the same time that Mozart and Haydn were writing their own piano sonatas and variations. But beyond its historical interest, this is not music that I find emotionally engaging or spiritually nourishing. On the other hand, at Naxos's budget prices, the CD is not a major investment if you have a compulsion to fill in the historical gaps of your collection. Jerry Dubins

This article originally appeared in Issue 27:6 (July/Aug 2004) of Fanfare Magazine.

Joseph Kraus: Complete piano music - ClassicsToday - Després Review by: Jed Distler Artistic Quality: 7 Sound Quality: 9

The birth and death dates for German composer Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792) virtually parallel those of his better-known contemporary Mozart. His multi- faceted career, largely based in Stockholm, ranged from conducting and teaching to composing music and writing poetry and theatrical works. His graceful keyboard writing takes Gluck’s lyrical style into account, replete with unusual modulatory patterns and sudden bursts of drama that take their cue from C.P.E. Bach. These characteristics manifest themselves in the E-flat major and E major sonatas–two substantial, inventive works that deserve to be rescued from oblivion. Each contains a large-scale variation movement that provides ample opportunity for pianists to show their mettle. The F major Rondo features attractively ornamented passagework, while striking minor-key episodes highlight the Scherzo con variazioni’s 12 variations. Lovers of Mozart’s Musical Joke certainly will enjoy the Zewi neu kuriose Minuetten, with their deliberately incongruous modulations and rhythmic bumbling.

Pianist Jacques Després gives a persuasive, sharply honed account of the aforementioned Scherzo con variationi, but his rounded phrasing elsewhere often undercuts the music’s classical profile and rhythmic backbone. He underplays, for instance, the E-flat sonata first movement’s syncopations in the second subject, and he slows down a bit to accommodate double notes that ideally should be played in tempo. By contrast, the freedom and flexibility he brings to the E major sonata’s central Adagio intensifies the music’s harmonic disquiet and tragic undertones. All in all, I direct this disc to those who enjoy investigating the piano repertoire’s overlooked and underrated byways. I musn’t forget Naxos’ crystal- clear engineering and superb booklet notes.

Amazon - Scott Morrison - Kraus Piano Music with Jacques Després 5.0 out of 5 stars Surprising Piano Music by a Contemporary of Mozart Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2003 Format: Audio CD I had never paid much attention to the music of Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792) until Naxos began issuing their series of his orchestral music. Although he is sometimes called 'the Swedish Mozart' and although he has almost precisely the same dates as Mozart, his music is actually more like that of middle-period Haydn in general. On this disc though, which contains all of his piano music, the style reminds me much more of that of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, although the early pieces sound more like the much older composer, Baldassarre Galuppi--I'm referring especially to the Rondo in F major, VB 191; think of that delightful Galuppi C major sonata that Michelangeli was so fond of and which he recorded several times. There is some similarity, too, to the Mannheim School, although in my opinion he is more talented than, say, Stamitz. This is music that tends towards that sensibility associated with C. Ph. E. Bach, the so-called 'Emfindsamkeit' [roughly 'feeling- ness'] movement. At any rate, this disc is a bit of a surprise. For one thing one hears surprising turns of phrase, odd (but pleasing) modulations, and unexpected and unprepared-for changes of mood. At first listen, especially if one isn't paying close attention, this sounds like typical style galant music-box prettiness. But when you really hear what he's doing the surprises mount. There is always tunefulness and grace but they are often associated with unexpected asymmetry of phrase-length. This grows as Kraus reaches his maturity and in the second sonata in particular (VB 196) there is even some foreshadowing of early Beethoven in that there is broader statement of themes, a grandiosity even, and more complex manipulation of thematic, rhythmic and harmonic material. (I'm thinking particularly of the second theme of the first movement which is downright Beethovian.) This sonata's last (third) movement is an engaging (but sometimes moodily intense) set of variations. Which brings me to my favorite piece here: the Scherzo con variazioni, VB 193, a 12-minute set of variations on a particularly trivial theme (but think what Beethoven did with Diabelli's trinket!) that opens with hunting horn harmonies but progresses further and further down a path of harmonic complexity. Indeed one of the variations modulates crazily and rapidly through (by my count) six barely related minor keys; that's pretty wild for 1785; he was living in London at the time, so maybe it was due to all the gin that flowed freely in those days. The only regret I have about this disc--and I'm speaking wistfully here--is that the so-called Larghetto, VB 194, lasts only 42 seconds. It's clearly a theme for a set of variations, and a potentially fecund one--it's a sort of chorale whose bass-line would have made a bang-up passacaglia--that for whatever reason Kraus apparently never got around to writing. Our loss. The pianist here, Jacques Després, is new to me and I cannot praise his playing too highly. This is seemingly simple music but, like in that of Mozart, lapses of taste and style in its playing are transparently obvious; there are no such solecisms in Monsieur Després' playing. He is a Québécois currently living and teaching at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where the disc was recorded. I want to specially mention that the piano used, a Hamburg Steinway, has an extraordinarily rich and lustrous sound and it is beautifully recorded by engineer Garth Hobden. A pity Kraus didn't write more piano music. Recommended. TT=79:17 Scott Morrison