The Complete Duos / Phantasie by Pieter Wispelwey / Paolo Giacometti

Johannes Brahms, Max Reger, Franz Schubert

Pieter Wispelwey / Paolo Giacometti

The Complete Duos / Phantasie

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Evil Penguin
UPC: 0608917720426
Catnr: EPRC 0018
Release date: 08 May 2015
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Label
Evil Penguin

UPC
0608917720426

Catalogue number
EPRC 0018

Release date
08 May 2015

"vpro - april 2016"

vpro, 20-4-2016

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

Press

About the album

Can a virtuoso be expected to keep his hands off cherished chamber works because they were not written for his instrument? Should a passionate admirer of Schubert and Brahms really forego on 14 duos because he does not play the violin, the viola, the flute, or the arpeggione?
Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey doesn’t believe so. In his largest phonographic enterprise up to now, he embarks on a series of 6 CDs dedicated to the complete chamber duos by Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms. Teaming up with his trusted piano partner Paolo Giacometti, Wispelwey wants to demonstrate that music written by major Lied composers can rewardingly be played on the violoncello, the string instrument which most resembles the human voice.
On “Phantasie”, the upcoming first installment of the Complete Duo series, Wispelwey confronts late works – Schubert’s sensational Fantasie D. 934 and Brahms’s breathtakingly lyrical Viola Sonata op. 120 nr. 2 – with the ebullient but unusually profound Sonatina D. 409 Schubert wrote as a young man of 19.
Wispelwey and Giacometti have been called “exceptionally imaginative and impassioned performers” (American Record Guide), and their collaboration has spawned recordings rated as “fascinating, provocative, almost perverse” on account of their “immediacy and involvement” (Sunday Times). A previous Brahms project was hailed a “tremendous performance” on account of its “wonderfully imaginative and wide-ranging tonal qualities” (BBC Music Magazine).

Mag men van een virtuoos verwachten dat hij de handen afhoudt van enkele van zijn lievelingswerken omdat ze niet voor zijn instrument bedoeld zijn? Moet een vurig bewonderaar van Schubert en Brahms echt 14 duo’s verloochenen omdat hij geen viool, altviool, fluit, of arpeggione speelt?

Ambitieus project

De Nederlandse cellist Pieter Wispelwey vindt van niet. In zijn meest ambitieuze opnameproject tot nu toe wijdt hij 5 cd's aan de complete kamerduo’s van Franz Schubert en Johannes Brahms. Samen met zijn vertrouwde pianopartner Paolo Giacometti wil Wispelwey met die reeks aantonen dat het loont om muziek van grote liedcomponisten op de cello te spelen, het strijkinstrument dat de menselijke stem het dichtst benadert.

Op dit eerste deel van de Complete Duos reeks, met de titel Phantasie, plaatst Wispelwey late werken, Schuberts sensationele Fantasie D. 934 en Brahms adembenemend lyrische Sonate op. 120 nr. 2, naast de sprankelende maar ongewoon diepe Sonatine D. 409 die Schubert op z’n 19de schreef.

Uitzonderlijke artiesten

Wispelwey en Giacometti worden door American Record Guide “uitzonderlijk fantasievolle en gepassioneerde artiesten” genoemd en Sunday Times roemt hun partnerschap dat opnames en concerten opleverde die het blad als “fascinerend, provocerend, haast pervers” beschrijft. Een eerder Brahmsproject kreeg van BBC Music Magazine het label “sensationeel” mee omwille van de “wonderlijke verbeeldingskracht en het brede toongamma”.

Kann man von einem Virtuosen erwarten, dass er die Finger von einigen der beliebtesten Kammermusikwerken lässt, nur weil sie nicht für sein Instrument geschrieben wurden? Sollte ein leidenschaftlicher Bewunderer von Schubert und Brahms wirklich auf 14 Duos verzichten, nur weil er nicht Violine, Viola, Flöte oder Arpeggione spielt?

Die Antwort des niederländischen Cellisten Pieter Wispelwey ist ein klares „Nein“: In seinem bislang größten Studio-Unterfangen stürzt er sich in das Abenteuer einer Sechs-CD-Serie der gesamten Kammer-Duos von Franz Schubert und Johannes Brahms. Zusammen mit seinem Partner Paolo Giacometti möchte er zeigen, dass Musik von großen Liedkomponisten auch auf dem Cello sehr lohnenswert zu spielen ist, ist das Cello doch auch das Instrument, das der menschlichen Stimme am nächsten kommt. Als Hörer darf man sich in jedem Falle auf ein außergewöhnliches und bereicherndes Projekt freuen.

È immaginabile che un virtuoso del violoncello si astenga dall’amata musica da camera perché non è destinata al suo strumento? Pieter Wispelwey non lo crede, e la sua determinazione l’ha portato a un notevole allargamento del repertorio per violoncello. Per la sua avventura discografica a tutt’oggi più ambiziosa, Wispelwey collabora con l’amico pianista Paolo Giacometti in una collana di 6 CD dedicata all’integrale dei duetti da camera di Franz Schubert e Johannes Brahms. Il primo volume è intitolato ‘Fantasia’ e mette a confronto due opere tarde: l’eccezionale Fantasia D. 934 di Schubert e la struggente Sonata per viola op. 120 n. 2 di Brahms – con la giovanile ma insolitamente profonda Sonatina D. 409 di Schubert.

Artist(s)

Pieter Wispelwey (cello)

Pieter Wispelwey is equally at ease on the modern or period cello. His acute stylistic awareness, combined with a truly original interpretation and a phenomenal technical mastery, has won the hearts of critics and public alike in repertoire ranging from JS Bach to Schnittke, Elliott Carter and works composed for him. Highlights of the 16-17 season include a play-direct project with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, a performance of the complete Bach suites at Auditorium de Lyon and the City Recital Hall in Sydney, performances of Tavener’s Svyati with the Flanders Radio Choir and two recitals at King’s Place in London as part of their ‘Cello Unwrapped’ season. Pieter will also give series of extraordinary recitals at the Melbourne Recital Centre as...

Highlights of the 16-17 season include a play-direct project with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, a performance of the complete Bach suites at Auditorium de Lyon and the City Recital Hall in Sydney, performances of Tavener’s Svyati with the Flanders Radio Choir and two recitals at King’s Place in London as part of their ‘Cello Unwrapped’ season. Pieter will also give series of extraordinary recitals at the Melbourne Recital Centre as part their Great Performer Series, where he will perform the complete Bach Suites, Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano, and the two cello sonatas by Brahms over the course of three consecutive evenings.

Pieter Wispelwey enjoys chamber music collaborations and regular duo partners include pianists Cédric Tiberghien and Alasdair Beatson and he appears as a guest artist with a number of string quartets including the Australian String Quartet.

Wispelwey’s career spans five continents and he has appeared as soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Dallas Symphony, St Paul’s Chamber Orchestra, NHK Symphony, Yomiuri Nippon, Tokyo Philharmonic, Sapporo Symphony, Sydney Symphony, London Philharmonic, Hallé Orchestra, BBC Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Academy of Ancient Music, Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig, Danish National Radio Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra and Camerata Salzburg. Conductor collaborations include Ivan Fischer, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Herbert Blomstedt, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jeffrey Tate, Kent Nagano, Sir Neville Marriner, Philippe Herreweghe, Vassily Sinaisky, Vladimir Jurowski, Louis Langrée, Marc Minkowski, Ton Koopman and Sir Roger Norrington.

With regular recital appearances in London (Wigmore Hall), Paris (Châtelet, Louvre), Amsterdam (Concertgebouw, Muziekgebouw), Brussels (Bozar), Berlin (Konzerthaus), Milan (Societta del Quartetto), Buenos Aires (Teatro Colon), Sydney (The Utzon Room), Los Angeles (Walt Disney Hall) and New York (Lincoln Center), Wispelwey has established a reputation as one of the most charismatic recitalists on the circuit

In 2012 Wispelwey celebrated his 50th birthday by embarking on a project showcasing the Bach Cello Suites. He recorded the complete Suites for the third time, released on the label ‘Evil Penguin Classics’. The box set also includes a DVD featuring illustrated debates on the interpretation of the Bach Suites with eminent Bach scholars Laurence Dreyfus and John Butt. A major strand of his recital performances is his performances of the complete suites during the course of one evening, an accomplishment that has attracted major critical acclaim throughout Europe and the US. “On paper it is a feat requiring brilliance, stamina and perhaps a bit of hubris. In practice Mr. Wispelwey proved himself impressively up to the challenge, offering performances as eloquent as they were provocative” ( New York Times).

Pieter Wispelwey’s impressive discography of over 20 albums, available on Channel Classic, Onyx and Evil Penguin Classics, has attracted major international awards. His most recent concerto release features the C.P.E. Bach’s Cello Concerto in A major with the Musikkollegium Winterthur, whilst he is also midway through an imaginative project to record the complete duo repertoire of Schubert and Brahms. Other recent releases include Lalo’s Cello Concerto, Saint-Saen’s Concerto no.2 and the Britten Cello Symphony with Seikyo Kim and the Flanders Symphony Orchestra, Walton’s Cello Concerto (Sydney Symphony/Jeffrey Tate), Prokofiev’s Symphonie Concertante (Rotterdam Philharmonic/Vassily Sinaisky.

Born in Haarlem, The Netherlands, Wispelwey’ studied with Dicky Boeke and Anner Bylsma in Amsterdam and later with Paul Katz in the USA and William Pleeth in the UK.
Pieter Wispelwey plays on a 1760 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini cello and a 1710 Rombouts baroque cello.

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Paolo Giacometti (piano)

Pianist Paolo Giacometti performs all over the world as a soloist and as a chamber musician, both on period and on modern instruments. He was born in Milan, Italy in 1970, but has been living in the Netherlands from his early childhood. Jan Wijn and Gyorgy Sebök were important sources of inspiration and had a significant influence on his musical education. Paolo Giacometti has won many prizes at both national and international competitions. He has played with renowned orchestras under distinguished conductors such as Frans Brüggen, Kenneth Montgomery, Laurent Petitgirard, Michael Tilkin and Jaap van Zweden. Apart from his activities as a soloist, Paolo Giacometti’s love for chamber music has resulted in a successful co-operation with leading musicians such as Pieter Wispelwey,...

Pianist Paolo Giacometti performs all over the world as a soloist and as a chamber musician, both on period and on modern instruments.

He was born in Milan, Italy in 1970, but has been living in the Netherlands from his early childhood. Jan Wijn and Gyorgy Sebök were important sources of inspiration and had a significant influence on his musical education.

Paolo Giacometti has won many prizes at both national and international competitions. He has played with renowned orchestras under distinguished conductors such as Frans Brüggen, Kenneth Montgomery, Laurent Petitgirard, Michael Tilkin and Jaap van Zweden. Apart from his activities as a soloist, Paolo Giacometti’s love for chamber music has resulted in a successful co-operation with leading musicians such as Pieter Wispelwey, Gordon Nikolich, Alois Brandhofer, Janine Jansen, Bart Schneemann and Viktoria Mullova. Paolo Giacometti is a much sought-after musician at chamber music festivals in Europe, Canada and the United States. He has performed in concert halls all over the world including the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam), Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), Wigmore Hall (London), Théâtre du Châtelet (Paris) and Seoul Arts Centre (South Korea).

Giacometti's impressive discography has been widely acclaimed by the international press. His recordings include Rossini’s complete piano works, a remarkable project that started in 1998 and was completed in 2007. In Rossini’s homeland critics say: "... Rossini has finally found his pianist ...". His recording of the Dvorák and Schumann piano concertos have been acclaimed by Gramophone as "... one of the best concerto disks I have heard in a long while ...".

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Composer(s)

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer. Schubert already died before his 32nd birthday, but was extremely prolific during his lifetime. His output consists of over six hundred secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music. Appreciation of his music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works. Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers of the late Classical and early Romantic eras and is one of the most frequently performed composers of the early nineteenth century.
It was in the genre of the Lied that Schubert made his most indelible mark. Prior to Schubert's influence, Lieder tended toward a strophic, syllabic treatment of text, evoking the folksong qualities engendered by the stirrings of Romantic nationalism. Schubert expanded the potentialities of the genre like no other composer before.

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Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer is such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.
Brahms composed for symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ, and voice and chorus. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works. He worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim (the three were close friends). Many of his works have become staples of the modern concert repertoire. Brahms, an uncompromising perfectionist, destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished.
Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg and Edward Elgar. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms's works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Within his meticulous structures is embedded, however, a highly romantic nature.

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Max Reger

Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger (19 March 1873 – 11 May 1916) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher. Born in Brand, Bavaria, Reger studied music in Munich and Wiesbaden with Hugo Riemann. From September 1901 he settled in Munich, where he obtained concert offers and where his rapid rise to fame began. During his first Munich season, Reger appeared in ten concerts as an organist, chamber pianist and accompanist. He continued to compose without interruption. From 1907 he worked in Leipzig, where he was music director of the universityuntil 1908 and professor of composition at the conservatory until his death. In 1911 he moved to Meiningen where he got the position of Hofkapellmeister at the court of Georg II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. In 1915 he moved to Jena, commuting once a week to teach in Leipzig. He died in May 1916 on...

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Press

vpro - april 2016
vpro, 20-4-2016

''Een selectief gebruik van vibrato en (bij de opening van the Fantasie) een beetje opvallende portamentos zijn zetten je zeker weten aan het denken, niettemin is het algehele effect een verworwen smaak''
The Strad, 01-12-2015

"harbors some tonal surprises."
kulturradio rbb, 01-9-2015

"Here two musicians are playing together, listening to each other and it seems like they are fascinated themselves, that their focus lays on different aspects." Music 4 stars Sound 4 stars
Fono Forum, 20-7-2015

"Onorthodox series: all duo's by Schubert and Brahms op cello (and piano). More convincing than expected in the arrangements, but not everywhere totally convincing."
NRC Handelsblad, 22-6-2015

"The Brahms-Schubert project is a dedicated plea for the violoncello with its abilities to sing and its tonal versatility. One can be excited for the sequel."
Ich-habe-gehört, 16-6-2015

De prijs-CD is elke dag te horen om 13.15 in Licht op 4.
Radio 4, 07-6-2015

"Music that makes you happy" [...] "Nowadays there are so many things you can do to make yourself happy, and one could say 'try listening to this music in this performance'. And eventhough the music has certain dark undercurrents, one is mentally raise up by this."
Cobra.be, 29-5-2015