account
basket
Challenge Records Int. logo
The Late Sonatas
Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert

Benjamin Moser

The Late Sonatas

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085533190
Catnr: AVI 8553319
Release date: 05 June 2015
Buy
1 CD
✓ in stock
€ 19.95
Buy
 
Label
CAvi
UPC
4260085533190
Catalogue number
AVI 8553319
Release date
05 June 2015
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN

About the album

Benjamin, for your new CD recording you have selected Beethoven’s and Schubert’s very last piano sonatas. Why have you chosen these works specifically, just now, in 2014?
The question is justified, particularly since they have been recorded by great masters on countless occasions. In view of the great artistic maturity required to climb these twin Himalaya peaks of piano repertoire, it is often said – quite rightly, no doubt – that the older the performer, the better. But after having devoted my first two studio recordings to Russian and French music respectively, I found it important to finally bring out an album devoted to Viennese Classicism.
While I was still a student, but then particularly during the last three or four years, I’ve been intensely studying Beethoven’s last sonatas and I’ve often performed Op. 111 in concert. My first idea was to make a Beethoven recording with the last three sonatas, but then I thought it would certainly be interesting to contrast the last Beethoven Sonata with the last one by Schubert, D.960 (incidentally, a combination not so often recorded on one album until now). “Late works” have always held a special place in my heart. Bach’s Art of Fugue, the “Ninth” symphonies of Beethoven, Bruckner and Mahler, Beethoven’s late string quartets, obviously his last piano sonatas, then the late Brahms intermezzi and many more, are all works I particularly love and by which I am profoundly moved whenever I hear them. They contain so much mystery and mysticism; words come to mind such as Weltumarmumg (embracing the world), Weltschmerz, piety, Abschied (farewell), thankfulness, abstraction, highest mastery, and holiness.

Artist(s)

Benjamin Moser (piano)

Pianist Benjamin Moser gave his début performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival in 2011, and is now performing here for the sixth time in 2018. He studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich under the guidance of Michael Schäfer, and at Berlin University of the Arts with Klaus Hellwig. Benjamin Moser attracted international attention in June 2007 as a prizewinner in the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where he was awarded the prize for the best interpretation of Tchaikovsky, as well as the Audience Prize. In January of that year he also won First Prize in the International Young Concert Artists Audition in New York, which gave rise to a number of recital performances in Paris, Washington...
more
Pianist Benjamin Moser gave his début performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival in 2011, and is now performing here for the sixth time in 2018. He studied at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich under the guidance of Michael Schäfer, and at Berlin University of the Arts with Klaus Hellwig. Benjamin Moser attracted international attention in June 2007 as a prizewinner in the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where he was awarded the prize for the best interpretation of Tchaikovsky, as well as the Audience Prize. In January of that year he also won First Prize in the International Young Concert Artists Audition in New York, which gave rise to a number of recital performances in Paris, Washington D. C., and New York City. He has concertized with the Munich and Bamberg Symphonies, as well as with Leipzig MDR Radio Symphony Orchestra. His chamber music partners include Nicolas Altstaedt, Julian Steckel, Danjulo Ishizaka, Andrej Bielow, and his brother, cellist Johannes Moser.

less

Composer(s)

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include nine symphonies, five piano concertos, one violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. Together with Mozart and Haydn, he was part of the First Viennese School.    Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob...
more
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include nine symphonies, five piano concertos, one violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. Together with Mozart and Haydn, he was part of the First Viennese School. Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn, and gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. He lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost totally deaf. In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public but continued to compose; many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years of his life.

less

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...
more
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.

less

Press

Play album Play album

You might also like..

Various composers
Awakenings
Laurence Kilsby & Ella O’Neill
Various composers
Echoes
Katharina Konradi | Catriona Morison | Ammiel Bushakevitz
Richard Wagner
The Wagner Project
Kathrin Zukowski & KammerMusikKöln
Johanna Senfter, Max Reger
Max Reger & Johanna Senfter, Clarinet Quintets
Kilian Herold & Armida Quartett
Ernst Křenek, Johannes Brahms
Brahms & Krenek, Piano Trios
Feininger Trio
Various composers
Vers la flamme
Severin von Eckardstein
Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven
Hommage à Beethoven
Aris Alexander Blettenberg
Frank Martin, César Franck
Franck & Martin, Piano Quintets
Martin Klett & Armida Quartett
Max Reger
Piano Concerto - Live Recording (vinyl)
Markus Becker
Robert Schumann, York Höller
Edition Klavierfestival Ruhr Vol. 41
Various Artists
Franz Schubert, Leoš Janáček
Soulmates
Herbert Schuch
Egon Kornauth, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Johannes Brahms
Vienna 1913
Kilian Herold & Hansjacob Staemmler