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Piano Quintets
Robert Schumann, Ferdinand Hiller

Tobias Koch

Piano Quintets

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085533374
Catnr: AVI 8553337
Release date: 22 October 2015
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Label
CAvi
UPC
4260085533374
Catalogue number
AVI 8553337
Release date
22 October 2015
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN

About the album

A World Première
Among the composers of his day, he was a heavyweight who left a great number of works to posterity: over 200 compositions, including works for the stage, a string of song collections, various concertos and four symphonies, apart from a multitude of writings about music, personal diaries and over ten thousand letters. We are not referring to Robert Schumann, but to Ferdinand Hiller. Ennobled in 1875, he was still ranked without hesitation among the most influential musical figures of his time by the end of the 19th century. Yet his great reputation as a composer and a pianist paled alongside his prominent role as orchestra director and as organizer of the Lower Rhine Music Festivals in Düsseldorf and in Cologne. In 1865, for instance, 20-year old Friedrich Nietzsche participated along with hundreds of other chorus singers in that year’s festival, and wrote to his sister about those unforgettable experiences: “The most beautiful moment of all was the performance of Hiller’s symphony with the motto ‘Spring has to come!’; the musicians were in a state of rare enthusiasm, since we all held Hiller in the highest esteem. After each section, everyone broke into tremendous applause, and once the work was finished we started a similar ruckus that escalated even further. His throne was covered with wreaths of flowers and bouquets, and one of the artists placed a laurel wreath on his head. The orchestra then broke into a threefold fanfare; the old man covered his face and cried for joy.” It might be surprising that young Nietzsche found 53-old Hiller “old”, probably only because the composer had already held important, honored positions for so long. Contemporaries of his own generation such as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Chopin had been his friends, but were long deceased; Hiller must have felt like a monument from another era. Almost defiantly, he viewed himself as the heir of a tradition he traced back to Mozart, and in his writings he adopted a public stance against the New German School. Just as foreign as its main representatives Liszt and Wagner remained to him, he revered Johannes Brahms all the more, and wholeheartedly supported the career of Brahms’s Cologne pupil Max Bruch. (…….from the Liner Notes)

Artist(s)

Tobias Koch

To trace the essence of sound with the joy of discovery and open-minded versatility – that is the musical credo of Tobias Koch, one of the most fascinating current performers in the area of historical keyboard instruments. Koch never ceases to surprise his audiences with a series of exceptional projects, featuring an extensive variety of repertoire and a pronounced curiosity for discovering rare historical instruments and unknown musical gems. A comprehensive musical career as soloist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist has led him to tour throughout Europe. He appears as a guest artist in leading festivals such as Schleswig-Holstein, Ludwigsburg, Verbier, and the Warsaw Chopin Festival. Important musical partners include Andreas Staier, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, Concerto Köln, Collegium 1704 Prag, Hofkapelle München, Frieder Bernius...
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To trace the essence of sound with the joy of discovery and open-minded versatility – that is the musical credo of Tobias Koch, one of the most fascinating current performers in the area of historical keyboard instruments. Koch never ceases to surprise his audiences with a series of exceptional projects, featuring an extensive variety of repertoire and a pronounced curiosity for discovering rare historical instruments and unknown musical gems.

A comprehensive musical career as soloist, chamber musician, and vocal accompanist has led him to tour throughout Europe. He appears as a guest artist in leading festivals such as Schleswig-Holstein, Ludwigsburg, Verbier, and the Warsaw Chopin Festival.

Important musical partners include Andreas Staier, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, Concerto Köln, Collegium 1704 Prag, Hofkapelle München, Frieder Bernius with Hofkapelle Stuttgart, the choirs of the broadcasting entities WDR (Cologne) and BR (Munich), and singers such as Dorothee Mields, Jan Kobow, Thomas E. Bauer, and Markus Schäfer, with whom he has been collaborating for many years. Tobias Koch works in tandem with instrument makers and restorers, as well as with some of the most important musical instrument museums;

He is on the faculty of the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf and imparts masterclasses on an international level. A wide range of publications and a great number of broadcast productions for radio and television round out his work in the field of music, along with over 40 CD releases of works ranging from Mozart to Brahms.


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Composer(s)

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing. Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in...
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Robert Schumann was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could become the finest pianist in Europe, but a hand injury ended this dream. Schumann then focused his musical energies on composing.
Schumann's published compositions were written exclusively for the piano until 1840; he later composed works for piano and orchestra; many Lieder (songs for voice and piano); four symphonies; an opera; and other orchestral, choral, and chamber works. Works such as Carnaval, Symphonic Studies, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, and the Fantasie in C are among his most famous. His writings about music appeared mostly in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (New Journal for Music), a Leipzig-based publication which he jointly founded.
In 1840, Schumann married Friedrich Wieck's daughter Clara, against the wishes of her father, following a long and acrimonious legal battle, which found in favour of Clara and Robert. Clara also composed music and had a considerable concert career as a pianist, the earnings from which, before her marriage, formed a substantial part of her father's fortune.
Schumann suffered from a mental disorder, first manifesting itself in 1833 as a severe melancholic depressive episode, which recurred several times alternating with phases of ‘exaltation’ and increasingly also delusional ideas of being poisoned or threatened with metallic items. After a suicide attempt in 1854, Schumann was admitted to a mental asylum, at his own request, in Endenich near Bonn. Diagnosed with "psychotic melancholia", Schumann died two years later in 1856 without having recovered from his mental illness.

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