Sonatas for Viola and Piano Vol. 2 by Tabea Zimmermann, Kirill Gerstein

César Franck, Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert

Tabea Zimmermann, Kirill Gerstein

Sonatas for Viola and Piano Vol. 2

Price: € 19.95
Format: SACD
Label: Myrios Classics
UPC: 4260183510086
Catnr: MYR 008
Release date: 27 October 2023
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Label
Myrios Classics

UPC
4260183510086

Catalogue number
MYR 008

Release date
27 October 2023

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Tabea Zimmermann and Kirill Gerstein return to the studio to record the follow-up to their highly praised first duo album. The new disc includes spellbinding performances of three late works by significant 19th century composers: Brahms mature Sonata in F minor, Schubert s melancholic Arpeggione Sonata, and Franck s splendid Sonata in A major, all masterly performed on viola.

Artist(s)

Tabea Zimmermann

Kirill Gerstein

Kirill Gerstein’s curiosity and versatility has led to an intense engagement with a wide range of repertoire and styles. From Bach to to Adès, his playing is distinguished by its clarity of expression, discerning intelligence and virtuosity. Gerstein’s energetic and imaginative musical personality has taken him rapidly to the top of his profession.
2016 saw Gerstein release Liszt’s "Transcendental Études" for myrios classics which was picked by The New Yorker as one of 2016’s notable recordings. His 2015 release of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto in the composer’s own final version from 1879 won an ECHO Klassik award.
Based in Berlin, Kirill Gerstein appears world-wide in performances ranging from concerts with the Chicago and Boston Orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Royal Concertgebouw, Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics, London Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre de Paris, to recitals in London, Paris and New York. He is the sixth recipient of the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award which allowed him to commission new works from Timothy Andres, Chick Corea, Alexander Goehr, Oliver Knussen and Brad Mehldau. Previous accolades include First Prize at the 10th Arthur Rubinstein Competition and an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Earlier recordings for myrios classics include "Imaginary Pictures", Mussorgsky’s "Pictures at an Exhibition" coupled with Schumann’s "Carnaval", named by The New York Times as one of the best recordings of 2014; two discs with Tabea Zimmerman of sonatas for viola and piano by Brahms, Schubert, Franck, Clarke and Vieuxtemps, of which the Second Volume received the “Diapason d’Or de l’année 2013”; and a recital disc of works by Schumann, Liszt and Knussen.

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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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César Franck

César Franck was simultaneously a child prodigy and a late bloomer. His parents quickly discovered his enormous talent, but they were mostly interested in the money and fame that he might generate. Because of this, he was presented as a piano virtuoso, without a focus on composition. Unfortunately, his virtuoso career was less promising then they had hoped, and he started earning his money more as a teacher and organist. Composing stayed in the background, but in the mean time he did get some notable students, such as Henri Duparc. After a while, a sort of "Franck school" of students arose, albeit against his will, who affectionately called him ‘Pater seraphicus’. It was not until he was 50 before he started to receive some acclaim as a composer, and from his 52nd he started a very prolific period, lasting until his death at the age of 68.
Nowadays, Franck is mostly known for his instrumental music, peaking at the famous Violin Sonata in A. Besides this work,, his small collection of organ works was particularly influential.

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