Costantino Mastroprimiano - Madchenliebe Songs - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Tobias Koch was born in Kempen. He attended the Robert Schumann Music College in Dusseldorf, and conservatories Vienna, Graz and Brussels. Koch is the recipient of the Music endowment award of the City of Dusseldorf. He pursues a concert career specializing in historically informed performance practice and musicological research, constantly striving to lend the music he performs vivid color and unorthodox style on keyboard instruments best suited for the repertoire. Tobias Koch is on the faculty of the Robert Schumann Music College Dusseldorf, the Gutenberg University in Mainz, and at the Summer Academy in Montepulciano.

Recorded in the beautiful acoustics of the Villa Contucci in Montepulciano (2011 - 2012), by Eleonora Contucci, soprano, and veteran forte pianist Costantino Mastroprimiano, playing a superb Graf piano from 1826, since it's build, in the possession of the Contucci family. - Norbert Burgmüller's early death in 1836 at the age of 26 was greatly lamented by his famous contemporaries Mendelssohn and Schumann, the latter comparing the tragedy of his death with that of Schubert. He was considered a major talent, and he left a substantial oeuvre of orchestral, vocal and instrumental works. This CD features his songs, and the grand scale Piano Sonata in F minor Op. 8 in the style of Weber and Hummel. His songs remind us of Schubert in their freshness and naturalness, though not without personal touches in some of the more daring modulations.

This presents works of Chopin written in his Vienna period, and here they are played on exactly such an instrument, as is still preserved in the Italian Palazzo Contucci in Montepulciano. The young Chopin, a child prodigy if ever there was one, soon found his surroundings in his native Warsaw too narrow, and visited the cultural capital Vienna during the years 1829-1831. Here he met the local piano manufacturer Conrad Graf and was seduced by his instruments, with their light action and delicate, pliant sound. His triumphal concerts in Vienna were played on Graf's pianos, and the young Fryderick was presented one as a gift by Graf himself.