Florian Wieninger - Out of Hainburg - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

In 1696, the Salzburg court conductor Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber described his print of seven chamber suites (InchPartienInch) for two string instruments and basso continuo as Inchartful vocal harmonyInch in ornate Latin. These trio sonatas are of a special kind, because the two upper voices are not limited to the typical imitations practised in Italy at that time, but Biber allows the solo voices to be played in a free, expressive manner. He allows them to shine in a different light in virtuoso interplay above the bass foundation, repeatedly in full-bodied polyphony or in chords. In addition, new timbres are created through the use of the violin, viola and viola d'amore in various combinations and the 'detuning' of the strings (scordatura) to achieve different string tensions and thus give the instruments a sharper or softer sound. This recording is the third installment of the Biber recordings with Harmonie Universelle.

?In 19th-century Vienna (where Brahms spent much of his professional life), the practice of writing Inchmusic for the homeInch (which should in no way be pejoratively construed as a retreat into carefree seclusion) experienced a boom that reached as far as the imperial court of Franz Joseph I. The music-making in many Viennese households was on a par with public performances and boasted enormous variety. Special reference to this recording on the evening of May 11, 1895, Johannes Brahms played this very CD-programme at the Vienna home of the culture-loving Fellinger family, with whom he was very well acquainted, having received from Simrock the galley proofs of the rearranged versions of the op. 120 sonatas for violin and piano. His partner for this soirée was the violin virtuoso Marie Soldat-Roeger, who was one of the eminent female musical figures of the 19th century, on a par with the likes of Clara Schumann, Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn), Pauline Viardot-García and others. Soldat-Roeger was the first Austrian woman to gain prominence in European concert halls. So Brahms had made just the right choice for the domestic context of this soirée, as have the two performers on this in making this recording, they have brought a piece of historical performance practice from the salons of the 19th century into the living rooms of our time.

From Beethoven's extensive oeuvre of variations, I have selected four works ranging from the first to the last composition for solo piano for which Beethoven created variations on an original theme. Thus the wide-ranging Eroica Variations Op. 35 find their place alongside the compressed and downscaled Variations in C minor WoO 80 and the Variations in G major WoO 77 which were created as a piece of occasional music. The recording closes with Sonata Op. 111, whose second movement is one of the longest and most complex variation settings of the Viennese School and represents the homogeneous integration of the variation as a form within multi-movement works in Beethoven's piano literature. Each of these four works possesses it's own semantics and shows a Beethoven sparkling with creativity, wit, deep expressiveness and consummate mastery of forms, confronting the pianist with a multiplicity of technical, but also interpretative challenges. (Florian Feilmair)