Miroslav Beinhauer - Pieces For Broken Piano - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Hummel / Azzolini / Ensemble Il Capriccio / Wezel - Concertino for Bassoon & Strings [COMPACT DISCS] date 06/27/2006

I would like to prove that Bedrich Smetana was a composer comparable with Franz Liszt and that his music deserves to be performed at major concert venues worldwide. Armed with this belief, the pianist Miroslav Sekera plunged into making the present album. He is an extraordinary soloist, as well as an experienced and sought-after chamber musician (regularly performing with the violinist Josef Spacek, the hornist Radek Baborak, and others). Putting together Smetana and Liszt is in a sense logical - both of them were superb pianists, with the piano having played a significant role in their lives and artistic developments, particularly in the first decades of their careers. Liszt was a great model for Smetana, as documented by a note in the Czech composer's diary InchWith God's grace and help, one day I will be like Liszt in technique and like Mozart in composition.Inch The correspondence and several personal encounters between Liszt and Smetana ultimately led to a friendship. Yet whereas Liszt's piano works have enjoyed great attention, Smetana's piano music is yet to become widely known and acknowledged. The very first cycle of characteristic pieces, Bagatelles et Impromptus (1844), written by Smetana at the age of 20, featured traits that would be palpable throughout his piano oeuvre. His five-year stay in Gothenburg and conversations with Liszt enhanced Smetana's penchant for programme music. This inclination of his reflected in several virtuoso piano works dating from that time, including the piano poem MacBeth and the etude On the Seashore. Sekera's performance reveals to the full Smetana's genius and singularity, which we know from his symphonic poems, but are only now discovering in his piano music.

This album features three masterpieces by composers deeply connected to Vienna, two of whom-Haydn and Beethoven-earned the timeless title of InchViennese Classics,Inch while Schubert, ever the bold innovator, explored new musical territories in their shadow. Created within less than fifty years, these works reveal the evolution of the piano sonata genre and the eventual rejection of it's conventional form-from Haydn's Sonata in E Major, which straddles the line between the galant style and fully developed classicism, to Schubert's avant-garde and extravagantly Romantic Fantasy in C Major, a work far ahead of it's time.Schubert's innovation would not have been possible without Beethoven's influence. Beethoven's late-period Sonata in E Major, written just two years earlier, serves as a bridge between the two, clearly paving the way toward a pre-Romantic expressive style.Mariusz Ciolko, an internationally performing artist, pedagogue, and competition juror, brings a unique interpretation to this demanding piano repertoire. He masterfully balances classical elegance with Romantic virtuosity, offering a performance that captures both the technical brilliance and emotional depth of these iconic works.