Schumann / Meneses / Cruz - Schumann Saint-Saens & Tchaikovsky - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Schubert / Schumann / Schoenhals - Schubert & Schumann [COMPACT DISCS] date 10/14/2014

Virtuoso pianist Marc Ponthus's new recording for Bridge Records consists of three of Robert Schumann's key masterpieces Kinderszenen, op. 15, Kreisleriana, op. 16, and Fantasie in C, op. 17. Ponthus's last recording for Bridge was the InchComplete Music for PianoInch of the late Pierre Boulez. Ponthus's Boulez recording received glowing reviews, and was Gramophone magazine's InchEditor's ChoiceInch. Pianist Marc Ponthus, also a conductor and composer, is noted for landmark performances of the complete piano works of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez and radical performances of celebrated works such as Bach's InchGoldberg VariationsInch and Beethoven's InchHammerklavier SonataInch. He has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe and created the InchLower Eastside EnsembleInch dedicated to performing contemporary music. His belief that art can define humanity and that music transcends political boundaries brought him to perform in war-torn Sarajevo. He wrote about those experiences for the London newspaper, InchThe Independent,Inch and continues to work with intellectuals and philosophers in France and the United States on behalf of the people of Bosnia, Chechnya, and South Sudan.

Elisabeth Kulman and Eduard Kutrowatz have for many years now been working together, as they share an artistic passion for the unusual and unconventional which has manifested itself in pushing the traditional boundaries between various eras and genres. They aim, in their Lieder programmes, to recount new, interrelated stories, and to this end, they combine song and pieces for piano in unusual sequences, sometimes plucking verses from one song and placing them individually in a programme; carefully and deliberately choosing keys that connect a number of Lieder in order to provide a dramatic link that results in exciting, flowing and sometimes imperceptible combinations. At the 2017 Schwarzenberg Schubertiade, Elisabeth Kulman and Eduard Kutrowatz dedicated the first part of their programme entirely to Robert Schumann. The lieder cycle Frauenliebe und Leben and the op. 104 songs form a common theme running through this part of the programme. For Elisabeth Kulman and Eduard Kutrowatz the key focus when choosing songs is always on the lyrics, the message, and what may lie behind it. It is therefore hardly surprising that they also chose poems by Erich Kästner set by the Austrian composer Herwig Reiter. His witty, ironic lyrics full of cryptic humor abound with worldly wisdom and hold up a mirror to their readers without merely moralizing or preaching. Placing Herwig Reiter's settings in a dialogue with Lieder by Franz Schubert appears at first glance to be courageous, if not foolhardy. On closer inspection however the art of selection and comparison shown by Kulman and Kutrowatz in their choice of the songs by Reiter and Schubert proves to be the perfect symbiosis.