Spencer Martin - Gems Rediscovered - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Martin Perry - Martin Perry Plays [COMPACT DISCS] date 03/12/2013

The musical world remembers this year Gustav Jenner 100 years after his death. The German composer was the only pupil of Johannes Brahms and author of numerous songs after the poets Theodor Storm and Klaus Groth. The baritone Ulf Bästlein and the pianist Charles Spencer bring to the public with the present album a fine performance of mostly unknown songs, many of them world first recordings, accompanied by extremely detailed liner notes. Ulf Bästlein, Bass-Baritone- The German bass-baritone Ulf Bästlein studied classical philology and German literature, completing a Ph.D. before commencing vocal studies with Prof. Albrecht Meyerolbersleben at the Music Academy in Freiburg. There he graduated from the Inchconcert examsInch with Distinction. Ulf Bästlein was appointed as Vocal Professor at the Music Academy in Lübeck, Germany, in 1999, and has held a professorship in Singing at the University for Music in Graz, Austria, since 2000. Ulf Bästlein gives regular masterclasses in Germany and abroad. Charles Spencer is a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and is one of the most international sought-after piano accompanists.

Schumann was twenty-eight years old when he composed in 1838 a cycle of eight pieces for piano, the Novelletten (Novelettes) op.21. This impressive, highly virtuosic set was dedicated to the pianist Adolf von Henselt, whose spectacular playing and technique were often compared to those of Liszt. Presented by the composer as 'long, bizarre tales', the Novelletten were written around the same time as the Kinderszenen, two years before his marriage to Clara, to whom he confided 'I have written a frightful amount of music for you in the last three weeks - light-hearted pieces, Egmont stories, family scenes with fathers, a wedding, in short, the most amiable things.' Martin Helmchen has taken up this cycle (with the addition of Robert's Gesänge der Frühe and three excerpts from Clara's Soirées musicales) with all the passion and virtuosity for which he is famed. He was determined to record this program on a Bechstein pianoforte, in order to capture as many of the colours of this flamboyant musical kaleidoscope as possible.