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SOMM Recordings proudly announces this fifth and penultimate in the complete cycle of the Beethoven Symphonies arranged for piano four-hands by the great Polish-German composer and pianist Xaver Scharwenka. This is a series that has consistently had listeners Inchwaiting impatiently for the next volumeInch (MusicWeb International). Of the many piano-duo versions of the Symphonies, Scharwenka's benefit from an unbroken link back to Beethoven himself, for the arranger was a piano student of Franz Kullak, who in turn studied under the master symphonist's pupil Carl Czerny. The present Volume 5 adds Symphonies 4 & 8 to the collection, coupled with Ferruccio Busoni's two-piano transcription of Mozart's Magic Flute Overture BV B 93, leaving only Beethoven's InchChoralInch Ninth still to be released on the series' concluding instalment. The performers undertaking this monumental recording project, the InchphenomenalInch piano duo of Tessa Uys & Ben Schoeman (InchIn TuneInch, BBC Radio 3), have performed all nine symphony arrangements in public for almost a decade, breeding a familiarity that informs the impeccable ensemble and authoritative vision they bring to the recordings. Gramophone's Peter J. Rabinowitz lauded this in Volume 4 InchUys and Schoeman cut through the clutter with impressive unanimity; and their finely gauged handling of dynamics and their rhythmic drive... assure that the symphonies emerge with their shape intact, even shorn of orchestral colour. It all sounds idiomatic, both as Beethoven and as piano music... knowledgeable and illuminating.Inch The Sunday Times' Dan Cairns, who named Volume 3 a InchClassical Album of the WeekInch, also relished those Inchdual delights you can just as easily feel you are listening to entirely new works as experience moments when your response will be along the lines of 'Ah yes, that bit'. Both are richly rewarding...
