Various Artists - Chill with Chopin - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

In 2005 Igor Levit and Xiaohan Wang performed, together with the Kolner Kammerorchester under Helmut Müller-Brühl, as outstanding talents of the semi-final of the InchInternational Beethoven Competition for Piano BonnInch. The competition had been initiated in the same year by the then President of the Federal Republic of Germany Horst Kohler. The young pianists, today successful all over the world, performed on that occasion Beethoven's piano concertos nos. 1 and 2. On this recording, Igor Levit performs the First Concerto, and Xiaohan Wang the Second.

SOMM Recordings presents an intriguing pairing of chamber works that share the unusual and expressive instrumentation of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass Johann Nepomuk Hummel's 'Military' Quintet in C major and Franz Schubert's Piano Quintet in A major, his Trout Quintet. Extraordinarily, this is a first recording of Hummel's 'Military' Quintet.' It is an amazing find by the virtuoso double-bass player Leon Bosch, Artistic Director of the mixed-instrument chamber ensemble I Musicanti, with whom he performs here. They're joined by Peter Donohoe, laureate of the Tchaikovsky Competition and acclaimed as one of the foremost pianists of our time.Johann Nepomuk Hummel's gift as a composer was matched by his excellence as a pianist. A child prodigy, Hummel was taught and housed by Mozart for two years, and he studied further with Clementi, Haydn, Albrechtsberger, and Salieri. Hummel's mastery as a pianist and his compositional personality, admired by Liszt, shine through in his two piano septets featuring winds, brass, and strings, which he also arranged for a combination not uncommon at the time of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass.It was in October 1829, nearly a year after Schubert's death, that Hummel completed his 'Military' Piano Septet No. 2. For publication in Vienna the following year, he also prepared a piano quintet version, again arranged for that ensemble of piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. The Septet's scoring-for piano, flute, clarinet, trumpet, violin, cello, and double bass- already included four of the five of those instruments, so in effect the alternate version redistributes the wind and brass parts among four strings with added viola. It is this version that receives it's premiere recording on this . Franz Schubert's Trout Quintet came about during a walking holiday in the Alps in 1819, when he made the acquaintance

In Holland in the 1720s the transverse flute enjoyed considerable popularity among amateur musicians. Aware of that keen interest, the Michel Le Cene decided in 1729 to present his customers with the very first collection of concertos for flute and orchestra. Vivaldi responded to his request by refurbishing several older works. Only one of them was already in the modern concerto form the Concerto in F major for recorder and strings. Another four pieces were hybrid in form and still close to chamber works. The predominant role of the recorder or flute in those four concertos made them ideal for adaptation. The odd man out of the collection is the short Concerto in G major RV 435. No earlier version is known and it's style, more modern than it's five companions in the set, leads us to suppose that Vivaldi wrote it specifically for Le Cene's publication. The decade following the publication of op. 10 saw the appearance of a fair number of new flute concertos. Among them, the Concerto in A minor RV 440 is a splendid example of Vivaldi's maturity. Studying the manuscript of this concerto reveals different stages in it's composition, as well as shedding light on it's destination. In the case of RV 438 and RV 400, Vivaldi simplified many passages, probably making such sacrifices for a flautist of very limited virtuosity. Since these revisions had no musical justification, we chose to restore the original text.