Polish Piano Trios by Altenberg Trio Wien

Artur Malawski, Krzysztof Meyer

Altenberg Trio Wien

Polish Piano Trios

Price: € 12.95
Format: CD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917231021
Catnr: CC 72310
Release date: 31 October 2008
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Label
Challenge Classics

UPC
0608917231021

Catalogue number
CC 72310

Release date
31 October 2008

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Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Artur Malawski was known in the years after 1945 as one of the most striking personalities on the Polish music scene – his ballet- pantomime Wierchy (The Mountain Tops, 1950) attained the status of a key work, which manifested the innovative force of a new Poland resurrected from the traumata of war, destruction and the Holocaust.

Despite this, Malawski never seems to have enjoyed the special favour of the “cultural politicians”. Very soon after Malawski’s early death, the succeeding generation of composers blacked-out his renown, and his name appeared only very rarely in concert programmes. There may well have been political reasons for this neglect – a composer whose last symphonic work bore the title Hungaria 1956 must hardly have aroused confidence in the communist powers-that-be. Of Malawski’s numerous pupils the best known is Krzysztof Penderecki.

The piano trio is Malawski’s last chamber music score. In the new edition of the encyclopaedia Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Music in History and the Present Age; vol. 11, Kassel) Adam Myrgo’n extols this work as “one of the most remarkable chamber music works in twentieth-century Polish music.” The composition’s significance is also reflected in that it is one of the few works by Malawski to be performed with any regularity.

Krzysztof Meyer is probably the most remarkable child of the music history phenomenon people associate with the name of the festivals “Krakow Music Spring” and “Warsaw Autumn”. And not only because he experienced his first great successes as a composer in both these festivals (1964 with the First Symphony in Krakow and in 1965 with the First String Quartet in Warsaw), but far more because the whole course of his development, his skills as a composer and his artistic creed appear shaped in their essentials by this phenomenon. Meyer is quite aware of the connections that exist between him and the work of his older contemporaries and compatriots: he dedicated his first three “official” string quartets to the three composers who influenced his career (though to very different degrees): Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutosławski and Dmitri Shostakovich. His trio is without doubt one of the most gripping trio compositions of the last decades. Its closeness to the ideas and concepts of Dmitri Shostakovich, above all to his late work, never restricts the free flight of the composer’s original ideas and his visions of sound – on the contrary, the lack of shyness in seeking this closeness allows the uniqueness of the younger composer to emerge with even more freedom and conviction.

Spannende en emotionele Poolse pianotrio's
Het Altenberg Trio Wien speelt pianotrio's van 2 bijzondere Poolse componisten: Artur Malawski en Krzysztof Meyer. Zoals altijd subliem vertolkt door het Altenberg Trio. "Technisch volmaakt en meesterlijk qua opbouw en uitwerking. Het warme pleidooi en de volkomen techniek doen gewoon vergeten hoe weerbarstig deze muziek werkelijk is." Aart van der Wal, Opus Klassiek, februari 2009.

Pianotrio's zijn muziekstukken, speciaal gecomponeerd voor een kamermuziekensemble, dat bestaat uit een piano en 2 andere instrumenten, meestal viool en cello. Het Altenberg Trio Wien is zo'n ensemble, opgericht in Wenen in1994 en in Europa een van de bekendste piano trio's van deze tijd.

De Pool Artur Malawski (1904-1957) studeerde viool en orkestdirectie aan het conservatorium van Krakau. Daar werd hij na de 2e wereldoorlog docent compositie, dirigeren en muziektheorie. Malawski was een van de opvallendste karakters binnen de Poolse muziekscene. Zijn muziek is van een gematigd moderne stijl en hij componeerde in vrijwel alle genres, behalve opera. De componist was kritisch over zijn eigen werk. Zijn eerste strijkkwartet en een strijksextet, heeft hij uiteindelijk zelf vernietigd. Het romantische pianotrio van Artur Malawski wordt gezien als een van de opmerkelijkste werken van de Poolse kamermuziek in die tijd. Het is zijn laatste kamermuziekstuk en de enige muziek die regelmatig werd uitgevoerd, in tegenstelling tot zijn andere werken, die nauwelijks aandacht kregen.

De Poolse pianist, componist en schrijver Krzysztof Meyer werd in 1943 in Krakau geboren. Tegenwoordig woont hij in Duitsland, waar hij hoogleraar compositie was aan het conservatorium van Keulen. We associëren Meyer vaak met het Lentefestival in Krakau en het Herfstfestival in Warschau in de jaren 60. Niet alleen vanwege zijn succes, maar vooral omdat zijn ontwikkeling, vaardigheden en zijn artistieke overtuiging daar gevormd werden. Zijn eerste strijkkwartetten droeg hij op aan de 3 componisten die zijn carriëre zouden beïnvloeden: Krzysztof Penderecki, Witold Lutosławski and Dmitri Sjostakovitsj. Voor de laatste had hij een bijzonder plekje in zijn hart, vandaar zijn biografie -volgens velen de beste ooit - over Dmitri Sjostakovitsj. Het aangrijpende pianotrio van Krzysztof Meyer benadert het werk van Sjostakovistj heel dicht. Maar zijn eigen originele ideeën en zijn visie op klank krijgen toch altijd ruim baan.

Die neue CD des Altenberg Trios Wien widmet sich zwei besonderen polnischen Komponisten, die jeweils ihre Generation geprägt haben. Penderecki war Malawskis (1904-1954) Schüler, auch Krystsztof Meyer (*1943) ist von ihm beeinflusst worden. Spannend und hoch emotional!

Artist(s)

Altenberg Trio Wien

The Altenberg Trio of Vienna came into being when Claus-Christian Schuster and Martin Hornstein, members of the Vienna Schubert Trio and Amiram Ganz, the initiator and violinist of the Shostakovitch Trio joined forces in January 1994. All three musicians had earned critical acclaim and world wide recognition with their performances in the world's most important chamber music venues for many years prior to the formation of the Altenberg Trio. Since its debut at the 1994 Salzburg Mozart Week, the Altenberg Trio has enjoyed great success with performances in the United States, Canada and Europe. The ensemble regularly appears in such distinguished venues as London, Wigmore Hall and was invited to perform at the Prague Spring Festival and the Orlando Festival. In Australia the trio performs often at the Salzburg Mozarteum and presents a regular concert at Vienna's famed "Musikverein".
The "Viennese Touch", for which the Altenberg Trio has often been commended, is not simply a question of musical technique - phrasing, vibrato or portamento, dynamic or agogic accents, although these are a part of it. The Viennese style represents a specific artistic orientation, rooted in a city that was the center of an empire and the crossroads of many distinctive cultures in the 18th and 19th centuries. This style may be best-known outside of Austria through the city's music, because that is the art, whose stylistic refinements have made the strongest international impression. But it is also reflected in literature, painting (Klimt), architecture, psychology (Freud), philosophy (Wittgenstein) and even cuisines. That is one reason why it makes sense, for a pianist, violinist and cellist to form a trio named after a poet. Peter Altenberg (1859-1919), whose life and works reflect the spirit of an era when literature, science, art and music were closely interactive.

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Amiram Ganz

Violinist Amiram Ganz was born in Montevideo. He began to study violin in Uruguay with Israel Chorberg, the Leopold Auer-pupil Ilya Fidlon, and Jorge Risi. At the age of eleven he won the Jeunesses Musicales Contest and then continued his studies with Richard Burgin in the U.S.A. and Alberto Lysy at the International Academy of Chamber Music in Rome. Studying on a scholarship at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory between 1974 and 1979 he met Victor Pikaisen, who became his teacher. As finalist and award winner of several international competitions (Long-Thibaud/Paris, ARD/Munich, etc.), he became first concert master of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg in 1980. From 1987 until the foundation of the Altenberg Trio he was the violinist of the Shostakovitch Trio, appearing at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Alte Oper Frankfurt, Tchaikovsky Conservatory Moscow, etc. In 1994 he became a founding member of the Altenberg Trio of Vienna with pianist Claus-Christian Schuster and cellist Martin Hornstein, who was succeeded in 2004 by Alexander Gebert. With the Altenberg Trio Ganz performes in Europe and North America.
As a soloist he has collaborated with conductors Alain Lombard, Günter Kehr, Theodor Guschlbauer, Marc Soustrot, James Judd, Hiroyuki Iwaki, Nicolas Pasquet und others. He teaches violin and chamber music in Vienna Conservatory (Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität). Amiram Ganz plays a violin built in Saluzzo in 1686 by Goffredo Cappa (1644-1717); it was made available to the trio by an anonymous patron.

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