Solo Cello Sonatas by Pieter Wispelwey

Pieter Wispelwey

Solo Cello Sonatas

Format: CD
Label: Globe
UPC: 8711525508903
Catnr: GLO 5089
Release date: 19 August 2002

1 CD

Label
Globe

UPC
8711525508903

Catalogue number
GLO 5089

Release date
19 August 2002

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Pieter Wispelwey received his early training from Dicky Boeke and Anner Bijlsma in Amsterdam, and continued his studies with Paul Katz in the USA and William Pleeth In England. His repertoire ranges from J.S. Bach to Carter, Kagel and Schnlttke. He regularly plays the complete solo cello suites by Bach and Britten and the complete sonatas by Beethoven and Brahms in his many recitals, the latter with Paul Komen, and in the USA with Lois Shapiro, as his piano partner. He also performs frequently as a soloist with orchestras and has recently played concertos by Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Elgar, Haydn, Dutilleux and Schnittke. Pieter Wispelwey gave his debut performance in the recital hall of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw in 1986 with a Beethoven recital. In 1985, he won the Elisabeth Evers Prize, an award given biennially to the most promising young Dutch musician.

Verrukkelijke opnamen van bekende en minder bekende cellosonates
Naast Brittens Suites hoort de meer dan 36 minuten durende Cellosonate van Zoltán Kodály tot de meest belangrijke cellowerken uit de 20e eeuw. De andere twee werken op dit album zijn relatief onbekend, maar ook meesterwerken op zichzelf. Rudolf Escher begon tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog aan zijn Cellosonate te werken, en rondde de compositie in 1948 af. George Crumb, tegenwoordig bekend als de ‘alchemist van de muziek’, schreef zijn sonate tijdens zijn studiejaren in Berlijn. Beide werken behoren tot de belangrijke bijdragen aan het hedendaagse repertoire voor cello solo.

De muziek wordt uitgevoerd door Pieter Wispelwey. Wispelwey werd op vroege leeftijd onderwezen door Dicky Boeke en Anner Bijlsma in Amsterdam, en zette zijn studies voort onder Paul Katz in de Verenigde Staten en William Pleeth in Engeland. Zijn repertoire reikt van Johann Sebastian Bach tot Carter, Kagel en Schnittke. In zijn recitals speelt hij regelmatig de Cellosuites van Bach en Britten, en de Sonates van Beethoven en Brahms.

Het eerdere album van Wispelwey met de drie Cellosuites van Benjamin Britten is nog steeds een immens succes. Michael Jameson schreef in de Gramophone over dit album: “I know of no other player who reveals the subliminal architecture and conceptual mastery of these taxing and intellectually demanding works with such clarity.”

Artist(s)

Pieter Wispelwey

Pieter Wispelwey is equally at ease on the modern or period cello. His acute stylistic awareness, combined with a truly original interpretation and a phenomenal technical mastery, has won the hearts of critics and public alike in repertoire ranging from JS Bach to Schnittke, Elliott Carter and works composed for him.
Pieter Wispelwey enjoys chamber music collaborations and regular duo partners include pianists Cédric Tiberghien and Alasdair Beatson and he appears as a guest artist with a number of string quartets including the Australian String Quartet.
Wispelwey’s career spans five continents and he has appeared as soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras including the Boston Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Tokyo Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, London Philharmonic, Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig, Danish National Radio Symphony and Camerata Salzburg. Conductor collaborations include Ivan Fischer, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Herbert Blomstedt, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jeffrey Tate, Kent Nagano, Sir Neville Marriner, Philippe Herreweghe, Ton Koopman and Sir Roger Norrington.
With regular recital appearances in London (Wigmore Hall), Paris (Châtelet, Louvre), Amsterdam (Concertgebouw, Muziekgebouw), Brussels (Bozar), Berlin (Konzerthaus), Milan (Societta del Quartetto), Buenos Aires (Teatro Colon), Sydney (The Utzon Room), Los Angeles (Walt Disney Hall) and New York (Lincoln Center), Wispelwey has established a reputation as one of the most charismatic recitalists on the circuit.
In 2012 Wispelwey celebrated his 50th birthday by embarking on a project showcasing the Bach Cello Suites. He recorded the complete Suites for the third time. A major strand of his recital performances is his performances of the complete suites during the course of one evening, an accomplishment that has attracted major critical acclaim throughout Europe and the US. Pieter Wispelwey plays on a 1760 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini cello and a 1710 Rombouts baroque cello.

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Composer(s)

Zoltán Kodály

Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, born in 1905. If you would read Kodály's biography, you could only do so with increasing astonishment. Not only did he reach the honarable age of 84, throughout his whole life he remained astoundingly prolific - and with great success. Moreover, besides his work as a composer, Kodály was active as a conductor, (ethno-)musicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. And in each of these areas, he had a pioneering role, always with exceptional passion and dedication. To name but one example: together with his friend Belá Bartók he worked on a ten volume reference guide to Hungarian music, which appeared from 1951 with each volume spanning more than a thousand pages.
Yet, Kodály gained acclaim for his compositions as well, with his Psalmus hungaricus (1923) en his opera Háry János (1926) as the pinnacles of his musical career. The core of his body of work consists of vocal music, in particular works for choir, but his instrumental music is just as impressive. His master piece Laudes Organi, written one year before his death, truly proves that Kodály's creative energy stayed with him to the bitter end.

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Rudolf Escher

Rudolf George Escher was born on 8 January 1912 in Amsterdam as the son of the Swiss Emma Brosy and the geologist Berend George Escher, who gave him piano lessons. In his youth he moved with his family to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, where he encountered gamelan music, which was significant for his musical development.
In 1935 Escher made his debut as a composer with his first piano sonata. He wrote a relatively small oeuvre of orchestral works, chamber music and vocal music, and also examined the musical applications of electronics. One of his most important works is Musique pour l'esprit en deuil, which he composed during the Second World War. This work immediately made him the most important composer of the Netherlands. Most of Escher’s student works have been lost due to the bombing of Rotterdam on May 14, 1940.
Escher’s music is lyrical, expressive and elegiac, with a great driving force. He mainly joined the French music of Debussy and Ravel, although he disliked being constantly connected with the French tradition. He was also influenced by Renaissance polyphony, Gustav Mahler, Gregorian chant and gamelan music.

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George Crumb

George Crumb (b. 1929) is one of the most frequently performed composers in today's musical world. Crumb is the winner of Grammy and Pulitzer Prizes, and continues to compose new scores that enrich the lives of all who come in contact with his profoundly humanistic art. Crumb's music often juxtaposes contrasting musical styles, ranging from music of the western art-music tradition, to hymns and folk music, to non-Western musics. Many of Crumb's works include programmatic, symbolic, mystical and theatrical elements, which are often reflected in his beautiful and meticulously notated scores.

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