Piano Works by Ivo Janssen

Ivo Janssen

Piano Works

Format: CD
Label: Globe
UPC: 8711525511309
Catnr: GLO 5113
Release date: 19 August 2002

1 CD

Label
Globe

UPC
8711525511309

Catalogue number
GLO 5113

Release date
19 August 2002

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Vier fascinerende werken van de onterecht genegeerde Hindemith
Paul Hindemith is nog altijd een verwaarloosde componist, maar uit de vier fascinerende werken op dit album blijkt opnieuw dat hij onterecht genegeerd wordt. Hij werd door niemand minder dan de legendarische Glenn Gould beschouwd als een van de belangrijkste componisten aller tijden.

Wat repertoire betreft heeft dit album nauwelijks te maken met concurrentie in de internationale catalogi, en wat de interpretaties van Ivo Janssen betreft staat het vast dat zij absoluut geen concurrentie zullen krijgen! Janssen vestigde zich met zijn opname van Hindemiths Ludus Tonalis namelijk als een van de beste Hindemith uitvoerders van deze tijd, en de huidige opnames zullen zijn internationale reputatie alleen maar versterken. Dit grootse pianoalbum met een schitterende klank zou zelfs nog succesvoller moeten worden dan Ludus Tonalis!

Janssen studeerde onder Jan Wijn, György Szebök en Andrzej Jansinski. Met zijn eerdere albums en concerten vestigde hij zich al snel als een van de belangrijkste pianisten van zijn generatie.

Artist(s)

Ivo Janssen (piano)

Since his debut in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in 1988 pianist Ivo Janssen (Venlo, 1963) performs regularly in the Netherlands, and also in Germany, France, Italy, Australia and the USA. He has performed with musicians such as Heinrich Schiff, Nobuko Imai, Han de Vries and Charlotte Margiono.
For Globe, Ivo Janssen made a number of recordings including Brahms, Prokofiev, Chopin Preludes op. 28 and Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis, which the Hindemith Institute considered to be the best recording by far of this work.
In 1994 he started a series of concerts which will eventually include performances and recordings of the complete keyboard works by J.S. Bach. In February 1998 the first album in this series was released, on his own label VOID Classics, which was especially started for this purpose. After recordings of the Goldberg Variations, Toccatas, French and English Suites, Partitas, the Well-tempered Clavier, and much more, the cycle was completed with a recording of The Art of Fugue in January 2007. His toccata! project, that combines Bach’s toccatas with toccatas especially written by a number of contemporary Dutch composers such as Louis Andriessen, Michiel Borstlap, Leo Samama and Christina Viola Oorebeek was received with much enthusiasm, in the Netherlands as well as abroad.
Since 2014 Ivo Janssen plays recitals in Janssenbeton, music below decks, a concert hall built by himself in a concrete ammunition barge in the centre of Amsterdam. However, he has decided to stop performing for the time being in the summer of 2019.

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Composer(s)

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith studied violin at the Dr Hoch's Konservatorium of Frankfurt and played from 1915 to 1923 in the Frankfurt opera. From 1921 to 1929 he played viola in the Amar Quarter, where he was advocate for contemporary music. Throughout the years, he held multiple positions as teachers, but he remained most popular as a violist. During the Second Worldwar he fleed to the USA and was given the American nationality in 1948, Later, he returned to Europe to teach at the university of Zürich.
His use rhythm, called "Motorik" by himself (a combination of Motor and Musik) is piercing, and at times even tormenting. It echoes the arrival of industralisation and the motor, as Hindemith opposes any form of sentimentality, psychology or personality. This way, Hinemith created shrill, neoclassicistic music (Gebrauchsmusik, music with a social or political aim). His body of works is quite extensive, with more than 100 compositions in all kinds of genres. Even though he was an advocate of contemporary music, he never felt affiliated with dodecaphony. He wrote several theoretic treatises, among which his Unterweisung im Tonsatz from 1937 in which Hindemith offers several systems in which the tension between intervals, harmony and melody is analysed and elevated into a compositional technique.

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