Arpeggione Sonata / Lachrymae / Viola Sonata by Rachel Roberts

Franz Schubert, Benjamin Britten

Rachel Roberts

Arpeggione Sonata / Lachrymae / Viola Sonata

Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085532452
Catnr: AVI 8553245
Release date: 19 February 2016
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Label
CAvi

UPC
4260085532452

Catalogue number
AVI 8553245

Release date
19 February 2016

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

SECRET MESSAGES
Rachel Roberts: Schubert’s Arpeggione sonata D 821, is perhaps the only significant work we have for it today. My approach to this piece has changed considerably since I first approached it over thirty years ago. As a child I enjoyed it for its beautiful themes and the seemingly happy, outwardly dance-like nature. With time, and a broadening acquaintance with Schubert – his language and individual code of writing, his character and life-events – I no longer feel only that element of simplicity or playfulness. The frequent reiteration of pianissimo and piano seems an expression of intimacy and intensity; the music’s meaning in this context becomes something extremely personal and nuanced, as though Schubert is confiding a deep secret, whatever the immediate nature of the theme may appear to be. Benjamin Britten’s "Lachrymae“ Op. 48, subtitled “Reflections on a Song of Dowland”, dating 1945, is a theme and set of variations inspired by the sad lament of unrequited love, “If my Complaints could Passions Move”, written by John Dowland, the Elizabethan lutenist and composer (1563-1626). Britten wrote the piece for the violist William Primrose and the two artists premiered the piece at Aldeburgh Festival in June 1950. Britten was an enthusiast of traditional forms and his compositions widely reflect his fascination with old English music and the folksongs of England, Scotland, Ireland and France.... Shostakovich’s Sonata for Viola and Piano, opus 147, his last composition, is one of the most profound and harrowing statements of the composer’s most intimate thoughts and feelings ........

Artist(s)

Rachel Roberts (viola)

Rachel Roberts performs internationally as soloist and chamber musician. As soloist she has collaborated with conductors Christoph von Dohnanyi, Andras Schiff, Richard Hickox and Martyn Brabbins performing concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Cologne Chamber Orchestra and Kammerphilharmonie Graubunden in Switzerland amongst others. Rachel Roberts has played chamber music at Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Musikverein (Grand Saal) Vienna, Alte Oper, Frankfurt, Wigmore Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Cadogan Hall and King’s Place. She appears at international festivals including Salzburg Festival, Wiener Festwoche, Schubertiade – Schwarzenberg, SPANNUNGEN, Mecklenburg Vorpommern, Hamburg “Oestertone”, Lofoten Norway and Stift Holland. Prizes for chamber music include the Diapason d’Or, ‚Supersonic Award’ and CD of the month in Fono Forum Magazine, Germany. Highlights in 2015 include a Wigmore Hall concert with Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis, BBC Radio 3 recitals with the London Conchord Ensemble, live Deutschlandfunk broadcasts with the Tetzlaff Quartet and a solo CD release with pianist Lars Vogt. In May 2015 she has toured Japan with Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt, and Tanja Tetzlaff. Rachel Roberts is Professor of Viola at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She has given masterclasses at the Britten Pears Young Artists Programme, Dartington International Summer School, Chethams School of Music and Birmingham Conservatoire.

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Lars Vogt (piano)

Born in the German town of Düren in 1970, Lars Vogt has established himself as one of the leading pianists of his generation. By winning Second Prize at Leeds International Piano Competition in 1990 he launched a remarkable career that has led him to concertize in all the major classical music venues worldwide. Vogt not only performs as solo pianist and as a chamber musician, but also increasingly as a conductor. He took up the post of Music Director of Royal Nothern Sinfonia in Newcastle (England).
Highlights of Lars Vogt's 2015/2016 season include concerts with the LSO, CBSO, Schottish Chamber and Hallé, with the Bavarian Radio SO, Orchestre de Paris etc. In the US he played with Baltimore Symphony and St. Louis Symphony and toured extensively with the Tetzlaff siblings as well as in Japan.
With his passion for chamber music, Lars Vogt has become the professional partner and friend of many first-rate musicians in the classical music field. As the founder and artistic director of SPANNUNGEN Chamber Music Festival he has fulfilled a long-held dream. In 2007 he received the Annual German Music Critics Circle Award for the collected live recordings of Heimbach performances from 1999 to 2006.
As an EMI recording artist, Lars Vogt made fifteen discs for the label, including collaborations with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Claudio Abbado and with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle. Recent releases on other labels include Mozart piano concertos with Frankfurt RSO (Paavo Järvi), a solo CD with works by Liszt and Schumann, and two duo CDs and a successsful trio CD. Especially his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations received rave reviews.
Lars Vogt is the founder of “Rhapsody In School”, an acclaimed educational initiative with important reper-cussions in Germany and abroad. The project presented its featured artists as “Rhapsody In Concert” for the first time at the Konzerthaus in Berlin in 2012. That same year, Lars Vogt was appointed Professor of Piano at the Hannover Conservatory of Music.

Lars died September 5th 2022

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Composer(s)

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer. Schubert already died before his 32nd birthday, but was extremely prolific during his lifetime. His output consists of over six hundred secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of chamber and piano music. Appreciation of his music while he was alive was limited to a relatively small circle of admirers in Vienna, but interest in his work increased significantly in the decades following his death. Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms and other 19th-century composers discovered and championed his works. Today, Schubert is ranked among the greatest composers of the late Classical and early Romantic eras and is one of the most frequently performed composers of the early nineteenth century.
It was in the genre of the Lied that Schubert made his most indelible mark. Prior to Schubert's influence, Lieder tended toward a strophic, syllabic treatment of text, evoking the folksong qualities engendered by the stirrings of Romantic nationalism. Schubert expanded the potentialities of the genre like no other composer before.

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Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten is one most important British composers from the second half of the twentieth century. Remarkably, he focused on opera, a dying genre, at least in its current form. Britten's contributions however, among which Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, managed to remain core repertoire for opera companies to this day. Many of these productions included a role for his artistic partner and life companion Peter Pears. Britten also wrote a number of lieder for this tenor, among which his Serenade for tenor, horn and string orchestra. Yet, Britten excelled in many more genres. He wasn't even 20 years old when he composed his brilliant Phantasy for hobo quartet and his friendship with...

Benjamin Britten is one most important British composers from the second half of the twentieth century. Remarkably, he focused on opera, a dying genre, at least in its current form. Britten's contributions however, among which Peter Grimes, The Rape of Lucretia, Gloriana, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice, managed to remain core repertoire for opera companies to this day. Many of these productions included a role for his artistic partner and life companion Peter Pears. Britten also wrote a number of lieder for this tenor, among which his Serenade for tenor, horn and string orchestra. Yet, Britten excelled in many more genres. He wasn't even 20 years old when he composed his brilliant Phantasy for hobo quartet and his friendship with the legendary cellist Rostropovich led to a Cello sonata, three Suites for cello solo and a Symphony for Cello and orchestra in the 1960s.

Britten never became Master of the Queen's Music, yet he surely had feeling for public sentiments. For example, as a pacifist, he taught his people about world peace through his War Requiem from 1962. Britten was an excellent interpreter of his own work, just like Bartók and Stravinsky. Many of his recordings have been matched, but never exceeded.

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