account
basket
Challenge Records Int. logo
Haydn Piano Sonatas
Joseph Haydn

Markus Becker

Haydn Piano Sonatas

Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085533695
Catnr: AVI 8553369
Release date: 25 November 2016
Notify when available
1 CD
Notify when available
 
Label
CAvi
UPC
4260085533695
Catalogue number
AVI 8553369
Release date
25 November 2016
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN

About the album

Haydn's piano sonatas have thrilled me since childhood. This music may seem easy to grasp at first glance: so much seems clear and straightforward. However, once you take a closer look and spend more time playing and listening to Haydn's music, it develops an endless, multifaceted life of its own. It becomes more concrete and at teh same time it develops an endless, multifaceted life of its own. It becomes more concrete and at teh same time more mysterious. Unexpected turns of phrase, sudden occurences, humorous juxtapositions and startling asymmetries are just as much a part of this music as its extended melodic arcs that make the piano sing. Haydn's music forms an intimate bond between song and speech. In each movement of the ca. 60 piano sonatas he wrote, we meet a personality, an unmistakeable character, evoked in detail. Haydn was long viewed as teh mere forerunner of vienna Classicism - Mozart and Beethoven's Papa, so to speak. His sonatas were mainly regarded as witty, useful pedagogical material. Several generations seem to have been unaware of his profoundly nuanced approach. Perhaps, however, Haydn's keyboard oeuvre might require even better interpreters than the works written by his towering colleagues. One cannot clothe this music in an adequate form without applying a great deal of fantasy in one's choice of timbres, along with a keen sense for musical thetoric and careful regard for phrasing. Most of all, the Haydn performer should be able to modify the entire timbre effect and redistribute the balance among parts from one moment to the next. We must not forget that he was born way back in 1732: Haydn thus still had one foot in the Baroque age, as one can tell from the latent polyphony and frequent figures of musical rhetoric. His variegated types of articulation cover a wide spectrum: dozens of nuances fill out the range between Haydn's profound, songlike legato and his humorously accentuated staccato. Here is not where we will find Beethoven's force and dramatic vigor, neither Mozart's ethereal beauty. Haydn wrote a music of profound humanity, with a basic outlook similar to what the German Romantics called humor': a reflection of human life with all its beauties, unfathomable depths, hopes, losses, crises and joys, all shouldered with a large dose of passion and irony.

Artist(s)

Markus Becker (piano)

“As a musical virtuoso, Markus Becker is unbeatable – an intelligent creator of soulful musical portraits.” Eleonore Büning, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Born in 1963 in Osnabrück, Markus Becker has convinced audiences and critics alike as a highly formative interpreter of piano literature from Bach to Rihm, an eminent artist on the international scale who is noted for his original programming choices. Exceptionally among classical pianists, he also stands out as a virtuoso jazz improviser. Becker makes regular appearances at the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Kissingen Summer Festival. Markus Becker has played with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, RSB Berlin, the radio symphony orchestras of the NDR, WDR and SWR in Germany, and the BBC Welsh Orchestra under such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Howard...
more
“As a musical virtuoso, Markus Becker is unbeatable – an intelligent creator of soulful musical portraits.” Eleonore Büning, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Born in 1963 in Osnabrück, Markus Becker has convinced audiences and critics alike as a highly formative interpreter of piano literature from Bach to Rihm, an eminent artist on the international scale who is noted for his original programming choices. Exceptionally among classical pianists, he also stands out as a virtuoso jazz improviser.
Becker makes regular appearances at the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and the Kissingen Summer Festival. Markus Becker has played with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, RSB Berlin, the radio symphony orchestras of the NDR, WDR and SWR in Germany, and the BBC Welsh Orchestra under such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Howard Griffiths, Michael Sanderling, and Thierry Fisher. Becker’s chamber music partners include Albrecht Mayer, Nils Mönkemeyer, Adrian Brendel, Igor Levit, Sharon Kam and Alban Gerhardt.
He studied with Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling and received additional crucial guidance for many years from Alfred Brendel. Since 1993, he has been a professor at the Hanover Academy of Music, Theatre and Media, where he supervises a class of pianists and chamber ensembles, oversees the Masters Degree department, and directs the Chamber Music Institute.
With his CD recordings, Becker is the three-time winner of the ECHO-Klassik award as well as the German Critics Choice Award, along with a number of further distinctions from the international music press (Gramophone, Fono Forum, Klassik Heute, BBC Music Magazine, American Record Guide).
Becker‘s recording of Max Reger’s complete piano works on 12 CDs (Thorofon) is already considered legendary. Fono Forum‘s assessment of this encyclopaedic feat: “One of the rare and truly major achievements of German piano artistry in the past 50 years.” He received an OPUS award for his live recorded Reger piano concerto.

less

Composer(s)

Joseph Haydn

(Franz) Joseph Haydn was a prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets 'Father of the Symphony' and 'Father of the String Quartet'.   Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, 'forced to become original'. Yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.   He was a friend and mentor of Mozart,...
more
(Franz) Joseph Haydn was a prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".
Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original". Yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.
He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a teacher of Beethoven, with whom he formed the First Viennese School. He was also the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.

less

Press

Play album Play album

Often bought together with..

Joseph Haydn
Solitude
Markus Becker
Robert Schumann
Scenes and Fantasies
Einav Yarden

You might also like..

Franz Schubert, Antonin Dvořák
Schubert 1 & Dvořák 9
Adam Fischer
Dmitri Shostakovich, Franz Schubert
Viola & Piano
Andreas Willwohl & Daniel Heide
Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven, Violin Sonatas Nos 1, 5, 6 & 10
Antje Weithaas | Dénes Várjon
Ludwig van Beethoven, Erwin Schulhoff
Berlin 1923, Beethoven & Schulhoff
Herbert Schuch
Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven, Violin Sonatas Nos 3, 7 & 8
Antje Weithaas | Dénes Várjon
Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven, Sonatas Vol. 3
Daniel Heide
Robert Schumann, Ludwig van Beethoven
Hommage à Beethoven
Aris Alexander Blettenberg
Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven, Violin Sonatas Nos 2, 4 & 9 Kreutzer
Antje Weithaas | Dénes Várjon
Max Reger
Piano Concerto - Live Recording (vinyl)
Markus Becker
Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert, Schwanengesang
Andreas Bauer Kanabas & Daniel Heide
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart, String Quartets complete (7-CD set)
Armida Quartett
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart, Sonatas & Fantasies
Elena Bashkirova