Edition Klavier - Festival Ruhr Vol. 36, „The Americas“ and a new Melodram by Sergio Tiempo & others

Various composers

Sergio Tiempo & others

Edition Klavier - Festival Ruhr Vol. 36, „The Americas“ and a new Melodram

Price: € 43.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085534593
Catnr: AVI 8553459
Release date: 09 February 2018
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Label
CAvi

UPC
4260085534593

Catalogue number
AVI 8553459

Release date
09 February 2018

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

On the occasion of Philip Glass’s 80th birthday, and in view of the current global situation, I felt inspired and urged to remind music lovers of the cultural richness and variety of the New World, and to recall that its artists strongly defend humanistic values. With that motivation, the Ruhr Piano Festival 2017 was held under the global motto of “The Americas”, focusing on the music of the entire double continent. That focus is likewise reflected in our annual boxed set of three CDs.

On the first CD you will find examples of the spirited, colourful music of several South American countries. You have certainly already heard works by composers such as the Brazilian Heitor Villa-Lobos or the Argentinians Astor Piazzolla and Alberto Ginastera. But the enchanting works of artists such as Moisés Moleiro, Cláudio Santoro or Carlos López Buchardo, just to name a few, were a wonderful discovery for me as well. I therefore thank the pianists Sergio Tiempo, Anna Zassimova and Zhang Zuo, not only for having offered us thrilling interpretations of these pieces, but for having undertaken the considerable task of unearthing these almost unknown works, and having taken the time to learn them to perfection. The second CD takes us to North America: to the US. The music of Edward MacDowell, a New York native, exudes a thoroughly European, Late Romantic flair. His Sonata No. 2 grips the listener with a great variety of ideas and overflowing virtuosity: Joseph Moog plays it with admirable ease. With Samuel Barber’s Hesitation Tango and George Gershwin’s Three Preludes, we enter the world of American dance music and early 20th-century jazz, both of which exerted a strong influence on ‘learned’ music of the day, not only in the US. These pieces have found a congenial interpreter in Bulgarian pianist Plamena Mangova.

The second CD closes with rarities for two pianos. Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies – recipients of the Ruhr Piano Festival Prize 2017 along with Philip Glass – perform Henry Cowell’s Celtic Set, William Bolcom’s Sonata for Two Pianos, and the splendid Hallelujah Junction by John Adams, who has celebrated his 70th birthday this year.

The melodrama – a musical genre that associates instrumental music with spoken text – flourished during a relatively brief period in the late 1800s and early 1900s. A commission from the Ruhr Piano Festival has brought this genre back to life: renowned author Michael Krüger has written thirteen short texts on the subject of Missed Opportunities, expressively set to music by Manfred Trojahn and congenially interpreted by pianist Hanni Liang. In this performance, the texts are recited by the composer himself; at the beginning of the CD, you can hear an extra audio version in which the author reads the texts without the music. This world première on CD No. 3 concludes our musical retrospective of the Ruhr Piano Festival 2017. As every year, I extend my heartfelt thanks to all participating artists, as also to our faithful benefactor who finances this project, Ms Helene Mahnert-Lueg. I wish you several hours of listening pleasure!

Prof. Franz Xaver Ohnesorg, Director of the Ruhr Piano Festival

Artist(s)

Joseph Moog

Born in 1987 in Ludwigshafen, Joseph Moog started sitting down regularly at the piano when he was four. At the age of ten he was accepted as a young student at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, before going on to study in Würzburg and Hannover. Moog has a fine sense for combining repertoire. He places well-loved pieces alongside rare niche findings, searching for new insight and thereby throwing a different light on familiar music – for instance, when he places shining gems of the Late Baroque period such as Domenico Scarlatti’s brief sonatas alongside piano transcriptions and arrangements from the 19th century, or when, instead of pairing the Grieg Piano Concerto with the Schumann Concerto, he chooses to feature Moritz Moszkowski instead: a true discovery. Moog has twice won the International Classical Music Award (ICMA); in 2009 he was selected as a Young Steinway Artist. He has garnered further international prizes such as the 2015 Gramophone Classical Music Award as Young Artist of the Year, followed by a 2016 Grammy nomination. Moog is featured in several instances on CDs of the Edition Ruhr Piano Festival: for instance, on Vol. 35 with Max Reger’s Telemann Variations. Volume 32 includes an entire CD performed by Moog, with works by Liszt, Debussy, and others. He guested at the Ruhr Piano Festival for the 5th time in 2017.

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Anna Zassimova (piano)

Anna Zassimova not only studied piano in Moscow and in Karlsruhe; she also holds advanced university diplomas in art history and in musicology. The Moscow-born pianist has attracted widespread recognition with recordings of rare masterpieces by turn-of-the-century Russian composers: her name is particularly associated with the rediscovery of Russian-French composer Georges Catoire. Zassimova’s monography on Catoire’s life and music was the first major publication on the subject, and her CD productions featuring his works have opened completely new perspectives on that fascinating pioneer of Russian Modernism. Zassimova’s concert tours have led her to perform all over Russia, the US, and China, and she hasgiven solo and chamber music recitals at international music festivals. She is currently piano professor at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe....

Zassimova’s monography on Catoire’s life and music was the first major publication on the subject, and her CD productions featuring his works have opened completely new perspectives on that fascinating pioneer of Russian Modernism.

Zassimova’s concert tours have led her to perform all over Russia, the US, and China, and she hasgiven solo and chamber music recitals at international music festivals.

She is currently piano professor at the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe. After her acclaimed début in 2017 at the Ruhr Piano Festival, she returned for the third time in 2020.

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Manfred Trojahn

Manfred Trojahn was born in Cremlingen (near Brunswick) in 1949. He studied orchestra music in Brunswick and went on to study composition with Diether de la Motte in Hamburg. His works have received a great number of distinctions, including the Stuttgart Advancement Prize (1972), First Prize in the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris (1978), the Sprengel Music Prize (1980) and the German Music Author Prize (2009). Until 2017 he held a professorship for composition at the Robert Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf: Trojahn is a member of the Academies of the Arts in Munich, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, and Berlin. Manfred Trojahn’s oeuvre comprises practically every music genre. His works have been performed by outstanding soloists, orchestras and conductors in Germany and abroad. Ever since the première of Enrico in 1991, music theatre has occupied a preponderant place in his output. Trojahn’s operas Was ihr wollt (Munich, 1998), La Grande Magia (Dresden, 2008) and Orest (Amsterdam, 2011) have been taken up and staged by a number of international opera houses. Trojahn has recently been composing more and more for instrumental ensemble: thus, since 2012, he has been writing the Quitter cycle based on texts by René Char for Ensemble Modern; in 2013 wrote Le Ceneri di Gramsci (on a text by Pasolini) for MusikFabrik NRW, and in 2015 /16 the first portion of Nocturne – Minotauromachie for Ensemble Intercontemporain.

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Plamena Mangova (piano)

Born in Bulgaria in 1980, pianist Plamena Mangova’s career was launched with a true kettledrum roll when she not only won Second Prize at the Queen Elizabeth International Competition in Brussels, but also a “Diapason d’Or of the Year” in France for her first CD release. She had studied at the State Music Academy in Sofia under Marina Kapatsinskaya, with Dmitri Bashkirov at the Reina Sofia Academy in Madrid and with Abdel-Rahman El Bacha at the Chapelle Musicale in Brussels, while garnering further important counsel in masterclasses imparted by outstanding musicians such as Leon Fleisher, Krystian Zimerman and Sir András Schiff. She has proven her capabilities as a solo concerto performer with orchestras such as the BBC Philharmonic, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the English Chamber Orchestra, Saint Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, MDR RSO Leipzig and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, under conductors including Sir Colin Davis, Myung-Whun Chung, Dmitri Jurowski, Karl Heinz Steffens and François-Xavier Roth. She has been invited to perform in outstanding venues: the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Munich Herkulessaal, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. 2017 marked the year in which Plamena Mangova gave her first performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival.

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Sergio Tiempo (piano)

Born in 1972 in Caracas, Venezuela, Sergio Tempo started playing the piano and learning from his mother at the age of three. When he was four years old he already appeared on an Argentinian television broadcast, and he gave recitals in London and in France when he was seven. His most outstanding mentors include Martha Argerich, Nelson Freire, Nikita Magaloff, Murray Perahia and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Tiempo has performed as a chamber musician worldwide, including appearances with Martha Argerich and Mischa Maisky. As a soloist, he particularly loves to perform concerts in tandem with his compatriot and friend Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra. Tiempo has made several recordings for labels including Deutsche Grammophon and EMI Classics. After having...

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Zhang Zuo (piano)

Zhang Zuo was born in the Chinese megalopolis of Shenzhen; she started learning the piano at the age of five. She has studied at Shenzhen Arts School and in the US, as well as in other countries. She obtained her Masters Degree at Juilliard School of Music in New York City, and continues to receive guidance from Alfred Brendel. Zhang Zuo has won First Prize at the 1st International Piano Concerto Competition in China, at the Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition in the US and at the Krainev International Piano Competition in Ukraine. Audiences are riveted by her individual, unique interpretations, and her unpretentious, natural character ensures that she is able to connect with them on a direct level....

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Hanni Liang (piano)

Born in Bielefeld in 1993, Hanni Liang received her first piano lessons at the age of eight. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in music and an additional degree in media management at the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, there under the significant influence of Bernd Goetzke. She then pursued her studies with Prof. Matthias Kirschnereit at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre. She has received scholarships from the German National Academic Foundation, the Carl Bechstein Foundation, and the Gesellschaft Westfälische Kulturarbeit.
Her 2018 début at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie was followed by a number of acclaimed national and international performances at Ludwigsburg Castle Concerts, at the Heidelberg Spring Festival, and at the Würzburg Mozart Festival, apart from appearing in Saint Petersburg and Beijing. She has received decisive musical influence from Maria João Pires. All these artistic experiences and encounters, along with her long-standing collaboration with composer Manfred Trojahn (leading to several world premieres) have reinforced her vision of seeking to encourage a more harmonious co-existence among human beings of all backgrounds through music.
Thus, apart from her solo appearances, Hanni Liang curates a number of artistic social projects that function on a participative basis and focus on a subject of social interest. This has led to collaborations with “Fridays for Future,” with sociologist Harald Welzer, and with concert poet Timo Brunke; furthermore, she has felt inspired to team up with TONALi, the Hamburg art project, to ensure the formation of the TONALiSTEN collective. In 2022, Hanni Liang presented a project for the fourth time at the Ruhr Piano Festival.

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Michael Krüger

Michael Krüger was born on 9 December 1943 in Wittgendorf (near Zeitz). After his secondary education in Berlin, he trained as a publisher’s bookseller and book printer, while sitting in on lectures at the Faculty of Letters of the Free University Berlin. From 1962 to 1965 he worked as a bookseller in London, and began working as a literary critic in 1966. Two years later, in 1968, he became an editor for the Carl Hanser publishing house, which he managed from 1986 to 2013. Since 1981, he has published and edited Akzente, an influential literary bimonthly. In 1972, Krüger published his own poems for the first time, with his debut as a fiction writer twelve years later with the book Was tun? Eine altmodische Geschichte (“What Should We Do? An Old-Fashioned Story”). A great number of stories, novels, edited works and translations have ensued. Among many other distinctions, Michael Krüger has been awarded the Eichendorff Prize for Literature (2017), the Joseph Breitbach Prize (2010), the Literature Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts (2004), the Prix Médicis Étranger (1996) and the Peter Huchel Prize (1986).

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Composer(s)

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was an American composer, who is mostly known due to his combinations of classical and popular music genres. George Gershwin grew up in a poor neighbourhood in New York. His parents were Russian immigrants who had trouble making ends meet. They did, however, decide to purchase an old piano so Ira Gershwin could study to become a musician. Yet, it turned out not Ira, but his younger brother George showed remarkable talent. Ira applied himself to writing song lyrics and together the Gershwin brothers became absolute greats in the world of 20th century musicals. Nowadays, George's compositions are still relevant, as is evidenced by the many performances of his Rhapsody in Blue from 1924. But the best example is the ageless Summtertime,...

George Gershwin was an American composer, who is mostly known due to his combinations of classical and popular music genres.

George Gershwin grew up in a poor neighbourhood in New York. His parents were Russian immigrants who had trouble making ends meet. They did, however, decide to purchase an old piano so Ira Gershwin could study to become a musician. Yet, it turned out not Ira, but his younger brother George showed remarkable talent. Ira applied himself to writing song lyrics and together the Gershwin brothers became absolute greats in the world of 20th century musicals. Nowadays, George's compositions are still relevant, as is evidenced by the many performances of his Rhapsody in Blue from 1924. But the best example is the ageless Summtertime, which has been covered a countless number of times by a countless number of artists.

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John Adams

The American composer, conductor and creative thinker John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of American music. His symphonic and operatic works stand out for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. The music of Adams has played a decisive role in turning the tide of contemporary musical aesthetics away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, expressive language, entirely characteristic of his American surroundings. This music is often classified as minimalistic, however, while Adams employs minimalist techniques, he is not a strict follower of the movement. He categorizes himself as a post-style composer.
Adams is a much sought-after conductor, appearing with the world’s major orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He conducts his own compositions, and combines them with a wide variety of repertoire ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Ives, Stravinsky, Zappa and Ellington. Through his conducting and commissioning of new works, Adams has become a significant mentor of the younger generation of American composers. Adams is also a highly esteemed writer. He has written for The London Times and The New Yorker, and published his much praised book Hallelujah Junction, containing his memoirs and his commentary on American musical life.
Orchestras and opera companies all around the United States and Europe mark Adams' 70th birthday year, 2017, with performances of his compositions.

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Alberto Ginastera

Alberto Evaristo Ginastera (Spanish pronunciation April 11, 1916 – June 25, 1983) was an Argentine composer of classical music. He is considered one of the most important 20th-century classical composers of the Americas. Ginastera was born in Buenos Aires to a Catalan father and an Italian mother. During the last few years of his life, he preferred to pronounce his surname in its Catalan pronunciation, with a soft 'G' as in 'George' rather than a Spanish 'J' sound. In fact this would be the local Argentine pronunciation of his name if it were spelled Yinastera or Llinastera.
Ginastera studied at the conservatory in Buenos Aires, graduating in 1938. As a young professor, he taught at the Liceo Militar General San Martín. After a visit to the United States in 1945–47, where he studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood, he returned to Buenos Aires and co-founded the League of Composers. He held a number of teaching posts. Among his notable students were Ástor Piazzolla (who studied with him in 1941), Alcides Lanza, Waldo de los Ríos, Jacqueline Nova and Rafael Aponte-Ledée. See: List of music students by teacher: G to J#Alberto Ginastera.
Ginastera moved back to the United States in 1968 and then in 1970 to Europe. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, at the age of 67 and was buried in the Cimetière des Rois there.

Sergio Tiempo & others

Edition Klavier - Festival Ruhr Vol. 36, „The Americas“ and a new Melodram

About the album

Artist(s)

Joseph Moog

Anna Zassimova (piano)

Manfred Trojahn

Plamena Mangova (piano)

Sergio Tiempo (piano)

Zhang Zuo (piano)

Hanni Liang (piano)

Michael Krüger

Composer(s)

George Gershwin

John Adams

Alberto Ginastera

Astor Pizzolla

Press

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