account
basket
Challenge Records Int. logo
Reflecting Beethoven
Various composers

Herbert Schuch

Reflecting Beethoven

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085530168
Catnr: AVI 8553016
Release date: 04 September 2020
Buy
1 CD
✓ in stock
€ 19.95
Buy
 
Label
CAvi
UPC
4260085530168
Catalogue number
AVI 8553016
Release date
04 September 2020
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN

About the album

REFLECTING BEETHOVEN
Mr Schuch, you are celebrating Beethoven’s anniversary year in 2020 and, at the same time, going beyond his legacy. What does this composer mean to you?

Beethoven has been pressed into many categories. At times he was seen as the great Titan, at others as an idealist; later approaches occasionally attempted to “de-emotionalize” his music. He simply had an incredible ability to be many things, but his music was never dispassionate. Beethoven could even sound overemotional, and then display dry wit! I see him at a crossroads in music history where he was occasionally still allowed to write plain, simple music, and I find that thoroughly moving.

You introduce each of the three Beethoven sonatas with a piano piece from the late 20th or early 21st century. What is the idea behind this approach?

I’m always searching for connections across the centuries. Composers relate to one another, consciously or unconsciously. For instance, unconsciously:

Henri Pousseur wasn’t thinking at all about Beethoven’s G Major Sonata. When I was thirteen years old, I performed the Pousseur piece at the European Youth Music Competition: it was a compulsory piece, and I won a special prize. It was the first truly “modern” piece in my repertoire, and required things I wasn’t prepared for at all. At the beginning, for example, six different dynamic shadings are overlapping simultaneously in both hands. I found those challenges exciting: after having gone through such an experience, I had “tasted blood” as far as contemporary music was concerned.
In the middle of the piece, there is an improvisation on predetermined musical material: I wrote my version down, and have recorded it that way now.

At the onset, the piece features a displacement of one semiquaver between the two hands, which is maintained until the phases come together again. This always reminded me of the first movement of Beethoven’s G Major Sonata. Beethoven was surely one of the first to discover how such small shifts can generate a kind of jagged, forward-moving energy, and he presents it in a dry, unemotional manner………

(Excerpt of an interview by Rainer Nonnenmann, from the booklet)

Artist(s)

Herbert Schuch (piano)

Pianist Herbert Schuch has gained a reputation as one of the most interesting musicians of his generation with his strikingly conceived concert programmes and CD recordings. He has worked with a number of renowned orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Bamberg Symphony, the Dresden Philharmonic and the radio orchestras of hr, MDR, WDR, NDR Hannover und Danish Radio, as well as with the Camerata Salzburg and the Festival Strings Lucerne, with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Valery Gergiev, Jakub Hru° ša, Jun Märkl, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jonathan Nott, Markus Poschner, Michael Sanderling, and Mario Venzago. Herbert Schuch was born in Timi¸soara, Romania, in 1979. He had his first...
more
Pianist Herbert Schuch has gained a reputation as one of the most interesting musicians of his generation with his strikingly conceived concert programmes and CD recordings.
He has worked with a number of renowned orchestras, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Bamberg Symphony, the Dresden Philharmonic and the radio orchestras of hr, MDR, WDR, NDR Hannover und Danish Radio, as well as with the Camerata Salzburg and the Festival Strings Lucerne, with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Valery Gergiev, Jakub Hru° ša, Jun Märkl, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Jonathan Nott, Markus Poschner, Michael Sanderling, and Mario Venzago.
Herbert Schuch was born in Timi¸soara, Romania, in 1979. He had his first piano lessons in his native city with Prof. Maria Bodo, before his family moved to Germany in 1988, where he has lived since.
He continued his musical studies with Kurt Hantsch and then with Prof. Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Recently, Herbert Schuch has been especially influenced by his encounters and work with Alfred Brendel.
As a child, Herbert Schuch also played violin for 10 years and has been an enthusiastic chamber musician ever since, sharing the stage with musicians of the likes of Nicolas Altstaedt, Vilde Frang, Julia Fischer, Maximilian Hornung, Sebastian Manz, and Daniel Müller-Schott.
He also forms a successful piano duo with Gülru Ensari: together, they have recorded three releases for the CAvi-music label, featuring a wide range of repertoire from different periods.
In addition to his performance activities, Herbert Schuch is also involved in the organization Rhapsody in School, founded by Lars Vogt, which promotes classical music education in schools.

less

Composer(s)

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include nine symphonies, five piano concertos, one violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. Together with Mozart and Haydn, he was part of the First Viennese School.    Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob...
more
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include nine symphonies, five piano concertos, one violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. Together with Mozart and Haydn, he was part of the First Viennese School. Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of the Holy Roman Empire, Beethoven displayed his musical talents at an early age and was taught by his father Johann van Beethoven and by composer and conductor Christian Gottlob Neefe. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn, and gained a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. He lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost totally deaf. In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public but continued to compose; many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years of his life.

less

Press

Play album Play album

You might also like..

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
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
José Maria Sánchez-Verdú, Joseph Haydn
Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuz & Sheba
Capella Augustina & Andreas Spering
Franz Schubert, Leoš Janáček
Soulmates
Herbert Schuch