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Solitude
Joseph Haydn

Markus Becker

Solitude

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085530311
Catnr: AVI 8553031
Release date: 05 March 2021
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Label
CAvi
UPC
4260085530311
Catalogue number
AVI 8553031
Release date
05 March 2021
Album
Artist(s)
Composer(s)
EN

About the album

SOLITUDE
Personal Notes by the artist

What prompted you to make this selection?

The five sonatas in the first production were chosen to cut a broad swath within Haydn’s variegated, highly inventive keyboard output: the widest possible range of formats, movement types, creative periods, and characters. Conversely, the works on the new recording are much closer to one another in terms of expression. Apart from the E Flat Major Variations, they are in minor keys. The result is a sort of programme album.

That is why you chose the title “Solitude”?
Indeed: solitude, or, more exactly, isolation, is what marked Haydn’s biography the most. Composing at the Esterházy court, he lived far from Vienna, without having to bother with the distractions of socializing among the upper set in the Imperial city. Haydn could remain at one with himself and his music, as he famously stated himself: “No one near could confuse me, so I was forced to become original.”

Perhaps his situation in those surroundings allowed him the inner freedom to write a sort of music that seems to remain at one with itself. Of course this music is also “asking” to be awoken into sound, to be heard by others. Yet in another way, in a spectacularly unspectacular manner, it seems to be thoroughly introspective, listening to itself. (Excerpt from the Interview in the Booklet)

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...
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“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.

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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.

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Often bought together with..

Joseph Haydn
Haydn Piano Sonatas
Markus Becker

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