Beethoven, Sonatas Vol. 1 by Daniel Heide

Daniel Heide

Beethoven, Sonatas Vol. 1

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: CAvi
UPC: 4260085533268
Catnr: AVI 8553326
Release date: 08 October 2021
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Label
CAvi

UPC
4260085533268

Catalogue number
AVI 8553326

Release date
08 October 2021

"Don't you want that final crashing chord to linger forever? Perhaps, thanks to thoughtful interpreters such as Daniel Heide, it does. We look forward to hearing more from him and the composer whose work he expresses uniquely and so well."

Fanfare, 31-1-2022

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

Press

About the album

I and the „Middle“ Ones

Result to cope with the pandemic

The home of my mother – a pianist and singer herself – was where I first came in contact with Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Several of her piano students from Weimar Conservatory often came to take lessons or visit us in our apartment. Curiously, instead of popular sonatas such as the Pathétique or the Appassionata, we tended to hear other ones: I still vividly recall Sonata No. 30 in E Major op. 109, on which my mother was working with a student to whom I had taken a liking.

The themes from Sonata No. 31 in A Flat Major regularly rang through the apartment as well. Bound in red leather, the three Peters volumes of Beethoven sonatas were just as much a staple of our living room as the LPs next to the record player, including Maurizio Pollini with Sonatas op. 109 and 110, or Wilhelm Kempff with the op. 13 sonatas, op. 27/2, and op. 57. My gaze was long held by portraits of famous pianists, usually in a serious, contemplative pose.

My mother was also my first teacher, and she often raved about these 32 masterpieces’ major importance, quoting the names of great Beethoven interpreters such as Wilhelm Kempff, Edwin Fischer, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Walter Gieseking.

When I owned my first CD player at age fifteen, I started to look for those names in music stores, and they turned up quite readily. The first CD I purchased myself long remained my favourite: a recording made by Walter Gieseking in 1956 with the Op. 13 sonatas, Op. 14, and Op. 27. It helped me become more familiar with these pieces, now with the passionate, burgeoning interest of an adolescent.

It is thus certainly no coincidence if I am featuring those works on this recording.

(Excerpt from lines notes by Daniel Heide)

Artist(s)

Daniel Heide (piano)

Born in Weimar, pianist Daniel Heide is one of the vocal accompanists and chamber musicians most in demand on the current international music scene, making appearances throughout Europe as well as in the Far East. Heide studied at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in his hometown with Prof. Ludwig Bätzel, and received valuable counsel from outstanding artists including Christa Ludwig and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.
He collaborates on a regular basis with renowned vocalists including Andrè Schuen, Christoph Prégardien, Konstantin Krimmel, Julian Prégardien, Simone Kermes, Katharina Konradi, Patrick Grahl, Ingeborg Danz, Britta Schwarz, Johannes Weisser, Roman Trekel, and Natalie Perez.
Heide also collaborated as a duo partner with the late German-Greek mezzo-soprano Stella Doufexis: their CD Poemes with artsongs by Claude Debussy was awarded the German Record Critics’ Prize.
In chamber music he gives public performances with soloists including Tabea Zimmermann, Antje Weithaas, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Jens Peter Maintz, Friedemann Eichhorn, Andreas Willwohl, Barbara Buntrock, Julian Steckel, Isang Enders, Konstanze von Gutzeit, Benoit Fromanger, Danjulo Ishizaka, and the Mandelring Quartett.
Heide laid a further foundation for his career as vocal accompanist in 2011, when he launched Der lyrische Salon at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar, a vocal recital series where he has accompanied a great number of outstanding singers on over 70 occasions.
Apart from his intense concert schedule, Heide’s activities are documented on a number of CD releases – most recently Dichterliebe with Patrick Grahl (CAvi, 2020), Liebende with Katharina Konradi (CAvi, 2021); Schubert‘s Die schöne Müllerin mit André Schuen released by DG (2021).
In 2016 André Schuen‘s first Lieder recital partnered with Daniel Heide received the ECHO, the album Wanderer 2019 the OPUS award (both CAvi-music). For the next years Daniel Heide is masterminding the 7 CD project with the complete songs by Franz Liszt subsequently folloed by a new work catalogue of Liszt‘s artsong output.
He also loves the genre of melodrama, working in spoken word programmes with actors and actresses of the likes of Christian Brückner, Thomas Thieme, Hanns Zischler, Markus Meyer, Sky Dumont, and Udo Samel.
For 13 years, Heide taught vocal accompaniment, chamber music, and instrumental accompaniment (Korrepetition) at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin and at the Hochschule für Musik FRANZ LISZT Weimar. He is currently much in demand giving masterclasses and private coaching in the same areas, also with the intent of promoting and supporting young vocal artists and their piano partners.
With the onset of the Corona pandemic in March 2020, Daniel Heide devoted more of his time to studying solo piano repertoire, focussing on sonatas by Beethoven and Schubert.

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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 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.

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Press

Don't you want that final crashing chord to linger forever? Perhaps, thanks to thoughtful interpreters such as Daniel Heide, it does. We look forward to hearing more from him and the composer whose work he expresses uniquely and so well.
Fanfare, 31-1-2022