Release Date: 01 May 2014
Label: Hyperion Records Ltd
Packaging Type: Jewel Case
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 034571280189
Genres: Classical Chamber Music
Description
Pianist Leslie Howard is acclaimed as ‘a virtuoso in the true Romantic style with its emphasis on musicality as much as bravura’ (The Guardian). He is joined here by three of his frequent string collaborators for two forgotten masterpieces of the Russian nineteenth-century chamber music tradition by renowned pianist-composer Anton Rubinstein.
In recent years there has been something of a revival of Rubinstein’s music, but previously it had fallen into total neglect outside Russia from around the early 1920s. However in his day Rubinstein was a hugely important figure: the first international professional Russian composer. His influence is almost incalculably vast on the succeeding generations of Russians who benefited from his grasp of Western musical forms allied to an excellence of craftsmanship and an easy melodic fluency. Although a thoroughly cosmopolitan composer, Rubinstein could also incorporate the occasional Russian folk-song or an echo of Russian church music.
The Piano Quartet in F major was dedicated to Berthold Damcke, the music critic who had championed Rubinstein during the late 1850s in the public argument fomented by the composer and critic Aleksandr Serov, whose printed taunts of Rubinstein and his non-nationalistic style seem largely to have been fuelled by anti-Semitism. The Piano Quartet in C major was one of Rubinstein’s most popular works in its day.
Tracklisting
Roberto Prosseda, London Philharmonic Orchestra / Nir Kabaretti
The Brabant Ensemble / Stephen Rice
Steven Isserlis
The Nash Ensemble
MultiPiano Ensemble, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin / Ivor Bolton
Marc-Andre Hamelin
Marc-Andre Hamelin, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Andrew Litton
Gothic Voices / Christopher Page
Karolos
The Counterpoints
Narratio Quartet
Danbi Um; Juho Pohjonen
Engegard Quartet, NyNorsk Messingkvintett
Flute Alors
Louise Bessette
Jonas Batstrand, Jorn Fossheim
