Release Date: 10 July 2020
Label: Challenge Classics
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 0608917285024
Genres: Classical Solo Instrumental
Description
American pianist Peter Orth, one time pupil of Rudolf Serkin, performs piano music by Brahms.
Peter Orth: While it may seem that everything has been recorded in the classical canon, I've found there still is room for new interpretations. Oddly, the piano music of Johannes Brahms has by no means been exhausted.
In my experience with American music teaching, the great masters were very much handled with a certain distant reverence - when in actuality they need to be approached naturally. Coming to live in Germany where the composers lived and worked removes these pedestals in favour of understanding their lives in the context of their surroundings.
Having been in the same room to hear the likes of Callas, Baker, Bernstein, Celibidache, Horowitz, Rubinstein, Serkin, to mention only a few, showed me viscerally what kind of fire is involved in making a musical statement. Perhaps having been witness to a time now gone, arguably the last of the great performing generation, has informed in my ethos a kind of measuring stick against which to measure myself and be responsible to. Whether I can live up to any of it is not for me to say.
"Whether in the Klavierstücke or in the scherzo of the F minor Sonata (Allegro energico), Peter Orth's highly musical, always clear and transparent playing is never determined by sound masses… Orth has thought through his program very precisely. Even in stronger passages, his wonderfully phrased playing remains clear and transparent, and somehow light and elastic. For him playfulness is certainly important, which even makes the finale of the sonata somehow cheeky.
For me, these interpretations are so coherent, so convincingly personal and so sovereignly laid out that I am respectfully enthusiastic." - Pizzicato
"This selection of mature Brahms piano works is performed with great sensitivity and expression by Peter Orth, who injects every note with just the right amount of colour and emotional power." – BBC Music Magazine, 4 Stars
Tracklisting
The Counterpoints
Narratio Quartet
Aart Bergwerff
Roberto Prosseda
Octavie Dostaler-Lalonde
Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Dejan Lazic, Jan Willem de Vriend
Ton Koopman
Duo Saraswati
Peter Orth
Peter Orth
