New release ICSM Records (ICSM 002)
NEW RELEASE ICSM RECORDSICSM 002
“Legacy”
Release date – August 2014
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 –1827), Bagatelles Op. 126 (1823), Robert Schumann (1810 –1856), Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn), Op. 133 (1853), and Johannes Brahms (1833 –1897) from the Chorale Preludes Op. 122 (1896) (transcription for piano by Ferruccio Busoni).
Ivo Varbanov, piano
The first release of Ivo Varbanov on ICSM Records (ICSM 002) features the last piano works by Ludwig van Beethoven (Bagatelles Op. 126), Robert Schumann (Gesänge der Frühe Op. 133), and the piano transcription of Ferruccio Busoni of 6 of the 11 Choral Preludes for organ Op. 122 by Johannes Brahms.
Beethoven’s Bagatelles, written three years before his death, were considered by the composer the best things of their kind that he had done, a true cycle of miniatures. Schumann’s Morning Songs, with their visionary intimacy inspired by the great German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, were written just a few months before Schumann’s tragic attempt to drown himself in the Rhine, due to his mental illness; his content is in stark contrast to his early piano works. As for Brahms’s Chorale Preludes, written after the death of his beloved Clara Schumann, they are works of lonely self-communing and consolation, the ultimate fruit of Brahms’s lifetime immersion in early music. In these rarely performed transcriptions, Busoni has re-imagined them in the style of Brahms’s own late piano pieces.
More than a search for ultimate messages, this recording is a philosophical journey in the late lives of Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms, performed by Varbanov in a minimalist but poignant way.
www.discovery-records.com
http://icsmrecords.com/catalogue/solo/
New release ICSM Records (ICSM 001)
NEW RELEASE ICSM RECORDS
ICSM 001
BRAHMS: WALTZES for piano four hands
Release date – JUNE 2014
Johannes Brahms, Walzer for piano four hands, Op. 39 (1865), Liebeslieder Walzer for piano four hands, Op. 52a (1869), and Neue Liebeslieder Walzer for piano four hands, Op. 65a (1874-1877):
Fiammetta Tarli and Ivo Varbanov, piano four hands
The first release of ICSM Records (ICSM 001) features the complete recording of Brahms four-hand Waltzes. Dance music was in Johannes Brahms’s blood. Two particular dance-measures fascinated him throughout his life, the waltz and the Hungarian Cz?rd?s.
Here we explore what he could do with waltz-rhythms, even on the smallest scale, in the medium of the piano duet.Brahms’s two sets of Liebeslieder-Walzer (Love-song Waltzes) used to be among his best-known works. These beguiling little waltz-songs remind us of a time before radio or television, when domestic music-making was a fact of life, a time when ‘quartet parties’ were frequent and when families would gather around the piano to play and sing for their evening entertainment.
Performed by Tarli and Varbanov, the two interpreters enrapt the listener with an imaginary fantasy on the waltz form whose underlying theme is love.
http://www.discovery-records.com
http://icsmrecords.com/catalogue/omnia/