Name: Tales from Vienna
SKU: LDV 12
Price: 20.00 EUR
Availability: InStock

1 CD | LDV 12 | total duration: 74'06 | release date: 22/10/2013

Tales from Vienna

Menahem Pressler,

Menahem Pressler, a living legend of the piano, has coupled three Viennese Classical works for this ‘birthday album’. In this recital, the tradition is Viennese. The city plays a key role in this music, as was later to be the case in Leipzig with Mendelssohn and Schumann.

2013, Beethoven, Menahem Pressler, Mozart, Piano, Schubert

En stock: 8

20,00 €

Only 8 left in stock

Booklet

Description

In his view, there is nothing more beautiful than the Mozart Rondo included here. This music contains both sadness and joy, feelings the interpreter has often experienced in his life. Here he records the piece, one of the most personal Mozart ever composed, for the very first time. By placing it alongside Beethoven’s Bagatelles, he underlines a spiritual link with Mozart. In Schubert’s Sonata in G major, Menahem Pressler has thought long and hard about how to convey the spirit of this free dance, which also refers to song, to the art of the lied.

Menahem Pressler has honed his sonority to the point where it resembles a vocal timbre. His sound is infinitely warm, pure and tender, with notes of fruit and wood, like fine vintage wine.

This disc is a true event, giving listeners the sensation of being transported back to a lost paradise, something like the ‘world of yesterday’ evoked by Stefan Zweig.

Franz SCHUBERT – Piano Sonata No. 18 en G Major, D. 894

Molto moderato e cantabile 18’36
Andante 9’30
Menuetto 5’37
Allegretto 10’45

Wolgang Amadeus MOZART – Rondo in A minor, K. 511 10’24

Ludwig van BEETHOVEN – Bagatelles Op. 126

Andante con moto 3’20
Allegro 3’26
Andante 2’23
Presto 4’29
Quasi allegretto 2’23
Presto 3’59

Born in Magdeburg on 16 December 1923, Menahem Pressler fled Nazi Germany in 1938. It was in Israel, where he was raised, that he received most of his training, with the pianists Eliahu Rudiakov and Leo Kestenberg, a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni, followed by lessons with Eduard Steuermann, also a Busoni disciple, in the United States. His musical learning and his profound knowledge of the piano and chamber music have earned him an undisputed reputation.

Menahem Pressler’s international fame began to develop after he won first prize at the Debussy Piano Competition in San Francisco in 1946, immediately followed by his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Eugene Ormandy. In 1955, the Berkshire Music Festival witnessed the debut of the Beaux Arts Trio, which was to become a legendary group, acclaimed all over the world for fifty-three years.

He gives masterclasses in Germany, France, Canada, Argentina and Brazil, and is a jury member at the Santander, Van Cliburn and Queen Elisabeth competitions. Appointed Distinguished Professor by Indiana University in Bloomington, Menahem Pressler is now an honorary professor there. In 1998 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Gramophone magazine and an Ehrenurkunde award from German music critics to mark forty years spent in the service of music. In May 2000 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Recently, the French government decorated him with the rank of Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et Lettres, while the German government awarded him the Deutsches Bundesverdienstkreuz in recognition of his entire career and conferred German citizenship on him in September 2012.