SCHUMANN, R.: Arrangements for Piano Duet, Vol. 4 - Symphony No. 2 / Overtures / Concertstück (Eckerle Piano Duo)
Demand for piano duet material in the nineteenth century was such that the market expanded to an unparalleled extent. The preparation of an easily playable four-hand piano reduction was of critical importance to a work’s dissemination and Robert Schumann, himself a keen duet performer, wrote for the medium with enthusiasm. He arranged his Symphony No. 2 himself, aided by his wife Clara, expending considerable time and effort on the work. The overtures show the variety of arrangers involved, such as his brother-in-law Woldemar Bargiel and the organist Robert Pfretzschner, both of whom Schumann held in the highest regard.
André Messager
FORTUNIO
Fortunio - Cyrille Dubois
Jacqueline - Anne-Catherine Gillet
Maître André - Franck Leguérinel
Clavaroche - Jean-Sébastien Bou
Landry - Philippe-Nicolas Martin
Lieutenant d’Azincourt - Pierre Derhet
Lieutenant de Verbois - Thomas Dear
Madelon - Aliénor Feix
Maître Subtil - Luc Bertin-Hugault
Guillaume - Geoffroy Buffière
Gertrude - Sarah Jouffroy
Comédien - Laurent Podalydès
Les Éléments
(chorus master: Joël Suhubiette)
Orchestre des Champs-Élysées
Louis Langrée, conductor
Denis Podalydès, stage director
Éric Ruf, set designer
Christian Lacroix, costume designer
Stéphanie Daniel, lighting designer
Recorded at the Opéra Comique, Paris, France, 14 and 16 December 2019
Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Audio language: French
Subtitles: French, English, German, Japanese, Korean
Running time: 119 mins
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)
Noriko Ogawa began piano lessons at the age of four and a half, continuing her musical education at the Tokyo College of Music High School. She then went to the Juilliard School in New York, where she won the Gina Bachauer Memorial Scholarship, and whilst in that city played the piano for Benjamin Kaplan. Ogawa studied with Kaplan and states that she learnt from him the things she had not learnt from her other teachers. She returned to Japan where she later received a letter from Kaplan offering her the chance to enter the Leeds International Piano Competition: he offered her a scholarship of £1,000 from a benefactor to enable her to do this. She won third prize at the Leeds Competition, as a result receiving offers of recitals and concerto appearances. However, since Ogawa’s repertoire was small, she was unable to accept all the offered engagements, so her career began slowly with appearances in Britain, America, Japan and Asia.
A year after her success at Leeds, Ogawa gave her London recital debut at the Wigmore Hall playing Schumann’s Fantasie in C major Op. 17 and Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor. She was awarded the Muramatsu Prize for her outstanding contribution to the musical life of Japan where she is very popular and regularly performs with the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Japan Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, often appearing on radio and television. Ogawa is also popular in Britain and therefore spends half of her year in Japan and half in Britain appearing with many of the British orchestras and in chamber recitals with violinist Dong-Suk Kang. Ogawa has appeared with many conductors including Leonard Slatkin, Tadaaki Otaka, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Yan Pascal Tortelier and Richard Hickox.
In 1988 Ogawa formed a duo with clarinettist Michael Collins. From around 2000 Ogawa has also played in concert with pianist Kathryn Stott, and they gave the première of a concerto for two pianos, written for them by Graham Fitkin, with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in March 2003. Ogawa now also works with violinist Matthew Trusler.
Ogawa’s association with the Swedish-based record label BIS, which began in 1996, has fostered her career. She signed an exclusive contract with the company in October 1997 and to date she has appeared on twenty releases. She began by recording piano music by her compatriot Takemitsu with whom she had become friendly. The composer apparently liked the sound she made at the keyboard and knew that it would suit his music perfectly. Her next disc was also of Japanese piano music, but the following two were of core repertoire: piano concertos by Rachmaninov and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Lawrence A. Johnson, writing in Fanfare, was greatly impressed with Ogawa’s recording of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos No. 2 in C minor Op. 18 and No. 3 in D minor Op. 30. ‘These stylish performances provide an antidote to years of would-be Cliburns banging away, and, like the cleaning of Renaissance frescos, wash away years of grime and bad habits to reveal the Classical underpinning of these works.’ He stated that Ogawa’s ‘luminous, electrifying performances’ would go to the top of his list of best discs for 1998. The performances certainly were an antidote, but those wanting to hear Rachmaninov played with more Russian spirit need to look elsewhere, although Ogawa professes a love of Dostoyevsky, and obviously has some understanding of the Russian spirit. Johnson was not so happy with her recording of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition which, in comparison to that of William Kapell, he found ‘heavy, literal and distinctly unenergized’.
Ogawa has made recordings of some unusual repertoire, including the Piano Concertos by Tcherepnin and Rimsky-Korsakov, Delius’s orchestral works transcribed for piano duet by Peter Warlock, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 arranged for solo piano and voices by Richard Wagner. She is at her best however in music that requires subtlety of sound. Her two discs of Debussy (the beginning of a projected complete cycle of his solo piano works) have received the highest of praise, with The Gramophone delighting in Ogawa’s ‘…magical transparency… super-fine pedalling and her cool command of texture and colour’. Ogawa’s soundworld is also suited to Frösöblomster, miniatures in the style of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces by Wilhelm Peterson-Berger. Another highlight from Ogawa’s discography is her recent recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor Op. 16. In this The Gramophone found that ‘…her musicianship and dexterity are immaculate, her interpretation quite without the mannerisms or idiosyncrasies that so often disfigure the readings of other more obviously celebrated names.’
Ogawa has a reputation for a beautiful sound. Her playing combines the clarity and scrupulousness shown by many Japanese pianists with an underlying and thoroughly thought-out solid foundation of technique and structure.
© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — Jonathan Summers (A–Z of Pianists, Naxos 8.558107–10)
Claude Debussy has exercised widespread influence over later generations of composers, both in his native France and elsewhere. He was trained at the Paris Conservatoire, and decided there on a career as a composer rather than as a pianist (his original intention). His highly characteristic musical language, thoroughly French in inspiration, extended the contemporary limits of harmony and form, and he had a remarkably delicate command of nuance, whether in piano writing or in the handling of a relatively large orchestra.
Operas
Debussy attempted many operas, two based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe, but he completed only one: Pelléas et Mélisande, a version of the medieval play by Maurice Maeterlinck, with its story of idealised love perfectly matched by the composer’s musical idiom.
Orchestral Music
The most influential piece of orchestral music by Debussy is the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (‘Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun’), based on a poem by Mallarmé. This was later used for a ballet, with choreography by Nijinsky, who created a considerable scandal at the first performance. The music evokes a pagan world, as the satyr of the title takes his ease in the afternoon shade on a summer day.
The three symphonic sketches that constitute La Mer (‘The Sea’), published with a famous woodcut known as The Wave (from the Japanese artist Hokusai’s views of Mount Fuji—an indication of oriental influence on Debussy), offer evocations of the sea from dawn to midday, of the waves, and of the dialogue of wind and sea. Other orchestral works by Debussy include Nocturnes, made up of three sections: Nuages (‘Clouds’), Fêtes (‘Festivals’) and Sirènes. Images, a work in three movements completed in 1912, includes Gigues, Ibéria and Ronde de printemps, the last a celebration of spring. His Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien, finally scored by André Caplet, was in origin a theatrical and choreographic collaboration with Gabriele d’Annunzio.
Debussy sketched out orchestration for his Rapsodie for saxophone and piano, completed after his death by Roger-Ducasse, an interesting addition to the repertoire of an instrument often neglected by classical composers.
Chamber Music
Debussy’s chamber music includes a fine string quartet, known as the first, although the second, like so much of the composer’s work, existed only as a future project. He wrote his Rapsodie for saxophone (later orchestrated) somewhat reluctantly, while Syrinx, for unaccompanied flute, in which the pagan god Pan plays his flute, was originally written as incidental music for the theatre. Towards the end of his life Debussy planned a series of six chamber works, patriotically announced as by “Claude Debussy, musicien français”. He completed three of these projected works: a violin sonata, a cello sonata and a sonata for flute, viola and harp.
Vocal Music
Debussy made a significant addition to the French song repertoire, capturing the spirit, in particular, of the work of poets like Verlaine and Mallarmé, but also turning to earlier poets, including Villon and Charles d’Orléans. His Chansons de Bilitis, settings of verses by Pierre Louÿs, turn again to the pagan world, while the settings of the Verlaine Fêtes galantes, including Clair de lune, capture the nostalgia of the poems, their yearning for an unattainable past. His cantata Le Printemps was his submission for the Prix de Rome.
Piano Music
In his writing for the piano Debussy proved himself a successor to Chopin, who had died in Paris 13 years before Debussy’s birth. His own debt to Chopin was overtly expressed in his two books of Études (‘Studies’), completed in 1915. The Deux Arabesques, early works, enjoy continued popularity, as does the Suite bergamasque, with its all too popular ‘Clair de lune’. Estampes (‘Prints’) evokes the Far East in ‘Pagodes’, Spain in ‘La Soirée dans Grenade’ (‘Evening in Granada’), and autumnal sadness in ‘Jardins sous la pluie’ (‘Gardens in the Rain’), while L’Isle joyeuse turns to Watteau for inspiration. Two sets of Images offer further delicate pictures, while the two books of Préludes offer still more varied images, from La Fille aux cheveux de lin (‘The Girl with Flaxen Hair’) and La Cathédrale engloutie (‘The Submerged Cathedral’) to the final Feux d’artifice (‘Fireworks’). The single La Plus que lente (‘More than Slow’) of 1910 and the light-hearted Children’s Corner Suite form a further part of a larger series of works.