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Contents:
DDD 38:10 - Recorded: Hardstudios AG, Winterthur, 21 December 2005, 16 August and 6 October 2006 TL Guild GmbH is proud to present this debut recital, the first album recorded by the very gifted 15-year-old Swiss pianist Martin Werner. Martin Werner has been playing the piano since the age of three, and received his earliest encouragement from his family, in his home town of Schaffhausen. His piano teachers have included a number of distinguished professors of piano in Switzerland, including Professor Karl-Andreas Kolly in Winterthur, where Martin has given a much-admired performance of Haydn’s Concerto in D major with the Winterthur Youth Orchestra conducted by Christoph Rehli. In this recital, Martin plays a wide variety of Romantic piano music from the 19th-to the earliest part of the 20th-centuries, amongst which will be found some of the best-loved short pieces in the entire repertory. Included also is a new work by the noted Swiss composer Alfred Felder, who writes separately on his composition in these booklet notes. Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828) - Impromptu Op. 142, D. 935 & Op. 90, D. 899 The final year of Schubert’s young life saw an astonishing outpouring of solo piano music, including the three last great Sonatas, in C minor, A major and B flat major, as well as several sets of shorter pieces which he termed Impromptus. It is clear that he did not intend the two main sets of Impromptus to be played continuously, although they are occasionally so heard in recitals, but their character is such that they surely make a greater effect when heard singly, or perhaps when just two or three from the entire collection of eleven are played. Robert Schumann (1810-1856) - Kinderszenen Op. 15, No. 1 & No. 6 Of all the great composers of the first half of the 19th-century, the music of Robert Schumann is arguably the most Romantic of all. For many, he summarises the essence of the Romantic movement in music, wherein his inspiration would often be taken from extra-musical ideas, yet subsumed into music of the most distinctive and memorable character. His collection of pieces which comprise his Opus 15, Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) was composed in 1838, an annus mirabilis for him and his young betrothed Clara. The thirteen pieces are all concerned with aspects of childhood, and from this collection Martin Werner plays the first, Von fremden Landen und Menschen (From Foreign Lands and Peoples), and the sixth, Wichtige Begebenheit (An Important Event) . Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) - Lyric Pieces: Book 10, Op. 71 Of Edvard Grieg’s many works for solo piano, it is the collection of ten volumes to which he gave the collective title of Lyriske Stykker (Lyric Pieces) that are by far the best-known. Such was their international success, amongst professional and amateur players alike, that every new volume in the series was eagerly awaited – his publishers, Peters Edition, often being badgered by pianists as to when the issue of the next volume in the series was expected. For most people, Grieg’s Lyric Pieces constitute the essential qualities of his art, and there is much to support such a view, but one should not be so seduced by his mastery of the smaller forms in music to assume that his larger works – of which there are rather more than many music-lovers are familiar with or even know about – are not in the same class, for they are - at least, qualitatively speaking. As 1901 dawned, and with it the twentieth-century, the final set, Opus 71, of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces appeared. As one might expect, in this set Grieg looks forwards as well as backwards – it is as though he knew this collection was to be his last in that genre. Amongst the forward-looking pieces here are the impressionistic No 4 Waldenstille (Peace of the Woods), yet in the third, Puck (Kobold – or Sprite) Grieg unites other of his unique characteristics – humour and the spirit of the mountains unite as the more mature Grieg looks back with affection on the young composer he once was. Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin (1810-1847) - Fantasie-Impromptu Op. 66 Robert Schumann was also a noted music-critic and writer on music as well as being a great composer and pianist, and it was his famous remark, on hearing Chopin play the piano for the first time – “Hats off, gentlemen – a genius!” - that helped launch Chopin’s career when he arrived in Germany after leaving his native Poland in the early 1830s. Exceptionally for a great composer, Chopin wrote for only the piano, which represented something unique for him. Considered as a technician, he was one of the finest: like Liszt, because no barrier came between his inspiration and its manifestation, he was able to extend the nature of solo piano writing to a hitherto unprecedented degree. The essence of Chopin's originality is its combination of tradition and newness. He was sympathetic to emergent Romanticism, then at the height of its early flowering. Whilst being a Romantic in temperament and in other aspects of his art, Chopin never relied upon extra-musical explanations for his work. If his ideas more readily lent themselves to shorter forms it would be quite wrong to consider him a miniaturist; for those pieces of his called Impromptus (probably taking the title from Schubert) the most famous is this brilliant and extended Fantasie-Impromptu in C sharp minor which he composed in 1835. Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) - Prelude Op. 3, No. 2 & Op. 32, No. 12 Rachmaninoff was not only a great composer but also arguably the greatest pianist of the 20th- century. Although his own recordings concentrate especially on his own music, he also recorded works by other composers, including Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and Beethoven. His 24 Preludes for solo piano were composed over a long period and the most famous is the first of the two which Martin Werner plays – the C-sharp minor, from the groups of five short pieces which make up Rachmaninoff’s Opus 3. These Morceaux de Fantasie (Fantasy-Pieces) date from the Autumn of 1892, when the composer was just 19 years old. The second of these pieces, the famous Prelude in C sharp minor, became a work which came to haunt the composer later in life – at virtually every recital he gave, the audience would not let him leave until he had played it as an encore. The remaining 23 Preludes appeared in two groups, the second being the 13 that make up the composer’s Opus 32. These pieces were all written between August and September, 1910, after Rachmaninoff’s return to Russia from his first visit to the United States, during which he premiered his Third Concerto. As we can hear from the Prelude in G sharp minor, these pieces inhabit very much the same atmosphere of that great Concerto. This piece was completed on 23 August, as Rachmaninoff dated the manuscript. Alfred Felder (b. 1950) - Song of the blue lizard Alfred Felder’s Song of the blue
lizard is the piano solo movement from the chamber musical work All songs
are good for flute, clarinet and piano (2004). “In this music I invite you all on a trip into another reality. You will meet several strong animals there from the tradition of primitive races. Each animal has its own sound, rhythm, character. The “blue lizard” sings, dances, suddenly stands still, tells a story etc. I have composed the beginning and the end especially for Martin Werner, so that this music can also be played without the other <songs>. “There were hundreds of songs and they came to the people in many ways. Sometimes a man made one up, or heard it in a dream of vision. Sometimes he heard it from an animal out in the hills…” Cheyenne Memories
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