Andrea Kauten

Andrea Kauten – Promenade – Works by Chopin & Mussorgsky (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:17:11 minutes | 612 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Solo Musica

The new Solo Musica recording “Promenade” of Frédéric Chopin’s Préludes, Op. 28 and Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition brings together two prominent piano cycles that are almost emblematic of their creators’ oeuvre. In the juxtaposition, pianist Andrea Kauten shows what unites them despite all the expected contrasts, which goes far beyond some obvious references by Mussorgsky to Chopin’s Préludes. Both large-scale cycles combine miniatures of partly aphoristic character. They stand in the tension between European art music and the national influences of Eastern European and Slavic traditions. For the time being, they seek different solutions. The cosmopolitan Chopin, rejecting any demonstrative patriotism, manages the seamless integration of his Polish idiom into a universally European expression. Mussorgsky, as a self-confessed post-cosmopolitan, emphatically recalled the folk-Russian, which he offensively opposed to everything “Western”. Both composers found their way to a personalised musical language which, while freely handling the form, allows the traditional harmonies to be broken up by deliberate instabilities. Both meet on the path to modernity. Even if emotional exhibitionism was alien to both composers and the works can only be related to the biographical snapshots of their genesis with extreme caution: Both cycles are set against the background of a confrontation with death that is as surprising as it is inexorable.
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Andrea Kauten – Mondscheinsonate (Moonlight Sonata) & Pathetique (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 36:14 minutes | 316 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical – Sony Music

Trained from the age of seven by the Basle pianist Albert Engel, the Swiss-Hungarian pianist Andrea Kauten became a finalist at the Jecklin Competition in Zurich at 13 and won first prize at the Swiss Youth Music Competition one year later before enrolling at the Basle Academy of Music.
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Andrea Kauten – Klavierkonzerte (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:31:04 minutes | 1,47 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Solo Musica

With Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15 by Johannes Brahms and Piano Concerto No. 2 in B major, Op. 18 by Hermann Goetz, pianist Andrea Kauten juxtaposes the works of two masters, who strike the musical-historical situation in the vacuum of the Beethoven succession illuminate in the second half of the 19th century. Both composers see themselves as traditionalists who want to create something new in proven forms. There is, on the one hand, the genre of a young composer who, early on, too soon as a harbinger of hope, mercilessly fails the work. And second, the work of a regionally recognized talent, which can attract the attention of the great German music world before his untimely death. Expressiveness and technique: the combination of these two musical qualities characterizes Franz Liszt’s compositions – and is of particular importance for the Hungarian-Swiss pianist Andrea Kauten. The piano music of the Hungarian virtuoso has left a lasting mark on her playing. With passion, musicality and high technical standards, Kauten elicits from a grand piano restrained poetic, but also very expressive sounds.
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