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Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens – Wilms: The Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:23 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
Born in the vicinity of Cologne, only two years after and some sixty km distant from Beethoven, Johann Wilhelm Wilms was once a musical force to be reckoned with. In Amsterdam, where he lived from the age of 19, his music was actually performed more frequently than Beethoven’s at one period, and his orchestral works were played in such musical centres as Leipzig. Besides chamber music and solo sonatas, Wilms composed several symphonies and concertos, among them piano concertos for his own use.
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Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens – Wilms: The Piano Concertos, Vol. 1 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:28 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
Born in the vicinity of Cologne, only two years after and some sixty km distant from Beethoven, Johann Wilhelm Wilms was once a musical force to be reckoned with. In Amsterdam, where he lived from the age of 19, his music was actually performed more frequently than Beethoven’s at one period, and his orchestral works were played in such musical centres as Leipzig. Besides chamber music and solo sonatas Wilms composed several symphonies and solo concertos (for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and cello) as well as piano concertos for his own use, five of which were published between 1799 and 1820. (Two more have been lost.) He also appeared regularly as soloist in concertos by other composers.
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Christian Poltéra, Ronald Brautigam – Brahms & Schumann – Works for Cello and Piano (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:23 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Six years after their acclaimed disc devoted to Mendelssohn’s works for cello and piano, Christian Poltera and Ronald Brautigam now tackle the two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms, two central works in the repertoire, unquestionably the most important since those by Beethoven. The First Cello Sonata was composed between 1862 and 1865 when Brahms was in his thirties. He seemed intent on showcasing the lyricism of an instrument that is often compared to the human voice. Composed 24 years later, the Second Cello Sonata makes greater use of the cello’s range, particularly in the upper register. A common feature of these two sonatas is that the role of the piano is never secondary (Brahms was an excellent pianist) and the dialogue between the two instruments is both inexhaustible and complex. The programme also includes the Funf Stucke im Volkston (Five Pieces in Folk Style) by Robert Schumann, Brahms’s early mentor. Composed in Schumann’s late years, this short cycle reflects the composer’s taste for small, expressive pieces in, as the title suggests, a popular and accessible idiom. These miniatures draw their charm not only from the cello’s marvellous nuances but also from the ‘folk style’.
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Ronald Brautigam – Schubert: Impromptus (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:01:29 minutes | 1,05 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Ronald Brautigam performs some of Franz Schubert’s most profound and beloved works: the eight Impromptus. Schubert’s name has become closely associated with this genre, often characterized by a lyrical melody and a free-flowing structure, with a sense of spontaneity. With it, Schubert seems to have found an ideal setting for the expression of his genius.
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Sharon Bezaly, Ronald Brautigam – Bezaly and Brautigam – Masterworks for Flute and Piano (2006)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:03:03 minutes | 940 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Recently released recordings of Mozart’s concertos, of three contemporary works for flute and orchestra and of a programme for solo flute have earned Sharon Bezaly epithets such as ‘God’s gift to the flute’, ‘an amazingly talented performer’ and ‘a First Lady among equals’. Here she has turned to some of the central works for flute and piano, and with Ronald Brautigam, familiar from many BIS releases, gives her interpretations of three master-pieces of the 1940s flanking Schubert’s great Trockne Blumen variations, composed some 120 years earlier. Though written in the span of two years, Prokofiev’s Sonata, Dutilleux’s Sonatine and Jolivet’s Chant de Linos each show the flute in a different light.
Prokofiev was preoccupied with clarity of style and found the instrument a perfect vehicle: ‘The sonata should be played with a bright, transparent, classical tone’, he wrote. (David Oistrakh later convinced the composer to create a violin version, which quickly became very popular.)
A distinctly different approach was taken by Jolivet, who wrote his Chant inspired by the ancient Greek concept of ‘linos’, a ritual lament punctuated by cries and dancing. It is thus based on musical material associated with Greek modes and explores the extremes of expression.
Dutilleux, finally, composed his Sonatine as a set piece for the flute competitions of the Paris Conservatoire. But these academic-sounding origins are belied by the by turns atmospheric and spirited writing, so typical of the multi-faceted Dutilleux.
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Ronald Brautigam – Mendelssohn: Piano Concertos (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:08 minutes | 1,23 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
This is the ninth installment in Ronald Brautigam’s series of the complete piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As on previous discs, Brautigam whose ‘muscular yet sensitively nuanced command of Mozartian discourse’ (BBC Music Magazine) is supported by Die Kölner Akademie under Michael Alexander Willens. The opening work on this installment is the C major concerto, K 415, which was first performed on 23rd March 1783 in the presence of Emperor Joseph II. K 415 was composed in conjunction with the Concerto No. 11 in F major, K 413, which in contrast is a more intimate creation, especially in its Larghetto middle movement, in which Mozart achieves some of his most memorable writing, with the various textures of the orchestra providing a cushion of sound for a delicious cantabile aria for the piano a model that was to become almost a trademark of his later concerto slow movements. The disc closes with Concerto No. 8 in C major, K 246, composed some six years earlier. Mozart wrote it for Countess Antonia Lützow, one of his father’s pupils, and in terms of technical difficulty, it is among the least demanding of his piano concertos which nevertheless didn’t stop Mozart from performing it himself on several occasions.
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Ronald Brautigam – Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 10:53:21 minutes | 6,88 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Dutch pianist Ronald Brautigam divides his interpretive energies equally between the fortepiano and the conventional concert grand. Born in Amsterdam, Brautigam first studied with Dutch pianist Jan Wijn and later studies took him to the U.K. and to America, where he took classes with Rudolf Serkin. Brautigam first came to prominence in 1984 when he was awarded the Netherlands Music Prize, the highest distinction the Netherlands bestows on musicians.
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Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie & Michael Alexander Willens – Beethoven: Piano Concertos (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:37:13 minutes | 2,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
As one of the finest pianists of his era and an improviser of genius, Ludwig van Beethoven’s preferred vehicle for musical exploration was the piano. His earliest composition, from 1782, was a set of piano variations and he continued to compose for solo piano until the last years of his life. His interest in the concerto form diminished as his deafness forced him to retire from performing. Nonetheless, with his five piano concertos composed between 1788 and 1809, Beethoven not only achieved a brilliant conclusion to the Classical piano concerto, but also established a new model for the Romantic era: a sort of symphony with obbligato piano which remained a reference point well into the beginning of the twentieth.
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Ronald Brautigam – Beethoven: The Complete Piano Variations & Bagatelles (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 06:49:25 minutes | 5,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Between 2003 and 2015, Ronald Brautigam recorded all of Beethoven’s music for solo piano – a huge undertaking resulting in a grand total of 15 highly acclaimed albums. Choosing to perform the works on the fortepiano, Brautigam began with a sonata cycle which caused one reviewer to talk of a challenge to ‘the very notion of playing this music on modern instruments, a stylistic paradigm shift.’ In 2010, after nine albums of sonatas, he went on to record the composer’s variations, bagatelles and other piano pieces – a staggering array of works ranging from a Bagatelle lasting 11 seconds to the monumental Diabelli Variations, and from a charming Rondo in C major composed by a 13-year old Beethoven, to what is often referred to as the composer’s ‘Last Musical Thought’, an Andante maestoso dated 1826. Brautigam’s sonata recordings were released in a box set in 2014, and they are now followed by this 6-album set of the remaining works for solo piano, in the original hybrid format, and with full documentation in the form of the original booklets. Composed over the course of more than 40 years, the music is performed on three different instruments, all by the master builder Paul McNulty, demonstrating the rapid development that the fortepiano underwent during Beethoven’s lifetime.
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Ronald Brautigam, Kölner Akademie & Michael Alexander Willens – Weber: Complete Works for Piano & Orchestra (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:58 minutes | 947 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Carl Maria von Weber wrote music that has been admired by composers as diverse as Schumann, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky. But in his lifetime he was also recognised as one of the finest pianists of the period, with an exceptional technique and a brilliant gift for improvisation. Especially during the 1810s he toured extensively, and like other composer-pianists he wrote works to use as his personal calling cards, among them the two piano concertos recorded here. They were both composed in 1811-12, but while the First Concerto takes Mozart’s concertos as its model, Piano Concerto No. 2 looks towards Beethoven. This change of direction was probably influenced by the fact that Weber had acquired a score of Beethoven’s recently published “Emperor” Concerto. In any case there are some striking similarities between his concerto and Beethoven’s: the use of identical keys, and the inclusion of a slow, subtly orchestrated Adagio and a closing playful rondo in 6/8.
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Alexei Lubimov, Ronald Brautigam, Manfred Huss, Haydn Sinfonietta Wien – Mozart: Concertos for Two and Three Pianos (2007)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:02 minutes | 596 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
There is only a limited number of works for two or more solo instruments with orchestra. One reason may be that the concerto genre in the 19th century became the stomping ground of the great virtuosi of the day, and the works themselves vehicles for the great and unique talent of one, special performer – not two, or three. Mozart, however, was evidently attracted by the sinfonia concertante genre and created some of the finest examples of it, such as the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola and the Concerto for Flute and Harp, as well as his two concertos for more than one piano. The ‘Lodron Concerto’ for three pianos was composed in 1776 for Countess Lodron and her daughters. It is Mozart’s third piano concerto and the young man’s irrepressible sense of fun is obvious: in his liner notes conductor and pianist Manfred Huss calls the concerto ‘a true musical joke, in which the musical line is divided between the three players quite arbitrarily; one piano continues what another has started and the third will conclude. The listener hardly notices the humour, however, as the music sounds quite “normal”, and only the pianists know (and the score shows) what Mozart is up to.’ When the composer three years later returns to the task of writing for more than one piano, the result is quite different. The Concerto in E flat major KV 365, composed for Mozart himself and his sister Nannerl, is according to Huss ‘in many respects Mozart’s first ‘big’ piano concerto. It is the first in which we find the very characteristic intertwining of the woodwind and the piano part, accomplished very effectively and virtuosically.’ Mozart seems to have been fond of the work, so fond that for a later performance he added clarinets, trumpets and timpani to the orchestra. Both versions of the score are found on the present recording, played by Alexei Lubimov and Ronald Brautigam, two of today’s finest performers on the fortepiano. The two versions frame the triple concerto, in which Lubimov and Brautigam are joined by Manfred Huss, artistic director of the eminent Haydn Sinfonietta Wien, who here make their first appearance on BIS.
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Ronald Brautigam – Beethoven: Eroica, Variations (1796-1802) (2012)
SACD ISO (2.0/MCH): 3,60 GB | 24B/88,2kHz Stereo FLAC: 1,19 GB | Full Artwork | 3% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: BIS # BIS-SACD-1673 | Country/Year: Sweden 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Classical Period, Piano
The chief reason to buy this disc is for Brautigam’s dazzling performance of the Eroica Variations.
Infrequently played and recorded merely because it’s not one of the numbered 32 sonatas, the Eroica Variations is a clever, virtuoso work from the beginning of Beethoven’s second period. It exhibits the same kind of nervous energy as the 2nd Symphony, which this performance embodies.
Unlike many theme-and-variation pieces which can be a bit pedantic, instead of just stating the theme and going through a few contained variations, Beethoven opens the piece with the bass line to the main theme, puts it through three variations, then states the whole theme, puts it through 15 variations, and finally closes the work with a finale that includes a fugue.
Brautigam’s playing is brash, highlighting the dynamic contrasts of the music. He effectively pounds out the three dotted 8th note section of the theme that are peppered throughout the work. As I said before, the spirit of the 2nd Symphony (completed the same year as the Eroica Variations) permeates this performance.
As for the sound of the fortepiano, it works quite well. In the second variation, for example, its wiry sound is a natural fit with all the 16th notes.
The other variations on the disc date from Beethoven’s first period. While Brautigam and BIS deserve much praise for recording all of Beethoven’s solo keyboard music (has anyone else ever done this?), compared to the Eroica Variations, they are a bit inconsequential.
Like the previous releases in this series, BIS’s sound is excellent. All I can say are the usually adjectives of praise.
Since I received this disc a month and a half ago I’ve probably listened to the Eroica Variations nearly 20 times — like the previous releases, it’s Beethoven played to perfection. SA-CD.net
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Ronald Brautigam – Beethoven: Hammerklavier Sonatas Opp. 81a, 90 & 106 (2009)
SACD ISO (2.0/MCH): 3,12 GB | 24B/88,2kHz Stereo FLAC: 1,02 GB | Full Artwork | 3% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: BIS # BIS-SACD-1612 | Country/Year: Sweden 2009
Genre: Classical | Style: Viennese School, Piano
BBC Music Mag., Nov 2009:
“… a fine recital, & the most impressive instalment so far in Brautigam’s Beethoven cycle. The warm-sounding reproduction Graf piano from around 1819 has been very well recorded.”
Ronald Brautigam, one of Holland’s leading musicians, is remarkable not only for his virtuosity & musicality but also for the eclectic nature of his musical interests. In 1995 he began what has proved a highly successful association with the Swedish label BIS. Among the more than 30 titles released so far are Mendelssohn’s Piano Concertos & the complete piano works of Mozart & Haydn on the fortepiano. The year 2004 saw the release of the first of a 17-CD Beethoven cycle, also on the fortepiano.
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Ronald Brautigam, Concerto Copenhagen, Lars Ulrik Mortensen – Haydn: Piano Concertos (2004)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:15:54 minutes | 688 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Here is a jewel of a record. Fresh from his triumphant reading of Haydn’s entire output for the fortepiano Ronald Brautigam now brings us four concertos for piano and orchestra by the great composer. The piano concerto of this period naturally means Mozart. No one would dispute his pre-eminence in the genre. But when we actually listen to Haydn, as opposed to nodding at his technical ability, breadth of application and so on, we are always surprised; his music is not just brilliantly skilful but deeply impassioned and full of delightful surprises. Lars Ulrik Mortensen is also a musician to bring out these elements. Widely recognized as a harpsichord player of unusual insight and personality he directs the period ensemble Concerto Copenhagen from the continuo bench. Surely no one can fail to respond to this heart-warming disc?
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Isabelle van Keulen, Ronald Brautigam – Strauss, Rota, Respighi – The violin sonata around 1900 (2009)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 02:14:20 minutes | 5,28 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: nativeDSDmusic | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century the violin sonata experienced a considerable renaissance. A fundamentally conservative genre, it suddenly sparkled with vitality. Mozart developed its classical formula: violin and piano are two equal partners in dialogue with neither the piano being reduced to a mere accompanist nor the violin being reduced to mere colouring of the melody voice; a three-movement-pattern; the first movement being based on the so called sonata form with two themes of clearcut atmospheric contrast and their developement.
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