Isabelle van Keulen, Ronald Brautigam – Grieg, Elgar, Sibelius – Music for violin & piano (2007)
DSF Stereo DSD128/5.64 MHz | Time – 01:00:50 minutes | 4,8 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Booklet, Front Cover | © Challenge Records
The acclaimed Dutch violinist Isabelle van Keulen is joined here by award-winning pianist Ronald Brautigam in a fascinating program of chamber music from Grieg, Elgar and Sibelius. The year 2007 marks an anniversary for each of these great composers.
Isabelle van Keulen and Ronald Brautigam are artists of keen insight, immaculate musicianship and culture… Moreover they are accorded first-rate sound… – BBC Music Magazine – December 2007
High-powered playing from Isabelle van Keulen and Ronald Brautigam, flawless in its technical accomplishment and brimful of big-boned vigour and assertiveness. – Gramophone Magazine – Janurary 2008
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Ronald Brautigam, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Parrott – Beethoven: Piano Concertos WoO4 and No.2 (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 58:04 minutes | 507 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
Released in 2008, Beethoven’s First and Third Piano Concertos as interpreted by Ronald Brautigam and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Parrott (BIS-SACD-1692) have been making an impression on critics all over the world. The freshness of the performances have struck many, for instance the reviewer in the German magazine Fono Forum who wrote: ‘Here Mozartian grace and Haydnesque wit join hands – and both concertos gain from it, in the flowing, breathing pulse, in intimacy, in nobility and unassuming beauty … a great moment.’ His colleague in Fanfare (USA) was in complete agreement, writing that ‘the music is unshackled from the dark and heavy blanket that so many performances impose on the score … a unique and, perhaps, revelatory take on the music.’ Teaming up again, the same performers now offer us the youthfully fresh Concerto No. 2 – which was actually conceived long before the First Piano Concerto – as well as two rarities. The first of these is the Piano Concerto in E flat major, WoO4, sometimes referred to as Beethoven’s ‘Concerto No.0’. Composed in 1784, when Beethoven was only 13 years old, it is a fully developed three-movement work that displays much imagination, harmonic control and sense of form, as well as a striking level of virtuosity. The work has survived in a contemporary copy of the piano part, incorporating directions showing that the original orchestra consisted of two flutes, two horns, and strings. For this recording Ronald Brautigam has made his own reconstruction of the orchestral score. The third work on the disc is also one without opus number, namely the Rondo in B flat major, WoO6, composed during the long gestation of Concerto No.2 and probably at one stage intended as the finale of this work.
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Ronald Brautigam, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Parrott – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 3 (2008)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:16 minutes | 563 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
If they have not already heard the recordings themselves, everyone with an interest in Beethoven will at least have heard reports of Ronald Brautigam’s ongoing cycle of the complete music for solo piano. Performed on the fortepiano, this project has been greeted with enormous interest by the reviewers. One contributing factor has been the choice of instrument, which has brought new perspectives to the music, causing one reviewer to expect a cycle ‘that challenges the very notion of playing this music on modern instruments, a stylistic paradigm shift’ (Fanfare). But more important for the critical success have been the direct and immediately engaging interpretations. ‘One has almost the feeling of being Beethoven’s contemporary, one of the first, infinitely surprised – not to say shocked – listeners to this music’ as the reviewer in Süddeutsche Zeitung phrased it, backed up by his colleague in International Record Review, writing about the Moonlight Sonata: ‘a Presto agitato from hell; such controlled fury and unrelenting intensity, yet musical to the core, and never banged out. It took sometime before I was able to unpin myself to the wall…’
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Ronald Brautigam, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Parrott – Beethoven: Piano Concertos in D, Op. 61 & No.4 (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:09:34 minutes | 577 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
In 1806, Beethoven composed two concertos – the Fourth Piano Concerto followed by the Violin Concerto Op. 61. In both cases the composer soon returned to the works to produce new versions, and it is these later versions that are presented here. At the public première of the Fourth Piano Concerto in 1808, Beethoven performed the piano part very ‘capriciously’ according to his pupil Carl Czerny, playing many more notes than are to be found in the printed edition. A clear indication of what Beethoven played comes from his copyist’s orchestral score, in which the outer movements contain annotations in the composer’s hand. These have been transcribed by Beethoven scholar Barry Cooper who, in his insightful liner notes, describes this rarely recorded 1808 version as ‘strikingly inventive’ and ‘more sparkling, virtuosic and sophisticated than the standard one’. In the case of the Opus 61 concerto, Beethoven succeeded in writing what many consider to be the quintessential violin concerto. Less well-known is the fact that soon after the first performance, Beethoven produced an arrangement of the solo part for piano, modifying the violin part slightly in the process. When the work was first published, it was as a concerto for violin or piano. Worth noting is that although Beethoven did not compose any cadenzas for the violin, he did so for the piano version. The one for the first movement is especially striking, in that it includes a part for timpani, reminding us of the timpani solo that begins the entire work. Ronald Brautigam and the Norrköping SO under Andrew Parrott have received acclaim for two previous discs of Beethoven’s works for piano and orchestra: ‘These well-known works emerge as if freshly minted’ wrote International Record Review about Concertos Nos. 1 and 3, while the German magazine Piano News hailed the release of No.2 and the youthful Concerto WoO4 as ‘a magnificent recording in which Brautigam demonstrates his stylistic expertise, and which shows what a splendid pianist he is.
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Ronald Brautigam – Beethoven: Complete Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 14 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:58 minutes | 1002 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Sechs Variationen in F major über ein eigenes Thema, op.34
1. Thema 1’39
2. Var. 1 1’32
3. Var. 2 1’02
4. Var. 3 1’13
5. Var. 4 1’17
6. Var. 5 1’54
7. Var. 6 4’37
Sieben Variationen in C major über God save the King, WoO 78
8. Thema 0’55
9. Var. 1 0’43
10. Var. 2 0’43
11. Var. 3 0’47
12. Var. 4 0’48
13. Var. 5 1’11
14. Var. 6 0’50
15. Var. 7 1’47
Fünf Variationen in D major über Rule Britannia, WoO 79
16. Thema 0’38
17. Var. 1 0’35
18. Var. 2 0’34
19. Var. 3 0’33
20. Var. 4 0’35
21. Var. 5 1’14
22. Zweiunddreissig Variationen in C minor über ein eigenes Thema, WoO 80 9’30
Sechs Variationen in D major (Die Ruinen von Athen), Op.76
23. Thema 0’37
24. Var. 1 0’37
25. Var. 2 0’35
26. Var. 3 0’44
27. Var. 4 0’43
28. Var. 5 0’37
29. Var. 6 1’49
Zwei Praeludien durch alle Dur-Tonarten for piano or organ, Op.39
30. I. 4’31
31. II. 2’11
32. Dreistimmige Fuge in C major, Hess 64 1’38
33. Präludium in F minor, WoO 55 2’17
34. Menuett in F major, WoO 217 1’53
35. Allemande in A major, WoO 81 1’31
36. Anglaise in D major, WoO 212 0’39
37. Menuett in E flat major, WoO 82 3’17
38. Walzer in E flat major, WoO 84 2’05
39. Walzer in D major, WoO 85 0’35
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Ronald Brautigam – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 27 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:34 minutes | 908 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Among the most widely performed of Mozart’s piano concertos for a good half century after its composition in 1785, the Concerto No.20 in D minor still assumes a commanding place in the concert hall.
Among its early devotees was Beethoven, who performed the work at a benefit concert for Mozart’s widow in March 1795 and who may well have found much to admire in the work’s brooding opening, characterized by syncopations and later punctuated by more aggressive outbursts; in his informative liner notes, the Mozart scholar John Irving goes so far as to call it ‘Mozart’s grittiest concerto’.
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Ronald Brautigam – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 19 and 23 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:00 minutes | 845 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
In just two years, between 1784 and 1786, Mozart composed no less than twelve piano concertos – a staggering number. Often described as one of the most light-hearted and buoyant among these is the Concerto in F major K459, sometimes called ‘the second Coronation Concerto’. The nickname comes from the fact that Mozart would later choose to perform it, along with the ‘Coronation Concerto’ in D major, during the festivities surrounding the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1790. Its companion work on this fourth disc in Ronald Brautigam’s survey hails from the same period: begun in 1784, the Concerto in A major K488 was completed in March 1786, at the same time as Mozart was putting the finishing touches to his opera Le nozze di Figaro. It is one of only three piano concertos in which Mozart uses clarinets in the orchestra, resulting in a very particular sound world, especially in the magical slow movement. Mozart clearly held the work in high regard, and described it as one of his most select compositions ‘which I keep just for myself and an élite circle of music lovers’, and later audiences have agreed with him. Ronald Brautigam has been described as ‘an absolutely instinctive Mozartian… with melodic playing of consummate beauty’ (International Record Review), and he is once again supported by the period orchestra Die Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens in a partnership which more than one reviewer has termed ‘ideal’.
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Piano Concertos Nos. 19 & 23
Ronald Brautigam / Die Kölner Akademie / Michael Alexander Willens
SACD ISO (2.0/MCH): 2,30 GB | 24B/88,2kHz Stereo FLAC: 806 MB | Full Artwork | 3% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: BIS # BIS-1964 SACD | Country/Year: Sweden 2013, 2012
Genre: Classical | Style: Viennese School, Piano
What a versatile pianist Ronald Brautigam is! I have recently been enjoying his RBCD set of Rachmaninov Preludes, played on a modern Steinway, and here he serves up the next episode in his on-going set of Mozart Piano Concertos on a Viennese Walther Fortepiano of c. 1795 (Paul McNulty replica). Die Kölner Akademie as usual provide sterling orchestral support on period instruments, under the direction of Michael Alexander Willens.
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Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – Lieder ohne Worte, Books 5-8 – Ronald Brautigam (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:13:33 minutes | 1,1 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | © BIS Records
Recorded: August 2014 at Österåker Church, Sweden
Ronald Brautigam, piano During the early 19th century a number of composers began to write in new genres inspired by literature: Chopin’s Ballades, Schumann’s Novelletten and, later, Liszt’s symphonic poems are all examples of this Romantic urge to create works that transcend the divide between the arts. In 1828 Felix Mendelssohn invented a genre of his own, when he presented his sister Fanny with a ‘song without words’ for her birthday. He went on to compose a large number of such Lieder ohne Worte and published no less than six sets of six pieces each. These became immensely popular with amateur and professional pianists, as well as with their respective audiences. Mendelssohn’s death in 1847 did not affect the huge demand for the pieces, and the publisher Simrock soon issued another two sets, compiled from pieces that the composer had set aside for later publication. Mendelssohn himself supplied a few of the songs with more or less descriptive subtitles, but his aim was not to tell an existing story in music instead of words, but rather to communicate something that could only be conveyed through music. To Mendelssohn, music was more exact than language – in his own words: ‘the music I love expresses ideas that are not too vague to be captured in words, but on the contrary too precise.’ When Ronald Brautigam’s recording of Books 1-4 was released in 2012, the reviewer in International Record Review wrote: ‘One could scarcely hope for performances more vivid or poetic than these.’ This second volume includes the last four published sets of Lieder ohne Worte, as well as a number of other piano miniatures. Brautigam performs them on the same instrument as on the previous disc, a copy by Paul McNulty after a piano from 1830 by Ignaz Pleyel, preserved at Musée de la musique in Paris.
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Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – Lieder ohne Worte, Books 1-4 – Ronald Brautigam (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96kHz | Time – 01:09:19 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical | Digital Booklet | © BIS Records
Recorded: August 2011 at Österåker Church, Sweden
If claims could be made for a certain composer to have invented a genre single-handedly, Felix Mendelssohn would be a strong candidate with his ‘Songs without Words’. The term itself can be traced back to 1828, and a letter in which Fanny Mendelssohn mention having received a ‘song without words’ as a birthday present from her brother.
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W.A.Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 27 / Ronald Brautigam (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 53:34 minutes | 953 MB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical.com | Digital Booklet | @ BIS
Among the most widely performed of Mozart’s piano concertos for a good half century after its composition in 1785, the Concerto No.20 in D minor still assumes a commanding place in the concert hall.
Among its early devotees was Beethoven, who performed the work at a benefit concert for Mozart’s widow in March 1795 and who may well have found much to admire in the work’s brooding opening, characterized by syncopations and later punctuated by more aggressive outbursts; in his informative liner notes, the Mozart scholar John Irving goes so far as to call it ‘Mozart’s grittiest concerto’.
Six years after the D minor concerto, in January 1791, the composer completed the Piano Concerto No.27 in B flat major, K595, giving the first performance of it two months later. This was to be his last public appearance as a soloist, and the concerto has sometimes been considered as a work in which the typical sparkle of Mozart’s virtuosity is tempered by resignation, as if the composer were already aware of his imminent demise. Such an interpretation is contradicted by a close study of the autograph manuscript, however: the concerto appears to have been begun two full years before it was completed.
Its language is nevertheless more introverted than most of Mozart’s works in the genre: he seems to be aiming for a sublime delicacy of expression rarely attempted elsewhere in his concerto output.
These two exceptional works are here performed by Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie, on their fifth disc of Mozart’s concertos – an ongoing series which has been described as ‘a lucky break and a true delight’ in the German magazine Piano News.
W.A.Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 19 & 23 / Ronald Brautigam (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:00 minutes | 845 MB | Genre: Classical
Official Digital Download – Source: eClassical.com | Digital Booklet | @ BIS
In just two years, between 1784 and 1786, Mozart composed no less than twelve piano concertos – a staggering number. Often described as one of the most light-hearted and buoyant among these is the Concerto in F major K459, sometimes called ‘the second Coronation Concerto’. The nickname comes from the fact that Mozart would later choose to perform it, along with the ‘Coronation Concerto’ in D major, during the festivities surrounding the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1790. Its companion work on this fourth disc in Ronald Brautigam’s survey hails from the same period: begun in 1784, the Concerto in A major K488 was completed in March 1786, at the same time as Mozart was putting the finishing touches to his opera Le nozze di Figaro. It is one of only three piano concertos in which Mozart uses clarinets in the orchestra, resulting in a very particular sound world, especially in the magical slow movement. Mozart clearly held the work in high regard, and described it as one of his most select compositions ‘which I keep just for myself and an élite circle of music lovers’, and later audiences have agreed with him. Ronald Brautigam has been described as ‘an absolutely instinctive Mozartian… with melodic playing of consummate beauty’ (International Record Review), and he is once again supported by the period orchestra Die Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens in a partnership which more than one reviewer has termed ‘ideal’.
Read more