Latest news with #DeutscheGrammophon
Spectator
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Astonishing ‘lost tapes' from a piano great
These days the heart sinks when Deutsche Grammophon announces its new releases. I still shudder at the memory of Lang Lang's 2024 French album, in which he drooled over Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte; when I reviewed it I suggested that if the poor girl wasn't dead when he started, then she certainly was by the time he'd finished. Now she's been killed again, this time by the guitarist Robin Scherpen, whose Ravel Reimagined offers us 'a peaceful and serene soundscape'. Then there's Rêverie from Nemo Filou, a trio whose cocktail-lounge noodling allows 'the listener to drift off into bliss', and Sleep Circle, a 're-recorded version of the 2012 project Sleep' by DG's in-house snoozemeister Max Richter. But the funny thing is that over the past year I've spent more on DG products than I have for decades. Like its competitors, the company is frantically mining its back catalogue. That isn't exciting: I don't need fancy new packaging for CDs I bought in the 1990s. But there are also recordings remastered by Emil Berliner Studios, named after the man who founded Deutsche Grammophon in 1898 – and the results are stunning. EBS revisits the peaks of DG's catalogue, going back to the master tapes to recover audio information that was lost because the original sound engineers didn't have the right technology to extract it, or messed things up at the mixing desk. Although many of these new remasterings have been issued as CDs, SACDs or downloads, the cream of the crop is available only as pure analogue vinyl. Trust me: you haven't really heard Karajan's Mahler Fifth until you've invested £80 in the 'Original Source' LPs and played them with the best stylus you can afford. But now EBS has worked a digital miracle that you can hear on any streaming service. The Lost Tapes is an album of four Beethoven sonatas performed by Sviatoslav Richter in 1965, recorded for possible release but then mysteriously forgotten for nearly 60 years. They are taken from live concerts in France and Switzerland in which we hear the pianist at the top of his form in terrific sound – a frustratingly rare combination. Richter felt suffocated by microphones and you can hear a lack of spontaneity in many of his studio recordings. In contrast, some of his supreme flights of imagination are found in live concerts captured by wretched equipment. For example, his legendary 1958 Sofia performance of Pictures at an Exhibition, praised by critics for its 'staggering breadth of colour' and 'frenzied grotesquerie', sounds muffled or strident, depending on how you twiddle the knobs. In 1960 Richter made his American debut with six concerts in Carnegie Hall. Gripped by stage fright, under heavy KGB surveillance, he tore through Beethoven and Prokofiev sonatas, Schumann's Novelletten and Rachmaninov Preludes with a mixture of savagery and feathery delicacy. The end of Beethoven's Appassionata comes so close to breaking the sound barrier that you scarcely notice the finger-slips. Alas, the microphone was in the hands of a clueless stagehand – and when Sony reissued the recordings on CD they drained the colour out of the abrasive but vivid LP originals. But I was lucky enough to stumble on a version beautifully renovated by an amateur from an internet forum, and that sent me down the rabbit hole of the vast Richter discography. Thanks to years of obsessive-compulsive collecting, I can compare the four Lost Tapes Beethoven sonatas – opuses 31 no. 3, 90, 101 and 110 – with other Richter performances. The last of these, in A flat major, represents a unique milestone in the composer's journey; Antony Hopkins once suggested that the transformation of the fugue subject into ecstatic rhapsody is the moment when Beethoven – and music itself – finally severed the shackles of the classical style. A fanciful theory, perhaps, but that's how Richter plays it, the final bars exploding with joy. Is it a finer performance than the one he recorded in Moscow in the same year? No – it's almost identical, and the same is true of Op. 101 in A major, which Richter described as 'horribly difficult… even riskier than the Hammerklavier'. To quote Jed Distler's liner notes on this previously lost tape, we hear a 'bracingly effortless traversal of the Finale', in which the pianist 'untangles the knotty counterpoint with insouciant ease'. Richter was on fire in 1965, and his achievement in Moscow is every bit as jaw-dropping. The difference is the sound; in all the sonatas the pounding of Richter's left hand jolts you out of your seat and his ability to sustain a whisper at lightning speed defies belief. It's hard to think of other Richter recordings in which technique and sound quality are so gloriously matched. We're told that Emil Berliner Studios removed the tiniest pitch fluctuations and audience noises, something that wouldn't have been possible until recently and other technicians probably couldn't replicate. So, all things considered, perhaps we should be grateful that some idiot at Deutsche Grammophon left these tapes gathering dust until precisely the right moment.
The Guardian
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Lost Tapes, Beethoven sonatas 18,27, 28 & 31 album review – Richter always found something fresh to say
Though he claimed to dislike performing in a studio, Sviatoslav Richter became perhaps the most intensively recorded pianist of the 20th century. But while his studio work was extensive, it was the huge volume of recordings made officially and unofficially at his recitals across more than 40 years that really bulked out his discography, with multiple versions available of many of the core works in his repertory. For those reasons the rediscovery of 'Lost Tapes' might not initially seem so remarkable. The performances, of four Beethoven piano sonatas, Opp 31 no 3, 90, 101 and 110, are taken from recitals that Richter gave in 1965. Op 110 comes from a performance at the piano festival he had founded the previous year at La Grange de Meslay near Tours, the others are taken from a concert in Lucerne three months later. There are recordings of Richter's performances of all four sonatas already in the catalogue, but the immediacy of these versions is startling. He was never content to keep on replicating the interpretation of a particular work; temperamentally, I suspect, he could not contemplate such lazy routine. Instead, each work was approached afresh each time he played it, always finding something new, whether it's the joy that courses through the third of the Op 31 set, the myriad colours and subtleties he brings to Op 101, or the serene, almost liturgical seriousness with which he presents the fugues in the finale of Op 110. The original recordings were made by Deutsche Grammophon engineers, who were following Richter around Europe that year, and the sound has been refined for this release. What has proved more intractable has obviously been the piano tone itself, which, in the Lucerne performances especially, seems very bright and rather shallow, sometimes sounding almost like a mid 19th-century instrument. It does take a bit of the gloss off the performances, but the playing is still glorious. This article includes content hosted on We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Listen on Apple Music (above) or Spotify
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Max Richter Announces New Album Sleep Circle and All-Night London Shows
All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by Pitchfork editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, Condé Nast may earn an affiliate commission. Max Richter, photo by Rory van Millingen Max Richter is celebrating the 10th anniversary of his landmark album Sleep with a sequel of sorts, Sleep Circle, and two London shows. The record returns to the hypnagogia of its eight-hour predecessor, presenting music composed to enhance the drifting consciousness of drowsy and dozing listeners. This one lasts 90 minutes, the length of a typical REM cycle. A song from the suite, 'Dream 11 / Moth-Like Stars (Pt. 2),' is out now; check it out below. Sleep Circle is out September 5 via Deutsche Grammophon. Richter's London shows take place at Alexandra Palace on September 5 and 6, reviving the all-night format that he debuted around the original album's 2015 release. These are his largest Sleep shows to date. Read the 5-10-15-20 feature 'Max Richter on the Music That Made Him.' $55.00, Amazon Originally Appeared on Pitchfork
ABC News
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Pokey LaFarge takes us to Rhumba Country, and the radical spirituality of Sofia Gubaidulina
Credited with 'making riverboat chic cool again', Pokey LaFarge brings his band in live to the Music Show studio. Pokey talks to Andy about how old Black gospel, his Christian faith and working on a farm have all influenced him on his latest album, Rhumba Country. Oľga Smetanová joins Andy to remember the composer Sofia Gubaidulina, who has died at the age of 93. Gubaidulina's music has been described as 'holy modernism', which was a powerful provocation in the Soviet Union of her early career. The theological and musicological throughlines of her composition paint a dramatic picture, which Ol'ga reflects on with her knowledge of the woman herself. Pokey LaFarge is on tour around Australia in May: 8 - The Croxton, Melbourne, VIC 9 - Barwon Heads Hotel, Barwon Heads, VIC 10 - Meeniyan Town Hall, Meeniyan, VIC 13 - Princess Theatre, Brisbane, QLD 14 - A & I Hall, Bangalow, NSW 15 - Liberty Hall, Sydney, NSW 16 - The Gov, Adelaide, SA 17 - Freo Social, Perth, WA Music played live in The Music Show studio by Pokey LaFarge: Fine to Me (from In the Blossom of Their Shade) So Long Chicago (From Rhumba Country) In the interview with Ol'ga Smetanova: Title: Offertorium Artist: Gidon Kremer (violin), Boston Symphony Orchestra/Charles Dutoit Composer: Sofia Gubaidulina Album: Offertorium Label: Deutsche Grammophon Title: Seven Words; iv. 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' Artist: Maria Kliegel (cello), Elsbeth Moser (bayan), Camerata Transsylvanica Composer: Sofia Gubaidulina Album: Seven words/Silencio/In Croce Label: Naxos Title: Am Rande des Abgrunds (At the Edge of the Abyss) Artist: Julius Berger, Sofia Gubaidulina, Viktor Suslin, Niklas Eppinger, Aleksandra Ohar, Diego Garcia, Yoonha Choi, Yoon-Jung Hwang, Tai-Yang Zhang Composer: Sofia Gubaidulina Album: Am Rande des Abgrunds Label: Wergo Title: The Canticle of the Sun; iv. Glorification of Death Artist: Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), Andrei Pushkarev (percussion), Rihards Zaļupe (percussion), Rostislav Krimer (celesta), Chamber Choir Kamēr/Māris Sirmais Composer: Sofia Gubaidulina Album: The Canticle of the Sun Label: ECM At the end of the show: Title: Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major Artist: Cédric Tiberghien (piano), Les Siècles/François-Xavier Roth Composer: Maurice Ravel Album: Concertos Pour Piano Label: Harmonia Mundi The Music Show was made on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung, Gadigal and Gundungurra Country Technical production by Tim Jenkins and Brendan O'Neill
Korea Herald
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Interview: Pianist Bruce Liu: Multicultural voice interprets Russian Romantics
The Chopin Competition winner returns to Seoul with a new recital program of Tchaikovsky, Scriabin and Prokofiev When pianist Bruce Liu last performed in Seoul in 2023, his recital was filled with electrifying technique and seven encores. Liu returns to Seoul in May as part of the 2025 Great Pianists Series, bringing with him an entirely new program centered on Russian Romanticism, featuring works by Tchaikovsky, Scriabin and Prokofiev. "With Tchaikovsky, I think there's this emotional vulnerability. His pain-dedicated personal moments, even larger-than-large gestures,' Liu, who catapulted to international stardom after winning the 18th International Chopin Piano Competition, said in an e-mail interview. 'Prokofiev, I'm excited to highlight with his rhythmical energy. It's a very modern edge. He brings a fresh, sometimes cheeky contrast that keeps the program very dynamic. Overall, I think I helped to create an arch. It feels like a journey through the emotional seasons of the Russian soul.' The program opens with 'The Seasons,' Tchaikovsky's 12-piece cycle capturing the atmosphere of each month. The work is the centerpiece of Liu's second Deutsche Grammophon album, released in November last year. 'Every piece in 'The Seasons' has its own charm and challenge,' he said. 'I love how Tchaikovsky managed to evoke the mood of each month so vividly. There's always something new to discover in every performance.' Liu made the rare decision to split the work into two parts -- January to June before the intermission, and July to December after. 'Dividing it into two parts was something I felt would help the audience to better connect with the emotional journey of the piece. 'The Seasons' is so much more than just a cycle of 12 pieces. It's a reflection of the passage of time with each month offering a very unique mood and texture. And by splitting it into two halves, I want to allow each step of the month to breathe and give the audience a chance to fully immerse themselves in the contrasting seasons and the images that Tchaikovsky evokes,' he added. From there, the program moves into Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 4, and concludes with Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7, often called the 'War Sonata.' Liu, who was born in Paris to Chinese parents and raised in Montreal, attributes much of his interpretive breadth to his multicultural upbringing. 'Growing up between cultures -- Chinese at home, French and North American outside -- taught me that there's never just one way to understand or express something,' he said. 'I'm drawn to the elegance and clarity of French music, the storytelling of Russian music. Being multicultural makes me more open and curious. I try to respect the traditions behind each piece but also find my own authentic voice. That's very important to me.' Though his victory at the Chopin Competition launched him into the global spotlight, Liu sees that moment not as a destination but a beginning. 'Winning the competition was truly life-changing,' he said. 'Everything happened so quickly — concerts, invitations, recordings. But internally, it gave me a new sense of confidence and responsibility. It's not just a prize — it's a legacy. It made me think more seriously about the kind of artist I want to be.' He continues to seek growth beyond the competition. 'I don't want to be defined only by that event. I want to keep evolving, exploring wider repertoire, collaborating with different musicians. I think art should be driven by honesty and curiosity, not just ambition. There's still so much for me to learn and discover.' As his international career has expanded, so too has his understanding of audiences -- among them, he noted that he feels 'a particularly deep emotional connection' with those in Korea. 'Korean audiences have a strong tradition of music appreciation. When they respond, it's not just polite applause -- it's genuine. I can feel they're with me through every moment. It's incredibly inspiring and intimate at the same time.' Liu is scheduled to perform at the Seoul Arts Center on May 11. Tickets are priced from 50,000 won ($35) to 110,000 won. gypark@
