Clara Schumann: Piano Transcriptions
Jozef de Beenhouwer (piano)
This most welcome new release reveals [Dall’Aquila’s] many facets…Playing a six-course Renaissance-style lute, Henning draws a lucid, ringing sound and a gamut of timbres and tints to capture...
Clara Schumann: Piano Transcriptions
Jozef de Beenhouwer (piano)
Purchase product
This most welcome new release reveals [Dall’Aquila’s] many facets…Playing a six-course Renaissance-style lute, Henning draws a lucid, ringing sound and a gamut of timbres and tints to capture...
About
Continuing MDG’s exploration of Clara Schumann’s works, Josef De Beenhouwer offers a special gift on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of her birth: a CD including numerous recording premieres from this famous pianist’s extensive transcription oeuvre. He not only honours her compositional talent but also spotlights works with which she very deliberately and intensively occupied herself - and in the process very attractively nuances our picture of the musical Schumann family. The focus is formed by selected songs by Robert Schumann. Thirty transcriptions in all were published during Clara’s lifetime, and eleven others were discovered and edited only a few years ago. De Beenhouwer’s choices drawing on both sources impressively demonstrate how skillfully Clara integrated the voice part into Robert’s piano parts, which often are quite complicated. Two genuine finds round off this intelligently designed program: an andante from the Three Diversions by William Sterndale Bennett, a composer completely unknown in Germany, and the album page on “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” by Clara Wieck composed when she was just nineteen years old make us eager for more - above all, when these works are so lovingly presented as they are here by Josef De Beenhouwer on this Super Audio CD meticulously recorded in a natural room atmosphere.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
October 2019
This most welcome new release reveals [Dall’Aquila’s] many facets…Playing a six-course Renaissance-style lute, Henning draws a lucid, ringing sound and a gamut of timbres and tints to capture the variegated colours of each piece. His technique is nigh flawless: agile passagework; nimble ornamentations.
March/April 2020
Throughout the recital Beenhower proves himself as fine a guide as one could hope for. His playing is sensitive to the numerous nuances one finds in this music, his phrasing is fluid rather than rigid, his tone particularly rounded in sound. Recorded in beautifully clear and resonant sound—close in, not overly reverberant—and with finely wrought program notes, this is a disc to savor.