Composer: Sergei Rachmaninov, Modest Mussorgsky
Performer: Fauré Quartett
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Berlin Classics
Release: 2018
Size: 0.99 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: cover
Sergei Rachmaninov:
Études-Tableaux (Arr. By Dirk Mommertz)
01. Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, Op. 39/6
02. The Sea and the Seagulls, Op. 39/2
03. The Fair, Op. 33/6
04. Funeral March, Op. 39/7
05. March, Op. 39/9
Modest Mussorgsky:
Pictures at an Exhibition (Arr. By Dirk Mommertz & Grigory Gruzman)
06. Promenade I
07. The Gnome
08. Promenade II
09. The Old Castle
10. Promenade III
11. Tuileries
12. Bydlo
13. Promenade IV
14. Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
15. Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle
16. Limoges
17. The Catacombs
18. Cum mortuis in lingua mortua
19. The Hut on Fowl’s Legs-Baba Yaga
20. The Great Gate at Kiev
Fauré Quartett:
Erika Geldsetzer, violin
Sascha Frömbling, viola
Konstantin Heidrich, cello
Dirk Mommertz, piano
The internationally renowned Fauré Quartett is re-leasing the world’s first-ever recording of Pictures at an Exhibition and Études-Tableaux in their versions for piano quartet on the Berlin Classics label.
It’s the Roaring Twenties. That musical jack-of-all-trades, Sergei Koussevitsky, Director of Music with the Boston Symphony Orchestra for twenty-five years, commissions the orchestration of two world-famous works: Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky and the Études-Tableaux by Sergey Rachmaninoff. And who does Koussevitsky choose for this task? Why, none other than the two great composers Maurice Ravel and Ottorino Respighi.Their orchestrations lay the foundations for numerous other arrangements of those works. More than 80 years later, Dirk Mommertz, a member of and pianist with the Fauré Quartett, has arranged both of these works anew this time for piano quartet.
A chamber-music ensemble, with piano and strings, is ideally suited to present the entire tonal spectrum, explains Dirk Mommertz. Violinist Erika Geldsetzer, violist Sascha Frömbling, cellist Konstantin Heidrich and Mommertz at the piano have been an entity for over 25 years now and are justifiably acknowledged as one of the most influential piano quartets in the world. They are renowned for branching out into new territory; they are not afraid of leaving the well-trodden path, so it comes as no surprise that the Fauré Quartett have recorded for the first time, and are about to release, their own arrangements of Pictures at an Exhibition and the Études-Tableaux on one album.
The mesh of relationships which binds Mussorgsky’s composition of 1874 and Rachmaninoff’s of 1911-1918 with Koussevitsky’s commissions to Ravel and Respighi, now ends 150 years later with the Fauré Quartett in the 21st century. The versions for piano quartet bring to the works an unexpected palette of colours. They are flexible, yet dense; more tangible than when played by a whole orchestra, yet none the less thrilling works possessing unique soul and intense colouring, with as-yet-unheard facets and turns; works that exhibit great spans of upheaval and fading tranquillity.