Composer: Georg Friedrich Händel, Johannes Brahms
Performer: Seong-Jin Cho
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalogue: 4863018
Release: 2023
Size: 0.98 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Handel: Suite No. 2 in F Major, HWV 427
01. I. Adagio
02. II. Allegro
03. III. Adagio
04. IV. Allegro
Handel: Suite No. 8 in F Minor, HWV 433
05. I. Prélude
06. II. Allegro
07. III. Allemande
08. IV. Courante
09. V. Gigue
Handel: Suite No. 5 in E Major, HWV 430
10. I. Prélude
11. II. Allemande
12. III. Courante
13. IV. Air & 5 Variations “The Harmonious Blacksmith”
Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24
14. Aria
15. Var. 1
16. Var. 2 (Animato)
17. Var. 3 (Dolce)
18. Var. 4 (Risoluto)
19. Var. 5 (Espressivo)
20. Var. 6
21. Var. 7 (Con vivacitá)
22. Var. 8
23. Var. 9 (Poco sostenuto)
24. Var. 10 (Energico)
25. Var. 11 (Dolce)
26. Var. 12 (Soave)
27. Var. 13 (Largamente, ma non più)
28. Var. 14 (Sciolto)
29. Var. 15
30. Var. 16 (Piano ma marcato)
31. Var. 17 (Più mosso)
32. Var. 18 (Grazioso)
33. Var. 19 (Leggiero e vivace)
34. Var. 20 (Legato)
35. Var. 21 (Dolce)
36. Var. 22
37. Var. 23 (Vivace e staccato)
38. Var. 24
39. Var. 25
40. Fugue
Handel: Suite No. 7 in B-Flat Major, HWV 440
41. III. Sarabande
Handel: Suite in B-Flat Major, HWV 434
42. IV. Minuet (Arr. Kempff for Piano)
The spectacular South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho steps back in time, presenting three of Handel’s exquisite suites. His album “The Handel Project” couples outstanding pieces by Handel from the early 1700s with Brahms’s virtuosic “Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel”. Handel’s keyboard suites have remained strangers to most concert pianists. Thus, Seong-Jin Cho sheds new light on some of the most heartfelt of all Baroque music: “The Handel Project” contains three of the 28-year-old pianist’s favorite suites from Handel’s first collection of “Suites de pièces pour le clavecin”. The artist was drawn to Handel’s keyboard suites after years of immersion in music from later periods. Having fallen in love with their wealth of musical ideas and wide-ranging melodic invention, Cho listened to recordings of the works on harpsichord, the instrument for which they were conceived, and refined his finger technique in order to give different tone colours and weight to Handel’s contrapuntal lines. He has avoided the sustaining pedal as much as possible, but modified some of the dynamic markings in order to exploit the potential of a modern piano. “For me, Handel’s music comes directly from the heart, so people can easily follow it.”, says Cho. He was also keen to explore the ways in which Handel influenced later composers and so chose to record Brahms’s enormously creative response to music from one of the suites as well. Brahms based his twenty-five variations on the Air from Handel’s Suite No. 3 in B flat major HWV 434, a simple theme on which Handel himself built four short variations. For Cho, this are “the best variations that have ever been written”. The album concludes with two individual movements from Handel’s second volume of Suites de pièces pour le clavecin, published in 1733: a Sarabande in B flat major (HWV 440/3), and Wilhelm Kempff’s arrangement of a Menuetto in G minor.