Changing reception history has unintentionally highlighted the historical character of Mahler's purely orchestral, ‘middle-period’ symphonies. The rehabilitation of his reputation after Wold War II, particularly in German-speaking countries was marked by a tendency to consider the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies his most successful and musically rewarding: as more traditional kinds of symphonic discourse, demonstrating the relevant signifiers of mastery. It would be equally appropriate to regard these two works as experiments in the new style to which Mahler himself referred in the case of the Fifth. The cumulative, heterodox structures of the earlier symphonies are replaced, in the Fifth, by a somewhat more uniform model. Its orchestral polyphony is also denser, more frequently mixed in timbre, in the manner of Richard Strauss, and less marked by simultaneously juxtaposed individual sonorities (Mahler experienced difficulty with the Fifth's orchestration and laboured on it in revisions). There is also a reduced reliance on explicitly characterized musical manners of intentionally ironic or naive effect. Instead, Mahler opted for a rhetoric that brings to the foreground a constructed musical subjectivity whose task is to control and unify the protean character changes that define its discourse. Symbolically projected voices and quasi-naturalistic scenarios are still present, but where formerly they were external to the alienated subject, such manners now tend to be presented more frequently as subjective modes, embraced and exploited with Nietzschean élan.[...]

The fragility of that self-confidence was starkly emphasized by the Sixth Symphony (1903–4). This was composed during the period of Mahler's closest contact with the younger Viennese modernists, to whose circle his uneasily progressing marriage to Alma Schindler gave him access. Conducted by Mahler with the subtitle ‘Tragic’ on at least one occasion, the Sixth displays an inverse relationship between symbolic subjective security and structural conciseness (it has four movements, the first with repeated exposition in the Classical manner). Specific biographical reasons for its cumulatively depressive and even suicidal manner are often sought, although Mahler explored as a logical proposal the insight that subjective authenticity and a positively constructed teleology (permitting a happy ending) might have no causal link.

The Sixth Symphony's first movement reverts to sharply characterized and opposed elements, like those of the first movement of the Second and Third Symphonies. A coercive A minor march is replaced by music of energetic lyricism which Mahler described as a representation of his young wife, although it, too, functions rhetorically as a subjective mode, urgently insistent upon its superior claim to authenticity. Other elements are added to the relentless succession of these two (in A minor and F major), most notably music that evokes an experience of high-mountain solitude: unrelated triads and 7th chords drift like mist (celesta and high tremolando strings) while offstage cowbells are heard. Mahler's last printed revision of 1906 somewhat contradictorily directs that these be played ‘so as to produce a realistic impression of a grazing herd of cattle … . Special emphasis is laid on the fact that this technical remark admits of no programmatic interpretation’. The fact that this unusually evoked site of experience is linked to an emergent lyrical idea recalling one of the resurrection motifs of the Second Symphony is significant, although the provisional nature of the first movement's resonantly positive conclusion is emphasized not only by the elegiac qualities of the Andante – originally presented as the third movement but subsequently relocated as the second – but also by the grotesque and almost surreal qualities of the Scherzo, whose insistent opening idea maintains both the key (A minor) and manner of the first movement's march (the changing time signatures of the ‘Altväterisch’ Trio may refer to an authentic Bohemian folkdance). Mahler's apparent intention to return to the original order of the two middle movements was not registered in a further printing.

The work's cumulative negativity focusses the philosophical and psychological implications of the new style, whose more intimate lyrical counterpart may be found in Mahler's settings of the early 19th-century poet Friedrich Rückert, dating from this period (1901–4). They fall into two groups: one an intended cycle, the Kindertotenlieder, the other a less formally related collection of five songs. Given Mahler's modernist connections at this time, Rückert represented a conservative choice of poet. While his settings flirt with consumable sentimentality, the Kindertotenlieder (begun in 1901) and independent songs like Ich atmet' einen linden Duft and Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen model a lyrical discourse of great subtlety, accompanied by modest, chamber-like forces (the addition of a piano to the harps in Um Mitternacht is not of proven authenticity).

Extracted from
The New Grove

Some essential pianists and writers have considered the piece as a whole variation of one motif, as Claudio Arrau has. We share that opinion, calling it a "psychological transformation" of the motif during the piece. The introductory scale is part of that motif, although the relation might be not direct, but in a way of contrast; the contrast between the relief of the death and the satisfaction of life, both inevitably two parts of existence. The epitome of this relief is the final: a unexpected chord which amazingly is a tonic of B Major. Liszt had doubts about whether the "relief" should be forte or piano.

The sonata is divided in three sections but at the same time is a unique form. It has a splendorous exposition where the main theme is presented, followed by a development where the Scherzo appears, and finally a huge recapitulation and a coda, where an impressive fugue takes the relay. We neglect the subjective interpretations that has been formulated about the possible lyrics of the theme.

Notwithstanding, when trying to make a deeper analysis of the piece, even nowadays nobody agrees on a unique analysis. This gives us the best clue to conclude that this is an eclectic piece subject to many interpretations. This is the reason why we believe that the piece will endure alive, not only in the hoary shelves of musicologists but mainly in concert halls and recordings.

Liszt 

Sonata in B minor

Scriabin

Piano Sonata nr. 2

Ivo Pogorelich

Beethoven still had five years left to live when he wrote this sonata but in many ways it feels like a definite end. The thirty two piano sonatas has spanned nearly thirty years of his life and transformed the genre from an at home entertainment to a vehicle of intimate, personal expression. Pianist Robin Taub describes Op. 111 as , "a work of unmatched drama and transcendence … the triumph of order over chaos, of optimism over anguish."

The work is only two movements, something he did in four previous sonatas but still unusual enough for Beethoven's publisher to assume that the final sonata-rondo has been lost in the post. A sketch was made for the last movement but, with every second counting, it was put aside in favour of the Missa Solemnis.

Extracted from

The Omniscient Mussel

Superb interpretations of Beethoven's Sonata Op. 111 and Schumann's Symphonische Etüden. Young Pogorelich in one of his greatest moments! (Erlen)

TCHAIKOVSKY WITHOUT EVENING DRESS

Pogorelich on this recordings

Ivo Pogorelich was a student at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, so when I asked him when he had first played the Concerto in B flat minor I expected a totally different answer from the one I got. "My teachers told me that my hands were exactly right for the concerto, all my friends played it - but I didn't", he said with a laugh. "I didn't want to. You could hear it being hammered out by every other student; I had an overdose of this music - I'd virtually been brought up on it."

He pondered. "I first heard the B flat minor Concerto on the radio when I was five. At the time I was thrilled by the way the piano sang and swelled with sound. Soon afterwards I heard it at a concert - an overwhelming impression. But then my experiences as a student gradually turned me against the Concerto. All I could hear was a virtuoso piece for up-and-coming pianists, a test of finger dexterity - not art.

At least, when I was 18, I began to study the concerto myself - and to rediscover it.

It certainly isn't the stale, self-satisfied jangle of notes which had so got on my nerves as the practice piece of my fellow students! I had thought that this concerto reduced all pianists to a common denominator, whether they were young or old, Russian or American.

I'd been wrong. It was all those up-and-coming pianists around me who had been reducing the concerto to a common denominator, subjecting Tchaikovsky to the circus act of their interpretation. Now I realized that wasn't what he'd had in mind. It became my purpose to show that Tchaikovsky had written a genuine dialogue between piano and orchestra. What it needs is partnership, not ostentatious cascades of sound with humble orchestral accompaniment. It is true that you have to toil like a gallery slave to master the technical difficulties of the piano part. But it is after that that the real work begins; you have to get into the frame of mind in which Tchaikovsky wrote this work to discover its secrets. Above all the pianist must not seek merely to dazzle, but must allow complete equality to the orchestra; when a theme is taken up by the woodwind, or the lower strings reveal structural features of the music, they must really be audible - the concerto must not be swamped by the flood of sound poured out by the pianist.

I am glad that Claudio Abbado and the orchestra fully shared my view in this matter, and that every instrumentalist gave of his best. Mere routine would be especially dangerous in the case of this work.

On the day before we began recording the concerto we performed in concert, and then we tried to bring the same live quality to our playing in the studio. Only without evening dress."

Hanno Rinke,
Translation: John Coombs

Tchaikovsky

Piano Concerto nr. 1, in B flat major, Op. 23

1. Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso -
Allegro con spirito [23:18]
2. Andante semplice - Prestissimo - Tempo I [7:43]
3. Allegro con fuoco [6:39]


Ivo Pogorelich, piano

London Symphony Orchestra,
Claudio Abbado

Though a welcome reappraisal of Britain's 19th-century musical heritage is now underway, the notion that the years leading up to the turn of the century saw a renaissance in attitude as much as technique still holds good.

Most 19th-century English composers had looked to song as a source of ready income in the popular, domestic form of the ballad. Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford, the most influencial teachers around 1900, aspired higher, each producing a sizeable corpus of artsong forming an important repertoire. But it was the next generation that was to produce a body of work in the genre that has never stood in need of revival. ...

George Hall

Vienna, 16 February 1785

On Friday evening we drove to his first subscription concert, at wich a great many members of the aristocracy were present. ... The concert was magnificent and the orchestra played splendidly. In addiction to the symphonies a female singer of the Italian theatre sang two arias. Then we had a new and very fine concerto [K. 466] by Wolfgang, wich the copyist was still copying when we arrived, and the rondo os which your brother did not even have time to play through, as he had to supervise the copying. ... On Saturday evening Herr Joseph Haydn and the two Barons Tinti came to see us... Haydn said to me: "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition."

Schumann

Allegro in B minor Op. 8
Kreisleriana Op. 16
Gesänge der Frühe Op. 133

Maurizio Pollini


DL Schumann piano works

Quality: mp3, varied kbps
Size: 62 MB

Brahms

Lieder

Complete Edition

7 Discs Box

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Jessye Norman

Daniel Barenboim, piano
Wolfram Christ, viola

Quality: mp3, 192 kbps

Dvorák - Janácek - Martinu

Love Songs

Magdalena Kozená, mezzo-sopran
Graham Johnson, piano


DL Love Songs


Quality: mp3, 192 kbps
Size: 94 MB

Chopin

Nocturnes
(Complete Recording)

Maria João Pires

Schubert

Winterreise, D. 911

Liederzyclus nach Gedichten von
Wilhelm Müller (24 Lieder)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, bariton
Jörg Demus, piano

(The Originals - Legendary Recordings from the Deutsche Grammophon catalogue)

DL Schubert Winterreise

Quality: mp3, 128 kbps
Size: 68 MB

DL Schubert Impromptus
Disc 1
Disc 2

Quality: mp3, varied kbps
Size: 38 MB + 71 MB