Hyperion RPC: Urspruch/Bronsart & Rheinberger/Scholz

[Alan Howe]

The cost of the Rheinberger/Hanselmann CD is CHF26, including postage. Unfortunately, the purchase can only be made via bank transfer, so there may be an additional charge...

[Gareth Vaughan]

How distinctly tiresome!

[Alan Howe]

Quite. A PayPal link would have been useful...

[eschiss1]

re Urspruch, we have or had his symphony and piano concerto uploaded. There was going to be an effort to record his piano music at one point... (vol.1 of which on Genuin can be heard on NMLibrary).

[Alan Howe]

...which is still flagged up on the Urspruch website - but who knows when/whether it'll come to fruition?

[Ilja]

re Urspruch, we have or had his symphony and piano concerto uploaded. There was going to be an effort to record his piano music at one point... (vol.1 of which on Genuin can be heard on NMLibrary).

That one can also be heard on Spotify, for those who have it. As can Das unmöglichste von Allem and a collection of songs sung by Rebecca Broberg.

As an unapologetic Urspruch fan, I may look forward to his Piano Concerto even more than I am to the Bronsart von Schellendorf.

[Alan Howe]

It turned out that the bank charges matched the price of the CD! It'd better be worth the money!

[Alan Howe]

This is an image posted on Twitter by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of the recording being made of the Urspruch and Bronsart PCs for Hyperion. Can anyone make out who the conductor and soloist are?

[Alan Howe]

And here's a teaser from Simon Callahan of the Scholz PC:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BUes6oTAj6G/

[FBerwald]

Exquisite ... Can't wait for this to be released.

[Christopher]

This is an image posted on Twitter by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra of the recording being made of the Urspruch and Bronsart PCs for Hyperion. Can anyone make out who the conductor and soloist are?

Is that the Cadogan Hall?

[Alan Howe]

No, it's Glasgow's City Halls (compare the gallery and the shape of the windows):



http://www.arup.com/projects/glasgow_city_halls/glasgowcityhalls_1

[Alan Howe]

The pianist on the Urspruch/Bronsart recording is Frenchman Emmanuel Despax; the conductor is the American Eugene Tzigane (b.Gene McDonough). This is what M. Despax posted on Facebook on 7th June:

Off to Glasgow next week to record these great romantic concerti by 2 Liszt students for Hyperion Records, along with the wonderful BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Eugene Tzigane.

It was a fantastic experience for me to discover these works I had never heard before. Despite having the same teacher, they are both incredibly different. The Bronsart is very Lisztian, full of bravura, with a virtuoso piano part. And the Urspruch is more symphonic, like a Brahms piano concerto, and quite Wagnerian at times. I can't wait to hear it with the orchestra!

So, the rationale behind the coupling is that both composers were students of Liszt.

[Ilja]

... as were half the concert pianists on the continent at the time  . Still, if it works to give us a decent recordings of the Bronsart and Urspruch concertos, who am I to complain. Haven't been looking forward this much to an RPC release in quite a time.

[Revilod]

I can' t give a link here for technical reasons but the late Balint Vazsonyi used to play Bronsart's concerto. There's a performance on YouTube...with another distinctly rough sounding orchestra. Vazsonyi also struggles and dodges a particularly demanding passage in the finale. He was, of course, the first to record Dohnanyi' s first piano concerto though he did make a cut in the finale

He also played Scharwenka' s fourth concerto a long time before Stephen Hough. Again, it's on Youtube.
Vazsonyi is something of a forgotten hero. He's never been mentioned on this forum I see.