Saturday, September 5, 2015

Giovanni Sgambati Piano Quintets String Quartets - Quartetto Noferini Roberto Piano (2015)

Giovanni Sgambati (May 28, 1841  – December 14, 1914)
Performers :  Quartetto Noferini, Roberto Plano (Piano)
Label : Brilliant Classics
Released : August 2015 - Buy it HERE -AMAZON

The legendary Giovanni Sgambati from Rome, Italia finally got his chamber music recorded properly. Two string quartets and piano quintets in on the Brilliant Classic CD. The CD liner notes :

Giovanni Sgambati (1841‐1914) was an important composer of 19th century Italy. A pupil and disciple of Franz Liszt he was one of the most brilliant pianists of his day. However, he was a composer, a conductor, a teacher and a patron as well, composing symphonies and chamber music in a country where opera was predominant.

Sgambati’s musical language is romantic pur sang. Rooted in the German tradition of Mendelssohn and Schumann he was further influenced by his great mentor Franz Liszt and by Wagner (as so many in that age). This 2CD set contains two string quartets and the two piano quintets, impressive works of substantial length, richly textured and full of instrumental virtuosity. Excellent performances by Italian forces, the great pianist Alberto Plano (a Van Cliburn Competition winner) and the Quartetto Noferini.

Maybe the last of Italian Romantic defender, here are the album descriptions from Brilliant Classics.

Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914) was one of the few 19th- century Italian musicians who worked outside the native operatic tradition of Donizetti and Verdi. As a conductor, composer, teacher and pianist, he promoted symphonic and chamber music alongside his younger and now more renowned colleague Giuseppe Martucci. Records of Sgambati’s music have largely confined themselves to his orchestral and piano works (as well as his magnum opus, a Requiem Mass), but transfers of a dusty 78 show him having enormous fun with the Scherzo of Dvořák’s Piano Quintet.

This set redresses the balance and reveals Sgambati as a chamber musician no less accomplished in composition than performance, within the German tradition that he worked hard to introduce to Italian concert societies: Mendelssohn and Schumann are keynote influences here. The first string quartet and piano quintets are early works, dating from 1864 and 1866
respectively; the latter written in the fairly unusual key of F minor (think Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony) for which Sgambati appears to have had a special fondness, given the many piano pieces he also composed in that key.

The second string quartet (1882) and piano quintet (1876) are more chromatically developed to embrace some of Wagner’s idiom (Sgambati also wrote a concert overture on the subject of Rienzi); and when Wagner heard Sgambati give a performance of the quintet at the Royal Court of Savoy he was sufficiently impressed to suggest to his publisher Schott that they also publish Sgambati’s work. This proved to be a turning point in Sgambati’s career, as well as the beginning of a friendship between the two composers.

Roberto Plano’s previous disc for Brilliant Classics, of the piano music of Smetana (BC94788), won warm critical appreciation;

Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914) was an important composer of 19th- century Italy. A pupil and disciple of Franz Liszt he was one of the most brilliant pianists of his day. However, he was a composer, a conductor, a teacher and a patron as well, composing symphonies and chamber music in a country where opera was predominant.
Sgambati’s musical language is romantic pur sang. Rooted in the German tradition of Mendelssohn and Schumann he was further influenced by his great mentor Franz Liszt and by Wagner (as so many in that age).
This 2CD set contains two string quartets and the two piano quintets, impressive works of substantial length, richly textured and full of instrumental virtuosity.
Excellent performances by Italian forces, the great pianist Roberto Plano (a Van Cliburn Competition winner) and the Quartetto Noferini.

Sgambati: Piano Quintets & String Quartets
Buy it HERE -AMAZON

String Quartet in D Minor 21:43
I. Allegro moderato 5:51
II. Allegro 6:21
III. Romanza: Andante 4:48
IV. Allegro assai e appassionato 4:43

Piano Quintet No. 2 in B-Flat Major, Op. 5 41:20
I. Andante - Vivace 13:27
II. Barcarola (Allegretto con moto) 8:45
III. Andante 10:14
IV. Allegro vivace 8:54

String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 17 31:06
I. Adagio - Vivace ma non troppo 12:02
II. Prestissimo 3:30
III. Andante sostenuto 8:52
IV. Allegro 6:42

Giovanni Sgambati: Piano Quintet No. 1 in F Minor, Op. 4 46:20
I. Adagio - Allegro ma non troppo 12:19
II. Vivacissimo 7:37
III. Andante sostenuto 10:21
IV. Allegro moderato


Franz Xaver Gebel String Quartets - Hoffmeister Quartet (2015)

Franz Xaver Gebel (1787-1843)
Performer : Hoffmeister Quartet
Label: Profil
Release: August 2015 - BUY IT HERE AMAZON

Another rarity found in Amazon today. Franz Xaver Gebel is mostly unknown, I went for research and found very little information on this guy. From Wikipedia :

Franz Xaver Gebel (1787 – 3 May 1843) was a German composer, music teacher, and conductor.

Gebel was born in Fürstenau, near Breslau, Silesia. He studied under Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Abbé Vogler, and became Kapellmeister at Leopoldstadt in Vienna in 1810, then worked at a succession of theatres in Pest and Lemberg.

He moved to Moscow in 1817, where he would remain until his death in 1843. He taught piano, and became a significant figure in Moscow's musical life, teaching notable figures such as Nikolai Rubinstein and Alexander Villoing,[2] and organizing string quartet performances from 1829 to 1835.

He wrote operas, a mass, four symphonies, overtures, string quintets and quartets, and many piano pieces, among other works.

and from the CD notes :

Franz Xaver Gebels biographer Ernst Stöckl reported that while there were at least three Gebel string quartets, he was familiar with but one, the published Quartet in D major. Despite persistent research in Russian libraries, he was unable to find the others mentioned in contemporary discussions about concerts. Recently however, the sheet music for the Quartet in E-flat major, printed in Moscow around 1840, where Gebel spent the remainder of his life after 1817, was found in a German library. The Hoffmeister Quartet performs these rarely heard, little-known early-Romantic gems. 

another version...

Stöckl was unable to find any of Gebel’s later quartet compositions mentioned in contemporary discussions about concerts, despite persistent research and requests in Russian libraries. Thus it was a real stroke of luck when we discovered the printed music of the previously unknown Quartet in E-flat major. The sheet music, which was printed in Moscow around 1840, was found in the City Library of Hanover. sources

and ...

 A German who spent the last 25 years of his life as a valued teacher and performer in Moscow, Gebel (two of whose string quintets came out on MD&G in 1999) wrote the D major quartet just before leaving Germany in 1817 and the other in Moscow around 1840. Oddly the later one is in a Beethovenian severe classical style and the early one redolent of early Romanticism. Hoffmeister Quartet. sources

The trend of discovering string quartet music from the 18th century and put it right away to record is most encourage by we, fans of lost string quartet. The Hoffmeister Quartet already done the recording on Ferdinand Titz under PROFIL Label, so it is not new to the industry. The other F.X. Gebel record we can find is his String Quintet, recorded by MDG.

Franz Xaver Gebel - WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING
buy it here - AMAZON

String Quartet in D major
1. Allegro vivace
2. Menuetto, Presto
3. Andante
4. Presto

String Quartet in E-flat major op.27
5. Allegro con brio
6. Largo con espressione
7. Minuetto
8. Finale. Allegro

Hoffmeister Quartet :
Ulla Bundies, Violine
Christoph Heidemann, Violine
Aino Hildebrandt, Viola
Martin Seemann, Violoncello