Description
Hungaroton: Gábor Farkas — The Schumann Album (Audio CD)
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Product Details:
- Product Type: Audio CD
- Brand / Label: Hungaroton
- Artist: Gábor Farkas (piano)
- Composer: Robert Schumann
- Catalogue Number: HCD 32798
- UPC / Barcode: 5991813279828
- Release Year: 2017
- Genre: Classical
- Style: Solo piano, Romantic
Product Features
- Format: CD
- Discs: 1
- Total runtime: approx. 67 minutes
- Repertoire: Carnaval Op. 9, Arabeske Op. 18, Symphonic Études Op. 13
- Made in the E.U.
Overview
Hungarian pianist Gábor Farkas builds this recital around Schumann's most original early piano writing — the music written between 1834 and 1839, when the young composer was inventing the language that would define him.
The three works here are each strange in their own way. Carnaval, Op. 9, is a masked ball of short character pieces, full of private codes and hidden names — Schumann buried musical ciphers throughout it. The Arabeske, Op. 18, is gentler, a single flowing movement that has become one of his most loved miniatures. And the Symphonic Études, Op. 13, are a set of variations that push the piano toward orchestral weight and virtuosic demand.
You can hear the young composer's reading and listening in all of it — the influence of Jean Paul's literature, of Schubert, of Beethoven — folded into a way of thinking in cycles that was entirely his own. Farkas plays with clarity and a real feel for the structures holding these eccentric pieces together.
About 67 minutes of music, recorded by Hungaroton, the historic Hungarian label.
Interesting Facts
- Carnaval, Op. 9, is built largely on a four-note musical cipher (A–S–C–H), spelling the hometown of Schumann's then-love interest while also using the only letters in his own name that translate to notes.
- The set includes portraits of real and fictional figures, among them "Chiarina" (Clara Wieck, his future wife) and "Chopin," a brief homage to his contemporary.
- The Symphonic Études, Op. 13, exist in multiple versions; Schumann revised the work and left several additional variations that pianists often weave back in.
- Schumann composed all this music in his twenties, the same restless years when he was also founding and editing his influential music journal.
- Gábor Farkas is among Hungary's leading concert pianists, a prizewinner and a professor at the Liszt Academy in Budapest.
- The album was released by Hungaroton, Hungary's oldest record label, founded in 1951.
Track Listing
1–21. Carnaval, Op. 9 — 33:21
- Arabeske, Op. 18 — 7:40 23–35. Symphonic Études, Op. 13 — 26:11
Total time: 67:23
Publishers
Released by Hungaroton in 2017, catalogue HCD 32798. © 2017 Fotexnet Kft., distributed by Fotexnet Kft., Budapest. Made in the E.U.
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