How many pianos is too many?
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
German composers don’t know how to have fun. Think no further than Mozart’s Musical Joke, or Beethoven’s fat-shaming of the violinist Schuppanzigh. Not funny at all. Not to mention Schumann and Brahms, or the feeble anti-critic jokes made by Wagner, Mahler and Richard Strauss.
So it was in a wary frame of mind that I approached a frisky album…
Read on here.
And here.
En francais ici.
Why not “Hexameron” by Liszt?
I read recently that Bruckner students Lowe and Schalk were going around Germany playing four-hand versions of his symphonies to conductors to drum up interest.
Somehow that worked!
Is there any composer today who’s earned that much devotion from anyone in his circle, besides his mother?
When did Mozart become German? If he was German, so was Haydn and nobody has ever accused him of lacking a sense of humour.
Austrian composer G.F. Haas has his work for 50 pianos performed on a regular basis at the moment. Much less gimmicky than one might expect, and in fact a moving listening experience in the room.
Humor is in the ears of the beholder.
German humor abounds, no examples needed. It is subtle and requires intelligence to understand. Prejudice against things German prevents the semi-intelligent from discerning German humor. Unfortunately, bigotry stands in the way of human understanding. Music needs no excuses; it exists on a higher plane.