Martin Helmchen, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker & Antje Weithaas – Schubert: Arpeggione Sonata & Trio No. 2 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:13:23 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Following a first recording on Alpha devoted to Brahms which garnered much praise – ‘real duo playing’ said Gramophone, while Classica discerned ‘shared music making . . . a world full of nuances and subtlety, boundless sonic imagination (Marie-Elisabeth Hecker), playing of rare intelligence (Martin Helmchen)’ and awarded the disc a ‘Choc’ – the duo is reunited. Its new programme features two summits of chamber music: Schubert’s famous Arpeggione Sonata – named after a now obsolete instrument that was a cross between the guitar and the cello – and his no less celebrated Trio no.2 D929, which achieved even greater popularity thanks to Stanley Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon. In the latter, the duo is joined by an eminent musician with whom they enjoy playing, Antje Weithaas, ‘one of the great violinists of our time’ (Fonoforum) and also one of the teachers most sought after by the young generation. For example, she taught Tobias Feldmann, the young violinist recently signed by Alpha.
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Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Edo de Waart – Elgar: Cello Concerto & Piano Quintet (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:10:00 minutes | 678 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
After making several discs of chamber music by Brahms and Schubert, the cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker now records a large-scale concerto, showing the full range of her talent. Composed between 1918 and 1919, Elgar’s Concerto Op.85 was poorly received at its first performance but has since become established as one of the key works in the cello repertoire. To complete the programme, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker rejoins her chamber music partners, the violinists Carolin Widmann and David McCarroll, the violist Pauline Sachse and the pianist Martin Helmchen, in Elgar’s Piano Quintet, composed at the same time as the Concerto and premiered in London in 1919.
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Marie-Elisabeth Hecker, Martin Helmchen – Brahms: Cello Sonatas (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:37 minutes | 923 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Since her high-profile victory at the 2005 Rostropovich Competition (she is the only winner ever to have taken both the First Prize and two special jury prizes), Marie-Elisabeth Hecker has belonged among the cellists who really count in the world. For her very first sonata recording, she is reunited with her partner both on the concert platform and in private life, the stylish pianist Martin Helmchen, in a programme of Brahms. The combination of the cellist whose playing was described by Die Zeit as ‘moving and instinctively beautiful’ and the pianist whom Diapason calls a ‘master of sound, tempo and articulation’ promises to be a moment of true chamber music, lyrical and brimming with complicity.
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