We’re absolutely delighted to present a solo performance by one of Germany’s most fascinating pianists, Herbert Schuch, who after producing two albums with his wife Gülru Ensari for CAvi-Music, returns to the Cologne label to work on his own ambitious projects. Recorded in Studio 2 of the Bayerischer Rundfunk in December 2017, here’s at last his newest solo project, following his 2014 Naive album (Invocation − the relationship with the French firm was terminated when Naive’s art director joined Belgian label Outhere, and the group Believe took over Naive) and his seven albums produced for Oehms Classics before 2013.
Herbert Schuch had seldom explored Beethoven until this album, in which he opposes Beethoven’s Eleven Bagatelles, Op. 119 to György Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata eleven miniatures, topping it off with the Bonn Master’s Op. 126. Unlike the Bagatelles’ last opus, Op. 119 isn’t necessarily designed as a cycle, meaning it makes perfect sense to weave together these Beethovenian thoughts with those of the greatest piano composer of the second half of the 20th century. With these powerful piano harmonics, supported by a brilliant sound recording that would lend itself marvellously to Olivier Messiaen’s music or the tenants of spectral music, the various characters explored by Ligeti in his Musica Ricercata directly impact Beethoven’s accents − the Bonn Master not necessarily being the most expansive of the two in this case.
A slightly unsettling, yet undeniably intentional proposition. None should pass on the chance to experience the newest album of one of the piano scene’s smartest musicians, particularly as Musica Ricercata recordings remain a rarity. The Op. 126’s sculptural nature is most impressive. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz