Charles Koechlin - Piano Music, Vol. 1 (Michael Korstick)

Information

Composer: Charles Koechlin

• Au loin, Op. 2, No. 2
• Nouvelles sonatines No. 1, Op. 87
• Premier album de Lilian, Op. 139, Nos. 2, 3 & 5
• Nouvelles sonatines No. 2, Op. 87
• Paysages et marines, Op. 63
• Nouvelles sonatines No. 3, Op. 87
• Second album de Lilian, Op. 149, Nos. 2, 4 & 8
• Nouvelles sonatines No. 4, Op. 87

Michael Korstick, piano

Date: 2008

Label: Hänssler

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Review

Though it has still only scratched the surface of Charles Koechlin's vast and still scarcely known output, Hänssler has temporarily, at least, abandoned its exploration of his orchestral works to begin a series devoted to the piano music. There are nine works included in this first instalment; none is very substantial. The longest movement is the early seven-minute Andante Quasi Adagio with which Michael Korstick begins his sequence, while most of the movements in the cycle Paysages et Marines completed in 1916, or in each of the four Sonatines Op 87, composed in the mid 1920s, lasts around two minutes. Slight they may be, but all are pieces of a very specific and refined sensibility; the almost childlike simplicity of some of the writing belies its technical difficulty. There's nothing pianistic about Koechlin's piano music, for all its echoes of Debussy, Ravel and Fauré. Korstick never even hints at those challenges; his performances have exactly the quiet authority and poetry this elusive music needs. He also supplies the fascinating and informative sleeve notes to this immaculately presented disc.

-- Andrew Clements, The Guardian

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Charles Koechlin (27 November 1867 – 31 December 1950) was a French composer, teacher and writer on music. Koechlin was enormously prolific. He was highly eclectic in inspiration and musical technique, and his music was distinct from his contemporaries. He was a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things as medieval music, The Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling, Johann Sebastian Bach, film stars (especially Lilian Harvey and Ginger Rogers), traveling, stereoscopic photography and socialism. Despite his lack of worldly success, Koechlin was apparently a loved and venerated figure in French music.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Koechlin

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Michael Korstick (born April 30, 1955 in Cologne, Germany) is a German pianist. Korstick received his first piano lessons at the age of 9, and subsequently studied with Jürgen Tröster, Hans Leygraf, Tatiana Nikolayeva, Sascha Gorodnitzki and Jeaneane Dowis. His repertoire consists of more than 120 works for piano and orchestra and a large number of solo works from all periods, including the complete sonatas of Beethoven. Korstick has made more than 50 CD recordings so far, winning several prizes. He lives and works in Linz, Austria, where he is a full professor at Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Korstick

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