Thanking Peter Salisbury - Brahms, Bechstein grand piano and Stradivari viola on Harmonia Mundi

 

From Peter Salisbury’s words:

I’m getting very excited. From what seems like an eternity ago  I provided my 1899 Bechstein for a special recording project in Berlin with ANTOINE TAMESTIT & CÉDRIC TIBERGHIEN.

Finally its due to be released in 9 days time. 

You can hear the sound clips on the link below. 

http://www.harmoniamundi.com/#!/albums/2674

It was a special project because both artists recognised the importance of something so hugely ignored today in recordings and concerts, raising the bar as far as they could to create something beyond special.

It cost a small fortune to pull off but my gosh, the results speak for themselves. 

Here is what the artists had to say about why they went to these lengths for their project. 

“During all these years spent working together and playing these Sonatas Op. 120 in concert, we have often mentioned the sonic alchemy necessary to best reflect Brahms' writing, highlight his use of registers and the richness of his polyphony. Antoine's viola Stradivarius, generously loaned by the Habisreutinger Foundation, is constantly focused on the expression of song and, in fact, has a unique colour. From then on, finding a piano with a similar personality and a particular variety of timbre became obvious to us.

This is why we are infinitely grateful to Peter Salisbury for entrusting us so generously with this masterpiece Bechstein made in 1899, which Cedric had the chance to perform on a few years ago. This piano develops unique colors in each register, to the point of redefining our approach to this music: the writing of Brahms, his use of harmonies, his work on all the tessitura of the instruments, his way of intimately interweaving the viola and the piano suddenly seemed to us to flow naturally. Like the viola of Stradivarius, each note begins to sing, with infinite roundness, even in the most virtuoso or intense passages. The alliance of these two instruments has quite simply offered us a key to better understand, better play this music, put ourselves entirely at the service of the extraordinary lyricism that it exudes. For us it was a real revelation!

It is also this lyrical power that drew us to the magical universe of Brahms' lieder. Because for us this poetic and expressive dimension is found in each of his works, whether vocal, chamber or orchestral. Miraculously combining an almost minimalist conciseness and a fluidity that is simply astounding of beauty, these pieces appear to us as a concentrate of emotions, an ideal of song which for us, logically resulted in the art of Matthias Goerne. Its natural, bewitching, overwhelming expression has helped us go beyond our own instruments and understand, by his example, that musical emotion can arise from breathing and even from the whole body.”

ANTOINE TAMESTIT & CÉDRIC TIBERGHIEN October 2020