Free sheet music to download and print:
Brahms – Albumblatt in A minor

Listen:

András Schiff plays “Albumblatt” in A minor by Johannes Brahms

The theme reused in the Scherzo of Brahms’ Horn Trio

The $158,500 album

The piece was discovered by the auction house Doyle of New York City, where the “Album Amicorum of Arnold Wehner” was sold for $158,500 in April last year.
The album belonged to Wehner who was director of music at Göttingen in the 1850s and contains musical contributions and quotations from important contemporary composers and musicians including Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Liszt.
Musicologists believe that Brahms wrote this piano piece in Arnold Wehner’s album in June of 1853, when he and his friend Edouard Remenyi were visiting Göttingen.

Recycled theme

The theme was also used by Brahms in the Scherzo’s trio section in his trio for piano, violin and French horn, composed 12 years later. The new finding is however not a brief sketch but a finished manuscript of a complete piano piece, clearly written and including performance markings.

Who was first?

The album was catalogued and described in Doyle New York’s sale catalogue of April 20th 2011 with the assistance of Dr. Michael Struck of the Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe, Kiel. However, earlier this month BBC claimed that conductor and musicologist Christopher Hogwood discovered the piece and that the world premiere was to be performed by András Schiff in a broadcast on January 21. Although Hogwood’s discovery appeared to be slightly misleading and the piece had already been publicly performed, the short video by BBC including an interesting discussion and samples of Schiff’s masterful performance is well worth watching:
BBC Radio 3: András Schiff plays a lost work by Johannes Brahms

The new edition

A scanned copy of the manuscript has been online on Doyle New York as part of their April 2011 catalog, a transcription of it appeared on IMSLP this week and the piece will be included in Bärenreiter’s new edition of Brahms’ Horn Trio to be released in February.
Piano Street’s new urtext score may very well be the first officially published edition of this wonderful little piece. Regardless, we are happy to share it with the piano playing world for free to play and enjoy!

Please share it with your friends by posting the following link:
http://www.pianostreet.com/albumblatt
…and post your comments about the piece below!

• New Brahms piece to be performed by Schiff
• Wigglesworth on noisy audiences
• New York Times talks to Garrick Ohlsson
• Weissenberg and Karajan in Rach 2
• Legendary Alexis Weissenberg dies at 82
• Physics of Sound: Daniel Barenboim on the Duration of Notes
• Have you heard Simone Dinnerstein?
• What Liszt Gave Himself for Xmas Present
• Beethoven music shaped by gradual deafness, say experts
• The Piano Man is now officially a Steinway man

Born in Sofia, the noted Jewish-born, French pianist of Bulgarian birth, Alexis Weissenberg, was taught to play the piano by his mother. Several members of her family were Vienna Conservatory-trained musicians, and he grew up in an environment where the sight-reading of chamber music was as common as watching television is for most children today. His second piano teacher was a disciplinarian dentist, his third Bulgaria’s top composer and pedagogue, Pancho Vladigerov, at whose house Weissenberg heard Dinu Lipatti perform.

At age 10, Alexis Weissenberg gave his first recital, performing, among other works, an etude of his own composition. Shortly thereafter, Weissenberg and his mother attempted to flee Bulgaria for Turkey as fascist terror deepened. They were caught and thrown in a concentration camp. “Only three elements remained constant,” Weissenberg recalled. “Silence, singing, and crying.” What saved the pair was an accordion Weissenberg had been given as a gift by an aunt. A German guard who liked music let Weissenberg play and after three months put the Weissenbergs on a train to Istanbul, throwing the accordion into their compartment through an open window as they left.

In 1945 they made their way to Turkey and then to Israel (then Palestine), where Alexis Weissenberg studied at the Jerusalem Academy of Music with Leo Kestenberg. In 1945 he made his first appearance as a soloist with an orchestra. Later he performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Leonard Bernstein. He left his accordion with a group of children after playing an outdoor concert and departed for the USA in 1946. He enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music, studying with Olga Samaroff and at times with Artur Schnabel and Wanda Landowska. He also made contact with Vladimir Horowitz, who urged Weissenberg to enter the Leventritt Award competition.
Weissenberg won the award in 1947, and his career was launched. His USA debut came in 1947, playing Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (or Philadelphia Orchestra) under the baton of George Szell.

After touring extensively the USA and Europe, Alexis Weissenberg moved in 1956 to Paris, eventually becoming a French citizen. For a decade beginning around that time, he took a hiatus from performing, subjecting himself to a reconstruction of his keyboard technique. In 1966 he resumed his career by giving a recital in Paris; later that year he gave Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in Berlin under Herbert von Karajan, who called him “one of the best pianists of our time”. Subsequently he toured all over the world, and remained active into old age.

Interview and excerpts from Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto:

Videos:

• Interview and excerpts from Rachmaninov’s third piano concerto
• With Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonics in the 3rd movement of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto
• Swedish film director Åke Falck’s artistic film with Weissenberg playing Stravinsky’s Petrouchka in Stockholm, 1965
• Weissenberg playing J. S. Bach, Jesus bleibet meine Freude (BWV147) in 1969

Links:

• Gramophone: Pianist Alexis Weissenberg has died
• Stephen Hough: White heat: RIP Weissenberg
• Interview (in German)
• On DVD (2008)

Boris Berman, renowned concert pianist and teacher, is one of the world’s foremost authorities on Sergei Prokofiev. In this book published by Yale University Press, he draws on his intimate knowledge of Prokofiev’s work to guide music lovers and pianists through the composer’s nine piano sonatas. These cherished works, composed between 1910 and 1951, are today considered an indispensable part of the repertoire of every serious concert pianist. The book, written with a deep appreciation of Prokofiev’s style and creativity, looks at the sonatas within the context of Prokofiev’s complete oeuvre. For each sonata, Berman provides general information about the work and a discussion of the composition’s details and features, and in a section entitled “Master Class” he offers suggestions for interpretation and specific advice for performing. Berman also corrects for the first time various misprints in published scores and includes a helpful glossary of musical terms.

Boris Berman is professor of piano, Yale University School of Music, and an internationally renowned concert pianist. He has recorded Prokofiev’s complete works for piano solo on the Chandos Records label. His book Notes from the Pianist’s Bench, published by Yale University Press, was selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title in 2001.

Links:
This book on amazon.com
Berman’s complete Prokofiev Sonatas on the Chandos label

Why not spend some of the remaining time of this Liszt-year at the piano with two of his most beloved pieces, Consolation no 3 and Liebestraum?

New Piano Street Editions! – FREE to download and print:
Liszt – Consolation no 3
Liszt – “Liebestraum” (Nocturne no 3)
(available until December 31)

Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes

Franz Liszt’s 12 Transcendental Etudes from 1851 are a set of pieces designed to develop technique while beeing musically engaging and enjoyable at the same time. They are considered some of the legendary virtuoso’s most demanding music.

1. Listen to the complete recordings by Claudio Arrau and Boris Berezovsky while following along in the scores!

2. Share your thoughts: Which are your favorite etudes and interpretations?
Please post a comment here!

Click the pianist’s name to start the playback and then the “View Score” link.

Scores to download and print: Liszt – Transcendental Etudes (Gold membership required)

About Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes

The Transcendental Etudes S. 139 began in 1826, as a set of youthful and far less technically demanding exercises called the Étude en douze exercices (Study in twelve exercises) S. 136. Liszt then elaborated on these pieces considerably, and the far more technically difficult exercises called the Douze Grandes Études (Twelve Great Studies) S. 137 were then published in 1837. The Transcendental Etudes S. 139 are revisions of his Douze Grandes Etudes. As the third and final version, this set was published in 1852 and dedicated to Carl Czerny, Liszt’s piano teacher, and himself a prolific composer of etudes. The set included simplifications, for the most part; in addition to many other reductions, Liszt removed all stretches of greater than a tenth, making the piece more suitable for pianists with smaller hands and less technical skill. However, the fourth etude of the final set, Mazeppa, is actually more demanding than its 1837 version, since it very frequently alters and crosses the hand to create a “galloping” effect. When revising the 1837 set of etudes, Liszt added programmatic titles to all but the Etudes Nos. 2 and 10. These titles are in French and German. Later, one of Liszt’s editors Ferruccio Busoni gave the name Fusées (“Rockets”) to the Etude No. 2, and the name Appassionata to the Etude No. 10; however, Busoni’s titles are not commonly used or well known.

About the Arrau recordings

Arrau was entering his seventies when these performances were taped—in quad—in March 1974. An omnicompetent technique was intact, while expressiveness, suggesting the wisdom of a lifetime, blossomed. “Feux-follets” is punctilious yet quirky, leisurely and glowing, which is to say, not hustled. “Mazeppa” evinces more a canter than a gallop—virtuosically scintillant if not pyrotechnically coruscating—but still grandly compelling. If you want the fast-forward spin, try Freddy Kempf. The remaining Études are magisterial in any company, that is, even the best of today’s pianists could learn from them. “Paysage” is all rapture; “Ricordanza” (which Busoni compared to a bundle of faded love letters) is a steady spate of surprises and felicities, like fond memories awakening; the expressive crescendo of “Harmonies du soir” takes one’s breath. And so on.
- Fanfare
 Magazine

About the Berezovsky recordings

Liszt’s Douze Etudes d’exécution transcendante and pianist Boris Berezovsky were made for one another: under the extreme difficulty of execution and acrobatic tour de force of the Etudes Transcendantesis hidden a romantic musician steeped in poetry, Liszt. And behind the diabolical virtuosity and fantastic digital agility of the pianist, there is a performer of extreme sensitivity, Boris Berezovsky. We should not be obsessed with his curriculum vitae as an ace of the keyboard – he was born in 1969, studied with pianist Elisso Virsaladze at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow where he won the Gold Medal in the Tchaikovsky Competition and has since then led an international career – because with time Boris has learnt to sublimate his impressive technique and to simply put it at the service of the music. This film reveals to us a Berezovsky who is literally unequalled in his mastery of the terrible pitfalls of the Etudes Transcendantes – he even breaks a piano string… – and immerses us in the Romantic world of Liszt.
- Medici.tv

Classical Piano Blog – Top Picks 2011

Highly recommended reading on Piano Street’s Classical Piano Blog:

Dr. Walker Making Dead Pianists Come Alive
What Your Ears can’t See
The Piano Speaks!
The One-Armed Pianist’s Quest for Success
The Great Arthur Schnabel: Deciphering Beethoven – The Last Three Sonatas
“Padom Padom” Goes Mozart
Notes on Interpreting Chopin
Robert Schumann’s Small and Large Universes
Guinnes World Record for the Largest Recording Series by a Solo Artist
The Hungarian Liszt..? Exclusive interview with pianist Klára Würtz
John Ogdon in Rare Recital from Moscow in 1986
Can You Do the Beethoven G Major Concerto Blind Test?
Franz Liszt – 200th Anniversary
Prize Winners in Utrecht Celebrate Franz Liszt
A Haiku for the Future
Super Mario – The Czerny Studies of Our Time?

Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe form one of the most thrilling young piano duos performing today. The debut release from Anderson & Roe on the Steinway & Sons label is a showstopper captured in spectacular audiophile-quality sound by multi-Grammy-winning producer Steven Epstein.

The pair’s adrenalized concerts have been dazzling audiences around the world. Now Steinway makes 12 of their eclectic and electrifying performances available for your personal playlist. When Words Fade features original piano four-hand arrangements of vocal repertoire and popular songs by composers from Vivaldi, Rachmaninov, and Schubert to Michael Jackson, Radiohead, and Coldplay.
Packaged with the CD is a bonus DVD featuring dramatizations that re-interpret four of the wordless piano duos and their emotional potency with a modern twist.

Watch the Release Promotional Video:

More videos:

Vivaldi – A Rain of Tears
Der Erlkönig
The previous release (Michael Jackson’s) Billie Jean

• Interview with pianist Nikolai Lugansky
• Biss on Beethoven and Fleisher
• The Exhilaration and Dread of Beethoven’s Sonatas
• Interview with pianist Dang Thai Son
• Get cool with Alice
• Beethoven recital with John O’Conor in Aspen
• Beethoven Competition in Bonn – live broadcasts
• Hamelin Scores as a Pianist and Composer
• Kovacevich and The Diabellis – Gramophone Archive

No one variation exceeds 4 minutes. From baroque tinged to unmistakably Chopin to fugal, the variations on the Goldbergs take the listener’s lens on the iconic pieces and throw it into an entirely different realm. Pianist Gilbert Kalish then arranged the collection for its debut as a whole work, adding Bach’s theme to the beginning and to the end, and inserting Bach’s Variation 13 in the middle.
However, Kalish clearly states it is up to the pianist to decide how to perform these works, whether as a whole or specific movement(s) only.

In September 2011 Tritone Records announced the World Premiere release of 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE GOLDBERG – new re-imaginings of Bach’s iconic Goldberg Variations by today’s most remarkable composers.
Hear pianist Lara Downes play and talk about the project:

Listen to four free tracks from the album.

Piano Street caught up with Lara Downes for six short questions on the project and album “13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg”:

Patrick Jovell: As we have seen on the video, you were virtually raised on The Goldberg Variations. How is it that particularly this work has earned such historic landmark status in western art music?

Lara Downes: The Goldberg Variations are important in so many ways. For one thing, the piece is considered to be the most ambitious work ever composed for harpsichord, so it stands out as a monument of its own time, as the largest keyboard work produced during the Baroque period.
The piece exists on a level that is radically different from its contemporary compositions in terms of its structural expansiveness.

PJ: Isn’t it true that this work demonstrates not only Bach’s exceptional musical range but also his exceptional abilities as a performer?

LD: Ironically, it is exactly this virtuosic scope and breadth that may have condemned the work to relative obscurity for so many years. The work demands exceptional interpretive and technical skills from a performer, and the negotiations involved in transitioning a work originally composed for the harpsichord to the modern piano would have been particularly sensitive on this large scale.

PJ: Can you describe the work’s path from obscurity up to the grand concert stages?

LD: After Wanda Landowska’s pioneering revival of Bach’s keyboard music in the early part of the 20th century (during which she performed and recorded the Goldbergs on the harpsichord), it fell to Glenn Gould, who chose the variations for his sensational 1955 debut recording, to bring the work to its current place of truly iconic status within the piano repertoire as well as the larger cultural consciousness.

PJ: What actually happened to the work in the hands of Gould’s?

LD: Gould’s energetic, audacious and thoroughly unique interpretation generated a new kind of appreciation for Bach’s music by combining the sensibilities of the harpsichord with the romantic potential and expanded resources of the concert grand. His recording captured the imagination of an entire generation, and brought the Goldbergs, and classical music itself, to life for thousands of new listeners.

PJ: How would you sum up the potential of this masterpiece?

LD: I think it’s the capacity of this work for reinvention and rejuvenation that has earned the Goldbergs such landmark status in the classical tradition. This music seems to speak to generation after generation with a sustained purity, energy and sense of vastness. This is what captures me and keeps me coming back, time and again, to this one piece of music. When I listen to the Goldbergs, I forget about my individual concerns, troubles, perspectives – and I enter a sphere of infinite possibility and vision.

PJ: In this context the contributing composers were both historically inspired and thankful, I guess?

LD: 13 WAYS of Looking at the Goldberg is, to me, a wonderful acknowledgment of that possibility. This project celebrates the history of Bach’s monumental piece of music, its journeys across the centuries and the generations. In thirteen new voices, this music answers back across time and place to Bach, with all the gratitude and affection that
we musicians owe him, now and always.

The project was inspired by the poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a
Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens, a minimalist and mind-blowing portrait of
perspective. The fifth stanza of that poem includes the basic idea of
the “13 Ways” project:

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

The pieces:

Bach: Aria, from Goldberg Variations BWV 988
C. Curtis-Smith: Rube Goldberg Variation
Jennifer Higdon: The Gilmore Variation
Mischa Sarche Zupko: Ghost Variation
Stanley Walden: Fantasy Variation
Bright Sheng: Variation Fugato
Derek Bermel: Kontraphunktus
Bach: Variation 13 from Goldberg Variations
David Del Tredici: My Goldberg (Gymnopedie No. 1)
Fred Lerdahl: Chasing Goldberg
William Bolcom: Yet Another Goldberg Variation (for left hand alone)
(Canon Inversa)
Lukas Foss: Goldmore Variation
Ralf Gothoni: Variation on Variation with Variation
Fred Hersch: Melancholy Minuet
Bach: Aria (reprise) from Goldberg Variations

Links:

Hear samples from the album at Amazon.com
Get the scores at Edition Peters
Pianist Lara Downes website

Part One offers a series of writings that illustrate the philosophy and methods of the school:

• The Road to Artistry, Samuil Feinberg
• Advice from a Pianist and Teacher, Alexander Goldenweiser
• Some Principles of Pianoforte Technique, Lev Oborin
• Some Remarks on Technique, Konstantin Igumnov
• Notes on Mastery of the Piano, Grigorii Ginzburg

Part Two gives a privileged insight into the classroom methods of various teachers as they work with students on that repertoire in which Russian artists have always particularly excelled – Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev:

• Beethoven’s Appassionata: A Performer’s Commentary, Samuil Feinberg
• Three Answers to Questions about Beethoven’s Sonata Appassionata, Sviatoslav Richter
• Work on Beethoven’s Sonata in A major Opus 101, Heinrich Neuhaus
• Chopin Etudes (based on classes with Samuil Feinberg), Maria Eshchenko
• Reflections on Chopin’s Fourth Ballade, Yakov Flier
• Notes on Chopin’s Ballade in F minor, Alexander Goldenweiser
• Chopin’s Fourth Ballade in F minor, Konstantin Igumnov
• Lessons with Yakov Flier (on Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No 1 and Prokofiev’s Sonata No 3), Nina Lelchuk Lelchuk
  Yakov Zak as Teacher (on Liszt’s B-minor Sonata, Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques, and Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody), Olga Stupakova

Christopher Barnes, professor of Slavic languages at the University of Toronto, has translated hitherto unavailable essays, critiques and lectures from the leading teaching lights at the Moscow Conservatoire. Pursuing a parallel interest in music, he studied piano privately and is known as a lecturer-recitalist and a broadcaster on Russian musical topics. He is currently at work on a monograph on Scriabin and a history of Russian pianism.

This book on amazon.com

The final volume of Walker’s monumental study (Franz Liszt, Vol. 1: The Virtuoso Years, 1811-47, Franz Liszt, Vol. 2: The Weimar Years, 1848-61, Franz Liszt, Volume 3: The Final Years, 1861-1886) draws upon some recent scholarship to present a more complete picture of Liszt’s life and achievements than had been previously possible. Liszt’s remarkably peripatetic existence creates manifold challenges for the conscientious scholar but Walker is more than equal to the task. His narrative is copiously footnoted yet never seems to bog down in minutiae. In fact, quite the opposite: the prose is so lively that the reader is often swept along by the narrative.
A particularly fascinating section concerns the infamous Cosima Liszt-Hans von Bülow-Richard Wagner triangle, which is skillfully dissected by Walker to separate legend from accurate history. Liszt emerges as an unmistakably generous and self-effacing man in his later years whose prodigious gifts as a composer and pianist were undimmed until the very end. Walker provides frequent musical examples throughout, and his comments on them are not too technical for the general reader. Walker’s meticulously researched and engagingly written book is well illustrated and contains numerous musical examples and insightful analyses. It is an impressive conclusion to a biography that should become the standard work on its subject.

“A conscientious scholar passionate about his subject, Mr. Walker makes the man and his age come to life. These three volumes will be the definitive work to which all subsequent Liszt biographies will aspire.”
- Harold C. Schonberg, Wall Street Journal

“What distinguishes Walker from Liszt’s dozens of earlier biographers is that he is equally strong on the music and the life. A formidable musicologist with a lively polemical style, he discusses the composer’s works with greater understanding and clarity than any previous biographer. And whereas many have recycled the same erroneous, often damaging information, Walker has relied on his own prodigious, globe-trotting research, a project spanning twenty-five years. The result is a textured portrait of Liszt and his times without rival.”
- Time Magazine

“If you want the single best study of Franz Liszt, and one at a surprisingly reasonable price at that, Alan Walker’s study is the one to get. It has won numerous awards, understandably, and can be recommended without a moment’s hesitation. It’s a long undertaking to read from 1811 (or rather, from the chapters on Liszt’s family background) to his death (and, again, the musical context of his surviving family members). But it’s also sufficiently readable to make even bedtime reading as much as responding to the work as a scholarly study. Enjoyable. Illuminating. Gripping. Definitive.”
- Classical Net

Books in the series, available from Cornell University Press:
Franz Liszt, Vol. 1: The Virtuoso Years, 1811-47
Franz Liszt, Vol. 2: The Weimar Years, 1848-61
Franz Liszt, Volume 3: The Final Years, 1861-1886

Two new Liszt books by Walker (2011):

Reflections on Liszt

In a series of lively essays that tell us much not only about the phenomenon that was Franz Liszt but also about the musical and cultural life of nineteenth- century Europe, Alan Walker muses on aspects of Liszt’s life and work that he was unable to explore in his acclaimed three-volume biography of the great composer and pianist. Topics include Liszt’s contributions to the Lied, the lifelong impact of his encounter with Beethoven, his influence on students who became famous in their own right, his accomplishments in transcribing and editing the works of other composers, and his innovative piano technique. One chapter is devoted to the Sonata in B Minor, perhaps Liszt’s single most celebrated composition.

The Death of Franz Liszt
- Based on the Unpublished Diary of His Pupil Lina Schmalhausen

“If only I do not die here.” After falling ill during a visit to Bayreuth, Franz Liszt uttered this melancholy refrain throughout his final days, which were spent in rented rooms in a house opposite Wahnfried, the home of his daughter Cosima and his deceased son-in-law Richard Wagner. Attended by incompetent doctors and ignored and treated coldly by his daughter, the great composer endured needless pain and indignity, according to a knowledgeable eyewitness. Lina Schmalhausen, his student, caregiver, and close companion, recorded in her diary a graphic description of her teacher’s illness and death. Alan Walker here presents this never-before-published account of Liszt’s demise in the summer of 1886.