Marie-Elisabeth Hecker / Antwerp Symphony Orchestra / Edo de Waart ELGAR Cello Concerto - Piano Quintet

Cellist Marie-Elisabeth Hecker made her international breakthrough with her sensational success at the 8th Rostropovich Competition in Paris in 2005, where she became the first contestant in the event's history to win the first prize as well as two special prizes. Since then Hecker has become one of the most sought-after soloists and chamber musicians of her generation, recognised for her deep expression and natural affinity for the cello, with Die Zeit describing her playing as "heartbreakingly sad and instinctively beautiful". 

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.

Pauline Sachse / Andreas Hecker VIOLA GALANTE

„….Original compositions for viola as a solo instrument were quite rare before 1775. There are several reasons for this, and they go back a long way. In ensembles, the viola, as the middle part, usually played a subordinate role. In court and municipal orchestras, the posts of violists were generally poorly filled in terms of both quality and of quantity – also because violists were poorly paid. The first author to highlight the viola’s pivotal role in harmony and voice-leading was Johann Mattheson (1681-1764), who pointed out in 1713 that everything would sound dissonant without the viola. Then, in 1738, Johann Philipp Eisel (1698-1763) described the viola as the “innards of music”. Further statements can be found – for instance, Johann Samuel Petri (1738-1808), in his Manual of Practical Music-Making (1782), exclaimed: “Another mistake! The viola is so mistreated! A beautiful instrument that achieves such great effect is generally put through torture by ignorant apprentices or stupid old men.” 

However, the fact that solo viola parts were generally entrusted to skillful violinists eventually led to the emergence of works written specifically for viola. 

With this recording exclusively featuring world premières (with the exception of Flackton) of original compositions for viola, we are thus able to provide a multi-faceted glimpse of late 18th-century repertoire for viola and keyboard – works that are mostly forgotten today. …..“ (Excerpt from the liner Notes)

Isabelle Faust / Daniel Harding BRAHMS Violin Concerto - String Sextet No. 2

The booklet of Isabelle Faust’s new recording includes an essay written by her regarding the performing editions used and the significance of the violinist Joseph Joachim in the string works of Johannes Brahms, as seen from a performer’s point of view. Since Brahms did not belong to a generation of composers who mastered several different instruments – as had Bach or Mozart – and composed from the perspective of a pianist, his exchange of ideas with Joachim, which in the case of the Violin Concerto lasted almost a year, was of decisive importance for the final form of the piece, one of the most difficult in the repertoire. Isabelle uses the rarely played cadenza by Ferruccio Busoni, which dates from 1913. Brahms got to know Busoni as a child prodigy and recommended the young pianist in a number of artistic circles: ‘What Schumann did for me, I will do for Busoni.’ The spirit of Joseph Joachim also hovers over the second work on this recording, for the composer regarded the violinist as his most important adviser in the realm of chamber music too. In the case of his Sextet, however, the most perceptible influence is that of the doomed love affair between the composer and the soprano Agathe von Siebold. That Brahms was unable to overcome their separation with a light heart is clear from the monument in sound to his lost romance in the lyrical second theme of the first movement. ‘A-GA- D/H-E’1 proclaims the sequence of notes making up the motif (bars 162 ff). Isabelle generously credits Christopher Hogwood, Robert Pascall, Stefan Weymar and Douglas Woodfull-Harris for their active support in all questions relating to the manuscript and the first edition of Op.36 and for generously making available a prepublication copy of the new Bärenreiter edition. Gramophone Magazine gave Isabelle Faust its Young Artist of the Year Award for her first recording of sonatas by Béla Bartók, in 1997 [now reissued on hm gold with volume 2].

The year 2010 marked a new stage in her recording career: Diapason voted her CD of Bach Partitas and Sonatas a Diapason d’Or of the Year, while her complete set of the Beethoven Sonatas with Alexander Melnikov, received the Gramophone Award for Best Chamber Recording. Composed of around 40 musicians from 20 different nations, and independent of external sponsorship, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1997 by the players themselves and Claudio Abbado. In 1998, at the age of 22, Daniel Harding became Principal Guest Conductor; in 2003 he was named Music Director and he has served as Principal Conductor since 2008, conducting around a quarter of the orchestra’s projects each season. He is also Music Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the LSO and Music Partner of the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. (Presto Classical)

“a poetic player with an irresistibly warm sound, a tightly controlled vibrato and an athletic technique." BBC Music Magazine