Hans Gal - Chamber Music Vol.3 | Toccata Classics TOCC0433

Hans Gal - Chamber Music Vol.3

£13.25

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Label: Toccata Classics

Cat No: TOCC0433

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Chamber

Release Date: 29th March 2018

Contents

Artists

Katalin Kertesz (violin)
Nichola Blakey (viola)
Cressida Nash (cello)
Sarah Beth Briggs (piano)

Works

Gal, Hans

Piano Quartet in B flat major, op.13
Sonatina in F major
Sonatinas (3) for violin and piano, op.71

Artists

Katalin Kertesz (violin)
Nichola Blakey (viola)
Cressida Nash (cello)
Sarah Beth Briggs (piano)

About

These five works, from three different stages of Hans Gál’s long life (1890–1987), all show his consummate craftsmanship but are otherwise quite different in character. The passionate Piano Quartet (1914), downstream from Brahms and Dvořák, brings the grand gestures of Romanticism into the early twentieth century. The 1935 Sonatina in F major for violin and piano, recently rediscovered, and the three Sonatinas from 1956 put a premium on textural clarity and lyrical approachability. Here the contrapuntal ingenuity, ceaseless thematic development, harmonic freedom and rhythmic unpredictability of Gál’s language animate the music from within. The booklet text, by Gál’s daughter Eva, provides unique insights into his creative character.

Newcastle-born pianist Sarah Beth Briggs was a finalist in the BBC Young Musician competition at the age of eleven and studied with Denis Matthews and Edith Fischer. She has broadcast and performed live in the UK, around Europe and the USA, and made the first recording of Hans Gál’s Piano Concerto. Katalin Kertész, violin, was born in Budapest and studied in Germany. Since moving to the UK, she has performed on both period and modern violin in a multitude of chamber groups and ensembles. She is leader of the Kertész Quartet, with which she recently recorded the four string quartets by the nineteenth-century Czech composer Heinrich Wenzel Veit for Toccata Classics, Quartets Nos. 1 and 2 appearing on TOCC0335. Nichola Blakey, viola, enjoys a busy freelance career giving concerts and recitals across the UK and abroad with a number of ensembles and orchestras. Cressida Nash, cello, is a founder member of Musicians South West. She created and toured the well-reviewed show ‘Women of World War One’.

Sound/Video



Reviews

The earliest work here is the Piano Quartet which dates from around 1914. ... The piano writing is virtuosic, and Sarah Beth Briggs, no stranger to Gál’s music - I reviewed her premiere recording of the Piano Concerto a couple of years ago - meets the technical challenges with aplomb. In fact, all four players contour the ebb and flow of the music with consummate skill and authority, never once losing sight of the rhetoric. ... Katalin Kertész’s warm, burnished tone and affectionate phrasing, matched with Sarah Beth Briggs’s sensitive pianism, is a winning element in these captivating performances. They’re aided by a sympathetic acoustic and ideal balance.  Stephen Greenbank
MusicWeb International April 2018
Toccata’s Hans Gál series, with its various sub-sets, has now reached the third volume of his chamber music … a most enjoyable continuation of this series.  Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb International

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