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Piano Concerto - Live Recording
Max Reger

Piano Concerto - Live Recording

Markus Becker

Label: CAvi
Format: CD
Barcode: 4260085533060
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Catalog number: AVI 8553306
Releasedate: 08-03-19
- The only LIVE recording of this colossal pieces of the German composer Max Reger
- Markus Becker has worldwide a singular reputation as THE Reger specialist (recorded the entire works for piano solo and chamber music for another label over the last 10 years)
- The Piano Concerto is a fairly special pieces, from the same time as Busoni’s Concerto, very heavy, very long, very difficult, which requires a permanent and nonstop action of the soloist – very singular

A huge mass of different sounds

„I’ve been playing and studying Reger’s piano music for a long time now. In the 1990s, not long after graduation, I recorded his complete works for solo piano. Ever since then, I’ve been featuring Reger frequently in my recitals: not only solo piano pieces, but chamber music including violin, clarinet and cello sonatas, the works for two pianos, piano trios, quartets, and Lieder. Reger composed an impressive quantity of music in almost all genres.

Of course I’ve been familiar with the Piano Concerto for a long time, but I only recorded it for the first time live in January 2017. That is the source for the recording on this CD. To be honest, at first I had my doubts about this piece. So many notes, all the dense chords, and rapid changes of register –daunting leaps across the keyboard! – along with extreme dynamics (pppp and ffff ).

We already encounter that kind of superabundance elsewhere in Reger, but here he takes it to the extreme. The “full” piano is usually playing in tandem with the full orchestra. In our rehearsals, Joshua Weilerstein, the Radio Philharmonic and I were constantly working on trying to achieve the right balance between the orchestra and the piano.…….“ (Interview with Markus Becker from the Booklet)