Studio Masters

Alexei Lubimov – Ives, Berg & Webern: Concord (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:03:13 minutes | 533 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Zig-Zag Territoires

Lest anyone think modernist piano pieces all sound the same or operate on the same premises, Alexei Lubimov has chosen a program of key works that are not only quite varied in style, content, and expression, but are distinctive because of their originality. Charles Ives’ iconoclastic Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-60,” is an excellent example of his method of freely juxtaposing chaotic dissonances and jagged rhythms with raucous quotations of popular melodies and hymn tunes, in a spirit of rugged American individualism. To contrast this sonata, Lubimov has selected works from the Second Viennese School, to demonstrate the approaches taken by Anton Webern in his dodecaphonic Piano Variations, and Alban Berg in his loosely atonal Piano Sonata, Op. 1. Where Webern strives for a delicate balance of pitches and a purity of ideas, Berg’s music is intensely emotional, languid, and unsettled, and these characteristics show that their approaches diverged as much from each other as they did from Ives. Lubimov’s playing is sensitive and sympathetic, and his clear interpretations make this album something of a revelation, even for those who know these pieces well. To be sure, they are still challenging today, many decades after they were written, and they are enjoyed most by well-informed and adventurous listeners. Lubimov provides a fine introduction to these landmarks of modernism, and this exceptional disc from Zig Zag Territoires and Outhere Music is highly recommended.

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Alexei Lubimov – Dussek: Complete Piano Sonatas, Op. 44 & Op. 77 (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:35 minutes | 1,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Brilliant Classics

If you had to name the bridge between Beethoven and Schubert, it would have to be Dusek. Sadly, his lack of a local following – Beethoven, Mozart, Hayden, Schubert and Brahms all had adopted home towns to root for them, after all – has made him less of an obvious choice. Born in Lithuania, he went to live in St Petersburg, where he dodged deportation to Siberia by moving to Paris, where he dodged a revolutionary tribunal by fleeing to London, which he had to leave in a hurry in order to escape prison, winding up in Hamburg… And eventually he would find himself in Prague, and, finally, Paris, where he died at the age of just 52. For this third volume of his complete sonatas, Alexei Lubimov – playing a 1799 Longman-Clementi fortepiano – has chosen two monuments of his mature period: the 18th Sonata “L’Adieu” of 1800 and the staggering 28th Sonata “The Invocation” from 1812. These works reveal a Dussek who is anchored as much in the past – with Bach’s polyphonic rigour and an elegance of writing taken from Mozart and Hayden – as he is in the present, with the power of Beethoven; and indeed the future with impressive turns of harmonic and pianistic daring. His years spent with London’s Broadwood piano-makers, with whom he would work on many innovations, were clearly not in vain. Alexei Lubimov studied with Heinrich Neuhaus – the great Russian piano teacher – and at the start of his career specialised in the hyper-avant-garde of Boulez, Cage and Stockhausen, before turning towards period instruments, which he was the first to bring to the very conservative Moscow Conservatory. From the 1980s he was able to excite the interest of the whole Soviet musical world in the fortepiano, before developing a global career.
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