Andreas Staier

Andreas Staier – Méditation (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:55 minutes | 1,33 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics

Andreas Staier’s informed and inspired interpretations have left their mark on the discography of both the harpsichord and the fortepiano and have enabled us to see Bach, Mozart and Schubert in a completely new light. This is Staier’s first solo album of a projected series for Alpha Classics, in which he also presents his own compositions for the first time. “Two motifs connect the works in this recording: the first is a ancient cantus firmus, a melody in long notes […] the second is the interval sequence of octave, fifth, sixth, and third. […] Anklänge , my six pieces for harpsichord, grew out of several conversations I had with the composer Brice Pauset about what it means to compose in our time, and in particular what it implies to compose for historical instruments. This led me to ask myself how I could express and capture my own conception of music in notes, marked as it is not only by Byrd, Bach and Schubert, but also by the music of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

(more…)

Andreas Staier – J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:49:09 minutes | 2,41 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

After a recording of Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier that earned unanimous acclaim from the press, Andreas Staier now gives us an equally poetic and flamboyant interpretation of the first book. At once architect and colourist, he constantly varies the atmospheres, unfolding an infinite palette of musical landscapes. Under his fingers, this immense cathedral in sound is revealed in all its thrilling diversity. An exhilarating experience!
(more…)

Andreas Staier – Diabelli Variations (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:07:28 minutes | 549 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

In 1819, music publisher and composer Anton Diabelli sent a waltz of his own creation to all the important composers of the Austrian Empire, asking each of them to write a variation on it. His plan was to publish the variations in a patriotic volume called Vaterlandischer Kunstlerverein and to use the profits to benefit orphans and widows of the Napoleonic Wars. Beethoven chose to write not just a single variation, but a set of thirty-three. His audacious submission, the Diabelli Variations, has since become one of the most revered examples of the genre. On this fascinating disc, pianist Andreas Staier, playing a fortepiano after Conrad Graf, pairs Beethoven s magnum opus with a selection of the other works based upon Diabelli s waltz. Here you can discover the very first stirrings of Liszt s virtuosity (aged eleven), the music of Mozart s son, variations by Kreutzer, Kalkbrenner and even the great Franz Schubert. This fascinating album sheds welcome new light on both the music and the milieu of Beethoven s timeless masterpiece.
(more…)

Andreas Staier – Schumann: Variationen & Fantasiestücke (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:50 minutes | 943 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

Counting the album of violin sonatas he made with violinist Daniel Sepec, this is the third Schumann release from historical-instrument specialist Andreas Staier. Staier’s recordings of earlier keyboard music had some really surprising sounds, but with Schumann, playing an 1837 Erard, it’s a realm not too far removed from the modern piano: better able to capture the intimate shadings of the Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, perhaps. But, even more so than in previous releases, Staier has come up with a really arresting program this time, and done it full justice. What it is is a sort of arch shape, featuring Schumann’s first published composition, the Abegg Variations, Op. 1, and the last thing he wrote as he descended into insanity, the Variations in E flat major (“Ghost Variations”), along with two sets of Fantasiestücke (the term came from E.T.A. Hoffmann), one early, one late. The Abegg Variations also fare well on Staier’s Erard, and he captures the explosive talent incipient in them as what seems to be a polite variation set morphs into something completely different. But the real find here is Schumann swan song, the Ghost Variations, which were suppressed by Clara Schumann and Brahms and are still rarely performed. Schumann worked on the piece after his suicide attempt, with radically altered handwriting. He declared it finished, but it has a sort of radical simplicity based on the theme that he said had been dictated to him by angels. People haven’t known quite what to make of this, but Staier finds profound things in the work, most of all the dissolution of the theme behind arpeggio “noise” in the last variation, perhaps the composer’s final reflection on what was happening to him. At the very least, it’s worth hearing. Staier is also superb in the later set of Fantasiestücke, Op. 111, which fit well into the general reevaluation of Schumann’s late works. Two intensely chromatic short pieces, the last with some very strange octave-displaced leading tones, surround a slow movement whose outer sections are almost completely static explorations of the resonances of a single harmony. This is a fabulous release that may singlehandedly rewrite the Schumann canon.
(more…)

Andreas Staier – Mozart Piano Sonatas K330/331/332 (2005)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:01:28 minutes | 496 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

We all know that Mozart had an impish sense of humour. Now we know it is shared by the gifted German pianist Andreas Staier, who permits himself authentically Amadean fun with his decorative conceits in these three inter-linked sonatas, especially in the celebrated ‘Ronda alla Turca’ from the most distinctive, K.331. But he also accords the composer due respect, bringing as much grace and poise to the contemplative slow movements as sprightly mischief to the pyrotechnical passages. In few hands can the fortepiano sound so expressive; at times, it is tempting to wonder if this is much how Mozart played his own works.
(more…)

Andreas Staier – J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:20:05 minutes | 3,10 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © harmonia mundi

With the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Johann Sebastian Bach left posterity one of the most dazzling masterpieces in the history of music. Formal rigour and musical emotion meet in perfect communion. Following several outstanding recordings of other works by Bach, Andreas Staier invites us to climb this Everest once again, but starting, as it were, with the north face, the second book, and revealing its poetry, its sensibility and its daunting architecture with the utmost naturalness.
(more…)