Guillaume Bellom

Guillaume Bellom, Ismaël Margain – Mozart: Piano Four hands (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 58:56 minutes | 924 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was one of the first to compose pieces for piano four hands. His father, Leopold, wrote in a letter of 9 July 1765: “In London Wolfgangerl wrote his first piece for four hands. Until that time no sonata for four hands had ever been composed.”

The famous Salzburg family portrait painted by Johann Nepomuk della Croce in 1780-81 (Mozarteum, Salzburg) shows Wolfgang and his sister, Nannerl, playing a duet at the piano, with Leopold, violin in hand, looking on, and his wife, Anna Maria (d. 1778), included in a picture on the wall.

The three works presented here were composed in Vienna in 1786 and 1787, when the young virtuoso was about to give up his career as a pianist in order to concentrate on the composition of operas, having been stimulated by his meeting with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. In the summer of 1786 he composed what is probably the most ambitious and most significant of his four-hand pieces, the Sonata in F major (KV 497). It was first performed in Vienna on 4 November 1786, four months before the Andante and Variations in G major (KV 501). His last sonata for piano four hands, in C major, KV 521, was written in May 1787, when Mozart had reached his full maturity as a composer. It is characterised by the light key of C major and the virtuosity of its two fast movements (especially the first), bright and brilliant in their elegance.

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Ismaël Margain, Guillaume Bellom – Schubert (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/88,2 kHz | Time – 01:19:00 minutes | 1,16 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Aparté

‘Friendship and complicity’ could have been the title of this recording, made by two fine young musicians, both aged only 20.

Ismaël Margain (prize-winner in the Long-Thibaud competition 2012) and Guillaume Bellom (piano prize, Besançon Young Musicians competition 2008) illustrate the intimacy and the close sharing of musical pleasure that are major features of Schubert’s piano duets.

The composer produced 32 original compositions for piano four-hands that include some of the finest ever written, among which are the three masterpieces presented here: highly Romantic, almost symphonic works, with stormy episodes and poignant melodies of which melancholy is a dominant feature.

Revealed by the Deauville Festival and the Polignac Foundation, this talented young duo, with its rare, and heart-warming, complicity, will undoubtedly go far.

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Guillaume Bellom, Ismaël Margain – À deux pianos (Live at Deauville) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:02 minutes | 1,24 GB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © B Records

In the heart of summer, just a few steps from the beaches, two pianos were facing each other, played by Ismaël Margain and Guillaume Bellom. These two passionate young musicians impressed an audience, captivated by their four hands. They know each other perfectly, they go hand in hand and reveal the volume, the complexity, the fury and sometimes the tenderness of this romantic music. They express as well Schumann’s melancholy as Chostakovitch’s quasi-cinematographic liveliness. An intense moment, something like a short drama that was recorded by B Records for an album in relief, a black and white album.

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