Martin Klett

Martin Klett – Debussy, Préludes I & Crumb, Makrokosmos I (2020/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:17:09 minutes | 595 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin

The music critic Emile Vuillermoz wrote about the pianist Debussy: “No one like him could transform a dissonant chord into a small, bronze or silver bell whose harmonic sound spreads out in all four directions.” Martin Klett’s interpretation is hardly inferior to this, although he chooses much more cautious tempi than the composer. The magical sound of the Préludes is, however, clearly sharpened by this. This aspect connects Debussy’s cycle with that of the American composer George Crumb. In the first volume of Makrokosmos, dedicated to the signs of the zodiac, the focus is not on the astronomical dimension, but on the astrological. In this sense, Crumb’s Makrokosmos is also a collection of character pieces, as developed in a more romantic sense by Robert Schumann in his piano works in the 19th century.

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Martin Klett – Guastavino & Rachmaninoff (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 58:35 minutes | 489 MB | Genre: Classical, Piano
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CAvi-music

Harmonies and virtuosity: that is what the two composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Carlos Guastavino have in common. “Even though the geographical distance between them was immense, their approach to the piano was strikingly similar”, remarks Martin Klett. In both composers the Romantic element is paired with apparent attractive simplicity and ambitious piano artistry. Klett begins his album with a brief piece by the Argentinian composer Guastavino (1912-2000), one of the country’s most outstanding composers. In the course of his travels to Europe, the U.S.S.R., and China, he often presented his own piano works and songs in public – as well as his orchestral works, profoundly imbued with folklore. The listener will discover among others the Sonatina in three movements, where the composer associates folklore elements with the Romantic sonatina form. Klett continues with a selection of Guastavino’s Cantos Populares, Argentinian “Songs Without Words” so to speak. This cycle consists of ten brief aphorisms – often a short tango, a zamba, or a chacarera. The programme’s section dedicated to Guastavino closes with Las Niñas (The Girls, written 1953), where the link towards Rachmaninov seems rather obvious. A perfect transition to introduce Rachmaninoff’sSecond Sonata, which was composed in Rome in 1913 and helped consolidate his reputation as Russia’s last great Romantic. Once Rachmaninoff had performed the Second Sonatamany times in public, he decided to revise it thoroughly in 1931, and Klett plays this definite version. Klett, a former student of Elisabeth Leonskaja, Leon Fleisher and Pascal Devoyon, won the International Johannes Brahms Competition and the German National Music Competition, and has become a welcome guest at the prestigious music festivals of Lucerne, Schleswig-Holstein, Heidelberg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schwetzingen to name just a few.

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