Pianist Markus Becker notes that Reger's Piano Concerto requires constant work on sound balance between the piano and the full orchestra due to its dense scoring and extreme dynamics.
Recording & Production
The recording of Reger's Piano Concerto on this album is a live recording from January 2017, captured at the Großer Sendesaal des NDR Hannover.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Reger's musical style is described as simultaneously looking backward and forward, building a new musical language with familiar vocabulary, often seeming to cut up and reassemble musical snippets.
Historical Context
Max Reger lived during a time when composers like Stravinsky and Debussy were writing groundbreaking works, and twelve-tone music was emerging in Vienna and Prague.
Performer Biography
Markus Becker, the pianist on this album, recorded Max Reger's complete piano works on 12 CDs, a feat described as "one of the rare and truly major achievements of German piano artistry in the past 50 years."
Compositional Technique
Max Reger's Piano Concerto is characterized by an abundance of notes, dense chords, rapid register changes, and extreme dynamics, often with the piano playing in tandem with the full orchestra.
Performer Biography
Joshua Weilerstein, the conductor on this album, is the Artistic Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and hosts a classical music podcast called 'Sticky Notes'.
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