Matthew Rubenstein, the pianist on this recording, has performed as a soloist and chamber musician on four continents and won the Artists International Debut competition in New York City in 1993.
Recording & Production
This recording was made in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Dahlem, Berlin, between August 12-16, 2013.
Composer Biography
Heinz Tiessen, a prominent composer of the Weimar Republic, was marginalized during the Third Reich for political and aesthetic reasons, a position from which he never fully recovered after the war.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Tiessen believed that the basic cell of tonal relationships, like the overtone series and combination tones producing the triad, is a natural phenomenon that cannot be denied in music, similar to the color spectrum in painting.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Tiessen initially accused Arnold Schoenberg, a pioneering composer of atonality, of replacing 'the tradition of craftsmanship' with 'arbitrary instinct,' even dismissing Schoenberg's Kammersinfonie as 'ugly,' but later converted to Schoenberg's influence.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Tiessen's friend, musicologist Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, suggested that Tiessen was the first critic to use the term 'expressionism' in reference to music in a 1918 lecture.
Composer Biography
Tiessen was the first musician to join the Novembergruppe, an artists' union formed after the November Revolution of 1918, which became a leading forum for a democratically oriented cultural avant-garde during the Weimar Republic.
You might also enjoy...
Clarke, Raymond: Piano Music for Children by Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Copland, Webern and Bartok
Bloch: Poems of the Sea / Nirvana / In the Night / Enfantines
Bloch: Poems of the Sea / Nirvana / In the Night / Enfantines
