Reviews

Këngë : Albanian Piano Music (GMCD 7257)

See www.guildmusic.com/reviews/rev7257z.htm for complete reviews

Audiophile Audition, www.audaud.com, December 2003

'...Kenge is translated as "song" and establishes that most of these short pieces and suites are lyrical, though with a strongly exotic turn of melody and harmonies coming from the age-old Albanian culture's mix of elements from East and West. There are waltzes, marches, humoresques, romances and nocturnes. Some of the pieces are just a bit over a minute length while Zadeja's Four Pieces for Piano runs 11. Complete notes on each piece are enclosed. A very pleasant keyboard tour of an exotic land.' 

American Record Guide, 1 March 2004

'.Kirsten Johnson. plays this music with loving care and wrote the authoritative notes; .do expect limpid melody, haunting modal harmony, folkloric atmosphere, and rhythmic vitality. Johnson plays with nuance and color; the recording is rich and resonant.'

BBC Music Magazine, 1 June 2003

'.this is a surprisingly enjoyable collection. Albania's composers turn out to have been a capable and thoroughly musicianly lot who turned limitation to advantage and worked within their narrow confines with skill and grace and inventiveness. The toccatas of Feim Ibrahimi and Arian Avrazi are invigorating works, much else has charm or carries elegiac conviction, and the haunting and impressive Four Piano Pieces of Cesk Zadeja (1927-97), at least, introduce a composer I'd like to hear more of. Kirsten Johnson, who has made an intensive study of Albania's music over the past decade, expounds all this repertoire with manifest sympathy and skill. An unexpected delight.'

Classics Today, 26 August 03

'Kirsten Johnson's loving mastery of this music and skilful, nuanced pianism are a delight. What is more, she's able to find just the right tempo, sound world, dynamic range, and character that allows each piece to emerge as an individual entity, from her exquisite legato in Zadeja's lyrical writing to the Ibrahimi Toccata's piquant fingerwork. . Does Johnson plan a sequel?'

CD Review, hosted by Andrew McGregor, Radio 3, 29 March 2003

[ Played Nina-Nana by J. Papadhimitri in entirety] 'The pianist Kirsten Johnson has spent years studying Albanian piano music, and she's gathered some of the fruits of her knowledge onto this single disc. There's some really charming music here, which you won't find anywhere else.'

Music Web, 30 April 2003

'This folk-exotica is sympathetically played by Kirsten Johnson who also wrote the excellent notes. I wonder if she is planning a second Albanian volume. If not perhaps she and Guild might consider doing the same for the piano music of Bulgaria and Rumania.

This disc has the potential to become extremely popular. I hope that the likes of Classic FM in the UK will do more than take note of it.'

TEMPO : A Quarterly Review of Modern Music, Volume 57, July 2003

'I have to confess that I knew nothing of Albanian music until I heard this disc and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. All the music here dates from the 20th century and all of it shows profound folk influence, not without good reason.. all [of] these pieces are superbly played by Kirsten Johnson and well recorded: this is a repertoire well worth exploring.'

The Times, 25 March 25 2003

'.I played the title track - the word means song - and felt the old stone heart softening at a rippling folk-song setting from the pen of Kozma Lara. Simplicity of thought dominates. .The pieces by Cesk Zadeja have more substance and grit than most. Throughout the disc you can feel a kinship with Bartok, though none of the music can survive his competition, and in bulk its triviality fatigues. But I was glad to have a door opened, and Johnson's performances, warmly recorded, offer their own attractions.'

Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen - Piano Music (GMCD 7277) and Hermann Goetz - Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen - Piano Music (GMCD 7282)

Please see http://www.guildmusic.com/reviews/rev7277z.htm for complete reviews

MusicWeb, 16 May 2005

There is an ineffable Brahmsian contentment about the lovely poco moderato (tr. 16) and this is superbly put across by Kirsten Johnson..Pleasing music-making here. Op. 16 No. 1 as well as Op. 22 No. 3 make this something that admirers of the romantic piano school must hear.

Bei Dir! [from Lose Blätter] is an unmissably dreamy piece in a Schumann-related idiom: all gentle zephyrs and wavering reed. Fruhlingsgruss has the power of a Chopin scherzo and begins with something that sounds very like a rumba though the impression soon fades only to return at 00.50..Johnson injects some welcome hardness into the allegro impetuoso [from Genre-Bilder] entirely appropriate to the Lenau poem..His six movement Alhambra Sonata is from 1878-82. These are big movements and the mood is grand in proportion to the mission..Do not be misled by the titles: this is very much Schumann with a faintly exotic twist..Sonata? I think not; perhaps 'symphonic suite' is a better description. Whatever you call it there is much here to enjoy and Schulz-Beuthen is often freshly inventive. There is very little that is routine, tired, careworn or shabby.

Definitely for the admirers of romantic era piano music especially for those partial to Schumann and floral romance. Johnson, Guild and Macdonald [jacket notes] have done a superb job - if you like one of these two CDs you will want the other as well. Rob Barnett

Minnesota Public Radio, 26 May 2005 'The New Releases' with Michael Barone (http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/new_releases/)

[First three movements of Lose Blätter and the third movement of the Alhambra Sonata are played on air] ' Kirsten Johnson advocates this little-known repertoire and does it with panache and aplomb.'

Classical Net, 3 November 2005

The American-born pianist Kirsten Johnson dispatches the music with a flamboyance and panache that betrays her young age but certainly not her precocious talent, and she definitely succeeds in capturing all the nuances of the score with disarming ease.

Classical Net, 31 October 2005

The compositions on this disc are all delightfully well crafted little gems, full of melodic inspiration and delicate textures, and the American born pianist Kirsten Johnson betrays a certain predilection for these works. Her versions are full of charm and grace, but also, when warranted, a certain virtuosic passion that brings out all the hidden nuances of these atmospheric pieces. The annotations by Malcolm Macdonald are first class, an adjective that can be attributed as well, to both the artistic and technical merits of this CD. Recommended especially for piano aficionados with a taste for the uncommon.

American Record Guide March/April 2006

Hermann Goetz (1840-76) was born in Konigsberg and studied mathematics and physics. He only began learning the piano when he was 17, but by the time he was 20 he was studying conducting, piano, and composition at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. One of his teachers, Hans von Bülow, considered him one of his most gifted students. By age 23 he had moved to Switzerland, where he remained for the rest of his life. From 1867 an he was teaching, composing, and performing in Zurich and was considered the city's leading musical figure. By the early 1870s he was considered one of German-speaking Europe's central composers. Yet by 1872 ill health forced him to concentrate an composing. He died of tuberculosis in 1876.  His piano compositions, like his playing, lack the all-out virtuosity of Brahms and Liszt. But they are products of what he called a "middle difficult Chopin technique". The Loose Leaves were written in the 1860s and the Genre-Paintings were products of the 1870s. Both are rather Schumannesque.

Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen (1838-1915) was born in Silesia where he studied chemistry initially. In the 1860s he gave himself to music and from 1862-5 he studied with Moscheles and Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory. He spent 1866-80 in Zurich. Following a nervous breakdown he moved to Dresden, where he spent most of the rest of his life.  Although he wrote extensively…most of his manuscripts were destroyed in the fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945. It is known that Liszt admired his compositions, but many of his contemporaries felt him to be too daringly modern. Most of those compositions no longer exist, so we can't judge them. Enough has survived that we know that he was a composer of considerable gifts….

This well played and very well recorded CD gives us the opportunity to hear some out-of-the-way Works. The notes are very fine, too.   BAUMAN

Der Landbote, Winterthur 13.08.2005 von WALTER LABHART

Als Nachfolger von Theodor Kirchner trat der ebenfalls in Deutschland geborene Bülow-Schüler Hermann Goetz (1840-1976) aus Königsberg im Jahre 1863 die Stelle als Organist an der Stadtkirche Winterthur an. Nachdem er hier die noch stark von seinem Vorbild Mendelssohn Bartholdy beeinflusste «Frühlingsouverture» (1864) komponiert hatte, wandte er sich der Klaviermusik zu. Mit den zwischen 1864 und 1869 geschriebenen «Losen Blättern» op.7 schuf Goetz einen pianistischen Zyklus, der bereits von einer eigenständigen Ausdrucksweise und sicherer Handhabung des Klaviersatzes zeugt.

Die aus den USA stammende, jetzt in England lebende Pianistin Kirsten Johnson hat sich die Aufgabe ziemlich leicht gemacht. Sie verzichtet nicht nur auf die musikalisch durchaus berechtigten Wiederholungen, sondern auch auf Poesie und Ausdruckstiefe. Der Aufforderung «Frisch in die Welt hinaus! » kommt sie mit reichlich angriffigem Spiel nach; «Bei dir! »entbehrt der zu erwartenden emotionalen Wärme; der «Frühlingsgruss» gleicht mehr einer spielerisch gemeisterten Etüde als einem Stimmungsbild. Der romantischen Grundhaltung des Komponisten entsprechen am ehesten die auch klanglich differenzierteren Darstellungen des besonders ausdrucksvollen Stücks «Heimatklang» mit seinen Anlehnungen an Robert Schumanns Fantasie op. 17 und der ohne Frédéric Chopins melodische Eleganz kaum denkbare Epilog «Auf Wiedersehen!».

Zur Aufwertung der in der Reihe «Musik aus der Zentralbibliothek Zürich» erschie-nenen CD trägt die auf die «Losen Blätter» folgende Gesamteinspielung der zwischen 1870 und 1876 in Zürich entstandenen «Genrebilder» op. 13 (Neuausgabe: BP 2272, Amadeus-Verlag) desselben Komponisten bei. Zwar gelten auch da die oben vorge-brachten Einwände, doch trifft Kirsten Johnson in diesen wesentlich kürzeren und prägnanteren Stücken den lyrischen Grundton der Klaviermusik von Hermann Goetz besser. Im abschliessenden Larghetto, einem zart gesponnenen Wiegenlied in der recht seltenen Tonart Ges-Dur, stösst die zuletzt von Ronald Smith ausgebildete Pianistin sogar zu beeindruckender Nachdenklichkeit und erstaunlichen klanglichen Feinheiten vor.

Rapsodi : Albanian Piano Music, Vol. 2 (GMCD 7300)

Please see http://www.guildmusic.com/reviews/rev7300z.htm for complete reviews.

MusicWeb, 9 May 2006

We need more pianists prepared to venture out into unfashionable regions. American-born Kirsten Johnson is one such pianist: valiant, having the acumen to choose her revivals wisely and with both sensitivity and fire in her playing….Folksy-romantic Albanian piano music from the 1960s scintillatingly revived and handsomely documented by Kirsten Johnson. Now let’s hear her in the piano music of other ex-communist Balkan states. Surely there should also be an opportunity to hear her in the piano concertos of Lara, Zadeja and Harapi. Rob Barnett

MusicWeb, 13 June 2006

First, I am sorry to say that I somehow missed Volume 1 of Kirsten Johnson’s enterprising series of Albanian Piano Music not least because this volume is so enjoyable and fascinating. I can only suggest that anyone with a particular interest look it out, especially in the light of what I will say about volume two….Some of the intimate nationalistically-inspired pieces have a real charm and at times made me want to book the next plane to Tirana. One in particular was Papadhimitri’s ‘Little Shepherdess’ with its simple melody over a modal drone bass. Papadhimitri clearly has a way of making a simple idea so effective….Johnson plays with real sympathy. I had not heard these works before - who has? - and of course have no scores. She is however a perfect advocate and a true enthusiast for this little known music.

I can honestly say that if I had not been sent this CD to review then I would have purchased it. This project is fascinating, enterprising and should be supported. More music from Albania should be given an airing. Quite apart from that it is of good quality and is immensely enjoyable. Gary Higginson

Tempo, October 2006, Cambridge University Press

It was three years ago that Kirsten Johnson's first exemplary CD of Albanian piano was issued by Guild. All of that music was completely new to me (and probably to all but a few other listeners), as is the music on this second volume, but some of the same composers' names re-appear. The older generation of Ibrahimi and Harapi, Kozma Lara and Sokoli are represented, as is the newer name of Papadhimitri (b. 1948). Amongst the elder composers - that is, those born just after the end of the 1914-1918 war - we can hear how profound was French influence before the Iron Curtain came down on Albanian music.  Ibrahimi's Waltz and Harapi's Sonatina particularly show a French neo-classical influence combined with late 19th-century bravura style (apparent in much of this Albanian music) that is wholly engaging. According to Ms Johnson's excellent notes, Ibrahimi was often taken to task by the League of Artists and Writers for his use of pulsating rhythms, fragmentation of melodies and unconventional harmonic resolutions that went way beyond the bounds of Hoxha-approved social realism. By decree, all the composers had to make use of folk elements in their work: when Ibrahimi met Kirsten Johnson in 1995 in Tirana he told her that he had to 'shield his true intentions as a composer' by using such elements. The results make for interesting listening. 
            The equivocal but charming Satie-like Waltz by Tish Daija (composer of the first Albanian string quartet in 1953) somehow seems to have eluded the censors. The music in Johnson's programme is not all serious: Alberto Paparisto's Scherzo' and Dance is full of surprises, even humorous.  Like many of these composers Kozma Lara (b.1931) studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in the 1950s and has composed huge quantities of piano music including five piano concertos, four rhapsodies for piano and orchestra, sonatas, heroic ballades and much more. I found much of his music rather overblown for my taste and too rhetorical, and felt much the same for the Albanian Rhapsody No.2 by Sokoli (b. 1920). The music works best when it is unaffected, simple but with dynamic contrasts of rhythm and melody; the finest aspects of the folk music. But then, if we all had to work within the confines of institutional censorship as these composers did, we too might have cast aesthetic preferences aside in order to survive. This is an enjoyable CD and beautifully played by Ms Johnson. Raymond Head