Further Reading
27th July 2021
The piano duo talk about their new series of recordings of Beethoven's symphonies transcribed by Scharwenka, and discuss the unique musical changes that took place over Scharwenka's own lifetime.
"SOMM Recordings is delighted to announce the eagerly-awaited second volume of the Tessa Uys and Ben Schoeman Piano Duo’s ground-breaking series exploring Franz Xaver Scharwenka’s transcriptions of Beethoven Symphonies. A composer of no mean stature in his own right, Scharwenka’s transcriptions were once widely admired, his treatments of Beethoven’s symphonies a high-watermark of the genre. Volume 1 (SOMMCD 0637) met with universal acclaim; Gramophone praising the 'mastery' of the performances, BBC Music finding it 'utterly beguiling' and MusicWeb International declaring 'I was blown away by this magnificent recording'. Volume 2 features the first recording of Scharwenka’s transcription of Beethoven’s iconic Fifth Symphony for piano duet. Claiming a direct connection to Beethoven via his teacher Franz Kullak, who had studied with Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny, Scharwenka provides a virtuosic re-imagining of the Fifth’s tremendous scale, organic growth and seething energy. The Variations on a Theme of Beethoven by Saint-Saëns show him, Robert Matthew-Walker says in his informative booklet notes, 'at his most brilliant and searching… beautiful, imposing and elegant, as well as humorous'. Robert Schumann’s Andante and Variations in B-flat reveal Romanticism’s quintessential musical poet at his most emotionally acute: 'overhung with a pervading sense of intimacy, the music unfolds as a series of reflections upon the Andante theme, refracted in genuine variation styles of tempo, rhythm, tonalities (beautifully implied) and character'. Born in Cape Town and a Royal Academy of Music Associate, Tessa Uys has an impressive reputation as a concert and broadcasting performer, appearing at major venues around the world. Her multi-prize-winning South African compatriot Ben Schoeman has a busy international profile and is currently a senior lecturer in piano and musicology at the University of Pretoria. First playing as a Duo in 2010, their admired explorations of Scharwenka’s four-hand Beethoven transcriptions on the concert platform began in 2015."
