{"product_id":"symphonies-2-748871065024","title":"Symphonies 2","description":"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\".","brand":"Somm Recordings","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46371805921363,"sku":"2478636X","price":18.89,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0732\/1937\/5187\/files\/4075303_54056e8c-4aa7-437e-b05f-43fb5c1eb108.jpg?v=1790445148","url":"https:\/\/www.deepdiscount.com\/products\/symphonies-2-748871065024","provider":"Deep Discount","version":"1.0","type":"link"}