Vive la France! Debussy & Saint-Saint-Saëns (Edition Ruhr Piano Festival, Vol. 37)

„I’ve been playing and studying Reger’s piano music for a long time now. In the 1990s, not longafter graduation, I recorded his complete works for solo piano. Ever since then, I’ve been featuringReger frequently in my recitals: not only solo piano pieces, but chamber music including violin,clarinet and cello sonatas, the works for two pianos, piano trios, quartets, and Lieder. Regercomposed an impressive quantity of music in almost all genres.Of course I’ve been familiar with the Piano Concerto for a long time, but I only recorded it for thefirst time live in January 2017. That is the source for the recording on this CD. To be honest, atfirst I had my doubts about this piece. So many notes, all the dense chords, and rapid changes ofregister –daunting leaps across the keyboard! – along with extreme dynamics (pppp and ffff ). Wealready encounter that kind of superabundance elsewhere in Reger, but here he takes it to theextreme. The “full” piano is usually playing in tandem with the full orchestra. In our rehearsals,Joshua Weilerstein, the Radio Philharmonic and I were constantly working on trying to achieve theright balance between the orchestra and the piano.…….“