At the age of eight Abbey Simon (1920–2019) began private studies with Josef Hofmann and at ten was awarded a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He studied with David Saperton, Dora Zaslavsky and Harold Bauer and also with Leopold Godowsky. At 19 he won the Naumberg Award which launched his career.

He made his New York recital debut at the Town Hall and during the 1940s played throughout America with many orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony and the Minneapolis Symphony. In 1949 he made his European debut (with concerts in Rome, Amsterdam, Paris and London) and subsequently toured the world playing in the Middle East, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and South America.

In the early 1990s Simon was struck by a car in Amsterdam, causing severe injuries to his hands: the first three fingers of the right hand and the thumb of the left were severely damaged. Thanks to reconstructive surgery in Geneva he was playing at Carnegie Hall within only three months.

Simon was a pianist in the great Romantic tradition. His repertoire centred on Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninov and Ravel, and he had a virtuoso technique which he employed with effortless ease coupled with a smooth, clear sound. The majority of his recorded output is on the Vox label. For Vox Simon recorded the complete works for piano and orchestra by Rachmaninov, the complete piano works of Ravel, and the major piano works of Chopin and Schumann.

The Hamburg Symphony Orchestra has been an orchestra for the people of Hamburg since it was founded in 1957. The home of the concert orchestra has always been the Laeiszhalle, a venue steeped in tradition. Since the opening of the Elbphilharmonie it has been called Hamburg Symphony Orchestra – Laeiszhalle Orchestra.

Here the Symphony Orchestra and its artistic director Daniel Kühnel create popular subscription programmes and special concerts including silent films with live music. Highlights of the year include regular opera performances at the State Opera House or at the Academy of Music, as well as open-air summer concerts in the Town Hall courtyard. Since the 2018/19 season, the orchestra has been led by the world-renowned opera and concert conductor Sylvain Cambreling, who succeeded Sir Jeffrey Tate, who passed away in June 2017, and who has received considerable international acclaim for his rousing, imaginative and colourful performances.

With concerts of the highest standard, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra has become an essential part of the city’s musical life in recent decades. This claim is reflected in well thought-out programmes and the targeted selection of soloists and long-term artistic partners such as Martha Argerich. The musicians see themselves as a ‘thinking orchestra’ and, together with all the other players in the Hamburg music world, they want to give their city its own musical voice. With a wide range of educational opportunities, they are present throughout the city and bring the sound of Hamburg to the world on national and international tours.

www.symphonikerhamburg.de

Heribert Beissel (1933–2021) studied conducting with Günter Wand at the Cologne College of Music, piano and composition with Frank Martin, and violin. He began his career as a conductor in Bonn upon winning First Prize for Conducting at the German Music Council competition. He was a recital accompanist and chamber musician at WDR Cologne for several years, and was principal conductor of the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra from 1971 to 1985. He was closely associated with the Hamburg State Opera during this period, as well as conducting the NDR Symphony Orchestra, and the choirs of SDR and NDR.

Beissel conducted extensively worldwide including in almost all of the nations of Europe, and appeared at festivals in Ravello, Ansbach, Bregenz, Flanders, Berlin, Istanbul and Schleswig-Holstein.

In 1986 he founded the Klassische Philharmonie Bonn with which he toured Germany’s greatest concert halls. From 1991 to 1999 he was principal conductor of the Halle Philharmonic State Orchestra, and from 2001 to 2006 principal conductor of the Brandenburg State Orchestra in Frankfurt an der Oder, later becoming honorary conductor.

Heribert Beissel conducted a wide range of music from Bach to Debussy, and released several recordings on LP and CD, as well as making radio broadcasts. In 1998 he was awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and in 2012 the Order of Merit of Saxony-Anhalt.

Born near Warsaw in 1810, the son of a French émigré and a Polish mother, Chopin won early fame in the relatively limited circles of his native country before seeking his fortune abroad, in Paris. His departure from Warsaw coincided with the unsuccessful national uprising against Russian domination, and Chopin found himself in Paris in the company of a number of other Polish exiles. He was able to establish himself as a pianist and as a teacher of the piano, primarily in fashionable society. For some ten years Chopin enjoyed a liaison with the writer George Sand, but he broke with her during the last years of his life, which was brought to a close by the tuberculosis from which he had long suffered. His compositions, principally for the piano, make a remarkable use of the newly developed instrument, exploring its poetic possibilities while generally avoiding the more obvious ostentation of the Paris school of performers.

Orchestral Music

As a young musician embarking on a career as a pianist, Chopin provided himself with half a dozen works for piano and orchestra, a form for which he later found no necessity. These include two piano concertos, three works based on Polish themes, a fantasia, a Krakowiak and a grand polonaise, and a set of variations on a theme by Mozart.

Chamber Music

Chopin wrote his Introduction and Polonaise brillante for cello and piano for an early patron, and towards the end of his life he wrote a cello sonata. His G minor Piano Trio is a valuable addition to recital repertoire.

Piano Music

Chopin created or developed a number of new forms of piano music, vehicles for his own poetic use of the instrument, with its exploration of nuance, its original harmonies and its discreet but often considerable technical demands. He used the popular form of the waltz in a score of such compositions, of which the so-called Minute Waltz is probably the best known of many of almost equal familiarity. A Polish dance, the polonaise, elevated from village to ballroom, provided the basis of another characteristic form in sixteen such works, written between 1817, when Chopin was seven, and 1846. The best known, among generally familiar works, are the Polonaise in A major, Op 40, No 1, the Polonaise in A flat, Op 53, and the Polonaise-Fantaisie, Op 61. Other Polish dances used by Chopin include the 62 mazurkas. The four ballades are supposedly based on patriotic poems by Chopin’s friend Mickiewicz, evocative narrative works with no precise extra-musical association. The 21 nocturnes continue an evocative form initiated by the Irish pianist John Field. Chopin wrote 26 preludes, 24 of them completed during an ill-fated winter with George Sand in Mallorca, and 27 études, of which the Revolutionary Étude is perhaps the best known. Other compositions include four scherzos, expansions of the earlier form into a more extended virtuoso piece, three sonatas, a berceuse, a barcarolle, four impromptus and a number of other works. The whole body of Chopin’s music is of the greatest musical and technical importance, melodies often of operatic inspiration and harmonies and forms of considerable originality.

Life and Works of Chopin

Naxos new “Composer Sound-Portraits”, containing 4 CDs and a 164-page booklet

Life and Works: CHOPIN (Siepmann) 8.558001–04