Born into a family of professional musicians, Maria Kliegel was given a cello at the age of ten, her father intending to form a string quartet within the family. After winning first prize twice in the German Jugend Musiziert (Young Musician) competition she went to the Frankfurt Conservatory and then to Canada for masterclasses with János Starker. Starker took her as a pupil at Bloomington, bringing discipline and technique to her otherwise instinctive musicianship. Intensive artistic instruction then came from Rostropovich’s month-long classes in Basle: he spent two weeks guiding students through concertos with the piano before allowing them to perform with an orchestra. Kliegel’s subsequent success at the Rostropovich Competition in Paris immediately led to an international profile, which, continually developed over the years, positioned her unquestionably among the world’s leading performers. Simultaneously, she pursued academic endeavours and embraced a multitude of diverse life challenges beyond her musical career. Recording highlights include her Dvořák and Elgar Concertos and Schnittke’s Cello Concerto No. 1, described by the composer as ‘definitive’.

In cello pedagogy Kliegel’s activities include a professorship at the Cologne Musikhochschule and a multi-media publication, Cello Master Class Using Technique and Imagination to Achieve Artistic Expression (originally in German).

Kliegel’s playing is characterised by a warmth and sensitivity which complements established works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as core twentieth-century works. Her playing is notably refined and beautiful, with a fastidious approach and (often the case with more recent players) the ability to adapt a mainstream style to suit a variety of repertory.

The Bach Cello Suites (2003) are given an uncontroversial reading, Kliegel displaying accomplishment and careful consideration. There is clarity and resonance to her playing, relying upon fundamental tone production rather than too much glossy and historically anachronistic vibrato. A similarly thoughtful approach characterises Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra (2000): there is a lightness and elegance to the sound that suits the established mid-twentieth-century understanding of classical style. More exciting is Beethoven’s Op. 102 No. 1 Sonata (2003), with an energetic mood in the opening Allegro vivace, for example, albeit with a slightly exaggerated approach to Beethoven’s famous accents. This said, there is a somewhat saccharine understanding of slower passages, but the performance is well balanced and delivered with a beautiful bel canto. Richer tones are explored in Brahms’s Op. 99 Sonata (1992), with a committed outlook in the first movement. This reading is perhaps marred by a stereotypical ‘Brahms sound’: that is to say, the twentieth-century misconception that such music necessitates thick textures, steady tempi and heavily-applied vibrato.

Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 (1995) is equally worthy. This is an attractive recording, though lacking the committed fire (and flaws!) of Rostropovich’s performances of this powerful work.

In many ways Kliegel’s recordings are excellent, with evidence of an adaptable and sensitive aesthetic within an apparent conformity to recent notions of good taste.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Milsom (A–Z of String Players, Naxos 8.558081-84)

Kristin Merscher was born in Frankfurt am Main and as a seven-year-old had her first regular piano instruction there at the Conservatory. One year later she moved with her family to Hanover, studying at the Hanover Hochschule für Musik. From 1977 until 1980 she studied in Paris with an eminent teacher at the Conservatoire, with regular summer masterclasses with György Sebok in Switzerland and at Indiana University.

She made her début at the age of ten in a piano concerto by Haydn and her first solo recital at the age of fourteen, later embarking on a solo career which has taken her to the principal music centres of Europe, to the Far East and to Canada and the United States of America, as well as to the Middle East.

The son of a schoolmaster who had settled in Vienna, Franz Schubert was educated as a chorister of the imperial court chapel. He later qualified as a schoolteacher, briefly and thereafter intermittently joining his father in the classroom. He spent his life largely in Vienna, enjoying the company of friends but never holding any position in the musical establishment or attracting the kind of patronage that Beethoven had 20 years earlier. His final years were clouded by illness as the result of a syphilitic infection, and he died aged 31, leaving much unfinished. His gifts had been most notably expressed in song, his talent for melody always evident in his other compositions. Schubert’s compositions are generally numbered according to the Deutsch catalogue, with the letter D.

Stage Works

Schubert wrote operas, Singspiel and incidental music for the theatre. His best-known compositions of this kind include the music for the unsuccessful play Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern (‘Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus’), mounted at the Theater an der Wien in December 1823. The ballet music and entracte from Rosamunde are particularly well-known.

Church Music

Among the various works Schubert wrote for church use, particular mention may be made of the second of his six complete settings of the Mass. He completed his final setting of the Mass in the last year of his life, and it was first performed the following year.

Choral and Vocal Music

Schubert wrote for mixed voices, male voices and female voices, but by far the most famous of his vocal compositions are the 500 or so songs—settings of verses ranging from Shakespeare to his friends and contemporaries. His song cycles published in his lifetime are Die schöne Müllerin (‘The Fair Maid of the Mill’) and Die Winterreise (‘The Winter Journey’), while Schwanengesang (‘Swan Song’) was compiled by a publisher after the composer’s early death. Many songs by Schubert are very familiar, including ‘Der Erlkönig’(‘The Erlking’), the ‘Mignon’songs from Goethe and the seven songs based on The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott.

Orchestral Music

The ‘Unfinished’ Symphony of Schubert was written in 1822, but no complete addition was made to the two movements of the work. Other symphonies of the eight more or less completed include the ‘Great’ C major Symphony and the Classical and charming Fifth Symphony. His various overtures include two ‘in the Italian style’.

Chamber Music

Of Schubert’s various string quartets the Quartet in A minor, with its variations on the well-known Rosamunde theme and the Quartet in D minor ‘Death and the Maiden’, with variations on the song of that name, are the most familiar. The Piano Quintet, ‘Die Forelle’ (‘The Trout’), includes a movement of variations on that song, while the great C major String Quintet of 1828 is of unsurpassable beauty. The two piano trios and the single-movement Notturno date from the same year. Schubert’s Octet for clarinet, horn, bassoon, two violins, viola, cello and double bass was written early in 1824. To the violin sonatas (sonatinas) of 1816 may be added the more ambitious ‘Duo’ Sonata for violin and piano, D. 574, of the following year and the Fantasy, D. 934, published in 1828, the year of Schubert’s death. The ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata was written for a newly devised and soon obsolete stringed instrument, the arpeggione. It now provides additional repertoire for the cello or viola.

Piano Music

Schubert’s compositions for piano include a number of sonatas, some left unfinished, as well as the Wanderer Fantasy and two sets of impromptus, D. 899 and D. 935. He also wrote a number of dances for piano—waltzes, Ländler and German dances. His music for piano duet includes a Divertissement à l’hongroise, marches and polonaises largely written for daughters of a member of the Esterházy family, for whom he was for a time employed as a private teacher.

The son of a bookseller, publisher and writer, Robert Schumann showed early abilities in both music and literature, the second facility used in his later writing on musical subjects. After brief study at university, he was allowed by his widowed mother and guardian to undertake serious study of the piano with Friedrich Wieck, whose favourite daughter Clara was later to become Schumann’s wife. His ambitions as a pianist were thwarted by a weakness in the fingers of one hand, but the 1830s nevertheless brought a number of compositions for the instrument. The year of his marriage, 1840, was a year of song, followed by attempts in which his young wife encouraged him at more ambitious forms of orchestral composition. Settling first in Leipzig and then in Dresden, the Schumanns moved in 1850 to Düsseldorf, where Schumann had his first official appointment, as municipal director of music. In 1854 he had a serious mental breakdown, followed by two years in the asylum at Endenich before his death in 1856. As a composer Schumann’s gifts are clearly heard in his piano music and in his songs.

Orchestral Music

Symphonies

Schumann completed four symphonies, after earlier unsuccessful attempts at the form. The first, written soon after his marriage and completed early in 1841, is known as ‘Spring’ and has a suggested programme. His Second Symphony followed in 1846, and the Third Symphony, ‘Rhenish’, a celebration of the Rhineland and its great cathedral at Cologne, was written in Düsseldorf in 1850. Symphony No. 4 was in fact an earlier work, revised in 1851 and first performed in Düsseldorf in 1853. The Overture, Scherzo and Finale, Op. 52 was described by the composer as a ‘symphonette’.

Concertos

Schumann’s only completed piano concerto was started in 1841 and finished in 1845. The Cello Concerto of 1850 was first performed four years after Schumann’s death, while the 1853 Violin Concerto had to wait over 80 years before its first performance in 1937. The Konzertstück for four French horns is an interesting addition to orchestral repertoire, and his Introduction and Allegro for piano and orchestra was completed in 1853.

Overtures

Schumann’s only completed opera, Genoveva, was unsuccessful in the theatre, but its overture holds a place in concert-hall repertoire, along with an overture to Byron’s Manfred, again first intended for the theatre. Concert overtures include Die Braut von Messina (‘The Bride from Messina’), based on Schiller’s play of that name; Julius Cäsar, based on Shakespeare; and Hermann und Dorothea, based on Goethe. A setting of scenes from Goethe’s Faust also includes an overture.

Chamber Music

Schumann wrote three string quartets in 1842, a fertile period that also saw the composition of a piano quintet and a piano quartet. Other important chamber music by Schumann includes three piano trios, three violin sonatas, and a number of shorter character pieces that include the Märchenbilder for viola and piano, collections of Phantasiestücke with alternative instrumentation, the Fünf Stücke im Volkston for cello (or violin) and piano, and other short pieces generally suggesting a literary or otherwise extra-musical programme.

Choral and Vocal Music

Schumann wrote a number of part-songs for mixed voices, for women’s voices and for men’s voices, including four collections of Romanzen und Balladen and two of Romanzen for women’s voices. His choral works with orchestra include Scenes from Goethe’s Faust; Das Paradies und die Peri, based on Thomas Moore’s poem Lalla Rookh; and Requiem for Mignon, based on Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister. In his final years he wrote a Mass and a Requiem. The solo songs of Schumann offer a rich repertoire and are an important addition to the body of German Lieder. From these many settings mention may be made of the collections and song cycles Myrthen, Op. 25, Liederkreis, Op. 39, Frauenliebe und -leben, Op. 42, and Dichterliebe, Op. 48, all written in the ‘Year of Song’, 1840.

Piano Music

The piano music of Schumann, whether written for himself, for his wife, or, in later years, for his children, offers a wealth of material. From the earlier period comes Carnaval—a series of short musical scenes with motifs derived from the letters of the town of Asch; this was the home of a fellow student of Friedrich Wieck called Ernestine von Fricken, to whom Schumann was briefly engaged. The same period brought the Davidsbündlertänze (‘Dances of the League of David’), a reference to the imaginary league of friends of art against the surrounding Philistines. This decade also brought the first version of the monumental Symphonic Studies (based on a theme by the father of Ernestine von Fricken) and the well-known Kinderszenen (‘Scenes of Childhood’). Kreisleriana has its literary source in the Hoffmann character Kapellmeister Kreisler, Papillons (‘Butterflies’) has a source in the work of the writer Jean Paul, and Noveletten has a clear literary reference in the very title. Later piano music by Schumann includes the Album für die Jugend (‘Album for the Young’) of 1848, Waldszenen (‘Forest Scenes’) of 1849, and the collected Bunte Blätter (‘Coloured Leaves’) and Albumblätter (‘Album Leaves’) drawn from earlier work.