Presents
Theodor Kirchner
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Soundbites | |
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No.5 Novellette |
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Bunte Blätter for Piano Trio, Op.83
Theodor Kirchner (1823-1903) was born in the town of Neukirchen near Chemnitz in the German province of Saxony. He showed a prodigious musical talent at an early age, however, his father was reluctant to let him study music. It was only after hearing both Schumann and Mendelssohn highly praise his son’s talent that he permitted Theodor to attend the Leipzig Conservatory, where he studied with Mendelssohn, among others. It was upon Mendelssohn’s recommendation that Kirchner in 1843 obtained his first position as organist of the main church in Winterthur in Switzerland. He was a friend of both Robert and Clara Schumann as well as Brahms. Kirchner’s compositional talent was widely respected and held in the highest regard by Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, Wagner and many others. But Kirchner, found himself unable to write large scale works. Rather, he excelled at writing miniatures. He would often write several at a time and then publish them together, each with a different mood and feel and each perfect in its own way. He was widely considered to be the undisputed master of the character piece, a short kind of free form work. Kirchner literally wrote hundreds of such pieces which can rightly be considered little gems, little masterpieces.
The Bunte Blätter were originally published in 1888 as his Op.83, a set of 12 pieces. He titled the group Bunte Blätter (which in German means brightly colored leaves such as what one sees in the forest in Autumn) Each of these wonderful, emotive short pieces has its own mood and feeling. Together they make a full length program work but any one of them could easily serve as a fine encore each with a different mood
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(A) Bunte Blätter Book 1 |
$24.95 |
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(B) Bunte Blätter Book 2 |
$24.95 |
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(C) Bunte Blätter Both Books |
$39.95 |
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