After some biographical information as if he wanted to prove that Kalkbrenner had not only a nasty character, but was a mediocre musician as well, Mr. Nicholas inquires and answers himself: “What was he like as a pianist? Much can be gleaned from listening to the two concertos on this disc, written specially to show […]
With some cautiousness I continued my reading of the booklet only to learn that Heine “lampooned him as ‘a bonbon fallen in the mud’” (by the way, not Heine’s own definition) and reported of a concert in 1843 that “on (Kalkbrenner’s) lips there still gleamed that embalmed smile which we recently noticed on those of […]
One could assume that Kalkbrenner’s “Méthode de piano” based on the practice only for the fingers were of no use for the new generation pianists yet not lesser than Liszt wrote: “….Dank meinem eifrigen Studium der Kalkbrenner’schen Klaviermethode…”, “…thanks to my zealous study of Kalkbrenner’s piano method…” Did Charles-Louis Hanon, whose exercises are still played […]
2. The other recording is with Kalkbrenner’s 2 concertos – Nr. 1 and Nr. 4, made in 2006 and played by the renowned pianist Howard Shelley to whom we owe so many wonderful musical discoveries. I think in most cases, when a musician records some (especially unknown) music, it is because he (or she) likes, […]
It exists only one serious biography (in German) about him – by Hans Nautsch „Friedrich Kalkbrenner. Wirkung und Werk“ 1983. Some choice of scores can be found here. And there are two recordings of Kalkbrenner’s works on the market: 1. Kalkbrenner – Romantic piano works, played by Michael Krücker on a fortepiano. Every musician who […]