Pianist Jonathan Biss and Orchid Classics announce new album City Stanzas, out October 4

'City Stanzas' is the second recorded volume of Biss's Beethoven/5 project, which commissioned new works by five of today's most celebrated composers in response to Beethoven's piano concerti

This recording, which includes a new work by Sally Beamish paired with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1, features the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Omer Meir Wellber

 

... deeply insightful approach to the pillars of the repertoire and a desire to forge connections between that canon and the present...

-The Boston Globe

For immediate release – In 2015, pianist Jonathan Biss initiated the Beethoven/5 commissioning project with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and more than fifteen other orchestras, resulting in a groundbreaking collaboration over nine years. The project yielded five extraordinary new piano works by some of today’s most significant composers, responding to Beethoven’s own concerti.

Volume Two sees 'City Stanzas', written by British composer Sally Beamish to pair with Beethoven’s first piano concerto, marking a thematic departure from Beamish’s earlier works often inspired by nature. The concerto shifts focus to urban landscapes, and while initially envisioned as a celebration of human creativity the tone of the piece altered due to the political unrest in the UK and USA in 2015, with Beamish’s work responding to the greed and disparity prevalent in centers of power, and issues such as profit-driven technology, efficient armaments, and social inequality.

While all the material in 'City Stanzas' derives in some way from Beethoven’s concerto, with Beamish inspired by Jonathan Biss’s individual, expressive and virtuosic playing, the work is also deeply affected by both the composer and artist’s shared anxiety for the future.

Said Biss: "Sally and I first met to talk about this commission in 2015; neither of us could have predicted the path the work would take from that moment of inception to its premiere two years later. Inspired by the boundless energy and optimism of Beethoven's concerto, whose structure and motives she plays with and makes her own, Sally first envisioned a celebratory piece - one that takes joy in the human capacity for invention. As 2016 unfolded, gripped by pessimism and anxiety about the future, the piece took a far darker turn, using the same materials but looking at them through a destructive, even nihilistic lens. Beethoven's concerto and Sally's 'City Stanzas', taken together, capture the full range of humanity's capabilities."

'City Stanzas' was commissioned by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Orchestre de Chambre de Paris with support from Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.

The world premiere was given by Jonathan Biss, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Mischa Santora, on Inauguration Day in the USA – January 20, 2017 – at Ordway Hall, St Paul, Minnesota.

Album Track List

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto No.1 in C major, Op.15
1. I Allegro con brio
2. II Largo
3. III Rondo: Allegro

Sally Beamish (b.1956)
City Stanzas (Piano Concerto No.3)
4. I Burlesque
5. II Requiem
6. III Rondo

About Jonathan Biss

Pianist Jonathan Biss is recognized globally for his “impeccable taste and a formidable technique” (The New Yorker) and has appeared as a soloist with some of the world's foremost orchestras, including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Boston Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw, the London Symphony and more. Biss is also the author of Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven, in which he examines music and his own life 's journey through the lens of Beethoven's last piano sonatas. He has served as the Co-Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival alongside pianist Mitsuko Uchida since 2018.

Photos

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Media Contact: Mackenzie Horne | Unison Media | mackenzie@unison.media

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