Sheila Arnold - Brahms Intimissimo with Blüthner 1862 (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/88]

Recording on our partner label CAvi Music, pianist Sheila Arnold releases her album, on which she performs Brahms, Bach and Jörg Widmann on a special Blüthner grand piano from the early 1860s. As the piano is built with strings that are still straight and not overstrung, the registers are clearly different. The instrument has an unmistakable tone quality due to the unique way it is built, which provides an added layer of multidimensionality for the listener.

“In 2022, when I played this Blüthner for the first time, I was left speechless at first – and that only seemed to make the instrument’s sheer eloquence all the more impressive. I immediately and quasi-unconsciously felt inspired to try out the beginning of Brahms’ Intermezzo (Notturno) in E Major, Op. 116. The piece’s dialogue between deep inner longing, on the one hand, and the loveliness and grace of the response suggested by the music, on the other – all of this was ‘simply there’ all at once,” Arnold states. "It seems to me that this Blüthner Grand Salon Piano is the instrument I have been looking for all my life, and I am happy that it has found its way to me. It has a humanity in its timbre, along with clarity of polyphony. The individual notes have depth and lightness; this exceptional instrument possesses the eloquence of human speech and a songlike tone.”

TRACKLIST

1. Sheila Arnold - No. 1 in D Minor. Andante
2. Sheila Arnold - No. 2 in D Major. Andante
3. Sheila Arnold - No. 3 in B Minor. Intermezzo
4. Sheila Arnold - No. 4 in B Major. Andante con moto
5. Sheila Arnold - No. 1
6. Sheila Arnold - No. 2, Zart singend
7. Sheila Arnold - No. 1, Capriccio in D Minor
8. Sheila Arnold - No. 2, Intermezzo in A Minor
9. Sheila Arnold - No. 3, Capriccio in G Minor
10. Sheila Arnold - No. 4, Intermezzo in E Major
11. Sheila Arnold - No. 5, Intermezzo in E Minor
12. Sheila Arnold - No. 6, Intermezzo in E Major
13. Sheila Arnold - No. 7, Capriccio in D Minor
14. Sheila Arnold - No. 4, Wiegenlied
15. Sheila Arnold - No. 1 in E-Flat Major. Andante moderato
16. Sheila Arnold - No. 2 in B-Flat Minor. Andante non troppo e con molto espressione
17. Sheila Arnold - No. 3 in C-Sharp Minor. Andante con moto
18. Sheila Arnold - Prelude in E Major, BWV 878



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