Walter Niemann: Masken, Op.59: 3 - Kokette
Phillip Sear plays 'Coquette', one of '20 kleine Charakterstücke' from around 1918 by the German composer Walter Niemann (1876-1953).
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Walter Niemann (1876-1953), who studied composition with Humperdinck and Reinecke, is best known today for his many short piano pieces, although he also wrote larger scale works. He spent much of his life in Hamburg and Leipzig. In his many piano suites, Niemann often looked to antiquity and/or exotic locations (e.g., Bali, China, Japan and many others). However, much of this music, with a preponderance of sequences of sonorous parallel chords sounds doggedly Germanic (for example, compare the relative exoticism of Godowsky's 'Java Suite' as opposed to Niemann's 'Bali' suite), and one imagines Niemann looking through illustrated travel journals rather than visiting the locations evoked. Nevertheless, the suites contain some genuinely beautiful moments. Niemann was very good at portraying country landscapes, often with echoing cow-calls or church bells.
This cycle of 20 character pieces was conceived as a 'new Carnaval', after Schumann, and the opening and closing pieces are in his style. The set is dedicated to the German pianist (pupil of Liszt and Moscheles) and teacher Willy Rehberg (1863-1937).
Thumbnail image from Piqsels ( https://tinyurl.com/y8z89s5c ).
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Played by Phillip Sear
http://www.psear.co.uk (Email: [email protected]
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