New Release
July 2010


Wolfram Lorenzen explores Max Reger’s piano cosmos

Wolfram Lorenzen has long distinguished himself as an exquisite interpreter of the great German piano tradition, particularly of the music of Robert Schumann and Max Reger. Now he is finally receiving the attention he deserves, as the Munich label Troubadisc is remastering Lorenzen’s radio recordings and issuing compilations on CDs. The critics’ praise has been considerable, especially for the most recent releases. Thus, according to Klassik heute, the complete recording of Robert Schumann’s Novelettes (TRO-CD 01435), which does justice to a long underappreciated masterful cycle, is “a courageous, powerful interpretation and a valuable, all-in-all highly solid, responsible contribution to Schumann year.” And Salzburg’s knowledgeable piano expert Peter Cossé praised the performance of Max Reger’s colossal Piano Concerto, Mendelssohn’s Capriccio brillant, and Bartók’s Rhapsodie op. 1 with enthusiastic words: “Above all I bow before Lorenzen’s prudent, powerful, but also thoughtful-restrained virtuosity.”

Now Lorenzen’s first Reger solo album, compiled from high-quality radio recordings from the 1990s. The main work is the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Johann Sebastian Bach, op. 81. with which, in the words of Eduard Erdmann, Reger gave us “something great,” a “miraculous structure with its liturgy-like content.” Reger himself considered the grandiosely conceived work, composed in the summer of 1904, as “the best that I have written up to now.” Here he demonstrates for the first time in a sovereign manner his new, revolutionary technique of varying an actually already rather complex theme in a large-scale cycle. Unlike his predecessors Beethoven or Brahms, Reger breaks open the context of the thematic figure, allows offshoots and secondary themes to develop extensive lives of their own, and in this way creates a kaleidoscopic, highly varied large form that goes far beyond that which is already inherent in Bach’s original theme. With this, Reger takes a decisive step into the venturesome realm of chromatic modernity, where such different masters as Schoenberg, Szymanowski, Prokofiev, or Hindemith were to follow him. None of them would have been possible without his pioneering spirit. With sovereign mastery, Lorenzen unfolds the mighty architecture that culminates in a clearly structured rendition of the crowning final fugue.

The other works on the CD are indeed hardly known today, yet likewise substantial creations of German post-Romantic piano literature: two of the four Sonatinas op. 89, which in terms of their scope and elaborate development technique could actually be considered fully valid, compactly conceived, full-fledged sonatas, had the hesitant Reger not avoided the name of the genre out of respect for Beethoven. And the five wonderfully varied Humoresques op. 20 from 1989, which number among the best from the pen of the young Max Reger, and that carry on the history of the Romantic genre of the “humoresque,” established by Schumann, in such an independent and captivating manner. Lorenzen’s playing contributes to the awareness of Reger as the worthy heir and, at the same time, audacious vanquisher of the Classical-Romantic piano tradition. A treasure trove of great discoveries for every open-minded listener!