Album Set Features All 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Ground-breaking new Michael Houstoun Album Set Features All 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas

BEETHOVEN | Complete Piano Sonatas
Michael Houstoun

Rattle Records, The Wallace Arts Trust and Victoria University of Wellington are delighted to announce the release ofBeethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas, an extraordinary new work from one of the world’s finest Beethoven interpreters, New Zealand’s own Michael Houstoun.

Launched at Parliament tonight by Minister of Arts and Culture Maggie Barry, the handsome hand-crafted 14-CD boxed set comes complete with an illustrated hardback book including extensive notes on each sonata by Michael Houstoun (The Beethoven Piano Sonatas), and a biography of Michael by Charlotte Wilson (A Portrait of Michael Houstoun).

Rattle Records label manager Steve Garden says this ground-breaking album set is sure to be a collector's item for all lovers of classical music.

"Michael is acknowledged as one of the greatest interpreters of Beethoven in the world and this very special project matches the genius of Beethoven's music with one of New Zealand's most superb musicians."

The album follows Houstoun's highly acclaimed 2013 concert series Beethoven ReCYCLE with Chamber Music New Zealand performing all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas around the country.

Houstoun has a special relationship with Beethoven's music stretches back to his childhood and he credits hearing the Appassionata sonata with awakening a realisation that he wanted to be a musician.

"I can see myself exactly where I was standing in our house. I was still very young," Houstoun recalls. "It came to the second subject and my whole stomach just turned over. It was like the light went on. And I just knew something then that I hadn't known ten seconds before about myself, and about my whole life; that I was going to be a musician.

"It was Beethoven who woke me up to myself as a musician."

Houstoun says he has a particular affinity with Beethoven. "There is a power in this music that I feel is not in Mozart or Haydn; some basic emotional psychological power.

"And there are moods that you never deal with in any other composer, from the highest highs to the lowest lows and everything in between. He is so complex and so human and is investigating often quite subtle states."

Houstoun has previously recorded eight albums featuring Beethoven piano sonatas, but Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas was recorded over 12 days at the Adam Concert Room in Wellington in December 2013, and April and May 2014 as a complete package. It is presented in seven programmes - allowing the listener to experience the sonatas in the order created by Houstoun for his performances of the complete cycle in the early 1990s and repeated in 2013 on his Beethoven ReCYCLE tour.

Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas is Michael Houstoun's fifth recording on Rattle. The specially packaged 14-CD box set is distributed by Ode/Marbecks and is available from music retailers and the Marbecks and Rattle websites. Also available digitally through Amazon, iTunes, Amplifier and Mighty Ape. RRP $189.00

www.rattle.co.nz

ENDS

© Scoop Media