Des styles italiens novateurs comme l'opéra et l'oratorio, tous deux ayant pour base les mêmes concepts rhétoriques, se sont répandus très rapidement à travers toute l'Europe et c'est dans les régions de langue allemande que les modèles furent développés avec le plus d'ardeur. Le programme de ce CD Sanctum Desiderium est une soigneuse sélection de compositions allemandes du dix-septième siècle qui expriment un désir sacré en le traduisant aussi par des images musicales.

These interpretations are enormously pleasurable and at times revelatory. Always clean and never showy, Giltburg’s pianism is ideally suited to late Beethoven, and his touch throughout is light and flexible…There are no histrionics in his treatment of Op. 109, and none in the variations of Op. 111 – no fashionable excursions into jazz – while Op. 110 comes over with a plainness and sincerity which warms the heart.

Boris Giltburg’s personal exploration of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas reaches its penultimate volume. The Sonata No. 27, Op. 90 dates from 1814 and foreshadows Beethoven’s late period in its nuanced, expressive musical language. Sonata No. 28, Op. 101 is the first of Beethoven’s late period piano works, combining haunting poetic beauty with complex contrapuntal passages. Sonata No. 29, Op. 106, nicknamed ‘Hammerklavier’, is a monumental, symphonic work, pushing all boundaries of what had been achieved in the sonata form so far.

John Storgårds is a Finnish conductor and violin virtuoso, known for his strong interest in playing and promoting contemporary music. After studying violin with Esther Raitio and Jouko Ignatius at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, he went to Israel to study with Chaim Taub. While performing as an orchestra musician, Storgårds frequently led as concert master, and he developed an interest in conducting, particularly after receiving an offer to conduct the Helsinki University Symphony Orchestra.

Hans Werner Henze's career is notable for his mastery of a broad range of idioms, from the post-Romantic lyricism of Cantata della fiaba estrema to the neo-classical delicacy of his chamber music to the brash modernism of Der langwierige Weg in die Wohnung der Natasha Ungeheuer. Voices, written in 1973, can be heard as a compendium of many of the types of music he had embraced.