April 2010

Osterklang-Festival: Noch wird gebetet, zumindest musikalisch

...Der virtuose Grazer Cellist Friedrich Kleinhapl trat in Rostropowitschs Fußstapfen und zauberte schwebende Emanationen der Naturtonreihe aus seinem Instrument. Diesen Klängen schien die Chormusik jeweils zu entströmen...

...Die fulminante Ausführung durch Johannes Hiemetsbergers Chor, den Cellisten und die Schlagwerker Josef Gumpinger und David Panzl sorgte im Auditorium spürbar für Anteilnahme.

April 2010

Sonne, Mond und Gesang

...In der Karwoche 2010 ließ der Cellist Friedrich Kleinhapl den sakralen Raum erklingen. In archaischen Beschwörungsformeln ergänzte das Soloinstrument die brachialen Einwürfeder Percussionsinstrumente,...

...Kurzes Werk, große Wirkung: In John Taveners "Svyati" riefen die Sänger, Chormeister Hiemetsberger und der einsame Cellist zum innigen, altslawisch-orthodoxen Gebet.

March 2010

On March 31 cellist Friedrich Kleinhapl will perform Sofia Gubadulina’s “Canticle of the Sun” and Knut Nystedt’s “Stabat Matera as part of Vienna's OsterKlang Wien Festival. ** The annual Easter Festival traditionally opens with a performance of the Vienna Philharmonic. The performance takes place in the Minoritenkirche, a French Gothic church in Vienna’s first district that dates back to 1276 and is famous for its life-size mosaic copy of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, a work commissioned by Napoleon in 1809.

Friedrich Kleinhapl has left a trail of impressed critics on his recent Beethoven-sonata tour on the East Coast. Writing in the New York Times, Steve Smith attested that “Purists would have been scandalized. But Mr. Kleinhapl and Mr. Woyke supported their idiosyncratic vision of Beethoven with unimpeachable virtuosity and a thrilling unanimity of spirit.” And the usually measured Celia Porter wrote in the Washington Post that Woyke and Kleinhapl created “scenes of exciting havoc, their performance was driven and unorthodox, leading the audience to the brink of the music’s emotional abyss.” Chicago Sun-Times critic Andrew Patner, responding to a recital broadcast, simply exclaimed “Wow! What an exceptional player”. His recording of Beethoven’s first three cello sonatas elicited enthusiastic responses and was chosen as one of the Top Ten new releases of 2009 by Washington’s public radio station, Classical WETA 90.9.

When Kleinhapl was a member of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, Claudio Abbado encouraged him to explore modern works “to discover new textures, more complex sounds, more difficult rhythmical structures”. Since then he has premiered several new concertos and has performed works like Knut Nystedt’s “Stabat Mater”, Friedrich Gulda’s wild Cello Concerto, and Sofia Gubaidulina’s "Canticle of the Sun" to great acclaim. Kleinhapl will be making his Town Hall debut this December with performances of Zemlinksy’s Three Pieces for Cello and Piano, as well as Schnittke, Rachmaninoff, and Beethoven—whose remaining Sonatas and Variations he and Woyke will record for release in October of 2010.

Sofia Gubaidulina is one of the foremost, and most often performed, composers of our time. She was born in 1931 in Christopol (the Tartarstan Republic, then of the Soviet Union, now part of the Russian Federation). She first studied composition at the Conservatory in the Tartarstan capital Kazan and upon graduation in 1954 went on to study in Moscow. Her early interest in religious expression in music, coupled with what was deemed a ‘modernistic’ idiom, got her work banned from performance in the Soviet Union. She says about herself: “I understand ‘religion’ in the literal meaning of the word, as ‘re-ligio’, which is to say: the restoration of connections, the restoration of the legato to life. There is no more serious task for music than this.”

Encouragement to continue in her own, inimitable style came from colleagues like Dmitry Shostakovich and Russian performers in the West—notably Mstislav Rostropovich and Gidon Kremer—helped to get her performed. In 1992 she emigrated to Germany where she resides near Hamburg.

When the International Bach Academy of Stuttgart commissioned four new Passions in 2000—one for each Gospel—to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death and the Christian bi-millennium, they went to the most important composers from four different cultural realms: Wolfgang Rihm, the doyen among German composers, Tan Dun from China, Argentinian Osvaldo Golijov, and Ms. Gubaidulina. Simplicity, sincerity, an otherworldly accessibility, and the exploration of the mystical qualities of music mark her body of work. If composers like Tan Dun and Golijov have gone on to make a bigger splash in the classical music scene, it’s because Gubaidulina is an altogether quieter character, lacking the populist streak of her colleagues. The two composers Gubaidulina most admires are Johann Sebastian Bach and Anton Webern.

Her music has been commissioned and premiered by artists like Yuri Bashmet, Sir Simon Rattle, Anne Sophie Mutter, the Kronos Quartet, the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Library of Congress, and many more. Sofia Gubaidulina is a recipient of the Great Distinguished Service Cross of Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her discography continues to grow steadily and spreads across labels like Deutsche Grammophon, Chandos, Philips, Sony, BIS, Hänssler, and Berlin Classics.

"Canticle of the Sun": Based on St. Francis of Assisi’s prayer of the same name (“Laudes Creaturarum”), Gubaidulina created in “Canticle of the Sun” something that is both a cello concerto and a choral work. Involving percussion, celesta, chorus, and the cello soloist, it does not merely underline the words of St. Francis with music, but rather uses the chorus to create a general atmosphere above which the cellist can express himself to the fullest. This includes using his cello as a percussion instrument, playing the bass drum, and bowing the flexatone. On that note: Friedrich Kleinhapl plays the 1743 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini “Ex von Zweygberg”, a loan from the Austrian National Bank’s instrument collection and one of the most prized cellos there are. It is particularly appropriate that the performance should be held in the Minoritenkirche which was originally—in 1224—dedicated to the followers of Francis of Assisi. OsterKlang will go through April 4th.

Febbraio 2010

Kleinhapl, il violoncello e la gioia

La storia del violoncellista austriaco Friedrich Kleinhapl non è una vicenda qualunque. Un’infanzia e una giovinezza segnata da una grave malattia che ne ha segnato e condizionato la crescita, quindi l’insorgere di un aggressivo tumore cerebrale poi fortunamente sconfitto. Basta guardare ancora prima che ascoltare Kleinhapl, osservare la sua postura e quella dello strumento che imbraccia o piuttosto che abbraccia come fosse un’amante (è un Guadagnini del 1743 prestato dalla Banca Nazionale Austriaca), per capire come per lui suonare non sia soltanto e semplicemente una professione, ma una ragione di vita. Il senso stesso dell’esistenza. Eppure non c’è sforzo alcuno, all’apparenza, nel suo modo di suonare, ma solo gioia. Interprete dalla musicalità travolgente, dotato di intonazione purissima e di un suono dall’intensità emozionante, Kleinhapl ha avuto come mentori Claudio Abbado e Yehudi Menuhin, Paul Tortelier e Tibor Varga. L’abbiamo ascoltato nel concerto organizzato, in occasione della Festa Nazionale Austriaca, dal Consolato Generale d’Austria e dal Forum Austriaco di Cultura nella Chiesa di Sant’Antonio Abate, luogo storico della musica a Milano (tanto per dirne una, fu lì che si tenne la prima esecuzione del mottetto mozartiano Exsultate, jubilate K 165). Insieme col pianista Andreas Woyke – col quale forma un bel duo dal 2003 – Kneihapl ha eseguito le Sonate op. 5 n. 2 e op. 69 di Beethoven; nel mezzo, da solo, la mirabolante Cadenza dal Concerto per violoncello di Friedrich Gulda, di fatto un pezzo a sé per l’ampiezza come per le asperità richieste all’esecutore. Ma sono le interpretazioni di Beethoven a colpire anzitutto: tese e brillanti, ma al contempo percorse da un’estrema attenzione alla componente affettiva e affettuosa, alle diverse sfumature poetiche della scrittura e, nel caso specifico dell’op. 69, al sottile equilibrio tra cantabilità e arguzie del Witz. Interpretazioni che nella loro coinvolgente generosità sanno mantenersi sempre vivide e interessanti, ma che posseggono anche un nitore assoluto e dispiegano un florilegio continuo e inesauribile di raffinatezze e om•breggiature espressive. Cesare Fertonani Beethoven, Mozart, Gulda S. Antonio Abate

December 2009

Best recordings of 2009

The major American radio station Classical WETA put the Beethoven CD on their charts of the best 2009 recordings.

Beethoven, Cello Sonatas 1-3, Friedrich Kleinhapl & Andreas Woyke, ARS Produktion 38035

The quality of Friedrich Kleinhapl’s and Andreas Woyke’s playing and their Beethoven interpretation leave no room for any misgivings with these three cello sonatas. This is refreshingly gutsy Beethoven playing of the highest order, ferocious and musical. It would be an awkward performance, actually, if it were not for the pianist Woyke to excel at least every bit as much as Kleinhapl on his 1743 Guadagnini (“ex von Zweygberg”). Woyke doesn’t ‘accompany’, he leads, he embellishes and intensifies along with Kleinhapl, and reins his partner in when necessary. Were it not for the delicious sound of Kleinhapl’s cello, even when he abuses the poor instrument, the interpretation might be titled: “It’s the pianism, stupid.” One hopes that this disc doesn’t have any marketing problems in the UK or Commonwealth countries for being on the ARS Produktion label.

September 2009

Cellist and Pianist, United by Passion and Power
„For a relatively unknown performer to make a splash in New York is no simple matter. But when Friedrich Kleinhapl, an Austrian cellist, and Andreas Woyke, a German pianist, arrived on Tuesday night to play a program featuring Beethoven’s first three cello sonatas (Op. 5, Nos. 1 and 2, and Op. 69), they had several things working in their favor.

First was the location: Mr. Kleinhapl and Mr. Woyke, who have performed and recorded together since 2003, appeared at the Austrian Cultural Forum, whose intimate concert hall is among the city’s best chamber-music spaces. Second, they were well equipped; the forum provides a small but powerful Bösendorfer piano, and Mr. Kleinhapl plays a magnificent 1743 Guadagnini cello, albeit one fitted with modern titanium parts and steel strings.Most important, these players had a vision they wanted to express. Speaking from the stage before the concert, Mr. Kleinhapl, a self-avowed Romantic, said he had come to Beethoven late, initially resistant to the tidy charms of Viennese Classicism. But by reading up on the composer’s life and listening to recordings by the pianist Friedrich Gulda, he had come to see Beethoven as a figure of Romantic intensity and unsettling power: paradoxically or not, the view long promulgated by the mass media.

Liberties, almost needless to say, were taken. Mr. Kleinhapl plied his instrument’s gorgeous woody tone with an oversize ardor, shaping lines as a singer might. Mr. Woyke, also a composer, improviser and jazz performer, pushed and pulled tempos, exaggerated dynamics and lingered over pauses, to striking effect.

Purists would have been scandalized. But Mr. Kleinhapl and Mr. Woyke supported their idiosyncratic vision of Beethoven with unimpeachable virtuosity and a thrilling unanimity of spirit. The intensity with which they listened and responded to each other’s impetuous gestures was its own reward, but they also shed new light on these familiar pieces.

Alone, Mr. Kleinhapl played two brief modern works: “Monologi” by Oistein Sommerfeldt, a Norwegian composer, and the cadenza from Mr. Gulda’s Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra. Though neither approached the audacity of the Beethoven interpretations, each offered an effective showcase for Mr. Kleinhapl’s abundant skill and unbridled passion.“

October 2009

Beethoven broke new paths with his music. In many of his compositions he fragmented his themes, making them almost unrecognizable, leaving it up to performers to make sense of the whole. Friedrich Kleinhapl, on a lovely 1743 Guadagnini cello, and the pianist Andreas Woyke played Beethoven’s first three sonatas for their instruments at the Austrian Embassy on Thursday night. Creating scenes of exciting havoc, their performance was driven and unorthodox, leading the capacity audience to the brink of the music’s emotional abyss by quicker-than-the speed-of-light contrasts in dynamics and tempo, abrupt pauses, and asymmetrical phrasing. Yet, working together as if one voice, the duo gave daring new meaning to Beethoven’s overall structural landscape even in these early works. (Occasionally, to some ears, however, the musicians’ extremes bypassed the cello’s opportunities for full-bodied resonance.)

Kleinhapl wedged two relatively recent pieces for unaccompanied cello between the Beethovens: the Norwegian composer Oistein Sommerfeldt’s “Monologi,” Op. 45, and the cadenza from the Cello Concerto by the Austrian pianist/composer Friedrich Gulda. Kleinhapl said he believed that the “Monologi” expressed the composer’s “feeling of abandonment.” And indeed, in Kleinhapl’s hands, the opening movement raced by in a capricious flurry, sometimes thrashing about, sometimes yielding to searing lyricism, and always absorbing. In Gulda’s hypnotizing essay, Kleinhapl dashed through a striking array of many-hued tremolos, some flirting dangerously near the cello’s bridge and reinforced by eerie harmonics. A compelling tango by Astor Piazzolla capped the evening.
The Vocal Arts Society co-sponsored the concert.

September 2009

„I would hope that this ist the first in a pair of discs containing Beethoven’s complete works for cello and piano, for it would find a place among the most interesting in the catalogue. By opting for recordings taken from concert performances, the Austrian- Belgian cellist Friedrich Kleinhapl is trading off the considerable gain in spontaneity with those moments where suspect intonation would have been rectified in studio sessions.

He teamed up with the pianist Andreas Woyke six years ago, and over that time they have developed impeccably weighted tone between instruments, the dynamics never exaggerated but always truthful to the scores. They find much joy in the two early sonatas, with Kleinhapl’s 1743 Giovanni Guadagnini singing eloquently and perfectly matched by Woyke’s cantabile touch.

I love their bouncy approach to the Scherzo of the A major Sonata, though I wish they had cheated and later patched- in passages high on the A string where fingers do not perfectly centre notes in the concert hall. They more than compensate with a very fast final Allegro vivace where the joie de vivre is palpable.

Their faith in the acoustic of the Helmut List Hall in Graz is well rewarded with an immaculately balanced and beautiful sound.“

August 2009

„Do Beethoven’s musical messages ever get out of date? The answer is no. Over the past few decades, various musicians, whether in their rebellion against original sound, or, as of late, radical musicians such as Michael Korstick and Paavo Järvi, have repeatedly succeeded in proving that. Their extreme clarity of thought enables us to perceive Beethoven in a new light.

The explosive force of Beethoven’s early cello sonatas has now been brought to light and boldly ignited by an audacious Austrian cellist together with a similarly daredevil German pianist, Andreas Woyke, rendering access to the true dimension of that musical revolution for the first time. Connoisseurs of music may even begin to feel uneasy when they experience the fervent passion and subversive furor, the austere beauty and perhaps uncomfortable truth of those two early cello sonatas, the sonatas op. 5 as well as the intermediate sonata in A major, unleashed by the two 43-year-old musicians, Friedrich Kleinhapl from Graz on his mighty Guadagnini cello and Andreas Woyke on a grand Fazioli. With pure pleasure and great risk, they abandon themselves completely to Beethoven’s profound meditative discourse.

Their uncompromising almost ruthless interpretation projects an authentic picture of that gruff misfit who equally shocked and fascinated the decadent Viennese aristocracy, whilst, at the limits of extreme conciseness, they shed light on the musical workshop and dauntless creative will of an incomprehensible genius. The hyper-presence of multi-channel sound accentuates the eruptive effects of that volcanic dialogue, which, in truth, seems to reveal the moral core of the music much more than any beautifully styled phrases ever could.“

August 2009

„The SACD version creates a tangible sense of presence and depth adorned with high-quality, vinyl-type instrumental color and detail.

Beethoven may have given the official nod to the keyboard player when he pointedly titled the publication of his Opus 5: "Sonatas for piano and cello." Many cellists will disagree; they will tell you that their musical goal is to work as a team. Most pianists will agree. In practice, however, it's rarely achieved. Which makes this new recording doubly valuable.

Sneaking into each movement with sleek, slick tempos balanced by a poetically light hand on the throttle, the no longer obscure team of Friedrich Kleinhapl and Andreas Woyke positively renovate the old Beethoven homestead. They restore the impact of bold musical statements, and of the central structural position of the big allegro movements; they feel comfortable with adjusting tempos to what they consider are the musical needs of the piece at hand, and they don't mind speed. Time and time again, they find small beauties of melody and in the most subordinate of sub-thematic layers. Beethoven on the cello rarely runs this smoothly or this deep.

In the Scherzo of Op. 69, Kleinhapl and Woyke rediscover the joys of a fast-as-you-can tempo, and then proceed to courageously and outrageously re-phrase the big tune in the Trio, an impudent act which will have cellists and critics scurrying to consult their history books. 

From a soundmeister's viewpoint, cello and piano must be a difficult combination to record. The balance between the instruments varies, but caught at the right volume, the sound softens and takes on a transparent glow, like analogue. The right volume is somewhere just beyond your reach, on the boundary between two of the possible listening perspectives: From the control room where you can turn it up really loud, or crouching on the stage at the cellist's side. In either case, Kleinhapl's GB Guadagnini cello (1743) swoops you up and puts you in the driver's seat as the music resonates through your body and soul.

The SACD version creates a tangible sense of presence and depth adorned with high-quality, vinyl-type instrumental color and detail; it's caught to impressive degree in conventional CD playback. Kleinhapl's engaging and informative liner notes are translated with enthusiasm, rustic charm and poetry.“

„Beethoven's cello sonatas are amongst his most unruly compositions. Always ground-breaking, in their dramatic contrasts and lack of respect for classical sonata form, they at last firmly established the cello as a solo instrument in chamber music on a par with the violin. Although the cello parts in the sonatas are not technically flamboyant, they exploit all of the cello's registers but concentrate on its singing abilities. Virtuoso status is rather afforded to the piano, which has all the runs and short cadenzas which the young Beethoven required in 1792 as a young pianist arriving in Vienna to make a new career for himself.

Notably, Beethoven's title pages for these sonatas referred to them as 'Sonatas for Piano and Cello', emphasising that, in contrast to previous practise where the cello merely doubled the keyboard's left-hand part, both instruments had fully written-out parts and were equal proponents.

In his extensive booklet remarks, Friedrich Kleinhapl refers to his keeping the Beethoven cello sonatas at a distance for some time, feeling he was unable to come to terms with their challenge. He researched details of Beethoven's life in Vienna and the evidence from Beethoven's peers about his struggles to accommodate his boorish and rebellious manners in polite Viennese society. Always mistrusting and suspicious of others, Beethoven ploughed his own, often lonely furrow, but nevertheless gained respect from his noble patrons (to whom he showed little respect in turn). Eventually he won fame from his audiences.

Kleinhapl and Woyke's performances of the first three cello sonatas on this disc deliberately set out to reflect Beethoven's complex, rebellious personality, and were caught on the wing in 3 live performances in Graz, Austria. They are certainly to be counted with the best recordings, such as the classically poised, beautifully-toned and slightly understated Brendels (father and son) and the well-rounded, passionate Wispelway/Lazic duo (Beethoven: Complete Sonatas & Variations - Wispelwey/Lazic). True to their motivation, however, the Kleinhapfl/Woyke partnership explores the wild side of Beethoven in these sonatas. Quixotic changes of mood, dramatic surges in dynamics, unexpected sforzando accents, sudden pauses, tempestuous episodes of grim humour, the balm of carefree joy and deep introspection are all there in the scores. These full-blooded interpretations are in a class of their own, perhaps not for the faint-hearted (or always making comfortable listening) but I found them both compelling and inspiring. In their own terms, they are revelatory.

These readings drew my attention, more than others, to Beethoven's frequent use of peasant music. There are frequent earthy stomping and dancing rhythms, together with folk-song like motifs which are often gleefully distorted (pre-echoing Mahler's own cynical use of Austrian folk elements). The Rondo of Sonata Op.5 No. 2 starts with a cheeky rustic tune which is taken on a whirlwind ride before ending in the best of high spirits. In contrast, the Scherzo of Sonata No. 3 (written alongside of Symphonies 5 and 6) is a tough and heavily syncopated rustic tune which is taken to a frenzied pitch of edgy development, a tour de force in Kleinhapfl and Woyke's hands.

Andreas Woyke's pianism is not at all inferior to that of Brendel or Lazic in these sonatas, and he is fully empathic to the vivid drama and wide dramatic range of his partner's approach. Using a crisply-registered Fazioli piano, he relishes Beethoven's love of staccato (attested by Czerny, Beethoven's erstwhile pupil), giving the sonatas a strong rhythmic foundation. The duo have a real sense of ongoing dialogue and exchange which is the true gift of fine chamber music players, as I noted in their earlier disc of the Brahms cello sonatas.

I had no idea that these performances were taken from live concerts until I read a note of this in Kleinhapl's commentary. The balance is fine, with the cello half left, piano behind, and neither instrument being too close. There is bloom from a hall which has no particular ambient character, and the rear speakers add a touch of realistic perspective. Remarkably, there are no noticeable audience noises, nor any applause. One has the feeling that these sonatas were recorded in long takes, such is the sense of concentration and dedication.

To hear these unruly works in these muscularly thrilling yet lyrical performances has been most stimulating, and I hope that the duo will record the remaining sonatas, perhaps with the sets of variations for cello and piano. As a single disc it is still desirable.“

May 2009

„Take your choice. Warm and opulent or austere and analytical? At the point where many great cellists feel they have to choose between the two, Friedrich Kleinhapl succeeds in creating a synthesis. He plays those wonderful works with ease and yet with enormous passion. Andreas Woyke renders cantability, dynamics and lively momentum to the often rather domineering piano part. I do hope the second part follows soon.“

May 2009

“To start with, these are not “Sonatas for Violoncello and Pianoforte” as the booklet would make us believe, but rather „Sonatas for Pianoforte and Violoncello” as the composer himself described them. At first sight that does not seem to make much difference, but, in fact, it does. Although the cello does not accompany the piano, both instruments are for once on the same level, for the piano does not “accompany” either. For the first time, a dialogue is established between two equal participants. And that is exactly what the inversion means. Fortunately, both musicians play that way – they already begin the Adagio sostenuto in Sonata No. 1 as if they were listening to one another, wrapped up in the complete musical intimacy of a real dialogue. And when the Allegro sets in, it is with a kind of virtuosity that one would not usually associate with Beethoven. At this point, the reviewer recalls how his father, a pianist, always used to tell him that the piano part was much more difficult to play than the cello part. Never mind, be that as it may, Andreas Woyke and Friedrich Kleinhapl are doing a marvelous job, the former on his Fazioli, the latter on his Guadagnini. True and real partners! It’s enough to make any cellist or pianist go green with envy.

Kleinhapl describes himself in Booklettext as "a somewhat eruptive romantic cellist" who says he initially had his difficulties with Beethoven. He was "fascinated" by a language he felt he could not fully master. Now one can say he has certainly found it for himself. It is precisely this initial feeling of "estrangement" and its romantic impulse that give this engagement great significance. And even better that the experienced (and certainly very good) attempts of two water buffalos of the guild, such as Swjatoslaw Richter and Mstislaw Rostropowitsch. Woyke and Kleinhapl bring a grittiness, almost a rage, to those sounds that characterize so well Beethoven's continuous state of mind. And a spontaneity that exceeds by far their experienced and masterly depiction of the musical score: while listening, one has very often the impression that this is performed for the first time as a quasi improvisation, even if one has in fact played it before oneself - in fact, particularly if one has! This is a recording of three Beethoven sonatas that, from a technical point of view, does not have to hide behind anything that has been done before and in fact has this extra touch of life that distinguishes a great interpretation from a merely good one. Finally, one can only hope that Woyke and Kleinhapl will soon deliver both late sonatas and the variations.”

May 2009

"AUDIOPHILE CD of the MONTH"
"THE ERUPTIVE POWER OF A FREE THINKER"
“Although Beethoven’s musical messages were written over 200 years ago, they seem to be as modern today than ever before. And that is exactly what we are able to perceive of late when we listen to Beethoven-extremists Michael Korstick (the sonatas) and Paavo Järvi (the symphonies) with their fresh youthful ardor and extreme clarity of thought:  
A daredevil Austrian cellist has now allowed the eruptive musical forces within Beethoven's cello sonatas to finally explode with unprecedented vehemence, in a continuously alert, stimulating, impetuous dialogue with an excellent German pianist.
He thus, at last, places those early cello works on the same level as Beethoven’s greatest accomplishments:
What the 43 year old Friedrich Kleinhapl, from Graz, has allowed to break out of his powerful Guadagnini cello, together with Andreas Woyke, of the same age is a passion, a subversive furor, an austere beauty, a disturbing truth, that one has so far not heard with such rigor and integrity even from the icons of the craft.

With their uncompromising almost ruthless interpretation, they somehow project an authentic picture of that gruff rebel genius, who equally shocked and fascinated the decadent Viennese aristocracy. At the limits of extreme conciseness, they shed light on the musical workshop and dauntless creative will of an incomprehensible genius, who immediately added two works of highest quality to the new genre: By means of powerfully austere and open-hearted sound, Kleinhapl conjures up the necessary baritonal volume to enable the cello to hold its own against the highly virtuoso piano part. We thus experience a highly intensive dialogue between “free” individuals. But it is also the hyper-present, haptic proximity of Manfred Schumacher’s multi-channel stage and its vital contribution to the highly dramatic recording effects that allow us to perceive and experience the true dimensions of this essentially eruptive music much more intensively than perfectly styled performances. This is a lesson for the strong-natured.”

April 2009

"EXCELLENTIA AWARD"
„This is one of those records that one slips into the player and that from the very first note draws acute awareness. And then the pleasure of listening quickly rises to the highest level of rapture, and even more, brings us to be amazed as to how it could be possible, given the amount of existing recordings, that we have never heard these three sonatas in the way they come across on this CD, in such a new way.
"Beethoven not only made use of the violin’s concertante virtuoso possibilities for the cello. In his works he also developed the full chromatic range of various voices, similar to those of the violin, but which have the additional sonority of a bass. Beethoven thus established the cello as a solo instrument, absolutely equal to the violin. With his five cello sonatas, Beethoven created both the beginning and zenith of a new genre at the same time”, writes Austrian cellist Friedrich Kleinhapl on Beethoven’s cello sonatas, of which he has now recorded three with his piano partner Andreas Woyke. We are now talking about existing recordings.
In order to draw a comparison, we listened to some of the others: Casals, Rostropovich, Starker, Ma, but also younger performers such as Gastinel. With none of the other comparable recordings have we experienced such unrestricted satisfaction as from Kleinhapl and Woyke, in whose interpretation quite simply everything works, the musicality, the expression, the balance and also the sonority. On all counts, there were clearly masters at work!

First of all, my general impression is that Kleinhapl and Woyke always play in an expressive and highly communicative manner, without ever exaggerating. They avoid any possible pathos and exuberant overburdened gestures, any kind of superfluous emphasis and top-heaviness … and yet they are still far away from objectivity and sobriety. What comes across as a natural flow of music is to the last detail highly personal and in addition performed with such a harmonically conceptualized wholeness, that the three sonatas of this recording get burned into the hard drive of one's brain while simultaneously the Beethoven sonatas' partition gets disk-formatted. They can claim without contest the right to the supreme title.

Having executed the first Sonata’s Adagio sostenuto with loving care,Kleinhapl and Woyke carry us off into the most elated and light-footed allegro that we have ever heard. That is pure pleasure. Elan, harmony, a chant-like quality and the palpable excitement of the musicians carrying along their audience with this enchanting music, transporting us into a rare state of musical intoxication which lingers on for quite a while during the Rondo. With its well-coordinated contrasts, the Adagio sostenuto in the second sonata begins with an equally dramatic gesture, yet somehow sadly brooding tone. The way in which Kleinhapl and Woyke then approach the final Allegro molto is simply brilliant. In their dialogue, “words” are born of words, its structures and inner logics become as clear and intelligible as I’ve never heard in any other interpretation before. The spontaneity of their performance forces us to listen to them in awesome fascination, wondering how the drama in front of our ears is going to end. And that happens as naturally as a ray of sun would pierce two dark clouds and mightily push them aside, at the same time gathering momentum and gradually releasing it during the remaining twelve minutes of this long first movement until all problems are resolved in the final “heat“. Accordingly, the last movement sounds light and free.  
The third Sonata op. 69 is even more exciting, for Kleinhapl and Woyke do not compete against each other like Maisky and Argerich, but really work together to express Beethoven’s state of mind which, as the composer himself noted on the copy of a score, was “between tears and sorrow”. This they master with so much rhetorical fervor and energy, momentum and ardor that listeners get carried away by the music and are only able to recover during the brief one and a half.

April 2009

“So far he was handled as a quiet tip, but this could change quite rapidly with this Beethoven recording: the cellist Friedrich Kleinhapl, born in Graz in 1965, is an expressive musician par excellence.

Kleinhapl, a pupil of Philippe Muller in Paris and encouraged by the late Paul Tortelier, talks very frankly on his homepage about the crises in his life, how he overcame life-threatening health problems and how they forced him to change his ways, helping him to recover his intuition and self-assurance. It is easy to understand why an artist like Kleinhapl, who describes himself as being an “eruptive romantic cellist“ and who for a long time felt at home in that period, has steered clear of Beethoven’s five cello sonatas up to now. Perhaps it was because he wanted to avoid a “grand conflict” with that “giant”, Kleinhapl muses quite candidly in his booklet essay. It was only after reading contemporary sources from Haydn and Czerny that Kleinhapl began to comprehend Beethoven’s contradictory character and overcame his prejudice in favor of “a quite un-Viennese type of sound”. “Having been confronted with all those extremes, I then got together with my friend and duo partner Andreas Woyke, naturally not with the intention of recording some nice smooth music."

A Rousing Beethoven Performance
In fact, in this CD, which is already the 5th recording that Kleinhapl and Woyke have recorded together, they offer a Beethoven performance that is full of suspense and rich in contrast. Corners and edges are not smoothed out at all by these two newcomers in the field; Beethoven’s fury is exposed in a rebellious way, strikingly accentuated and rhythmically sharpened. In so doing, they give full reign to his wit and his singing qualities. It is certainly surprising how convincingly a musician who comes from a romantic tradition such as Kleinhapl has appropriated a style which fits the contemporary Viennese Classic and has contained the burning intensity of his music making; he and Woyke act without reserve, but are never uncontrolled or pathetic. This is thrilling Beethoven playing that does not leave you cold and makes you long for more.”

March 2009

„Here is an extraordinary Austrian cellist, highly esteemed by famous conductors, whose name is neither Heinrich Schiff nor who plays in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s cello group. Friedrich Kleinhapl presents a remarkable discography, impressing us with magnificent sound, technical brilliance and eloquent expression. Although the repertoire has been recorded so often, this newly-issued CD featuring Beethoven’s first three cello sonatas (F major, G minor and A major) seems to mark the beginning of a highly commendable era. Pianist Andreas Woyke is excellent.“