Ronald Fuchs, Chanda VanderHart - Johannes Brahms: Sonatas for cello and piano, Six lieder transcriptions (2008)

Following Johannes Brahms’ advice, in Octo­ber 1881 Richard and Maria Fellinger bought a black grand piano from the cel­e­brated piano man­u­fac­tur­ing firm of Emil Streicher.

Brahms was intro­duced to the Fellinger fam­ily by Clara Schu­mann in 1881. Over the next few years, this acquain­tance­ship grew into a deep friend­ship. The Fellingers and Brahms spent the sum­mer of 1885 together in Mürz­zuschlag, and Brahms became a reg­u­lar guest at the Fellinger res­i­dence, the Aren­berg palais, in Wien Erdberg.

Between 1882 and 1885 Brahms played no fewer than thirty house con­certs at the Fellinger’s on the Stre­icher grand piano with renowned friends and col­leagues includ­ing cel­list Robert Haus­mann, clar­inetist Richard Mühlfeld, vio­lin­ist Maria Soldat-Roeger, singer Her­mine Spies and the Joachim Quar­tet. In 1889 Brahms recorded the only acoustic record of his play­ing on the Stre­icher grand using an Edi­son wax cylin­der acquired by Robert Fellinger.

In par­tic­u­lar, Brahms often per­formed both his sonatas for cello and piano at the Fellinger’s with the cel­list of the famous Joachim Quar tet, Robert Haus­mann. He even pub­licly per formed the 2nd Cello Sonata in F Major, Op. 99 on the Stre­icher grand at the Fellinger’s in a house con­cert sev­eral days prior to its offi­cial pre­miere in the Musikverein of Vienna. In Richard Fellinger’s book, “Mem­o­ries of Brahms” (pub­lished in 1997 by the Brahms Museum Mürz­zuschlag and revised by Imo­gen Fellinger), his rela­tion­ship with Brahms is described with great feel­ing. Dr. Imo­gen Fellinger, the great-niece and last direct descen­dent of Brahms’ friends, Richard and Maria Fellinger, donated this unique instru­ment to the Brahms Museum.

Piano builder Gert Hecher skill­fully restored the Stre­icher grand in 2002. The cross strung, 2.4 meter long piano “Nr. 8105″ with Vien­nese action and a forged iron frame­work was man­u­fac­tured in 1880 by the firm Emil Stre­icher. It is on exhibit at the Brahms Museum, and is played reg­u­larly dur­ing museum con­certs.
In the inter­est of pre­serv­ing the overtone-rich sound char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Stre­icher grand, record­ing engi­neer Ernst Frei­hoff used an ORTF record­ing tech­nique and closely placed micro­phones. Recorded from a sin­gle loca­tion, this cre­ates a sound expe­ri­ence sim­i­lar to hear­ing a live per­for­mance while seated in a con­cert hall. Play­ing the two Brahms cello sonatas, par­tic­u­larly on this Stre­icher grand with Vien­nese action cre­ates an inter­est­ing chal­lenge for the pianist.

This chal­lenge, as well as Brahms’ 175th birth­day in 2008 inspired these record­ings in the “Kun­sthaus” in Mürz­zuschlag. Ronald Fuchs and Chanda Van­der­Hart play, in addi­tion to the two cello sonatas, six Brahms lieder tran­scrip­tions in their orig­i­nal keys. The lieder selected have a spe­cial con­nec­tion to both the Stre­icher piano and with Mürz­zuschlag itself. Brahms played severel of them, includ­ing “Wie Melo­dien zieht es mir” with Her­mine Spies, and com­posed both “Sap­phis­che Ode” and “Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht” dur­ing his time in Mürzzuschlag.