Hummel: Oberons Zauberhorn / Variations on Das Fest der Handwerker / Le retour de Londres

MARBECKS STAFF PICK - BEST RECORDINGS 2008

"(A) lovely disc of Hummel rarities. Christopher Hinterhuber is terrific in these works, and seems to be fast becoming a Naxos favourite. That label also works its old and much--appreciated trick of unearthing a really excellent but little-hyped band in the Gävle Symphony Orchestra of Sweden."
- Editor's Choice Gramophone Magazine Feb 2008

"Hinterhuber and Grodd have something to say about Hummel and it is something worth hearing"
(MusicWeb Feb 2008)

Hummel's long career as one of Europe's most celebrated virtuosi owed as much to his resourcefulness as a composer as it did to his exceptional technique as a pianist. The four works on this recording illustrate the vitality of Hummel's musical imagination at the height of his career. Oberons Zauberhorn (Oberon's Magic Horn) is a strikingly original fantasy based loosely on Weber's opera Oberon. Le retour de Londres, a large-scale rondo composed in 1833, opens with a slow introduction remarkable for its beauty and expressive power which leads into the inventive and brilliantly virtuosic Rondeau.