Robert Helps: Chamber Music With Piano / Helps, Atos, Trio, Spectrum, Concerts Ber

Sound Clips
Album Summary
Notes & Reviews
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	Piano Trio No. 1 - I. Mesto
	Piano Trio No. 1 - II. Molto marcato - Molto allegro
	Piano Trio No. 1 - III. Maestoso
	Piano Trio No. 2 - I. Duets: Allegro
	Piano Trio No. 2 - II. Horizons: Austere, but intense
	Piano Trio No. 2 - III. Toccata frustrata
	6 Lieder, Op. 71: No. 4. Schilflied (arr. R. Helps for piano) - 6 Lieder, Op. 71: No. 4. Schilflied (arr. R. Helps for piano)
	Love is a Sickness Full of Woes (arr. R. Helps for piano) - Love is a Sickness Full of Woes (arr. R. Helps for piano)
	Intermezzo in A flat major, FP 118 - Intermezzo in A flat major, FP 118
	53 Studies on the Chopin etudes - No. 45 in E major (1st version on Chopin's Nouvelle Etude No. 2)
	53 Studies on the Chopin etudes - No. 12 in G flat major (6th version on Chopin's Op. 10, No. 5)
	Shall We Dance - Shall We Dance
	The Darkened Valley - The Darkened Valley

Album Summary

Helps, Robert : Postlude, for horn, violin & piano (Seranade, Part 3)

Helps, Robert : Fantasy for violin & piano

Helps, Robert : Piano Quartet

Helps, Robert : Duo for Cello and Piano

Helps, Robert : Quintet for flute, violin, clarinet, cello & piano

Helps, Robert : Trio for violin, cello & piano no 1

Helps, Robert : Trio for violin, cello & piano no 2

Mendelssohn, Felix : Schilflied, Op. 71/4

Ireland, John : Love is a sickness full of woes, for voice & piano

Poulenc, Francis : Intermezzo no 3 for piano in A flat major, FP 118

Godowsky, Leopold : Studies on Chopin's Études

Helps, Robert : Shall We Dance, for piano

Ireland, John : The Darkened Valley, for piano

Performers

Bernhard Krug (Horn)
Annette von Hehn (Violin)
Naomi Niskala (Piano)
Thomas Hoppe (Piano)
Frank Dodge (Cello)
Ronald Carbone (Viola)
Lars van den Oudenwijer (Clarinet)
Marieke Schneemann (Flute)
Robert Helps (Piano)

Ensemble

ATOS Trio

Composers

Notes & Reviews:

This recording is an exploration of Robert Helps's 'subtle sound world' (ClassicsToday.com on Naxos 8.559199), and his shared history with Spectrum Concerts Berlin. Highly regarded as a 'musician's musician', Helps is featured as both composer and pianist. Postlude is suffused with an atmosphere of reminiscence, and the flow of 'endless melody' in the Piano Quartet is comparable to Scriabin. Associations with the Second Viennese School are heard in the poetic Quintet and the virtuoso Fantasy, while the two Piano Trios mark the stylistic boundaries of his career. Helps's Shall We Dance for piano (CD 2, Track 12) was among his last recordings.

Gramophone
Both of Robert Helps's formidable artistic gifts are represented on this revealing two-disc collection. There's the composer of piquant and poetic chamber music, and there's the pianist who gave supple life to his own works, as well as pieces by other composers. These complementary aspects paint a portrait of a bold musician with the facility to transform and illuminate in myriad styles... his immersion in the past also can be heard on this collection in shapely and eloquent live performance... Helps was no imitator... the music is always suffused with distinctive clarity, vehemence and pensive drama ... meticulously detailed performances by the ATOS Trio and an array of splendid colleagues.

U.S. Today
When we get so much music and that is a mere repetition of clichTs wrapped by orchestrations neotonales as bright as hollow, glad to discover a composer and Robert Helps. Composer and pianist, as both sides are necessary to understand his work, as you can see in this double album. It met a musician who, from a language that borders on atonality, seduces by its ability to communicate and express. Even in a work as demanding as the Quintet (1997) for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano, the same template of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, which Helps considered a reference, a starting point to create music on the other hand very staff, a very refined instrumental writing and lyricism that connects with undeniable romance.An art which shows again that linking of the musician with a well understood romanticism and updated.

American Record Guide
Robert Helps' music, dissonant with tonal moments, is finely wrought and holds the listener's interest.

Infodad.com
... the new two-CD Naxos set of his complete chamber works for strings or winds with piano will be welcomed by those who enjoy Helps' sonic world... the second CD... showcase nearly all the styles and influences informing Helps' career. They are offered on a CD that also contains more than half an hour of Helps' own piano playing - not only of his own work but also of pieces by Mendelssohn, Ireland, Poulenc and Godowsky. These live recordings... show Helps to have been not only a considerable pianist but also a composer quite familiar with and attuned to the works of earlier times, whether he chose to absorb their lessons or discard them.

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