Klavierabend Peter Lang

Robert Schumann
Novellette D major op. 21/8
The eighth and last Novellette is a complex, breathless piece with many tempo increases. Only one passage is calmer; it is a reminiscence of Clara. "The voice from afar" Robert Schumann noted there.  The melody is taken from Clara's Notturno op. 6 No. 2.

Nachtstücke (Night Pieces) op. 23
The title ultimately chosen, Nachtstücke, goes back to E. T. A. Hoffmann's narrative work. In the sombre Opus 23, "more owl's eyes glimmer than stars", wrote Franz Liszt.

Drei Fantasiestücke (Three Fantasy Pieces) op. 111
"R. has composed three piano pieces of a very serious, passionate character, which I like extraordinarily", reads a diary entry by Clara Schumann in September 1851.

Johannes Brahms
Sonata f minor op. 5
The 20-year-old Brahms prefaced the second movement, an Andante in A flat major, with a poem by Sternau:
Der Abend dämmert, das Mondlicht scheint. (The evening dawns, the moonlight shines.)
Da sind zwei Herzen in Liebe vereint (There are two hearts united in love)
Und halten sich selig umfangen. (And hold each other in blissful embrace.)

Peter Lang (*1946) was musically trained by his father, by Kurt Neumüller, Friedrich Gulda, Géza Anda, Bernhard Paumgartner, Kurt Overhoff and Gerhard Wimberger. In 1955 he gave his first own concerts, from 1965 he played at the Salzburg Festival, from 1970 in the USA and from 1980 in the Far East. He played with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, with the Camerata Academica Salzburg, with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Chamber music connected him with Ruggiero Ricci, with the Ensemble Wien-Berlin, with Claudio Abbado, Kiri te Kanawa and Walter Levin. From 1969 to 1975 he was artist-in-residence in the USA, and in 1978 he was appointed to the Mozarteum in Salzburg. From 1983 to 2003 he was a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg. From 1988 to 1991 he succeeded Rolf Liebermann as director of the International Summer Academy Mozarteum. Since about 2003 he has intensified his own artistic activities, which he likes to combine with his worldwide commitments as a lecturer in master classes. In 2013 he was awarded honorary membership of the University Mozarteum Salzburg.