The Music Collection
RECORDINGS
Hummel Chamber Music, ASV, 2000
BBC Music Magazine*****
Exemplary playing of captivating music
Clementi Fortepiano Sonatas, Naxos, 2002
The Guardian*****
Playing an attractively mellow-toned, untwangy fortepiano, the American pianist Susan Alexander-Max gives magnetic performances of five sparkling early sonatas by Clementi in what I hope is the start of a series from Naxos.
Edward Greenfield
Penguin Guide ***
Clementi Fortepiano Sonatas Vol.2, Naxos 2007
Fanfare (USA)
New York-born and Juilliard-trained, Alexander-Max studied with Ilona Kabos in London and has continued to maker her career there. She is a splendid pianist who employs an uncommon variety of touch and articulation, perfectly calibrated for the late 18th-century style. Best of all, Alexander-Max is blessed with a vivid imagination, lavishly applied toward a realm of expressive ends. Her choice of a fortepiano by Derek Adlam (a replica of an instrument by Michael Rosenberger, a Viennese builder and disciple of the great Walter) adds a vast dimension of interest to these sonatas from the early 1780s. Part of the excitement of the performances lies in the pleasure of discovery: how good it is to experience these pieces by Clementi, that master of brilliantly resourceful Keyboard writing, on a piano he would have recognized and delighted in.
Clementi Sonata in A major, Op.10 No.1
Hummel Chamber Music, Naxos 2005
BBC Music Magazine*****
BBC CD recommendation of the month (Dec. 2005)
Most of Hummel’s chamber music has been recorded recently, though the Piano Quartet is new to the catalogue. What sets this recording by The Music Collection apart from most, though, is the use of period instruments – and the pay-off is striking. Alexander-Max uses two different pianos ...Played with a fine sense of period style
Hummel Piano Quartet in G major, Op. posth.
Zipoli Complete Keyboard Works, Bk. II, Albany Records 2004
BBC Music Magazine*****
Susan Alexander-Max plays the pieces here on the restored Cristofori piano in the New York Metropolitan Museum, one of three extant instruments which their inventor himself called a ‘harpsichord with soft and loud’. Alexander-Max has clearly got to grips with its special demands, particularly its ability to articulate by dynamic accents as well as the minute delays and silences with which harpsichordists shape a phrase. She plays with the restraint demanded by such a delicate and complex mechanical action, and the sound is charming – warm and plumy in the middle and lower range, more sparkling on top. The upper register can become swamped by the riches of lower down in the loud passages – a characteristic of the instrument itself as much as of the recording – but the quiet contrasts are wholly endearing. A most imaginative combination of music and instrument, both revealed as far more than mere curiosities.
JUST RELEASED (August 2008)
Johann Christian and Johann Christoph Friedrich BACH Keyboard Concertos
All CDs are available direct from The Music Collection
