My first encounter with the music of Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792) was with his' Ouverture to Olympie' VB 29. It seemed as powerful and passionate as any of Beethoven's overtures, and I was astonished when I looked up his dates and found that Kraus was almost an exact contemporary of Mozart, dying in 1792, the year after Mozart. In his notes for this album, Christian Brembeck recalls his first impressions of the composer, with the Symphony in C minor; he would have placed Kraus somewhere between Gluck and early Schubert. Although Kraus was indeed a classical composer, he not only embraced the "Sturm und Drang" movement in the Arts of the time, but went beyond it to the strong emotional expressive style of nascent Romanticism.

Born and trained in Germany, Kraus moved to Sweden in his twenty-first year, intent on becoming a court musician in Stockholm. He struggled to gain Royal patronage for three poverty-stricken years, but eventually won the backing of King Gustav III, who sent him on an extensive European fact-finding tour, ostensibly to spy on the latest theatre designs. He passed through Paris, where he wrote one of the two keyboard sonatas on the album (Sonata in E flat major, VB 195, 1784-1785), then on to Vienna, where he met Gluck (who had high praise for him), joined the same Masonic Lodge as Mozart and wrote a symphony for Haydn (who later deemed Kraus to be "one of the greatest geniuses I have ever known"). On return to Stockholm, however, he found that his position had been usurped in his absence, and he had to struggle once more to regain his position as kapellmeister.

Kraus wrote relatively little keyboard music, he was a man of the orchestra and opera, and Christian Brembeck relates his impression as a keyboardist that much of the passage work in Kraus' piano music originates in violin parts (indeed, the E flat major Sonata was probably originally a violin sonata). The sonatas are the longest and most important keyboard works in the Kraus canon, and although based on formal classical templates, they carry a unique and unmistakable voice. Kraus constantly surprises the listener with improvisatory interludes (often of great emotional power), has quirky journeys into unexpected keys and harmonies and throughout shows a sly, self-deprecatory sense of humour which is most refreshing. His movements with variation sets are far more exploratory and remarkable than those of Haydn or Mozart, approaching Beethoven's level of inventive expertise.

Christian Brembeck has a long list of discs of keyboard music by Northern European composers ranging from the Baroque to early Romantic periods. He chooses on this album to play Kraus' complete keyboard works on a fine copy of Mozart's own Anton Walter piano, which allows very clear articulation with its somewhat rapid decay of tone, and has characteristic variation of timbres along its range (FF-f3). The Scherzo con variazione in C major (VB 193), Zwei neue kuriose Minuetten (VB 190) and the Svensk Dans (VB 192) are played on a clavichord, another copy, of a Fleischer from 1729. In Kraus' time, these compact instruments were already antique, but still much prized for practice and domestic use because of their richly colourful but softly muted sound. It's strings struck by tangents (small metal blades), the clavichord was JS Bach's favourite instrument.

Ronald Brautigam's identical programme of the keyboard works of Kraus is the obvious competitor for Brembeck's disc. Brautigam uses a fortepiano based on a rather later model from the early 1800's, which has a smoother and more modern type of sound compared to the Walther, very well recorded in a resonant church acoustic by BIS (one of the few Brautigam albums which is not SACD).

Comparisons show clear distinctions between the two keyboardists. While Brautigam's beautiful playing is the essence of gentile, eloquent Classical style, he sounds emotionally laid back compared to Brembeck, despite his generally faster (often much faster) tempi. Brembeck, for example, makes the Larghetto in G (VB 194) truly noble, with a stately Haydnesque melody at coming in at 1'02, but Brautigam scurries along with relatively little light and shade in a mere 0'38. In another example, Brembeck's reading of the jolly, tongue-in-cheek Swedish Dance displays their joking eccentricity brilliantly and comes in at 4'08, including a hilarious scrambling accelerando for the last bars (very much a peasant thing to do). Brautigam suavely and elegantly dances for 3'04. Allowing the works to breathe more, Brembeck also has time to bring out some of Kraus' intriguing harmonic effects; for example in bar 17 of the Sonata in E major's first movement, there are some daring clashes of A sharp and B in the left hand with A naturals in the right hand, which one hardly notices with Brautigam.

In my view, especially in the sonatas, some of the most complex and inspired of the Classical period, it is Brembeck who captures the mercurial nature of Kraus' invention, which focusses on dramatic effects and periods of deep emotion. In other words, for me it is Brembeck who plays with the distinctive voice of Kraus, which so caught my imagination on first hearing the composer's work.

Musicaphon's recording is exemplary (captured by Cybele AV-Studios), immediate but not too close, and showing off all the rich harmonics and timbres of the fortepiano, albeit with an inescapable element of action sounds. The much lower dynamic range and hushed tone of the clavichord is immediately apparent, and the many tone colours produced throughout its range are quite delightful, especially when silvery rapid runs are under pinned by a deeper lute-like melody. I did, however, find it helpful to raise the volume level somewhat to fully enjoy the exquisite sounds made by this instrument.

If you already enjoy Kraus' orchestral music, you will need to hear this disc to round off your understanding of the composer. And if you are at all interested in Classical keyboard music, then this album will introduce a composer who is definitely not one of the B-List (or lower) artists of the period. Highly recommended.

Copyright © 2011 John Miller and HRAudio.net

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