Blooming

Michael Gees / Bella Adamova

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: CD
Barcode: 0608917281828

Catalog number: CC 72818
Releasedate: 04-10-19

- Michael Gees and Bella Adamova improvise on the poetry of Marie Howe, Marina Tsvetaeva, Alexander Blok, Bella Adamova, Joseph von Eichendorff, Paul Verlaine, Yakov Polonsky as well as a Moravian and a Spanish folk song.
- Bella Adamova chose the poems and improvises with unparalleled talent and virtuosity
- Michael Gees contributes with his well-known intelligence that we have already experienced in his many recordings accompanying Christoph Prégardien.

There are some encounters in life about which one could say that they were simply destined to happen. The meeting of the two musicians in question is, without a doubt, one of them, because Michael Gees and Bella Adamova have a very rare talent: they are both exceptionally gifted improvisers. This is no quirk of a narcissistic piano virtuoso but rather the continuation of an old and venerable tradition. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was, to some measure, expected that a pianist could also perform something extemporaneously. Bella Adamova follows the same path. This is the basis from which the current CD with collaborative improvisations arose. Ten poems from different authors form the starting point for the musical expedition. The choices came completely from Bella Adamova. In their collaboration, Adamova and Gees have a vast stylistic range at their disposal which expands from folklore and classical to jazz and contemporary music. This includes a conceivably wide spectrum of musical resources, where one can find sprechgesang as well as arioso lines, and the piano can grow from a rustling cantabile to a hammered martellato.

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