Romantic Connections: Timothy & Nancy LeRoi Nickel - Duo Pianists
Piano - Sheet Music

SKU: EC.CD114

ISBN 600313011429. UPC: 600313011429.

Hermann Goetz was a musical jack-of-all-trades. He was successful composer, operatic producer, orchestra conductor, church organist and choral director, music critic, and distinguished pianist, highly regarded by his mentor, Hans von Bülow. Goetz produced many well-crafted, substantial works in his short creative life, lived under the constant shadow of incurable tuberculosis. His solo piano music enjoyed considerable success,and his two operas, Taming of the Shrew and Francesca von Rimini, have been revived from time to time. It was his Symphony in F that so delighted George Bernard Shaw. Goetz's name appears often in the three volumes of Shaw's published musical criticisms. In his inimitable, opinionated and overstated way, Shaw wrote that He [Goetz] has the charm of Schubert wtihout his brainlessness, the refinement of Mendelssohn with his limitations and timid gentility, Schumann's sense of harmonic expression without his laboriousness, shortcomings, and dependence on external poetic stimulus; while as to unembarrassed mastery of the materials of music, showing itself in the Mozartean grace and expressiveness of his polyphony, he leaves all three of them simply nowhere. Brahms, who alone touches him in mere brute musical facility, is a dolt in comparison to him. This is quite a vote of confidence from a respected critic of the day who was also a trained musician.