Marialena Fernandes - Viennese Waltz Export (2015)

The second release of four-handed piano duo Marialena Fernandes and Ranko Markovic goes by the name Viennese Waltz Export and sheds light on the development of the waltz over the years and national borders. Commencing with classical Viennese Waltzes by Johann Strauss I with Tanz-Signale op. 218, the journey goes on to Russia with a waltz by Sergej Rachmaninoff as well as his arrangement of Tschaikovsky's Suite after The Sleeping Beauty, op. 66a for four-handed piano. Further waltzes include op. 39, No. 14+15 by Johannes Brahms and Several short Waltzes by Wolfgang Rihm, whose handling of the tradition includes permeating it again and again with a modern, humorous wink. This release concludes with the Valse du mystérieux baiser dans l’œil by Erik Satie, allowing a certain glimpse of emerging musical Dadaism. Fernandes and Markovic have performed four-hands together since 2000. They have aroused special attention with performances of the piano transcriptions of symphonies by Mahler and Bruckner, including those in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (on Mahler’s original piano), in the Arnold Schoenberg Center and the Jewish Museum in Vienna, and at the Festival of the Four Cultures in Lodz. Recitals took place in the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, in Los Angeles and Ottawa, in the residence of the Austrian Embassy in London, in Washington and Brasília, at the University of California in Los Angeles and McGill University in Montreal, in the Kazakh National Music Academy in Astana and at the Con Brio Festival in the NCPA in Mumbai. In 2012, Gramola released their CD with the 3rd Symphony by Anton Bruckner in the arrangement by Gustav Mahler and the four-handed version of Franz Liszt’s Les Préludes. SELLING POINTS: - four-handed piano - Viennese Waltz in different flavours - original works and transcriptions