The Down with Romanticism project is the brainchild of two questing musicians — cellist, David Eggert, and fortepianist, Gili Loftus — and is the culmination of over a decade of artistic collaboration. Following meticulous archival research and immersions into the soundworld of the early days of the recording era, they have embarked on an experimental approach to explore forgotten dimensions of playing 19th century music. Their performance showcases flexibility of tempo and rhythm, elasticity of intonation and pitch, generous use of portamento, flexible alignment of the pianist’s right and left hands and heightened individualistic expression like you’ve never heard before, but that were once standard for music of this era — all on two beautiful period instruments.

"In this EP, the second part of our recital, we give a nod to the eclectic and highly imaginative programming skills of our predecessors, with a special acknowledgement to those unique interdisciplinary cultural institutions – the musical salons – in which a plurality of art forms existed in dialogue with one another. For the generation of the romantics, the concept of the finality of a musical text was understood to some extent within a paradigm of “work as sketch/sketch as work”, and the artists of that era created during a time when the boundaries between the realms of literature, music performance, and theatre were more fluid and flexible."

Clara Schumann, for example, was indeed well known for interspersing short improvised introductions and interludes between pieces on a concert programme. This allowed her to engage creatively with the finished musical text (and with the experience of concert-going at the time), with her improvisations offering a kind of in-the-moment musical commentary on a given work.

In this EP you hear celebrated masterpieces in historical arrangements for cello and piano made by 19th-century cellists Piatti and Hausmann, as well as the gloriously lyrical second movement from the young Clara Wieck’s piano concerto (which is in effect, a piano and cello duo), which according to some is rumored to have been inspired by Clara’s encounter with cellist Theodor Müller in 1835. Speckled throughout are Gili and David's own improvised interludes, a recitation of an excerpt from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur and to cap it off, a rarely heard accompanied melodram by Franz Schubert on poetry by Adolf Pratobevera von Wiesborn.

For an introductory essay to the project by Prof. Kai Köpp (Bern University of the Arts) CLICK HERE: drive.google.com/file/d/1Oc9ja_KIigEnJig8lCHAWWQIXv1SfETc/view?fbclid=IwAR2WlC_1tcJ6xUzXs4n9gpMVlGA0NHgLhJR2kObhodCMMoEzKSxcWwgRroc