Choose artist...
Home   >   Projects

Projects

Artist: Kian Soltani
Projects per page:
Kian Soltani:

Home

A protegé of Anne-Sophie Mutter and Daniel Barenboim, 25-year-old cellist Kian Soltani releases his debut DG album performed with pianist Aaron Pilsan, Home. Reflecting his Austrian and Persian roots, Home features Schubert's Sonata in A Minor (Arpeggione) and Schumann's "Du bist wie eine Blume," as well as world premiere recordings of Iranian composer Reza Vali's Seven Persian Folk Songs, written for Soltani, and the young cellist's own composition, Persian Fire Dance. 

Kian Soltani:

Schumann

For his new Deutsche Grammophon album, cellist Kian Soltani is focusing on the music of Schumann. The cornerstone of Soltani’s much-anticipated follow-up to Cello Unlimited – winner of the 2022 OPUS KLASSIK Innovative Listening Experience award – is Schumann’s masterful Cello Concerto in A minor, op. 129. This is a work Soltani has played to enormous acclaim many times (“The cello bow seemed to be a mere extension of his arm, his fingers flying over the fingerboard as if it were the most natural thing in the world … an unforgettable musical experience” – Seen and Heard International on his performance with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in September 2023). 

Joined here by the players of Camerata Salzburg, led by concertmaster Gregory Ahss, Soltani directs the ensemble from the cello in the Concerto and in orchestrations of four other works by Schumann. The album also features Soltani’s own transcriptions for cello and piano of music by both Robert and Clara Schumann, in which he is accompanied by French pianist Julien Quentin. Kian Soltani – Schumann is released digitally and on CD on today. The orchestrated version of “Abendlied” from the 12 Klavierstücke, op. 85 is available to stream or download, complete with performance video, and the Sehr lebhaft finale of the Cello Concerto.

In the detailed analysis of the Cello Concerto he has written to accompany the album, Soltani considers the skill with which the composer combines the boundaries of form with lyrical freedom, as well as giving space to the two sides of his artistic personality: “the fierily tempestuous Florestan and the bashful and introvert Eusebius”. As he notes, the work “performs a high-wire act as it moves between these two extremes, which confront one another right from the outset: on the one hand, we have the free flow of the music, the compositional skill and the interiority of Eusebius, and on the other, Florestan’s propulsive passion.”

The fact that Schumann takes so many diverse elements and builds a concerto of such finely balanced architecture is all the more remarkable given that he sketched and orchestrated it within the space of a fortnight in October 1850. Four years later, in early 1854, he spent time revising the proofs of the work sent to him by the publisher Breitkopf & Härtel, despite the fact that by this time he was suffering terrible aural hallucinations. Six days after finishing his revisions, he attempted suicide. He died in 1856 having never heard the Cello Concerto performed. It finally received its public premiere in 1860 but only established its rightful place in the repertoire decades later, after being championed by the legendary Pablo Casals.

Kian Soltani:

Cello Unlimited

Kian Soltani will never forget his first encounter with Spider-Man. The Austrian-Iranian cellist was just ten when he saw the first of Sam Raimi's epic movies about Peter Parker and his superhuman spider-like powers. He was held spellbound by its visuals and by its soundtrack, the experience sparking a lasting love affair with film. The enormous pleasure and inspiration Soltani takes from the cinema come together in his latest album for Deutsche Grammophon, a voyage through movie music like no other. Cello Unlimited, set for international release on 8 October 2021, offers a uniquely personal take on unforgettable themes and epic musical thrills from, among others, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Lord of the Rings, The Bourne Identity and The Da Vinci Code.

"Everything on this album is made exclusively with the cello," explains the cellist. Soltani recorded every note himself, from soaring solo melodies to infectious percussion sounds, mighty orchestral chords to whistling countermelodies. Having chosen his favourite film scores, he reimagined them for a supersized cello ensemble and played each part by ear. Multitrack recording sessions at Berlin's Emil Berliner Studios, a giant leap from Soltani's early experiments with his iPhone's GarageBand app, enabled him to construct deep layers of sound and uncanny contrasts of tonal light and shade, always by recording without reference to notes on a page. The painstaking creative approach, a genuine labour of love, was emotional and intuitive, rooted in what the cellist described as his immediate "aural impression" of scores conceived for the big screen.

When lockdowns were imposed last year, Soltani's live schedule was transformed overnight from packed to near empty. He returned to his archive of film score arrangements, essentially documents of ideas recorded in the moment, and it occurred to him they contained the makings of a recording project. "I realised it would take a lot of time," he recalls. "But I now had a lot of time! So I thought, why not give it everything? Why not spend all the time I have pursuing a dream I've had for many, many years, to create an album made exclusively from my own arrangements of epic movie scores."

Kian Soltani:

Dvorak Cello Concerto, Staat Berlin, Barenboim

Praised by The Washington Post for playing with "an easy warmth, drawing the orchestra after him like a halo around a candle flame," cellist Kian Soltani follows his DG debut album, Home, with a Dvorák album centered on the famous cello concerto. Featuring Maestro Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin, the concerto is paired with five arrangements of beloved Dvorák pieces, three of which Soltani arranged himself.