Luogo e data di registrazione		-
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Recording Supervision		-
	Edizione LP		TELEFUNKEN - 6.42184 AP - (1 LP - durata 42' 31") - (p) 1977 - Analogico
	Originale LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		-
	Note		-

Music competitions are not an institution of our own day and age but have been frequently described in the course of music history. Admittedly opinions difet as to their purpose and usefulness. Even through a selection, arranged in a business-like manner and binding upon all participants in equal terms, by no means decides the career of a young musician, it has nevertheless been established that outstanding artistic achievements under comparable conditions have at least indicative effects, provided they are viewed in connection with the cultural activities of today and tomorrow. It is certainly no coincidence that successful participants in a music competition manage to assert themselves among difficult rivals. The example of Maria Kliegel, the cellist from Dillenburg is no doubt symptomatic of this. Maria Kliegel had her first piano lessons when she was six and then from the age of eleven she took cello instruction, first with the tutor Dr. Ulrich, then from 1967-72 at the Frankfurt Academy of Music under Alexander Molzahn, and finally with Janos Starker in Bloomington, U.S.A.. Following this shesuccessfully took part on several occasions in Federal competitions known as "Jugend musiziert" (music-making youth), which are preceded by regional and state-level competitions. To these successes in the Federal competitions (1964 in Berlin, 1966 in Bremen, 1968 and 1970 in Erlangen) she added in 1973 a further prize in the Budapest Casals Cello Competition, and a first prize in the Chicago Music Competition. In 1975 Maria Kligel emerged as winner of the first prize in the First German Music Competition, organised by the German music council. This continous development, which meanwhile had led to lively concert activity (beginning in 1974 within the framework of the Federal selection of young artists, clearly shows what possibilities can result from extraordinary gifts and corresponding successes. It is true that in Maria Kliegel's case fortunate preconditions already existed: "In the family we really only made music in the domestic sense," she points out. "My father is a school musician, and one day there was no cello player for the quartet so I filled the breach." The path which this successful cellist has taken in the meantime is apparent from the present gramophone record. With it Maria Kliegel introduces a virtuoso early work by Chopin, which, although primarily designed with the piano in mind, because of the independence and affinity of the cantabile and richly figured cello part, presuppones the closest partnership with the pianist. In the present case the latter is Ludger Maxsein, who is meanwhile active in Essen as a piano pedagogue.Zoltán Kodály provides wider interpretative dimensions for the cellist with his technically extremely demanding three-movement solo sonata. Mastery of this work can be regarded as an acid test for the cellist elite, whose musical rendering goes beyond technical domination and establishes the actual interpreter. Gerhard Wienke (English translation by Frederick A. Bishop)