La Escondida

Michael Tslka

Release date: Thursday, May 7

La Escondida, pianist Michael Tsalka’s first release on Rattle, is a beautifully recorded and exquisitely performed celebration of the music of Franz Schubert.

“In 1821, Schubert, hoping surely to make a fine profit, gathered three dozen of these waltzes for publication in two volumes by Cappi & Diabelli. In a hurry, he established a somewhat arbitrary order through a loose tonal sequence, which he reinforced (perhaps subconsciously) with a few motivic connections and expressive contrasts. The waltzes seem bound together as if they were shining baroque pearls in a fine necklace that has no beginning or end. The dream of eternal movement and dance is almost impossible to stop.

Recording the collection, naturally, required another mindset. For my part, it was an opportunity to showcase the composer’s incredible gift for melodic improvisation, characterisation, and transformation within a serviceable but limited harmonic/formal framework. The process of recreating, on a modern Steinway, the vibrancy and naïve grace of the Biedermeier salon and invoking the separate registers and prismatic, yet muted colors of the Romantic square piano was complex, but the experience revived the delight that youth takes in nature, movement, and friendship, in those evenings when all sorts of experiences and characters cross your way in a seemingly endless stream of ventures, and in the mirage of immortality, which is the sacred endowment of the Spring of life. The circular dance only breaks when, for the first time, fate alters the repetitive movement of the couples. But what did young Schubert know of the wounds of time in 1820?”

Dr. Michael Tsalka

Produced and recorded by Mikles Jackson and Bob Bickerton
Mastered by Steve Garden
Design by UnkleFranc
Printing by Studio Q

Released: 07 May 2026
Catalogue: RAT-D165

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, Dr Michael Tsalka is a versatile musician who performs repertoire from the late Renaissance to the present day, and has released over forty critically acclaimed albums, including many world-premiere recordings.

After studying in Israel, Germany, and Italy, he graduated in 2008 from Temple University (U.S.A) with a D.M.A. in Piano Performance and two Master's degrees in Early Keyboard Performance and Chamber Music. From 2009-2014, he was a professor of harpsichord and chamber music at the Escuela Superior de Música, National Centre for the Arts, in Mexico City, and at Lilla Akademien in Stockholm. Apart from his current professorship at CUHK, Shenzhen, he is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA), Salzburg, Austria, the Chairman of the Board of the European Fortepiano Museum and Academy (EFM) in Germany, a visiting Professor at Celaya Conservatory of Music in Guanajuato, Mexico, and an Artist-in-Residence at the Nelson Center of Musical Arts (NCMA, New Zealand).

Michael enjoys a busy concert schedule, performing as many as ninety concerts a year. He has performed as a soloist with many orchestras, including the Sydney Consort and Thorough Bass (Australia), Musica Florea (Prague, Czech Republic), the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Birmingham University Chamber Orchestra (U.K.), and the Krasnoyarsk Chamber Orchestra (Russia). His chamber music performances often include complete cycles, among them: J. S. Bach's Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord Sonatas, W. A. Mozart's Clavier and Violin Sonatas and his complete works for four hands, L. v. Beethoven's Clavier and Cello Sonatas, F. Schubert's Four Hands Clavier works, and J. Brahms's Cello and Piano and Violin and Piano Sonatas.