This new recording from the Staatskapelle Weimar under Hansjörg Albrecht presents a rarely heard compilation of Richard Wagner’s themes from Tristan und Isolde, arranged for orchestra by Henk de Vlieger (b. 1953). This is Hansjörg Albrecht's follow-up Wagner recording to his album Der Ring ohne Worte (OC1872). The Staatkapelle Weimar dates back to 1491, making it one of the oldest orchestras in the world, and one that is more than familiar with the works of Richard Wagner.

In her new album "Solitude," soprano Katharina Konradi embarks on a musical journey to explore solitude. On this journey, she is accompanied by poets and composers from different time periods. The Cosmos Quartet from Barcelona joins her on her journey. Art songs by composers such as Robert and Clara Schumann, Franz Schubert, and Hugo Wolf, as well as folk songs and French chansons, are waypoints on this journey on which they explore the various facets of solitude together. Miniatures for solo soprano by the Hungarian-French composer György Kurtág serve as transitional elements, providing subtle and sophisticated coherence. Among the special rarities of the recording are the two Catalan songs by the violinist, composer, and conductor Eduard Toldrà.

The soprano, born in Kyrgyzstan, captivates audiences and critics alike with her vocal brilliance and cultivated emotional depth. The Cosmos Quartet matches her with its honest elegance and compelling expressiveness. Although the Cosmos Quartet and Katharina Konradi only met at the beginning of rehearsals for "Solitude," a very special magic immediately revealed itself, inherent in the combination of Katharina Konradi's voice and the Cosmos String Quartet. "String quartet and voice blend incredibly well together – even though the four instruments already form a perfect sonic structure on their own. I always enjoy being surrounded by so many different colors while singing," describes Katharina Konradi about the collaboration.

The result of this collaboration and shared journey is an album characterized by emotionality, a variety of moods, and the highest musicality. It invites one to linger, to listen closely, to find tranquility in the beauty of music, and to draw strength from it.

William Byrd's work stands out above all for the variety of genres and structural principles. This is particularly evident in his unique keyboard music. The influence that Byrd also had on the continental development of piano music remains remarkable. To commemorate the quadricentenary of Byrd's death, this album presents a special collection of the works of Byrd as well as two of his close contemporaries, by his long-time mentor Thomas Tallis (c. 1505-1585) and the younger Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625).

With William Byrd, Friederike Chylek follows up on her last albums Byrd –Keyboard works (OC1724) From Byrd To Byrd (OC1704) and Time stands still (OC1864). Friederike Chylek plays on an organ by Johann Christoph Leu, Klosterkirche Rheinau, 1715 and on a harpsichord by Boccalari, Napoli 1699, restored by Matthias Griewisch, 2019.

"Heiko Quinto" is the sixth album release on Naxos by the award-winning composer Daron Hagen. Composed for Duo YUMENO, the piece is based on the Japanese medieval text "The Tale of the Heike." Scored for Japanese koto, cello, and two voices, the work presents a compelling and expressive narrative. World premiere recording.

In 1841, Carl Loewe created his oratorio about the Bohemian theologian Jan (or Johann) Hus (or Huss) as a kind of "opera without a scene". A good 100 years before the appearance of the reformer Martin Luther, Hus had taken a hard stance on the official church and was burned at the stake on July 6, 1415 in Constance after being condemned by the council. Carl Loewe created the work to a libretto by August Zeune and premiered it on December 16, 1841 in and with the Berliner Singakademie. The rarely performed work deserves more attention and is now finally available in a premiere recording with the Arcis Vocalisten and the Baroque Orchestra L'arpa festante conducted by Thomas Gropper.

This album contains the symphonic suite "Scheherazade" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the short composition "The Enchanted Lake" by his student Anatoly Lyadov.

In 1887-88, after the sudden death of his brilliant friend Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov composed those three orchestral works which crowned his Russian national period and has made his name a permanent part of the worldwide concert repertoire: the "Capriccio espagno"l, the symphonic suite "Scheherazade", and the concert overture "La Grande Pâque Russe". With Scheherazade Rimsky-Korsakov did not tell a story, he rather set individual, unconnected episodes and images to music.

Anatoly Lyadov has a reputation of being lazy – based solely on Rimsky-Korsakov’s opinion of him – yet his ambition was for every piece of music he created to be flawless. One consequence of this was that his entire œuvre consists entirely of miniatures. The "Enchanted Lake" does not tell a story but is purely impressionistic music about a Russian forest lake, on a level with Ravel and Debussy. Conductor Dmitri Kitayenko conducted various orchestras in Moscow, became chief conductor of the Moscow Philharmonic in 1976, and took over the Symphony Orchestra of the Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt am Main in 1990-96. He went on to hold principal positions with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Seoul and finally, in addition to his worldwide activities as a guest conductor, was appointed Honorary Conductor of the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne.

As a winner of numerous national and international youth competitions, Robert Neumann (born 2001) was awarded with the International Classic Music Discovery Award 2017. In 2018, the Jury of the SWR (radio broadcasting corporation in Southwest Germany) chose Robert as the"SWR New Talent". For his debut CD at SWRmusic, Robert was awarded the OPUS KLASSIK Young Artist of the Year 2021. The young pianist made his orchestral debut with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra when he was eight, and since then he has appeared with other orchestras, including the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, German State Philharmonic Ludwigshafen, Stuttgart Philharmonic, Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra, SWR Symphonieorchestra, Praga Philharmonic Camerata and the Gewandhaus Orchestra. For his second album, Robert Neumann chose two works which can easily be placed side by side and that are both close to the pianist’s heart. Robert Schumann‘s Kreisleriana is about a character from several tales by E. T. A. Hoffmann and Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition describes walking from one work of art to the next. Both are programme music pieces with somewhat comparable ideas but, as Neumann puts it: „One idea deals with a real character, the other one doesn’t […]. And I think both show in an exemplary manner how flawlessly and also in different ways a great Romantic cycle can be structured, formed.

The inspiration for Hugo Distler’s gem of a Christmas narrative can be found in the German-language protestant sacred music of the early baroque era, especially the music of Heinrich Schütz. Drawing on Schütz’s example, Distler composed his Christmas story exclusively for vocalists – soloists and a 4-8-voiced ensemble – in what is, in Distler’s own words, described as an “Oratorium mit kammermusikalishem Charakter." We also hear parts of the beautiful choral Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, which appears seven times during the course of the narrative. – every time in a new harmonic colour. The story of Hugo Distler’s life is a tragic one. Born in Nuremburg in 1908, he would go on to teach at the School for Church Music in Spandau before being appointed professor of church music in Stuttgart in 1940. Distler, who was a deeply religious man, has been recognized as a forerunner of the New German Church Music, an important musical movement which developed in the 1930s. The Nazis stigmatized Distler’s compositions as “degenerate art”, and when he received his conscription papers, he took his life. Sadly, Distler’s music is seldom performed outside of Germany even to this day. Hailed by Gramophone as “a choir worth listening to for their beautiful singing, which can deliver performances of pure, natural eloquence,” the 16 voices of the award-winning vocal ensemble Concert Clemens, founded by conductor Carsten Seyer-Hansen in 1997, has established itself as one of the leading vocal ensembles in Scandinavia. Their stylistic versatility has been seen in numerous collaborations exploring the connections between jazz and classical music as well as note-perfect interpretations of standard repertoire. The evangelist, tenor Adam Riis, is one of Denmark’s leading voices. Recorded in the DXD format by the Danish “Wizard of Sound”, Preben Iwan, in the resonant sonics of Skt. Markus Kirken, Århus.

What happens when a soundtrack is taken from a film and given a life on its own? When two Icelandic composers Páll Ragnar Pálsson and Eðvarð Egilsson finished scoring Quake, a psychological family drama, they were not ready to stop just there. What followed was a voyage of musical discoveries as they allowed for new ideas to enter the creative space. Just as a plant spread itself over the whole garden, cues from the movie scenes become independent, mature songs. The soundscape dwells on the border of acoustic and electronic and drifts from song-based to textural, from atmospheric to cinematic with lustrous cello in the foreground.

Géza Anda performed regularly at the Lucerne International Music Festival from 1955-1969. Only from this period three recordings have survived, which are published here for the first time in their entirety. These are the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra BWV 1061 by Johann Sebastian Bach from the festival year 1955 and the 3rd Piano Concerto by Béla Bartók from 1965. Clara Haskil and Herbert von Karajan were Anda's partners for Bach, and Ernest Ansermet for Bartók, who was heard here for the last time in Lucerne. Also featured is Bartók's 2nd Piano Concerto, which Anda played with his favorite conductor Ferenc Fricsay before an enthusiastic audience. audite presents this important gap in the Anda discography in cooperation with the Géza Anda Foundation Zurich, Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), Salzburg's Eliette and Herbert von Karajan Institute, and Lucerne Festival.

Julian Brink is a South African composer. Born in Johannesburg in 1989, he first picked up his mother’s guitar at the age of ten and grew up playing in rock bands. He discovered a love of contemporary classical music through the films of Paolo Sorrentino and Paul Thomas Anderson. Hearing Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will be Blood, in particular, was what led him to pursue composition. Although he didn’t learn to read music until he was 19, while studying guitar at undergraduate level, he went on to complete a master's degree in film scoring through Berklee College of Music and relocated to California in 2015. Brink works in film music and lives in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Maddie Hasson.

In collaboration with eminent classical label Sono Luminus, Utility Music is Brink's first standalone release. Originally composed in 2019 as a score for an abandoned film project, the music was arranged for piano, harp and string trio. It was later repurposed, reorchestrated and combined with a few older pieces into what is its current form. The album features performances by several distinguished musicians, with the heart of the music being the string trio of Moldovan violin virtuoso Dan-Iulian Drutac; Nick Revel, violist of the Grammy Nominated PUBLIQuartet; and Joe Zeitlin who was the lead cellist on Mica Levi’s Oscar-nominated score for Pablo Lorraín’s Jackie.

TRACKS:

• Colombo / Green Fingers
• Miniatures
• Simple Trio No. 1
• Eventually Lapse
• Albatross
• At Night
• Eastwood No. 4
• Simple Trio No. 2
• Aura for M
• Baptism in the Field
• Pattern Shells

REVIEW:

For his first standalone release, Julian Brink has repurposed and re-orchestrated an incomplete score for an unfinished film. The 11 short, delectable tracks ‘toss boundaries’, as the trombonist provocateur Juliane Gralle observes. Taken together, it feels like there might still be a movie in there, somewhere.

‘Miniatures’ has the feel of a haunted, southern Viennese waltz surrounded in fog, its central beauty emerging serenely through the mist accompanied by drops of ringing pizzicatos. ‘At Night’ features cellist Joe Zeitlin creating other-worldly shadings of tone and colour then lifting them gently from the musical score. The two ‘Simple Trio’ tracks, which offer a vade mecum of ‘uncomplicated transitions between notes to make the samples sound more realistic’, feature the trio of Zeitlin, violinist Dan-Iulian Druțac and viola player Nick Revel of PUBLIQuartet, which Brink describes as ‘the heart of the album. I try to forget that they haven’t all met each other and aren’t playing together in the same room.’

‘Albatross’ channels John Cage and Morton Feldman with mesmerisingly deceptive, irregular beats, wonderfully quiet. The last track, ‘Pattern Shells’, influenced by Villa-Lobos, is a spontaneous splurge of brass and tropical birds.

-- Gramophone

Tvær hliðar/Two Sides presents two contrasting sides of our music-making. On the first album we perform our core repertoire of Italian and Swedish Baroque music, but Barokkbandið Brák also seeks to expand the repertoire for historical instruments by commissioning new works by up and coming Icelandic composers, and the second album showcases new Icelandic music written specially for the ensemble. All of these works share the same sound world as all the music is performed on historical instruments from the baroque era.

REVIEW:

This is a gripping if curiously conceived album, divided unequally between an entertaining music from the High Baroque, and four new works by young Icelandic composers all commissioned by Barokkbandi Brák.

There are no doubts about Barokkbandi Brák’s virtuosity or musicality: the lively opening Allegro of Vivaldi’s Sinfonia bounds along with flawless intonation and ensemble. In Agrell’s vibrant Sinfonia in A and Sammartini’s energetic Concerto grosso, musical flow is always beautifully maintained, moving consistently at pace without seeming hurried. Barokkbandi Brák’s partnership with Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir in the Agrell Concerto is immaculate, with a real sense of joy – but then Kristinsdóttir is not only one of theirs but was one of the founders of the group in 2015. The same applies to the crisp performance of Vivaldi’s triple concerto for two violins and cello, featuring the group’s co-founder Laufey Jensdóttir and cellist Steinunn Arnbjörg Stefánsdóttir.

The group’s chamber credentials are highlighted in the trio sonatas by Corelli and Stradella, and – in a very different vein – Thrainn Hjalmarsson’s string quartet Recitar cantando/Speaking in Song, a study in ethereal textures. Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir composed her septet Quorum Sensing to evoke the biological mechanism that can ‘regulate gene expression’ and ‘co-ordinate group behavior’. Starting in not dissimilar expressive territory to Recitar cantando, it develops, slowly, in a more focused manner. Finnur Karlsson describes Fold as ‘a kind of contemplation about different aspects of Baroque music’. Kristinn Kristinsson’s diptych BRK also explicitly references the Baroque at its opening, though the music immediately circles away from (and back to, several times) the idiom in the first span’s sedate progress. Sono Luminus’s sound is crystal clear throughout.

-- Gramophone

For many people Christmas time has come when the broadcasting stations start playing the specific music everybody knows and hears each year. However, not always music performed around Christmas has originally been composed for Christmas too. Especially our earliest and therefore most emotional memories are closely related to this festivity. The music we associate with these emotions does not necessarily have to be Christmassy, but should intensify and reflect those feelings. In December 2022 the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under chief conductor Pietari Inkinen performed a festive concert in the main broadcasting studio of the Saarländischer Rundfunk in Saarbrücken. Entitled "Festklänge" (Festive Sounds), the concerto was a compilation of Christmas music and music associated with Christmas, featuring the soprano Sarah Romberger and the mezzo-soprano Elsa Benoit as soloists. It contains next to Hely Hutchinson's excerpts from Humperdinck's opera Hansel and Gretel as well from Tchaikovskys' The Nutcracker.

For his series called Schubert+, pianist Can Çakmur juxtaposes the complete major piano solo compositions by the Viennese composer with works by others who were inspired by his music, thus providing the opportunity to see these works in a new light. While making up a near complete anthology of Schubert’s completed major piano music, each disc is also intended as a self-contained recital.

In this third instalment, Çakmur presents not only a work by the 20th-century composer Ernst Krenek but also Krenek’s completion of an unfinished sonata by Schubert. In the process, Krenek assimilated the Schubertian language so well that the result is astonishing. As Çakmur says, ‘I would find it difficult to spot where Schubert ends and Krenek begins if it wasn’t specified in the score.’ Krenek, whose career spanned more than seven decades, was a prolific composer who embraced a host of styles. For his Second Piano Sonata, composed in the 1920s, he pays homage to Schubert by adopting some of his techniques, though the music owes much more to early 20th-century Paris than to 19th-century Vienna. A fascinating and neglected work to be discovered through the prism of Schubert.

Korean Tapestry

Largest church organ in Denmark

The great organ of Aarhus Cathedral is a true masterpiece of North European organ building tradition through four centuries and with 96 stops the largest pipe organ of Denmark. 2018-20 the organ was carefully restored and enlarged by the Danish organ builder Marcussen & Søn Orgelbyggeri Aps.

This publication tells the story of the restoration through text and extensive photo material and for the ?rst time documents the beautiful sounds of the restored instrument in a 2 CD anthology of organ music from Buxtehude to present time. Performers are the two organists Kristian Krogsøe and Anders Johnsson.

The rich variety of colors and rhythms in South American culture and music are an essential feature of this program for concert flute and piano, which focuses largely on music by composers from the Ecuadorian Andes. Opening with Durán’s popular and crowd-pleasing Leyenda incásica, the theme of Ecuadorian dances continues in Jacinto Freire’s Suite, which also celebrates the flight of the condor. Virtuosity, evocations of landscape and expressive traditional songs can all be found here, concluding with Mexican composer Samuel Zyman’s internationally acclaimed Flute Sonata No. 1, which ranges from lyrical introspection to intensely contrapuntal dialogue.

Tri Nguyen, classical pianist and dàn tranh (Vietnamese zither) master, presents 14 enchanting pieces composed in the form of a heartfelt letter to his late mother. With his bicultural upbringing, Tri showcases his mastery of the piano, at times reciting Bach, Vivaldi, Ravel… as well as his profound knowledge of the ancient techniques of dàn-tranh playing. An elegant blend of ancient and modern, Western and Asian, touching on tales of his childhood, the challenges of Covid-19 and his profound love and gratitude for his mother.

Manuscripts Don’t Burn is a famous line in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita – the retelling of Faust, the 20th-century cult novel of an artist surviving in a Totalitarian regime, the love story, the burlesque with giant, vodka-drinking cats, and vampiric theater administrators.

I first read the book as a kid, growing up in Soviet Odesa. I took it with me when my parents and I immigrated, as Jewish refugees running from antisemitism, through Austria and Italy, to the United States. Crossing the border, I worried that guards would discover my book, and I would be severely punished. Throughout the years, the book played a role in my life. My childhood best friend from Odesa reread the book in adulthood and decided to find me - we are now together for 20 years, with two kids. I read the book to my mother as she was dying from brain cancer.

Bulgakov’s novel weaves through my own newly published memoir, Weight in the Fingertips - A Musical Odyssey from Soviet Ukraine to the World Stage (Backbeat Books, October 2023). I consider this very personal recording to be something of a mirror image to my memoir, as it intertwines the literal images from Master and Margarita with more autobiographical themes and layers.

The five premieres, written for me and recorded here, are vastly different in styles and aesthetic. The understated, elegant Master and Margarita Suite by Veronika Krausas complements the wild, theatrical, brooding and extended techniques-filled “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” by Maya Miro Johnson. Mike Garson’s Psalm to Odesa, an improvisatory ballad, with bits of my own improvisation based on a well-known Odesan song, sets off “Voices” by Ljova, a piece for piano and historical recordings of Jewish cantorial and klezmer music. Both take me back to my home city, currently under vicious attack, like the rest of Ukraine. The poetry I recite, sing and hum while performing the four-movement Godai - the Four Elements - is rounded off by the propulsive bravura whirlwind of Hero. Fasil Say’s Black Earth takes the listener on a journey from Odesa across the Black Sea - a Turkish ballad and jazzy beats alternate with improvisatory melisma of a Turkish lute, played on muted strings of the piano. The rarely heard Notturno of Fanny Mendelssohn connects a gifted female voice to the others on this disc, as well as, perhaps, to the dark, impassioned character of Margarita. In Master and Margarita, “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” is spoken by Satan when he retrieves the manuscript of a novel presumed burnt – and in Clarice Assad’s “Godai”, Steve Schroeder’s poem depicts the loss of a manuscript in a fire.

The lieder of Schubert, transcribed for solo piano by Liszt, riffs on the mythical and the Faustian lore found also in Master and Margarita: Gretchen (Margarita) at the spinning wheel, a mystical love story by the sea, a monstrous Elf King and the death of a child, of innocence, of joy - one’s worst fear.

This collection of music speaks to my love of dialogue between music and words. As in my Music/Words series, where I pair poets with musical programs in the form of a recital/reading, the connections between text and sound here are not just literal but emotional, based on memory, intuition, dreams, and hopes.

- Inna Faliks

After a pilgrimage to Rocamadour I had the idea of composing a clandestine work which could be prepared in secret and then performed on the long-awaited day of liberation. With great enthusiasm I began Figure Humaine and completed it by the end of the summer. I composed the work for unaccompanied choir because I wanted this act of faith to be performed without instrumental aid, by sole means of the human voice.”
– Francis Poulenc

“The day the Americans arrived, I triumphantly placed my cantata on the studio desk, beneath my flag, at the window.”
– Francis Poulenc

“Francis, I never heard myself.
Francis, I needed you to understand me.”
– Paul Éluard

I believe that great art is often the product of great difficulty and tribulation, in many cases for the artist themselves. I also think art borne out of a time of societal turmoil can be even more profound, and can shed light today on what it was like to live and endure through tragedies of the past.

Figure Humaine is one of the ultimate artistic achievements from a time of turmoil. Composed by Francis Poulenc in 1943 in occupied France, it was composed in secret, inspired by the resistance poems of the surrealist poet Paul Éluard (poems that were distributed under plain cover during the occupation). It is one of the most profound pieces in the a cappella choral repertoire, if also one of the most difficult. Scored for double choir in six parts each, it is a vocal gauntlet which requires unmatched concentration and musicianship from every singer involved to mount a successful performance. Given that the piece was written at a time when victory was by no means assured, I believe that the difficulty of the work was intentional; to be worthy of the expressive task of communicating Éluard’s wartime thoughts, I think Poulenc believed that a choir must possess outstanding commitment, dedication, and skill. 
Because of its challenges, Figure Humaine is rarely performed. Soon after founding Skylark, I began to feel that this was a piece we simply had to share. But at only 20 minutes in length, I struggled to find the appropriate way to present it to allow people to truly engage with the work. While on a walk in 2014, I realized that we were approaching the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War, as well as the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, occasions that presented a unique opportunity to share music of both time periods. 

I set out on a journey to find the appropriate Civil War-era songs to pair with the Poulenc movements. Figure Humaine sets forth an intense emotional progression, cycling between despair and optimism against a backdrop of gathering madness. It was critical to find pieces that would make sense musically and textually in the context of Poulenc’s work.

It was a fascinating journey. Through exploring my own musical heritage, I soon discovered that Alice Parker arranged Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye for the Robert Shaw Chorale in the late 1960s. Consultation with other Skylarks revealed several brilliant arrangements from Ron Jeffers, and a search through the Duke University Historical Sheet Music Archives uncovered several pieces that I never knew existed. The discovery that Abide with me (one of my favorite hymns) was written during 1861 was particularly poignant. Where no appropriate arrangement existed, I filled in myself with very simple editions. In all cases, the goal was to create as simple and honest an expression of the songs as possible. Against the foil of Poulenc’s monumental achievement of the choral art, we aim to juxtapose the simple, the familiar, the universal.

Through sharing this program, we hope to take you on an emotional and historical journey, a journey that we hope will illuminate the struggles of people who endured these two great wars, a journey that can shed light on nightmares of the past through the art that emerged from them, and most importantly, a journey that will affirm the incredible power of the human spirit to endure in times of tragedy.

– Matthew Guard, Artistic Director