The new CD edition 'Bauhaus Music, Volume 1' by the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung brings the rich and long-overlooked music history of the Bauhaus back to life. The series opens with an absolute sensation - Marc Blitzstein's 'Parabola and Circula', believed to be the only geometric opera in the world. Developed in 1929/30, the piece was supposed to debut at a Bauhaus event but, for various reasons, remained unperformed for almost a century. It wasn't until 2025 when the research project 'Bauhaus Music', initiated by the Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung, presented the world premiere of a reconstructed version at the Musikfest Berlin in the Berliner Philharmonie. Modern, poignant and richly multifaceted, Blitzstein's opera tells a tragic love story in the realm of geometric forms that evokes the artistic visions of the Bauhaus stage. With this CD, you can now enjoy the first recording of the 2025 debut performance - an acoustic document that captures an extraordinary moment of music and Bauhaus research.
Our life is like jazz improvisation; it should always be spontaneous, always in the moment, and always free.' (Nikolai Kapustin) Mission accomplished! After six years of rehearsals, concerts, and productions, all six piano concertos by the Russian jazz wizard Nikolai Kapustin are now available as recordings. Concertos Nos. 1 and 3, along with the no less virtuosic 8 Concert Etudes Op. 40, are released here for the first time, thereby completing this successful cycle. Drawing a parallel to one of the most prominent figures of symphonic jazz, Kapustin is often described as a 'Russian following in Gershwin's footsteps.' Frank Dupree has tirelessly followed that path, finally presenting us this significant gap in musical history.
Hans Winterberg: Piano Concerto No. 2; Symphony No. 2
Capriccio
CD
$21.99Oct 30, 2026
Hans Winterberg grew up in Prague where he was one of a whole cadre of composers in the new Czech musical tradition. He claimed to have been inspired by Schoenberg, but in reality, he cultivated a Central European Impressionism which he skillfully blended with complex rhythms. The two works presented on this CD mark high points in Winterberg's oeuvre. The circumstances in which they were composed could not have been more different. While the Second Symphony was written during the darkest moments of his existence, he composed the Second Piano Concerto less than ten years later, in what was probably the brightest moment of his life, the early 1950s, when his breakthrough as a composer, which he had been unable to achieve in Czechoslovakia, now seemed certain in the young Federal Republic of Germany.
Today Street Scene is Kurt Weill's most frequently revived American stage work. A polystylistic blending of operatic arias and ensembles, musical comedy songs and dances, dramatic dialogue both unaccompanied and underscored, and extraordinary emotional drama, Street Scene is arguably Weill's breakthrough. Though Elmer Rice's play was set in the 1920s, the popular music references are pure 1940s style (Glenn Miller, Rodgers and Hammerstein). After the successful release of "Love Life" (Capriccio C5550) this recording fills up the meanwhile large Kurt-Weill-Catalogue of Capriccio, again with a powerful cast from Opera North.
Ernst von Dohnanyi was one of the most versatile and influential musicians of his time but his works are now seldom played. A gap which Capriccio want to fill now with this already eight recording of his late romantical, sensual music, deeply rooted in the Austro-German classical tradition. His Symphony No. 2 is a colossal work, lasting around an hour and calling for an extraordinarily large orchestra. The composition coincided with his departure from war-torn Hungary during World War II. Ruralia Hungarica, written in 1923 and arranged for orchestra in the following year, makes use of familiar Hungarian folk-melodies, some of them known abroad through their appearance in the work of other Hungarian composers.
Music for children plays an important role in Miloslav Kabelac's artistic oeuvre. Especially in the early days after the communist coup in 1948, the composer devoted himself to this genre: 'I regard composing for children as a 'touchstone' not only for all creative abilities, but also for the human qualities of the composer. That is why I take this work as seriously and as importantly as any other". In his music, Kabelac creates powerful atmospheric images with a playful sensitivity for language, some of which is highly onomatopoeic. His serious engagement with children's works is once again evident in the fact that Kabelac repeatedly quoted motifs and melodies from children's works in larger symphonic works.
Brahms: The Piano Concertos / Barto, Eschenbach, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin
Capriccio
CD
$22.99Oct 14, 2014
The American pianist Tzimon Barto and the world famous conductor Christoph Eschenbach have had a very long and close friendship together. After their successful Capriccio recording of Tchaikovsky’s B flat Minor Concerto they follow up now with recordings of the Brahms Concertos, cornerpieces of the piano concerto literature and further examples of these two artist’s close working partnership. Mr. Barto and Mr. Eschenbach, iconoclasts both, offer a new focus on these masterpieces. Also to be heard are Mr. Barto’s interpretations of the 4 Ballades, op. 10.
The Goldberg Variations' alternation of connection and freedom, fantasy and strict form, was able to lead in a hitherto unknown way to a higher unity, raising them to the rank of a real compendium of the art of variation, strongly influencing Beethoven, Brahms and Reger. Tzimon Barto's international breakthrough came in the mid-1980s, when he appeared at the Vienna Musikverein and the Salzburg Festival at the invitation of Herbert von Karajan. Tzimon Barto has since performed with nearly every major international orchestra. “…a pianist who particularly cares about poetry." (Piano News)
[Photoptosis] is usually considered Zimmermann's defining work but never has it sounded so raw-boned and unrelenting: kudos to the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and Karl-Heinz Steffens for pulling off such a chancy, intrepid performance.
– Gramophone
The symphony is impressively taut and compact...Karl-Heinz Steffens's performance of Stille und Umkehr, Zimmermann's final orchestral work, reveals it to be a haunting and obsessive miniature masterpiece that is hard to forget.
Haydn: The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross / Vegh
Capriccio
CD
$16.99Apr 07, 2017
Joseph Haydn’s orchestral work The Seven Last Words of Our Savior On the Cross was commissioned in 1783 for the Good Friday service at Oratorio de la Santa Cueva. There are seven main meditative sections, which are all slow movements labeled “sonatas, that are framed by an introduction and an “Earthquake” conclusion, for a total of nine movements. The present release is from a live performance at the Vienna Konzerthaus, on March 15, 1992. Sandor Vegh conducts the Camerata Academica des Mozarteums Salzburg for this performance. This release is part of the Capriccio Encore series, which is a series of re-releases of the most famous recordings from Capriccio’s back catalogue, fully re-mastered and competitively priced. The legendary recordings of artists such as Sandor Végh, Ton Koopman, Sir Neville Marriner and the Vienna Boys’ Choir also contain repertoire highlights that have a particularly special appeal, from the baroque to the present day.
WELLESZ Piano Concerto, op. 491; Violin Concerto, op. 842 • 1Margarete Babinsky (piano); 2David Frühwirt (vn); Roger Epple, cond; RSO Berlin • CAPRICCIO 5027 (53:15)
Egon Wellesz, born in Vienna in 1885, is among the group of composers of “degenerate art” who survived the Nazi era physically, but not artistically. Like Braunfels, Zeisl, Mittler, or to a lesser degree Hartmann, his music died twice: once when the Nazis declared it “degenerate” and forced him into emigration, then again when the heavily subsidized postwar arts scene thought him not “degenerate” enough—too tonal, too beholden to music rather than organized sound. Even the many, many honors he received in the 50s, 60s, and 70s—in that sense he was luckier than many a colleague with a similar fate—smacked of guilt and placation, not genuine interest in his œuvre.
Wellesz was taught by Guido Adler (also Webern’s professor), became one of the first private students of Schoenberg, and later Schoenberg’s first biographer. In 1974 he died a CBO scholar in Oxford but was buried in his unappreciative home town, Vienna.
On this disc, further exploring “lost” 20th-century repertoire, Capriccio presents a piano concerto that decidedly, finally, doesn’t remind me of Ravel’s! Not that I don’t adore Ravel’s piano concertos to pieces; I do. It’s just that it started to seem like a strange running joke how anything from Zeisl to von Einem (Fanfare 33:6) to Krenz (Fanfare 33:2) seemed to remind of Ravel’s G-Major work. Wellesz doesn’t, partly because of his bold writing for piano and a more reticent orchestral part. From the first movement’s unhurried orchestral introduction over an impatient, then calming piano part, to the sudden spunk that picks up at around the two-minute mark, there is little that would immediately, much less invariably, remind one of any other composer. The virtuosic spikes that the pianist traverses, meanwhile, don’t just strike me as jazzy because I am listening to it (and writing this) as I am at a jazz festival in Bolzano, between gigs in this medieval town in South Tyrol. Pianistic ruminations and short orchestra exclamation marks take turns, with much of the material given to the solo piano. The five-minute, unintrusive slow second movement has the ability to just flit by if you don’t pay attention. The orchestra attempts to wax lyrically; the piano interrupts with coy runs. The third movement takes over stealthily with another slow introduction before virtuosity breaks through once again, pulling through to the end with some rambunctiousness and grand gestures. All together the work is not, to my ears, as wholly marvelous a discovery as Eric Zeisl’s (cpo 777226), to mention just an even more obscure work from a composer with a similar-enough biography. But it’s well worth listening to if concertos in general, and that lost period of music in particular, are of interest to you.
The same verdict stands for the Violin Concerto from 1961—even though it is considerably different in style. If you know Wellesz’s symphonies (also on cpo), you will have noticed a distinct break between the essentially late-Romantic symphonies Nos. 1 through 4 and the more explicitly modern Nos. 5 through 8. Wellesz called his Violin Concerto the brother of his Fifth Symphony and that is reflected by a greater—belated, if you will—incorporation of some elements of the serialist school. All movements are based on the same material, albeit a situation that Wellesz claimed to have discovered only after the fact.
The work manages to suggest density while retaining clear lines, and it is—at four movements—considerably more expansive than the Piano Concerto. After its premiere it was favorably compared to Berg (which it obliquely refers to) and Schoenberg. I don’t hear the beauty in it that I hear in the Berg (which, it should be pointed out, benefits from the advantage of far greater exposure, familiarity, and tons of wonderful recordings). It also seems less austere than Schoenberg’s concerto. Listeners who can just be brought to enjoy or accept the harmonic language of the Piano Concerto will find the Violin Concerto less attractive; tougher listening. But with some good will they should be able to access that work, too … especially via the Andante sostenuto, the fourth and last movement which, a terse and frenzied cadenza apart, has repose and considerable lyricism to offer. The violin part in the first movement has a good deal of electric, buzzing moments that are highly enjoyable. For getting to know the composer Wellesz, I’d start with the symphonies, but if they have turned you on already, then his two full-size concertos will be a mandatory expansion pack.
I know it must be frustrating for soloists or ensemble musicians when their work is done away with in one sentence, only because they are not famous enough to have pre-impressed the critic. This kindly dismissal usually takes place with adjectives like “adequate” or “perfectly acceptable.” Unfortunately for lack of comparison, knowledge of the score, and any immediately sensed enthusiasm about the playing (as in the Wetzler recording—Fanfare 33:4—for example), that’s exactly what I’ll have to do. Certainly the soloists Margarete Babinsky, David Frühwirt, or the Berlin RSO under Roger Epple don’t stand in the way of enjoyment.
Weinberger: Overture to a Chivalrous Play, 6 Bohemian Songs & Dances & Passacaglia / Albrecht
Capriccio
CD
$21.99May 13, 2016
Czech American composer Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967) was best-known for his opera Schwanda the Bagpiper, but he also excelled in other genres. The pieces featured here include his Overture to a Chivalrous Play (1931), 6 Bohemian Songs and Dances (1929), and Passacaglia for organ and large orchestra (1932). Organist Jorg Strodthoff is featured on the Passacaglia. The album also features the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducted by Gerd Albrecht.
Doppler: The Complete Flute Music, Vol. 1 / Arimany, Martinez, Orquesta Sinfonica Ciudad de Elche
Capriccio
CD
$16.99Jan 06, 2017
The Doppler brothers played a dominant role in the K & K Monarchy’s musical life as composers, conductors, musicians, and as orchestral soloists. They were on good terms with acknowledged artists of the era, such as Ferenc Liszt, Ferenc Erkel, of Jozsef Bajza. Capriccio starts with this first album in the release of ten total of the complete flute music composed by Franz and Carl Doppler, including many world premiere recordings and interesting autobiographical notes. Flutist Claudi Arimany has done all of the research for this project over the past two decades, and has invited some of the best musicians in the world to participate in this project, including Janos Balint and Shigenori Kudo, who are the flutists chosen for this album.
Frid: Symphony No. 3 / Gazarian, Georgian Chamber Orchestra Ingolstadt
Capriccio
CD
$21.99Aug 02, 2019
With his opera The Diary of Anne Frank (1968/69), by virtue of the subject alone, Grigory Frid could be sure of attracting attention beyond the borders of Russia. The remaining enormous oeuvre by the composer, covering mainly instrumental works, songs, radio and film music, still remains to be discovered and explored in depth. Both prior to and after the collapse of the Communist USSR, Frid was awarded the highest honors, e.g. the title of Artist of Merit (1986) and the Moscow Prize (1996). It is not erroneous to view Frid’s aesthetic position in a propinquity to Dmitri Shostakovich, as well as a generation of younger composers such as Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke. As in the cases of these composers, Frid’s music is also positioned within a field of tension between following the great Russian tradition and the quest for possibilities of expression in keeping with new, modern and international trends.
Walter Braunfels is a composer whose music died twice: Once when the Nazis declared his music “degenerate art”. Then again when post-war Germany had little use for the various schools of tonal music; when the arbiters of taste considered any form of romantic music – almost the whole pre-war aesthetic – to be tainted. This 7th release of Capriccio’s Braunfels Edition shows again his large range of colorful music and focus this time on his early great Orchestral work Fantastical Apparitions Of a Theme by Hector Berlioz, Op. 25 (1914-1917) - the first complete recording of this amazing composition, compiled with his last orchestral work, the Sinfonia brevis op. 69 (1948).
REVIEW:
Aside from hearing the Berlioz Variations in their splendid entirety, the interpretations here are also worthy. Buhl leads them with dramatic motion, pointing up their considerable orchestral flair.
Walter Braunfels is a composer whose music died twice: Once when the Nazis declared his music "degenerate art". Then again when post-war Germany had little use for the various schools of tonal music; when the arbiters of taste considered any form of romantic music - almost the whole pre-war aesthetic - to be tainted. Post-war Europe had experienced (or rather: been prescribed) an aesthetic paradigm shift. Walter Braunfels had a hand at drama and his operas demonstrate his careful consideration of texts. This also shines through in his songs, with which he learned his craft and all but two of which he composed prior to The Birds. Marlis Petersen, whose fascination with Braunfels' "unique tonal language of a totally transparent structure and large late-romantic nature" began with two songs she got to sing earlier in her career, considers the Federspiele to be "real jewels of the art of Lied: simple, deeply touching airs."
![ROLLE, J.H.: Thirza and her Sons [Opera]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/342142.jpg?v=1786753081&width=400)
