Richard Strauss‘ father, Franz Strauss, was one of the most prominent horn virtuosos of the time, and the horn was one of the instruments for which Richard had a predilection throughout his life. With his “Serenade,” Strauss junior convinced conductor Hans von Bülow of his talent. Von Bülow took the piece into the program of his famous Meininger Hofkapelle. There is a close relationship between the first concerto in C Minor op. 8 by Franz Strauss to the horn concerto op. 11 of his son who orientated him-self at the romantic stile of his father. The horn virtuoso himself premiered his own concerto in C Minor in spring 1865 during an academy in the Odeon concert house in Munich. Born in the same year as Franz Strauss, Franck received his first music lessons and made his first public appearances as pianist before moving with his parents to Paris, where he became a pupil of Anton Reicha. In 1871 he was a co-founder of the Société Nationale de Musique, and later elected its president. Characteristic of Franck’s mature style is the so-called “cyclical form” – a formal concept that attained full significance only in the works from Franck’s last decade. This period also saw the composition of his today most well-known works, which of course attained their great popularity only after his death. The Piano Quintet is considered the beginning, the “portal work,” whose tendencies and motifs are taken up again in later works such as the D-Minor Symphony, the Violin Sonata, and the String Quartet. Premiered in its original form on 17 January 1880 in the Société Nationale de Musique, the work experienced its premiere in the expanded form of a “Symphony for Orchestra and Piano” on 8 June 2008 with Mathias Weber, who made the arrangement, performing the piano part.

On the present release Duo Wolanska/Gajda presents transcriptions for Piano and Accordion. DUO WOLAŃSKA/GAJDA is an unusual chamber music ensemble. The combination of piano and accordion opens unlimited performance possibilities. Two solo, independent instruments collide with each other on a sonoristic level, thus creating a new quality of instrumental dialogue. Established in 2014, the ensemble is formed by pianist Julia Wolańska-Gajda and accordionist Michał Gajda. On a regular basis, the artists give concerts in Poland and abroad (New York, Virginia, Arkansas, Japan, Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Austria, Germany, or the Netherlands). They have already performed in the most prestigious concert halls in the world: New York’s Carnegie Hall, Berliner Philharmonie, Mozarteum Saal in Salzburg, Musikverein in Vienna, Kioi Hall in Tokyo, or Guri Art Hall in Seoul. Duo Wolańska/Gajda has won a number of coveted awards and accolades. They are prizewinners of, among others, the Gold Medal in the 4th Manhattan International Music Competition (2019), 1st prize in the 1st Vienna International Music Competition (2019), 1st prize in the Salzburg Grand Prize Virtuoso Inter-national Music Competition (2018), 1st prize in the 54th Internationaler Akkordeonwettbewerb Klingenthal (2017), ‘Top Winner’ 1st prize in the 25th Ibla Grand Prize World Music Competition in Ragusa (2016), or 1st prize in the Val Tidone International Music Competitions (2015).

Described by the New York Times in 1944 as “One of the most remarkably gifted of the younger generation of American keyboard artists,” Leon Fleisher was born in San Francisco in 1928. In 1944, at age 16, he played the Brahms first Piano Concerto as soloist with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Pierre Monteux. In 1952 he won the Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels. He played the Brahms and Beethoven Piano Concertos often and recorded them with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. In 1964, he noticed that two fingers of his right hand were beginning to involuntarily curl up. He tried every therapy that existed then, but his solo career was effectively ended. He continued to teach, and conduct and in 1967 began to perform works for the left hand. In 1995 he succeeded to regain the use if his right hand and began performing and recording with two-hands. Leon Fleisher passed away in 2020 at age 92. DOREMI is proud to offer here a hitherto unreleased live recording of 16 years old Leon Fleisher playing Brahms Piano concerto No, 1 with the New York Philharmonic, with Pierre Monteux conducting.

The internationally acclaimed pianist Adriana von Franqué takes a musical journey through Paris on her GENUIN debut album. The world-concerting musician, known for innovative concert formats and unusual program selections, focuses on the delicate and poetic aspects of the "City of Lights". With a sensitivity for sound and clarity, she plays music by Lili Boulanger, César Franck, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Simon Laks from Warsaw. The result is floating, atmospheric, finely crafted music that seems to incorporate the Tuileries Garden, the banks of the Seine, or the intricate lacework of the Eiffel Tower…

The first release on any format of Szeryng's recording in Berlin during the years 1962-1963* at which time Szeryng was at the peak of his technical and intellectual capacities. All tracks have been remastered from the original Berlin radio tapes using Phoenix Mastering, a unique restoration process developed over 2 years by The Lost Recordings and Devialet teams.

Henryk Szeryng: "Johann Sebastian Bach's work is a Bible. Bach is the ultimate goal; this is where everything starts and everything ends. His music brings you closer to your own spirit," What could more eloquently express the violinist's relationship with Bach, developed from an early age? Szeryng keep up his intimate association of Bach throughout his life. Szeryng's deft finger work brings out the full brilliance of the Partita's clarity and joy. His energy, his attacks, his remarkably precise bowing and generous timbre once more bear testimony to the depth and intensity of his lifelong attachment to Bach.

Throughout the innumerable meanderings of this Sonata for Violin and Piano in which Franck breathes new life into the genre, Henryk Szeryng has wrought a miracle. With his natural, dynamic interpretation, the warmth of his emotion-filled timbre, and the ringing clarity of his articulation and intonations, he does perfect justice to a work that is constantly balancing between sensual melodies and formal experimentation.

Henryk Szeryng masters the most demanding technical difficulties while rendering the subtlest effects of Ravel's writing. His generous timbre and pure phrasing, which have led some to compare him to "pure essence of rose", are superb in this highlight of the repertoire. Ravel, entranced by the flights of tzigane music, has bequeathed us one of his most captivating works. Szeryng's performance makes his intimacy with Beethoven manifest. The energy of his interpretation of the sonata nevertheless captures the finest details of the drama of the works.

* CD2, Track 9 recorded 1982. All tracks remastered 2022.

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.

It was not until 1884, and the publication of the Prelude, Choral & Fugue, that César Franck would truly begin to develop his personal voice – innovative and ground-breaking whilst at the same time reverent to the greats of the past, and displaying a spirituality both introverted and extroverted. Despite being performed far less frequently in concert than the Prelude, Choral & Fugue, the Prelude, Aria & Finale is no less masterful in its construction, and with it being written in September 1887 it would be the last work he would write for the instrument.

It was not until 1886 that Franck published his first and only Sonata for violin and piano. And it was with this work that Franck finally received the acclaim and admiration that had somehow evaded a man of his talents for so many years. Here van der Velde plays it in the rare transcription for piano solo by Alfred Cortot. The fourth piece of this recording is the even rarer transcription of the Prélude, Fugue and Variations by the great Polish virtuoso Ignaz Friedman.

After many acclaimed releases on BIS, most recently ‘Sounds and Sweet Airs – A Shakespeare Songbook’ (BIS-2653), Carolyn Sampson’s latest recital with Joseph Middleton lives up to its name: it is an eloquent testimony to the English soprano’s love of her art. This programme artfully blends well-known and lesser-known lieder by German and Austrian masters such as Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf with French songs by Gounod, Poulenc and Franck, as well as works by Anglo-Saxon composers such as Hubert Parry, Samuel Barber and Ivor Gurney. Female composers are not forgotten, with rarely-performed songs by Rita Strohl based on slightly risqué poems by Pierre Louÿs, music by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Kaija Saariaho – who has recently passed away – and Deborah Pritchard, whose song presented here was composed especially for Sampson. And while Leonard Bernstein’s comically cheeky song ‘I hate music’, appears to be a call not to let music take itself too seriously, Errollyn Wallen’s ‘Peace on Earth’, which concludes the album, invokes calm and encourages us to find peace, a message that seems more relevant today than ever.

With this CD box set, 35-year-old pianist Sunwook Kim presents a first-class curated selection of works by composers Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms and César Franck. Beethoven's piano sonatas hold a special place in Sunwook Kim's repertoire. This box set contains recordings of his most famous sonatas, among others No. 8 "Pathétique", No. 21 "Waldstein" and the last three sonatas op. 109-111. With recordings of Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Myung-Whun Chung, the Sonata No. 3 and the Six Piano Pieces, Op. 118, Sunwook Kim highlights his deep understanding of the composer's music. The collection is completed by a sensitive interpretation of the emotionally charged and highly complex work "Prélude, Choral et Fugue" by French composer César Franck.

The tradition of bringing out New Year publications on January 2, “Berchtold’s Day”, goes back as far as the 17th century. Societies andguilds provided printed books, illustrations or music to the young people of the city in return for a financial contribution, which went towards the heating of the society rooms. A 2005 CD of piano music by the Winterthur composer Johann Carl Eschmann, whose documents are held in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, marked the revival of the old tradition in a new guise.
The New Year release CD 2024 brings together works by six composers, male and female, all of whom except one were born and trained in French-speaking countries. Even Paul Juon had Romanic roots, since his grandfather had emigrated around 1830 from the Swiss canton of Grisons to Russia. Short pieces have been grouped around César Franck’s Sonata in A major: composed between 1880 and 1924, all – except Ernest Bloch’s three lieder movements From Jewish Life (1924), whose Judaistic timbre became Bloch’s trademark – conform to our present-day perception of a rhapsodic fin-de-siècle sound.
The cellist Isabel Gehweiler is a prizewinner of the European Bursary for Young Artists, the Art Prize of the Art Foundation of Baden-Württemberg, the Art Prize of the Markgräfler region; she is also a recipient of grants from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), the Juilliard School of Music, the Rotary Foundation, the arteMusica Foundation, the Cultural Foundation of the Saarland region, the Richard Wagner Association, the Covid-19 Grant of the City of Zurich, the Notenstein La Roche Privatbank and the Vontobel Bank. As a composer, Isabel Gehweiler has produced a body of work encompassing chamber music and orchestral compositions, which are regularly performed at international festivals.

The injustices of history are made to be redressed. Here a cast of international singers, under the dynamic direction of Gergely Madaras, devotes itself with conviction to the task of reviving one of the forgotten glories of French Romantic opera. Hulda, completed in 1885, was never staged in César Franck’s lifetime. This gory medieval legend recounts the multiple acts of vengeance its heroine inflicts on the Aslak clan, which slaughtered her family, and on her unfaithful lover Eiolf. The ferocious performance of American soprano Jennifer Holloway in the title role is matched by the sinister presentiments of her French colleague Véronique Gens and the tender outbursts of Dutch soprano Judith van Wanroij. Although the imaginary Norwegian setting brings Wagner to mind, Franck continues the tradition of French grand-opéra while adopting the contemporary Verdian idiom. The intensity of the action is reflected in harmonic and instrumental experiments that place Franck in the forefront of the modernists of his time. The inventiveness of the ballet is matched only by the splendour of the choral writing. How could such a masterpiece have languished in oblivion for so long? Quite simply, because it was deliberately buried by Franck's pupils, who preferred to keep for themselves the glory of personifying the French operatic revival.