Ludwig van Beethoven's devotion to wind musical instruments dates already from his young life in Bonn, as proved from the correspondence between his teacher Josef Haydn and the Elector of Bonn Maximilian Franz: here the composition of his Parthia dans un concert, or wind Octet op. 103 is mentioned as a work written before his arrival in Vienna and therefore as the earliest piece he wrote for winds. The remarkable Rondino for the same instruments, using the recently invented mutes for the horns, might have been part of the same Parthia in an earlier version. Once in Vienna, Beethoven was impressed by an ensemble consisting of just 2 oboes and cor anglais and wrote for them the extended and virtuosic Terzetto op. 87 in 1794 and the Variations on Mozart’s Don Giovanni in 1796. Also from 1796, a quintet with the unusual scoring of one oboe, three horns and bassoon survives incomplete. The picture of Beethoven’s output for winds wouldn’t be complete without his military music, commissioned around the year 1810. According to the Austrian tradition, with remote Turkish influence- the so-called janissary music- the scoring here includes also trumpets, contrabassoon and a rich variety of percussion instruments.

20 years ago, at the beginning of his career, the young baritone Bo Skovhus made his first recording of Schubert’s “Schöne Mullerin”. Now, as a famous opera and Lied interpreter he presents a new production of all 3 Schubert Cycles: “I’m very thankful to do this again. As a young men you do not reflect so much what happen. Now, when I’m older, I understand much more about. Especially for this cycle it’s important to have another point of view.” (Bo Skovhus) Stefan Vladar, the famous Viennese pianist and his partner on the piano, shows us the virtuosity of the piano part in a new different light.

This release features Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, who studies as the Vienne Academy of Music and Dramatic Art with Hilde Rossel-Majdan and Erik Werba. Holzmair performs at venues and festivals around the world, as well as with other renowned artists such as pianist Imogen Cooper.

Stravinsky’s much-loved work Petrushka receives a beautiful performance in this live recording by the Seattle Symphony. Alongside this titan of a work is the little-known children’s ballet by Debussy, La boite a joujoux (The Toy Box). Conductor Ludovic Morlot does a fantastic job of interpreting these works by two of the twentieth century’s finest conductors.

Her playing may aptly be described as emotional and intense. Displaying “amazing expressiveness and brilliance” (Westfalenpost) and “an empathy that touches one deep inside” (Märkische Allgemeine), Gerlint Böttcher fascinates her audiences in Europe, Asia, America and the Middle East. She makes solo appearances with such celebrated orchestras as Berlin’s Konzerthaus Orchestra, the South-West German Chamber Orchestra of Pforzheim, the Berlin Symphony, the Ryazan Philharmonic in Russia, the Philharmonic State Orchestra in Halle and the Brandenburg State Orchestra of Frankfurt an der Oder under such conductors as Sergey Oselkov, Heribert Beissel, Timo Handschuh and Nicholas Milton. The pianist is a regular performer at major festivals; in cooperation with the Bayreuth Festival, she has repeatedly played at Haus Wahnfried in Bayreuth. Many of the compositions that she has premiered were written expressly for her by composers of the first rank. Alongside the solo repertoire, which takes first place in her artistic life, she takes part in programmes of genuine rarities together with such partners as Echo Klassik prizewinners Bassiona Amorosa and actor Hans-Jürgen Schatz.

Sony Classical is pleased to announce another ten releases in its increasingly comprehensive series of Classical Masters. These new budget-priced releases contain classic recordings, many of them newly remastered, by some of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. “Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic once again defy the inexorable progress of period performance in exhilarating accounts of Mozart using modern instruments,” opined Gramophone. The new reissue of these recordings from the early 1990s includes several favorite symphonies, the Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, the Masonic Funeral Music, a serenade and divertimento as well as the C minor Mass, of which “Abbado’s performance is wide-ranging, delivering most satisfyingly on every aspect of this hugely varied score. He has an impressively unified team at his disposal, with a superb quartet of singers: in fact Bonney and Auger are as well matched as you could reasonably expect to find in the impossibly demanding Domine Deus duet” (Music-Web International).