Star conductor Herbert von Karajan is best known today for his studio recordings. However, although as a media pioneer he recognised the technical possibilities for creating recordings, he always considered the live concert to be the ideal. The radio recordings with the Berliner Philharmoniker, which were made in Berlin between 1953 and 1969 and which we present to you in this edition - mostly as first releases - represent an exciting paradox in this respect: they are snapshots that capture the spontaneity of the live performance, the magic of the unique musical moment. Never before has it been possible to experience Karajan the live artist and his joint work with the Berliner Philharmoniker as vividly as in this comprehensive edition.

(summary) "Ellis Island" or the sound odyssey of Julia Hamos, who examines in this very first album her family history, American and Hungarian, while displaying a longing for adventure. A poetic journey that takes us from the Hungary of Bela Bartok and Gyorgy Kurtag to the gates of New York and the recreations of Charles Mingus and Meredith Monk. (complete blurb) "Ellis Island" is an odyssey in sound, the story of a pianist with dual origins, Julia Hamos, who, in this very first album, looks at her family roots, American and Hungarian, and displays a longing for adventure. She looks towards the Hungary of Bartok and Kurtag, engaging in a dialogue with the memory of her ancestors from Transylvania. Originally from the same region as Kurtag, her maternal grandfather knew Ligeti as a child. This journey with it's haunting poetry will lead us also to New York, the pianist's first home, a place of hope and inspiration, which always feeds her creativity. Myself When I Am Real by Charles Mingus bursts forth, a fabulous moment, both poetic and pianistic, the zenith of this unusual and personal journey where the pianist, with a mellow yet clear sound palette, will have brought together in a fluid gesture the waking dreams of Schubert (Ungarische melodie, 1824), the very earthy and despair-tinged folklore of Bartok (Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs) and the torrential and enigmatic explosions of early Kurtag (8 Pieces Op. 3). In this eminently personal journey, however, there is no narcissistic temptation. Because if the young musician plays, she above all wants to speak to us, with modesty, but not without determination. Her piano assembles words, choreographs rhythms, and also deploy it's range of pastels colours. This is demonstrated by the subtle selection of Jatekok, where the piano will embody a thousand faces, in turn itself (Capriccioso), percussion (Play with Overtones), harp (Perpetuum mobile) or violin duet with viola (Tears). The two cycles of Bartok, with their characters so ironically sketched (Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs) and their sparkling rhythms (6 Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm), are no less alive. From the pianist's supple playing, from her silky legato, final streaks of melancholy will often escape. In all respects, "Ellis Island" is a fascinating experience - that of an artist who has found her voice.

The three Bartok concertos - Tomas Vrana's exciting debut Bartok as an uncompromising individualist, Bartok as an architect, Bartok as a poet - that could be a simplified characterisation of his three piano concertos; three works that capture in a surprisingly fitting way the stages of the composer's life, from the discovery of his own musical language to refinement and finally his acceptance of the difficult end to his life's journey. The calm and peaceful mood of the most frequently played Third Piano Concerto contrasts strikingly with the relentlessly tempestuous struggle of the First and the lively vitality of the Second. To this day, however, extreme technical difficulty hinders the more frequent performing of these works. The playing of the young piano virtuoso Tomas Vrana, joined on the recording by the Janacek Philharmonic Ostrava and the Hungarian conductor Gabor Kali, definitely goes well beyond mere technical mastery in the works. His debut received high praise from Jean-Efflam Bavouzet: "Apart from it being quite rare to see a pianist so dedicated to such difficult pieces, it is even less common to see a young musician mastering them with such musical intelligence and deep knowledge of the orchestra score coupled with a great sense of rhythm and a masterful technique!" Tomas Vrana also exhibited similar sensitivity and mastery in his use of language - he accompanied his recording with an interesting text for the CD booklet.

GRAMMY Award-winning tenor Nicholas Phan's thoughtful and probing recital program Fellow Citizens delves into stories of immigration and migration through compositional voices ranging from the 19th century to the present day. Nick explains, 'The 'wanderer' has been a trope at the centre of song repertoire since the advent of the art form fostered by travelling troubadours; through the migrant journeymen protagonists of Schubert, Mahler, and their contemporaries; to today's itinerant singer-songwriters.' Fellow Citizens, with Nick's fellow GRAMMY Award winner pianist Myra Huang, is bookended by works of composers who migrated during their lifetimes. The album opens with 'God Bless America,' Irving Berlin's musical prayer of thanksgiving to the nation that gave him refuge as a child fleeing pogroms in Russia. In the closing set of songs are by Robert Owens and Florence Price, each of whom followed the path of America's Great Migration in the twentieth century, whilst Rebecca Clarke's relocation to the United States was prompted by the Second World War. Songs by British-American composer Rebecca Clarke and British composer Errollyn Wallen CBE, alongside works by Franz Schubert and Ralph Vaughan Williams, explore the act of traveling from one place to another. Folk-song arrangements by Bela Bartók and Antonín Dvorak - both of whom spent extended periods in America - sit alongside an arrangement of the folk-gospel tune Poor Wayfaring Stranger by Ohio-born composer Steven Mark Kohn. Ruth Crawford Seeger's striking setting of Chinese-American poet and actor Hsi Tseng Tsiang's Chinaman, Laundryman, is juxtaposed with Schubert's expansive setting of Franz von Schober's poem romanticising the figure of the homeless wanderer as a kind of eternal pilgrim. Mohammed Fairouz's setting of W. H. Auden's poem, Refugee Blues, recounts the plight of Jewish refugees during World War II, who found themselves denied entry at nearly every port as they sought to escape the Holocaust. The title track comes from a song by Chicago-based composer Eric Malmquist, an eloquent setting of Carl Sandburg's poem of the same name. The world premiere recording of Shawn Okpebholo's cycle, The Beautiful, responds to Sandburg's poem, meditating on the question of who are our fellow citizens as Americans, through settings of poems by Margaret Noodin, Carl Sandburg, Claude McKay, and Tsitsi Jaji. Booklet art features historical images of immigrants passing through Angel and Ellis Island, as well as scenes from the Great Migration. In the year of America250, Fellow Citizens reflects on two enduring narratives in American history: one that asserts America is for Americans and another that celebrates the country as a Nation of Immigrants.

Benjamin Günst makes his GENUIN debut with 'Submergence'-a musical deep dive between light and darkness. The German Music Competition prize winner presents an ambitious and thoughtfully conceived program. From the rhapsodic sounds of Enescu and the Baroque mysticism of Biber to Bartók's 'Sonata for Solo Violin', rarely recorded in it's original version with microtonal intervals, the violin reveals all it's many facets. Works for violin and piano are set alongside solo works, while lyrical passages alternate with moments of breathtaking virtuosity. Together with his piano partner Martin Klett, Benjamin Günst spans centuries of violin music in a fascinating musical arc.

The final volume of this groundbreaking Thomas Jensen series encapsulates the series as a whole. New remasterings of rare studio recordings from the 1940s complement first-ever releases for live broadcasts from the 1950s and 60s. The repertoire demonstrates Jensen's excellence as a sympathetic concerto partner; an insightful interpreter of Sibelius; and a devoted advocate for the composers of his native Denmark. Note! ALL are first ever releases and all from unpublished radio broadcasts All the previous volumes are available and in stock.

Bela Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin was premiered 100 years ago, on 27 November 1926. The evening ended in chaos and is regarded as one of the most high-profile theatre scandals, certainly the biggest since the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in Paris a few years earlier. Causing shock among the public - perhaps because there is nothing miraculous in the fairy-tale sense - the work is in Bartok's own words 'hellish with instruments clanging, clattering and blaring'. Today, it's realism, rhythmic melody and harmony still inspire awe. Released to coincide with the centenary of it's premiere, this second album in Cristian Macelaru and WDR Sinfonieorchester's Bartok series pairs the Mandarin with the composer's other major work for orchestra, the Concerto for Orchestra. Unlike the former, the reception was a triumph.

Eugene Ysaye remains best remembered for his 6 Sonatas for Solo Violin: six diverse and contrasted pieces that have kept his name alive across the century since they were written. For the present album, each one of the sonatas was dedicated to a violinist whose style and manner of playing is accordingly reflected through the piece in question. Each work has been situated in the context of music by the performer or artist who inspired it. Written for violin and piano/piano 4-hands, these works are rarely performed. Programmed between each of the sonatas, these works create an intriguing way of listening to the Ysaye's 6 Sonatas for Solo violin. The Ysaye Sonatas, Op. 27, were played on violins made by Philipp Bonhoeffer. All other works were played on the 'Caspar Hauser' violin, made by Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri 'del Gesù', c. 1724.

Following her first recording of concertos for Channel Classics (CCS47825), the Franco-Hungarian pianist Suzana Bartal pays tribute to her Hungarian roots with a programme that showcases a variety of styles, from Liszt and his Gypsy influences to Bartok, who, through his campaigns to collect folk songs, immersed himself in folk and peasant music. Erno Dohnanyi's Ruralia Hungarica, composed in 1923, is more post-Romantic in style, although the composer himself also occasionally turned to folk music.

The only violin concerto written by Richard Strauss, at just 18 years old, is a beautiful, energetic, brilliantly structured work with so many clues and features of his later style., says Alena Baeva. With her long-standing collaborator Paavo Jarvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, she has found the ideal partners to record this relatively rarely performed concerto, as well as another early masterpiece, Bartok's First Violin Concerto, which is essentially a love letter to the violinist Stefi Geyer, nine years his junior. The 'Stefi theme' (D - F? - A - C?) forms the basis of the first movement but she never played it, as she broke up with him a few days before he finished his concerto... Bartok's First Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra rounds completes this programme. Just a few days after it's premiere, the composer travelled to Bremen for his next concert in the Glockensaal, where, 94 years later, this recording was made.

The works on this album were written between 1935 and 2019 by four Hungarian composers: Béla Bartók, who was the teacher of Sándor Veress, who taught György Ligeti, who in turn was an early but formative influence on Péter Eötvös. Their compositions all share the idea of a dialogue between cultured and popular elements, between a Western music tradition and folk music, particularly of Eastern Europe. This idea was formulated in the early 20th century by Bartók himself, who considered the use of folk elements in a piece of art music not only as a tool to revitalize the Classical tradition but also as a mean to unite different cultures. In the works recorded here, the dialogue is manifested in various ways, for instance through references to Baroque idioms and forms as well as folk styles in the solo sonatas by Bartók and Ligeti. In the case of Adventures of the Dominant Seventh Chord by Péter Eötvös it is the dominant seventh chord that stands as a symbol of Western tonality. Recurring frequently, the chord never reaches the expected resolution, however – instead it is confronted with non-tonal materials inspired by the folk music of Eastern Europe.

Based in Germany, the violinist Nurit Stark was born in Israel into a family which hails from Romania. Peter Eötvös’s work – which was written for her – therefore provides the perfect ending to this very personal project, dealing with the ability of music to cross cultural, geographical and ideological borders.

Folklore takes the listener on a musical journey throughout 19th- and 20th-century France, Georgia, Hungary, and Spain. Through different styles and soundscapes, the compositions are united by the spirit of folk traditions and national character, as well as personal memories of the performers-Swiss-French cellist Christoph Croisé and Georgian pianist Ana Bakradze. Works originally conceived for their instrumental combination sit alongside transcriptions that fit their sound world like a glove, a testament to the popularity of all the music on this album. Siete Canciones Populares Españolas, a set of seven traditional Spanish songs by Manuel de Falla, is his most-arranged composition and among his most popular. Béla Bartók's Six Romanian Folk Dances, originally composed for solo piano, were drawn from melodies the composer recorded of folk musicians singing in the countryside of his Hungarian homeland. Hungarian influences infuse Pablo de Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs), originally scored for violin and orchestra. Sulkhan Tsintsadze's Five Pieces on Georgian Folk Themes evoke childhood memories for pianist Ana, especially the fourth, a lullaby that her mother used to sing to her. The most substantial work on the album, Robert Schumann's Fünf Stücke i'm Volkston (Five Pieces in Folk Style), conjures the harmonies and rhythms of folk music. French national character imbues Nadia Boulanger's Trois pièces (Three Pieces) and works by her teacher Gabriel Fauré: his elegant Sicilienne-originally penned for orchestra but frequently adapted for cello and piano-and his ever-popular miniature "Après un rêve" (After a Dream) from his Trois Mélodies (Three Melodies). When asked about their own connections to this music and what they wish for the listener, Christoph and Ana agree: "Above all, joy! We share a love for the roots in these pieces and the inspiration they provided to the composers. For this album, we've selected our favourite miniatures. Some are well known, others are more personal, but they all connect to the spirit of folk traditions in some way. It's about the lasting pleasure of connecting through music we love."

Leif Ove Andsnes is a leading pianist of his time, known for his exceptional musicianship and subtil touch, his considerable technical flair being unfailingly put at the service of his interpretations. He was a pioneer for being the first home-trained superstar pianist to have emerged from Norway. This box is the story of a 20-year partnership that has yielded a rich seam of recorded treasures, first for Virgin and then for EMI. Running through this cornucopia of 34 albums (36 CDs), we find recurring themes: Grieg (Andsnes even recorded some Lyric Pieces on the composer's own piano at Troldhaugen), Nordic music in general, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Schubert.

For the complete Mandarin, Boulez is still the safest bet.

-- Gramophone [10/1993]

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It is nothing less than intriguing to find Pierre Boulez's whole interpretative personality significantly modified—at least on the evidence of this disc—by contact with the orchestra which for so many years Leonard Bernstein directed. Granted that two of Bartok's more abrasive works can never sound exactly gentle, these are interpretations that so far from following the pattern of diamond precision and emotional austerity we associate with Boulez in Britain, lean towards romantic expressiveness.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [1/1973, reviewing Miraculous Mandarin on LP, CBS 73031]

Following the highly successful CD of Sofia Gubaidulina’s cello works (32176), Henrik Brendstrup one of Europe’s best cellists of the younger generation recorded here a collection of cello works by the three representative composers from Eastern Europe. His new partner on piano is a young Gislinge who only two years after her debut has already established herself as one of the leading soloists in Europe.

Riccardo Muti is, of course, a noted Tchaikovskian, and this admirable performance of The Fairy's Kiss approximates the tone and lustre of The Sleeping Beauty ballet.

Tchaikovsky was as much a part of Stravinsky's creative consciousness as Mozart was of Tchaikovsky's. All three composers meet in Le baiser de la fée ("The Fairy's Kiss"; 1928), where Tchaikovsky is at his most overtly Mozartian and Stravinsky at his most elegantly balletic. The score is based largely on Tchaikovsky piano pieces and songs; it was commissioned by the dancer Ida Rubinstein, while sections of it were later selected for a separate work, Divertimento, that went on to achieve rather more popularity than the complete ballet. More recordings, too; some of them of exceptional quality.

Riccardo Muti is, of course, himself a noted Tchaikovskian, and this admirable performance approximates the tone and lustre of, say, The Sleeping Beauty ballet. The very opening has lovingly stressed string accents and a feeling of 'miracles in the offing'. The ensuing Allegro sostenuto is more playful than biting, and while I would have welcomed a keener edge in the third section of Scene I (track 3) and a rather less. sedate approach to the ensuing Vivace agitato, the "Village Fête" is properly buoyant, the third scene's "By the Mill" nicely atmospheric (how utterly Tchaikovskian those oboes and clarinets) and the penultimate "Scene", with its painfully nostalgic references to None but the lonely heart, is played with appealing restraint. Still, it is at that point in particular that memories of Mravinsky's searing 1983 broadcast prompt a quick rush to the shelves, even though imperfect sound and the occasional technical slip-up preclude total rapture. Stravinsky, too, is memorable, a tighter, drier and occasionally more incisive option, while Järvi's characterization and superior sound serve to bolster a third option - and that is about the limit of the competition, at least for the moment. Muti's La Scala strings are sweetly expressive, whereas his winds and brass are not quite in the top league.

The sound is warm, enclosed and scrupulously balanced, a fairly intimate experience, quite appropriate to the music. Ultimately, I would place Muti more or less on a par with Järvi, but not quite the equal either of Mravinsky or of the composer himself.

As to the BartOk Two Pictures, Muti's performance of "In full flower" traces a romantic strain to contrast with Boulez's Debussian axis (see above). Bluebeard is obviously close to hand while the "Village dance" is sleek, witty and very well played, with not much in the way of a native Hungarian accent. It is a good performance and makes for an attractive, if somewhat unexpected, coupling for a worthy Baiser de la fée.

-- Robert Cowan, Gramophone [9/1995]