This album is the second release in a series of three, that encompass the entire 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas. Pianist Moritz Winkelmann is a Prize Winner at the International Beethoven Competition Bonn and also part of an exclusive educational linneage that can be traced back directly to Beethoven himself.

... four of the brightest young stars in classical music today. We are enjoying another golden era thanks to Quartet Integra. -Martin Beaver, First Violin, Tokyo String Quartet Producer's notes: Yarlung Records returned to Zipper Hall at Colburn School in April, 2025 to record the debut album for Quartet Integra toward the end of the quartet's 3-year residency in Los Angeles. They had just returned from acclaimed performances in Wigmore Hall in London. The quartet left again after our recording for summer concerts (and a little bit of family time) in Asia before moving to Paris and Hannover in the autumn. Quartet Integra begins a two year residency in Paris at the Centre Europeen de Musique de Chambre and will continue study with Oliver Wille at the Hochschule fur Musik, Theater, und Medien in Hannover. We will miss the Quartet badly in Los Angeles and hope they return soon. This extraordinary young ensemble, Kyoka Misawa and Rintaro Kikuno on violins, Itsuki Yamamoto on viola, and cellist Ye Un Park play Classical, Romantic, Contemporary and Renaissance music equally well. In fact, we explore all four eras in this recording. We begin with Beethoven's last published work, String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Opus 135, written in 1826. Beethoven wrote this piece at the height of his Romantic powers, but the quartet looks back with irony and nostalgia to his classical period. Next, Quartet Integra tackles Ligeti's 1968 ground-breaking Sonata No. 2, which they played for me at their audition and which won me over immediately. Kyoka, Rintaro, Itsuki and Ye Un find beauty and repose in this seat-belts-required 25-minute work full of extended techniques and mid-20th-Century sound world while communicating humor and transcendent energy. Kyoka said "When people hear the name Ligeti, many tend to associate it with contemporary music and assume it will be difficult to listen to. But in reality, that's not the case. Especially the String Quartet No. 2, which we're performing this time - it's wild and destructive, yet it holds a kind of breathtaking beauty. It feels almost like watching a movie." Mike Wechsberg, an audience member at our special live concert recording session commented heartily how "Ligeti is not the sort of music I normally like, but THIS was magnificent! Bravo Quartet Integra!" We ended the concert with Green Mountains, Now Black, a new piece by David S. Lefkowitz which he completed in the spring of 2025. Donna Morton commissioned David's piece for Yarlung Artists and Quartet Integra through Yarlung's sister organization Coretet. Donna and her group have steadfastly supported new chamber music including from composers Caroline Shaw, Diego Schissi (who won a Latin GRAMMY® nomination for Nene, which he wrote for Yarlung's Sibelius Piano Trio), Jamie Thierman, Eric Nathan and Benjamin Taylor among others. Donna serves on the boards of both Yarlung Artists and Coretet, and we relished the opportunity to collaborate again as Coretet celebrates it's 10th Anniversary and Yarlung celebrates it's 20th. Beethoven wrote his last major composition, String Quartet Op. 135, in 1826. This was his final statement in his groundbreaking series. Opus 135 premiered in 1828, performed by Ignaz Schuppanzigh and his famous ensemble, a year after Beethoven died. When the members of Quartet Integra suggested we record this work on their debut album instead of Schubert's "Rosamunda" Quartet written only two years earlier, I initially demurred. Who needs yet another superb performance of Beethoven's final masterpiece?" I complained. "Who needs yet another Rosamunda?" Quartet Integra 'cellist Ye Un Park responded within milliseconds. She had a point, and I'm glad we recorded the Beethoven instead, at least on Quartet Integra's first Yarlung album! The ensemble had just performed Beethoven's first string quartet in London's Wigmore Hall in London, as well as "Rosamunda, " and they were game to expand their horizons and capitalize on their "Beethoven High." They also wanted to utilize the superb acoustics at Colburn School while the quartet was still living in Los Angeles, and we knew Zipper Hall would do the Beethoven special justice. Our recording concludes with David S. Lefkowitz' Green Mountains, Now Black. David's piece offers quotations from Monteverdi's earliest extant opera Orfeo (one of my favorites in the operatic literature) and additional quotations from Monteverdi's final opera The Coronation of Poppea, including it's magical and ever-so recognizable love duet between Poppea and the emperor Nero at the end of the opera. Instead of merely transposing my favorite arias, choral passages and this famous duet for string quartet, David wrote a work that explores the very nature of what it means to be a string quartet. And he experiments with the genre, pushes boundaries, and incorporates his own despair witnessing the burning of much of Los Angeles in the spring of 2025. David and his wife Laurie could see flames and smoke not too far away from their home as he composed this work. Nero himself famously allowed a good chunk of downtown Rome to burn, exercising (and bragging about) his dubious leadership in the process. David layers Octavia's farewell to her beloved city with the giddy love duet between Octavia's husband, the emperor, and his mistress Poppea, to tell the story of David's own distress while writing the piece. Green Mountains, Now Black not only refer to Monteverdi himself (Green Mountain) but the fire which turned so many of our spring green mountains to char in Los Angeles. Despite David's gloom and worry during our fires, his iridescent string writing shows itself proudly and his many glorious and lyrical passages outnumber the darker ones. As musicians, the members of Quartet Integra communicate superbly with audiences and with each other as they explore the depths and details of these musical scores. With generous support from Sel, Nick and Martin at Colburn School, we worked with Quartet Integra on April 13-15, 2025 and ended our recording session with a live concert for invited guests from the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society on April 15th. You can enjoy videos of this concert on YouTube's YarlungChannel. Fellow recording engineer and equipment designer Arian Jansen and I used SonoruS Holographic Imaging technology in the analog domain to refine the stereo image, Yarlung's SonoruS ATR12 to record Agfa-formula 468 analog tape, the Merging Technologies HAPI to record 256fs DSD in stereo and surround sound and the SonoruS ADC to record PCM. We used our friend Ted Ancona's AKG C24 microphone previously owned by Frank Sinatra, and Yarlung Audio vacuum tube microphone amplification designed and built by Elliot Midwood. In closing, it was Donna Morton and Martin Beaver who suggested Yarlung support Quartet Integra and Martin coordinated their audition. The Quartet has been lauded as the most exciting ensemble to emerge from Japan (and Ye Un from Korea) since the famous Tokyo String Quartet formed in 1969 at Juilliard. I love a certain symmetry here: two of the non-Japanese born musicians playing as members of the Tokyo String Quartet were Yarlung Special Advisor Martin Beaver, who became principal violin in 2002, and Clive Greensmith, who joined Tokyo as cellist in 1999. Both Martin and Clive performed with the Tokyo Quartet until the ensemble gave their final concerts in 2013, and now Martin and Clive co-direct Chamber Music at Colburn School and have mentored the four members of Quartet Integra. Before their Colburn residency, Quartet Integra won a four-year fellowship with Suntory Hall's Chamber Music Academy where they were coached by Tokyo Quartet members Koichiro Harada, Kikuei Ikeda and Kazuhide Isomura. This is generational integrity and communication worthy of Kyoka, Rintaro, Itsuki and Ye Un. As we celebrate Yarlung's 20th Anniversary, we are enjoying thinking back to our original inspiration. We began working with young musicians starting international concert careers and sharing their transformative performances with the world. Yarlung Records takes it's name from the Yarlung Valley in Central Tibet, which legend holds as a meeting place between heaven and earth. It is in this valley, at the site of Yambulakhang Castle in our Yarlung Records logo, where Heaven and Earth touched in order to transform humanity. What could be a better metaphor for the transformative power of great music? I feel a deep connection between this mythical name for our record label and Quartet Integra. Hearing them play and working with these four good-natured and talented people reminded me why we created Yarlung Records in the first place. Despite my earlier comment, Quartet Integra is not a Japanese ensemble. Three of their members come from Japan and one from Korea, but they are inherently international. Quartet Integra lived in California these past years, and as indicated will spend the next several years in France and Germany. Their ties to the famous Tokyo String Quartet increase the Japanese-ness of Quartet Integra, but Tokyo String Quartet was actually founded in 1969 at Juilliard in New York City, not Japan. In planning their album cover, this image of the Toyosaki Kompira Shrine Torii Gate on the west coast of Hokkaido jumped out at us, and reflected Quartet Integra's refreshing vitality. As does the inspiration for the name of Yarlung Records, a Torii gate symbolizes a portal to the sacred in Shintoism connecting everyday reality with transcendence. -Bob Attiyeh, producer

"The hours I spent learning Beethoven‘s last three sonatas were among the most cherished of my life. They were filled with the exhilaration of being in the presence of something magnificent, something truly meaningful. Over the years, these sonatas have become my intimate companions – a continuous source of learning and an always sympathetic yet mercilessly honest corrective for me…

"I learned Helmut Lachenmann‘s Wiegenmusik (Cradle Music) as a teenager, around the same time I actually met him at my grandfather‘s home. As a young man, Helmut had been a member of my grandfather‘s choir. I will never forget the impression his warm and friendly manner had on me...Much later, in preparation for a joint concert in which I played solo four of his works for piano, Helmut, in his unique way, introduced me to his works and invited me to “listen” – to listen to everything that is acoustically perceptible, to hear the attack of the key and its consequence, and to open up myself more to the beauty of tones, beyond the so-called limits; and ultimately not just with his music, but with all music.

"This juxtaposition of Beethoven and Lachenmann explores the interaction between the works – the field of tension opened up by their proximity. Without alienating the individual masterpiece, a new listening context emerges. The symbiosis of their auras allows us to experience anew what we have become accustomed to. I dedicate this album to my grandfather Gerhard Wilhelm, who dreamed of living life as a pianist like I do now – as a child of a generation that, unlike his, did not have to experience war. Let us hope that this does not change. Both Beethoven and Lachenmann will help in this endeavor." -Soloist Moritz Winkelmann

In their long history the SWR symphony orchestras (one covering the Southern part, the other the South-Western part of the federal state Baden-Würrtemberg) have changed their names several times. In 2016 they merged and are known today as the SWR Symphonieorchester. Over the years these orchestras have performed with many legendary conductors who either were in charge as chief conductor or occasionally invited as guest conductor. On this 10 album boxed set the listener will find 12 of the greatest conductors of the 20th century. Some, such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Leopold Stokowski, Hans Knappertsbusch, Karl Böhm, Kirill Kondrashin, Carlos Kleiber and Kurt Sanderling, appeared only sporadically on the podium of the two leading Baden-Württemberg orchestras. But all, including Carl Schuricht or the chief conductors represented here, Hans Rosbaud and Michael Gielen (Baden-Baden), George Prêtre and Roger Norrington (Stuttgart), have left a lasting legacy with the respective orchestras.

The new album Face2Face is an extraordinary experience that juxtaposes the iconic String Quartets of Beethoven with the avant-garde compositions of modern masters. This first volume in an ongoing series showcases how Beethoven's innovative spirit laid the groundwork for generations of composers to come. Featuring iconic classical pieces from Beethoven's and Bartok's repertoire, this album is a must-have for both classical enthusiasts and adventurous listeners alike. Performed by the award-winning Amaryllis Quartett, whose accolades include the prestigious 1st prize at the 6th International Chamber Music Competition in Melbourne (2011), this release promises to illuminate the brilliance of Beethoven's work while exploring the bold expressions of contemporary composition.

She questions the simplicity in this program of "simple" piano sonatas and demonstrates her virtuosity by filling the few notes with as much musicality as possible. Shows different interpretations and styles of the genre "Sonatine" with works by Beethoven (No. 25, op. 79), Reynaldo Hahn (IRH90), Ravel (M. 40), Mozart (KV 545), Hermann Goetz (No. 1, op. 8) and Nikolai Medtner (op. 56)

The Amelio Trio, which won the German Music Competition in 2024 and is currently taking the world's stages by storm, has been chosen as one of the ECHO Rising Stars of the season 2026/27. In collaboration with Deutschlandfunk, the German Music Council, and GENUIN, the young piano trio now presents a seamlessly crafted album: The trios by Charles Ives, Ludwig van Beethoven, Ursula Mamlok, and Johannes Brahms flow into one another, forming a musical bridge that spans centuries and continents. Birke Bertelsmeier's "vertrautes angezogensein" (familiar attire), composed especially for this album, recapitulates all the previous works and brings the journey full circle - chamber music at it's highest level!

Instrumental concertos 1938-1940 After numerous large-scale symphonic productions Karl Böhm and the Sächsische Staatskapelle opened up a new genre in the fall of 1938 a new genre. From now on, more and more renowned instrumental instrumental soloists were brought to Dresden for recordings - an illustrious mix of world stars, some of whom who were guests in symphony concerts of the Sächsische Staatskapelle on several occasions, such as the pianists Wilhelm Backhaus, Edwin Fischer and Walter Gieseking, from newcomers such as the young violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan and many more

Following her celebrated solo debut album, award-winning pianist Anna Khomichko now releases a GENUIN album featuring classical piano concertos. Accompanied by the Philharmonic Orchestra Heidelberg under the baton of Mino Marani, she not only performs the reconstructed first concerto by Ludwig van Beethoven in E-flat major but also presents early works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Muzio Clementi. With this cleverly curated selection and in brilliant, detailed sound, she offers a compelling overview of the beginnings of classical composers-a rare and gratifying listening experience!

Friedrich Gulda was born in Vienna on May 16, 1930. He began his musical education at the Grossmann Conservatory and subsequently took private lessons from Felix Pazofsky. From 1942 to 1947 he studied piano at the Vienna Academy of Music under Bruno Seidlhofer and Music Theory and Composition under Joseph Marx. He gave his first public performance in 1944 and, two years later when just 16 years old, won the Geneva International Music Competition. Starting after the Second World War, as a 20-year-old, Gulda established himself as a piano soloist with an excellent international reputation and even performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1950. In the 1950s he was celebrated and considered the leading interpreter of Beethoven in his generation. He founded his own Klassische Orchester Gulda for chamber music with members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to Beethoven, Gulda’s repertoire encompasses works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss, whose Burleske in D minor and lieder are included in this release, with Gulda accompanying soprano Hilde Güden. Gulda was essentially an out-and-out contrarian who showed that a great genius can sometimes be only a step away from a certain madness. While Karl Böhm or Rubinstein admired him as a magnificently talented interpreter of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Gulda could also be provocative – including inciting his fellow concert pianists. Asked about Vladimir Horowitz, Gulda once responded: “Horowitz is a master. Because he is able to do – whatever he wants,” but also added: “But what he is after doesn’t interest me” (Joachim Kaiser).

REVIEW:
Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000) was certainly never a conformist pianist. But he was less flamboyant in his youth than in his later years, and he did present new perspectives at the beginning of his career, which helped to provoke a change in thinking. The recordings in this CD box set date from this period.

He recorded the freshly perky Mozart Sonata K. 576 in 1948, and both Concertos K. 503 and 537 in 1955 with the New Symphony Orchestra under Anthony Collins. Gulda’s fresh yet nuanced playing compensates for the weak orchestra’s playing. The Beethoven sonatas Nos. 4, 7, 8 and 19 show the still searching Gulda of 1955 on his way to the 1967 complete recording. The 3rd CD includes the concerto piece by Carl Maria von Weber and the Strauss Burlesque, as well as a set of Strauss songs that Gulda recorded with Hilde Güden in 1956. These are wonderful interpretations of rare freshness and suppleness. Güden’s silvery timbre and her confidently controlled, light vocal line coupled with Gulda’s spontaneous and sensitive playing make for an uncommonly natural performance.

Recorded in 1954, Chopin’s compositions, the 4 Ballades and the 1st Piano Concerto, are among Gulda’s ‘immortal’ recordings. In the 1st Piano Concerto, Gulda collaborates with the more traditional Adrian Boult, but it is precisely the contrast in temperament that leads to special tension and dynamics. This recording has been available several times on various labels, but here it definitely sounds in the best quality so far. Also very exciting are the four ballads, which he plays dramatically and narratively.

Debussy and Ravel, the composers represented on CDs Nos. 5 and 6 of this box, have been Gulda’s recurring preoccupation. The early recordings from 1953 and 1955 may not yet be as stylistically tested on the hard, sharp and pithy of jazz as the late recordings, but their analytically modern style, with clear, precise lines and contours and good transparency, shows the intellectual brilliance of these interpretations.

The bottom line is that this encounter with the young Gulda is a very important one that should help one understand the older musician and could help bring respect to Gulda among those who did not appreciate his later work as much.

-- Pizzicato

Seventy years ago, on the 29th July 1951, Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at a concert marking the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival after seven years of silence following the Second World War. It was a momentous occasion, and the concert was broadcast by Bavarian Radio and transmitted across the world, for instance by Swedish Radio. Using the analogue mono tape as digitized by Swedish Radio, the present disc reproduces the broadcast as it would have been heard by listeners in Sweden: we have chosen to not change anything, not to ‘brush up’ the sound, not to clean and shorten the pauses or omit audience noises within the music, but to keep the original as it was. In this way we hope to recreate the feeling of actually sitting in front of an old radio in 1951, listening to this concert – a true historical document.

REVIEW:

Nothing else in the realms of recorded music is quite like it and I would urge you to share the experience...I’m not claiming that this performance will suit every mood or even every taste, but if and when it does hit target it will leave you changed for ever.

-- Gramophone (Editor's Choice, March 2022)

Few conductors of Klaus Tennstedt's generation demonstrated such complete mastery of the Classical and Romantic repertoire from Beethoven to Mahler and Strauss, coupled with an intensity in live performance that was palpable. He was among the finest German conductors to emerge after the Second World War and was in constant demand with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic the Boston Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic. Doremi's fourth volume of live concert material of Klaus Tennstedt features the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in Beethoven's fourth and fifth symphonies, Don Quixote by Richard Strauss (with cellist Lorne Monroe) and Boris Blacher's Paganini Variations; also included is the same composer's Concertante Musik with the Chicago Symphony.

An experienced early-keyboard specialist brings his expertise to the 'New Testament' of the piano repertoire. 'Period' performances of Beethoven sonatas have become relatively mainstream during the present century, through artists such as Robert Levin and Ronald Brautigam. Through them, we have learnt, or rediscovered, that the turns of phrase in Beethoven's musical thinking take on a particular shape and agility when played and heard on the kind of instrument for which he was writing. All the same, most modern fortepianos are exactly that: modern. In this bold new project, Simone Pierini presents the first nine of Beethoven's sonatas-from Op.2 to Op.10-on fully original instruments of the period. These instruments are identified as the work of piano-makers Johann Haselmann (end of 18th century-early 19th century), Matthias Müller (1822), and Conrad Graf (1830). Simone Pierini complements the sonatas with several standalone pieces: the Allegretto in C minor WoO53, Andante Favori WoO57, Bagatelle in B flat WoO60, the Rondos Op.51, Variations in D Op.76 and the Polonaise in C Op.89. The set thus surveys the first 20 years of Beethoven's career as a composer, from the Op.2 sonatas of 1795 to the Polonaise which he wrote in 1814-15. During those two decades, his style underwent far-reaching changes, which in themselves have come to define the passage from the Classical to the Romantic style in music. All the same, Beethoven was and is Beethoven all the way through, as inimitable and distinct in the coursing momentum and sometimes surprising breadth of Op.2 as in the inward gaze of the Andante favori and the sideways look at popular dances in the Polonaise: all of them, in their way, inheritances from and developments of Haydn's style. Simone Pierini's previous fortepiano albums for Brilliant Classics include sets of sonatas by Luigi Cherubini, JB Cramer (Beethoven's publisher in London) and Helene de Montgeroult. He brings to this repertoire a deep understanding of both it's context and the nature of the instruments on which these composers were working at the turn of the 18th to the 19th centuries: equipped with a lighter touch than many modern pianos, and a more intimate tone. Reviewing the album of de Montgeroult, the Fanfare critic remarked that Pierini 'plays with tremendous energy and conviction.'

Musical individuality rather than symbiotic fusion: on historical instruments, but with the greatest expressive freedom, the musical details of Beethoven, Schubert, and Vorisek's works from early-nineteenth-century Vienna speak directly to the listener.

Following his recordings dedicated to Beethoven's piano concertos (BIS-2281) and Franz Liszt's Transcendental etudes (BIS-2681), the gold medal winner at the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009, Haochen Zhang, now brings these two composers together on this new recording with two summits of 19th-century piano literature: Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' Sonata and Liszt's Sonata in B minor. The Piano Sonata No. 29, the 'Hammerklavier', is the longest, richest and perhaps the most masterful of Beethoven's 32 sonatas. In it, he pushes the instrument and the performer to their limits, and even beyond. It's immense complexity, the utter diversity of it's movements and it's daring structural conception give the sonata an unrivalled place in Beethoven's œuvre. It was very rarely played during Beethoven's lifetime, and Franz Liszt contributed to it's discovery with a concert performance in Paris that has since gone down in history. No stranger to the description 'unperformable', Liszt also wanted to write 'the' piano sonata that would reconcile his own approach to pianism with Beethoven's legacy. His Sonata in B minor, a monumental work that transforms the piano into a virtual orchestra, is a landmark work that sums up Liszt's genius.

When Christian Ferras died at age 49. his friend and colleague Yehudi Menuhin wrote that Ferras was"possessed by music, immensely talented, and of both a generous and intense temperament."

Christian Ferras was one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. Born in 1933, he was a guest soloist of the Nice Symphony orchestra in1942. In 1948 he won the First Prize at the International Scheveningen (Holland) Violin Competition and in 1949 won the top prize at the International Long-Thibaud Competition. Thereafter, he pursued a successful career as soloist with many of the world’s leading orchestras and in recitals with his long time accompanist, pianist Pierre Barbizet. He recorded for EMI and from 1964 for DG where he recorded the four main repertoire violin concertos, Brahms, Sibelius, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, with Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
Fortunately, Christian Ferras left behind a rich recorded legacy, that enable us to continue to enjoy his great artistry.