This world premiere recording presents Christoph Graupner's complete surviving cantatas for solo tenor, a remarkable cycle that occupies a unique place within the nearly 1,450 church cantatas of one of the Baroque era's most prolific masters. Performed by Georg Poplutz with L'arpa festante led by Florian Heyerick, these six cantatas reveal a composer whose striking harmonic imagination, expressive intensity and dramatic originality place him firmly alongside his contemporaries Bach, Telemann and Handel.
It is impossible to imagine the modern bassoon without him: almost 200 years ago, Carl Almenrader, together with Johann Adam Heckel, founded the instrument-making workshop that continues to dominate the global bassoon market unchallenged to this day. Almenrader's skill on the instrument, his refined sense of tone, and Heckel's precision craftsmanship laid the foundations for the success that Almenrader carried out into the world as a travelling virtuoso with his own compositions. Michael Kaulartz and Carl Sonje Montag present Almenrader's duets in an impressively agile, virtuosic and yet surprisingly rich and varied manner.
Johann Daniel Pucklitz stands among the most remarkable and inventive composers of the late German Baroque. Under the direction of Andrzej Szadejko, the Goldberg Baroque Ensemble continues it's ambitious Opera Omnia project with world premiere recordings of Pucklitz's strikingly imaginative cantatas. Volume 2 brings to light music that has remained unheard for centuries, revealing the richness and expressive power of a composer whose sacred works bridge the grandeur of Bach's world with the emerging stylistic shifts of the Rococo and the Age of Sensibility.
This exceptional double album stands as a landmark historically informed recording of Handel's solo sonatas, uniting pioneering scholarship, extraordinary period-instrument artistry, and superb audiophile sound in one of the most compelling chamber music portraits of the Baroque era. The Ganassi Consort, joined by guest violinist Anne Rohrig, illuminate the astonishing breadth of Handel's imagination across four decades of his creative life, revealing music of remarkable elegance, invention, and emotional depth.
With Volume 22, the Leipzig Quartet brings their acclaimed complete recording of Joseph Haydn's quartets to a decisive and resonant close. This final installment crowns a project of extraordinary scope and artistic consistency, with Op. 76 revealing Haydn at his most expansive and imaginative. The result feels less like an ending than a culmination of decades of interpretative insight into the classical quartet repertoire.
Mozart's piano trios mark a decisive moment in the evolution of chamber music, elevating the genre to new artistic heights. This critically acclaimed complete recording by the world-class ensemble Trio Parnassus captures that transformation with intellectual rigour and musical sensitivity. Both celebrated masterpieces and lesser-known fragments are presented in this thoughtfully curated edition, setting a benchmark for quality and artistic vision.
Vision Pianist Michael Schöch presents a distinguished tribute to Louis Vierne's legacy, inviting listeners into a world of elegance, introspection, and timeless beauty. With captivating musicality, Schöch unveils hidden dimensions of Vierne, long overshadowed by his celebrated organ music. These pieces emerge here as intimate, richly coloured miniatures of late Romantic expression, presenting a composer of striking imagination and rare artistic depth. Origins The programme's early works already display Vierne's remarkable sensitivity to pianistic colour and atmosphere. Suite bourguignonne paints a poetic rural day in vivid tableaux, from luminous morning serenity to the shimmering stillness of "Clair de lune." These pieces reveal a composer who transforms simplicity into evocative musical storytelling. Resonance Echoes of Claude Debussy emerge in Trois Nocturnes, where impressionistic textures and harmonic nuance shape nocturnal visions of rare beauty. Inspired by the vast interior of Saint-Ouen Abbey, the first nocturne evokes monumental grandeur, while the third captures a starlit stillness enlivened by birdsong. Vierne's voice remains distinct-introspective, atmospheric, and deeply expressive. Artistry Michael Schöch interprets this repertoire with radiant clarity and stylistic authority, uniting virtuosity with poetic restraint. Alongside the major cycles, he brings equal care to the smaller, often posthumous works, revealing their understated charm. The historic Steinway Concert Grand Piano D (1901) "Manfred Bürki" lends an authentic tonal palette, perfectly attuned to Vierne's world.
A total of four organs group themselves around the listener in three dimensions in St. Michael's Church in Hamburg, and all four instruments are spectacularly employed on this Super Audio album. Church music director Christoph Schoener has designed a very special program for the organs in his workplace: music by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy that has never been heard before in just this way. Schoener pulls all the stops on the central console and covers a spectrum ranging from the complete late-romantic forces of the entire organ system to the filigree murmuring of individual tone colors. A special treat: a solo for the echo organ installed high above in the ceiling sphere! The Six Preludes and Fugues op. 35 forming the focus here, though originally intended for the piano, create a phenomenal impression on the massive St. Michael's organ in this arrangement by Christoph Bossert. After all, it was Mendelssohn, who after the organ's Viennese classical "dry spell," supported the rehabilitation of this instrument. Accordingly, numerous piano pieces by him are ideally suited for transfers into the organ's much mightier sound dimension. Things get underway with the so very famous "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Even if many a bride and groom have entered many a church to this music, on this recording it is as if the listener could reach out and embrace the bride. Whether a "Song Without Words," a lovingly supplied fragment, or a "Theme with Variations," this Mendelssohn recording is a perfect complement to the Bach, Brahms, and Reger editions with which Christoph Schoener has brought delight to the organ world and beyond.
