With his "Lyric Pieces", Edvard Grieg kept a kind of poetic piano diary: between 1867 and 1901 he wrote 66 short character pieces, which were published in ten booklets. Pieces such as "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen", "Train of Dwarfs" or "To Spring" are among Grieg's most famous works ever. In addition to these quite virtuoso pieces, however, there are also numerous simpler dances and melodies that can be mastered and successfully performed by piano students at a fairly early age.

The Israeli-American pianist Daniel Gortler has selected his personal 21 favourites of the "Lyrical Pieces" for his debut album on Prospero Classical. Pianist Daniel Gortler delights audiences and critics worldwide with memorable performances and his technical mastery as well as his musical ingenuity. He has performed worldwide as a soloist with orchestras such as the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the NDR Sinfonieorchester, the Nord West German Philharmonic Orchestra and other orchestras. Career highlights have included a debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a recital at Wigmore Hall in London and tours of South Africa, Brazil, South Korea and Turkey.

This recording features the complete motets by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), set in the context of music from the previous generation of his family which inspired him. In his final decade, J.S. Bach researched and performed motets by his father’s cousin, Johann Christoph (1642-1703), whom he greatly admired. Although Johann Sebastian took the motet genre (and presumably his singers) to the limits of possibility, one can also hear the strong influence of the family tradition. This is the first of a series of location-specific Solomon’s Knot recording projects. We chose Arnstadt's inspirational Bachkirche for these works, not only for its wonderful acoustic, but also as a place which connects the two Bachs: Johann Christoph was born in Arnstadt, and Johann Sebastian's first job as an organist was at the church, which came to be named after him.

In the early 18th century, the most important works of Baroque chamber and orchestral music were still almost exclusively intended for the ears of aristocratic audiences. The princely courts had close to a monopoly on the enjoyment of art new music; churches were the only place where common people could listen to the works of great composers. However, the rising European bourgeoisie, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, increasingly challenged this aristocratic musical privilege from the end of the 17th century onwards.

The rapid spread of music printing made it possible to play music at home, among friends and family. At the same time, civic concert institutions sprouted up all over Europe. In 1678, the first bourgeois opera house in Germany was opened in Hamburg, the Oper am Gänsemarkt. In 1701, Georg Philipp Telemann founded a student music ensemble in Leipzig that organised public concerts under the name Collegium musicum; and in 1725, King Louis XV allowed the oboist of the royal chapel in the Tuileries Palace in Paris to organise a series for the general public, the Concerts spirituels.

The Swiss recorder player Isaac Makhdoomi enchants his audience with his great virtuosity and stylistic versatility. Together with the Piccante Baroque Orchestra, which consists of early music specialists from the Basel music scene, he takes us on a fiery virtuoso sound journey to the Venice of the "Prete rosso" Antonio Vivaldi. Like hardly any other composer of his time, Vivaldi helped the recorder and its variants to musical heights with his compositions. Stupendously virtuoso runs alternate here with beautiful cantilenas.

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of the important French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, the Basel Symphony Orchestra under its conductor Ivor Bolton had set itself the goal of giving its audience an insight into the composer's well-known and lesser-known symphonic works. In addition to the symphonies and various concertos, the orchestra has explicitly focused on the symphonic poems of the composer of the "Carnival of the Animals". For the first time, these works as well as the well-known "Bacchanale" from the opera "Samson et Dalila" have been recorded according to Hugh Macdonalds' new critical edition published by Bärenreiter. Camille Saint-Saëns - who also performed several times at the Stadtcasino Basel - was very old when he died in 1921 at the age of 86. He had an eventful life behind him. He lost his father when he was still a baby. He entered the world of music as a child prodigy. Later, as an adult, his two young sons die. After the death of his mother shortly afterwards, he dissolves his flat in Paris, gives away and sells his furniture and goes into hiding. He spends fifteen years in a travel fever in ship cabins and train compartments. He travels from North Africa to China, from Russia to America - and composes. With the four works he composed between 1872 and 1877, "Le Rouet d'Omphale", "Phaéton", "Danse macabre" and "La Jeunesse d'Hercule", Camille Saint-Saëns placed himself firmly in the tradition of Hector Berlioz, who had ushered in a new era in France with his "Symphonie fantastique", premiered in 1830, as well as the symphonic poems of Franz Liszt, who had established the genre in Germany. During Saint-Saëns' lifetime, his four "Poèmes symphoniques" became repertoire works that were heard around the world, but only the "Danse macabre" has remained in the concert programme to this day. This work with its pictorial depiction of a witches' sabbath - though clearly ironically broken - was a true scandalous piece at the time of its creation, not so far removed from Stravinsky's Sacre in this respect. His own mother fainted with indignation at the premiere and the hall audience went wild. In Germany, Carl Reinecke refused to perform the work because he considered the pictorial representation of skeletons by means of a xylophone immoral. Compared to the "Danse macabre", "Phaéton" is certainly more moderate. It describes Phaéton's high-spirited ride on Helios' sun chariot, which of course - danger of crashing! - does not end well. A rousing and concise orchestral piece. The critical first editions, which have just been published by Bärenreiter within the "Œuvres complètes instrumentales", offer the opportunity for new interpretations of these works on a reliable source basis. About the orchestra: the Süddeutsche Zeitung describes it perfectly: "You only have to experience the Basel Symphony Orchestra with its principal conductor Ivor Bolton once to know what this fabulous orchestra is capable of." Whether in its own concert series, at the Stadtcasino Basel or in guest performances at home and abroad, the innovative ensemble repeatedly confirms its high level of sound culture. The Briton Ivor Bolton has been the orchestra's principal conductor since the 2016/2017 season. Conductors with whom the Basel Symphony Orchestra has been closely associated include personalities such as Johannes Brahms, Felix Weingartner, Gustav Mahler, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Gary Bertini, Walter Weller, Armin Jordan, Horst Stein, Otto Klemperer, Nello Santi, Pierre Boulez, Mario Venzago and Dennis Russell Davies.