Today Don Carlos is performed in French as it is in Italian. Different productions and recordings vary considerably, however, as regards the choice of scenes and music. The extent of the original material is such that directors, drama tourists and conductors tend to stage the work in a highly individualistic manner.

The rediscovery of the works of German composer Friedrich Gernsheim continues with this collection, the third from CPO focusing on his considerable output which spotlights his violin concertos featuring the noted chamber violinist Linus Roth with the Hamburg Symphony conducted by Johannes Zurl. Gersheim's long life improbably encompassed meeting Liszt, Brahms and Saint-Saëns and extended into World War I when he spent the last years of his life in Berlin. Due to his Jewish ancestry, Gernsheim's music was effectively banned and removed from German music libraries during WWII further burying legacy, a slight that is being slowly corrected with releases such as this. Gernsheim's unique contribution is the sustained beauty and expressiveness of his melodies, informed by the Brahms and Schumann influences yet wholly his own.

With it's plot derived from Arthurian legend, Tristan und Isolde is considered by many to be the most harmonically daring and overtly sensual of the composer's operas. From the famous opening 'Tristan chord' of the Prelude, repeated at key points in the drama, to it's over-powering harmonic resolution at the end of the Liebestod (Love-Death), the opera is remarkable for the hypnotic power, physical longing and intense human emotion sustained over more than three years.

“When it comes to serving music through pianistic brilliance…tone and interpretive intelligence, then Michael Korstick is in his element.” (FonoForum) Among critics and informed citizens of the piano world, this Köln native enjoys considerable renown as one of Germany’s leading pianists. Mr. Korstick has proven to be an individual interpreter, creating new benchmark recordings, whether in works of unknown composers or the standard literature, He won the 2005 Echo-Klassik prize in the category Solo Recording of the Year for this rerelease of Schubert’s B flat major Sonata, D960.

We continue our astonishing Bruckner cycle with the rarely performed 2nd Symphony. As in the case in the 1st, Venzago has chosen a top orchestra of relatively small instrumental dimensions. 'After the many new recordings of the Bruckner symphonies, finally an interpretation that genuinely exhibits character and in a very musical way offers the listener the opportunity to complement his picture of Bruckner'(Pizzicato 3/12).

Comprising four separate operas, Wagner's visionary Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) took 25 years to complete. Centred around a ring of power and the attempts of various people to acquire it, the Ring cycle explores the relationship between love and earthly power and the themes of yearning and loss, all within a setting of medieval legend. The prologue Das Rheingold deals with the theft and subsequent surrender of the ring forged from the Rhinegold by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich.

Sergio Fiorentino has been one of the best pianists of the second half of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, he is not as known as many other colleagues of his, who were supported by important labels. For this reason he lacks a catalogue of official recordings, but this does not mean that he has no documentation of his art. The proof is this extensive release that contains a selection of Fiorentino’s version of some of the masterpieces of Franz Liszt’s repertoire, who was one of his most beloved composers.

This 2-disc set is Paavali Jumppanen’s fourth volume in his cycle of Beethoven piano cycles. This album includes works from the composer’s middle period: Sonatas Nos. 16-18 & 24-27. The first installment in Jumppanen’s Beethoven cycle won the “Choc” Award from French music magazine Classica.

Successful string quartet performance is all about communication, in the purest sense of the word: constant giving and exchanging, a communion among the players based on an intimate relationship bound by deep understanding, of the music and of each other. It’s the essence of what is meant by ensemble. When you have that, you can play anything together and make it vital, and most of all, true to the composer’s intent.

As my colleague David Hurwitz said in an earlier review, Brahms’ quartets are “respected more than they are loved”, and can sound “overworked” and “texturally monotonous”. It’s true that you can play unlawfully fast and loose with these quartets and pretty much get away with it, given enough rhythmic finesse and blurring of textures, and these are among the many reasons that listeners, including me, usually aren’t that much in love with these dense, phenomenally busy, complicated pieces. But when you hear them played with the unusual clarity, scintillating detail, and dynamic, exacting, turn-on-a-dime expressive statements uttered by an ensemble of literally one interpretive mind and unassailable technique, you have to rethink the reasons for your avoidance reflex when faced with a Brahms quartet close encounter.

When the New Zealand Quartet made this recording its members had been working and playing together for 20 years, a rarity in the music world, and a situation that pays huge dividends in performance. There are few relationships anywhere in which the members spend more time together, pouring heart and soul into an intensely charged, creative collaboration, its success built both on individual artistic drive and vision, and contingent on compromising, blending, and capitalizing on the strengths of those impulses and passions. Any group that can manage this, whether a married couple or a string quartet, is something of a miracle, and, especially if you’ve seen this group in concert, you know how special it is.

And there is no holding back in these performances: the NZSQ literally attacks and wrestles Brahms’ scores to the ground–a positive, friendly intervention, for the good of all concerned. These performances should not disappoint any listener, whether you hate Brahms or love his music, because they take you out of the realm of preconception and just deliver aggressive, uninhibited, and yes, passionate expressions of these scores, respectful of the composer while always working to realize the fullness of the music that Brahms struggled so long and hard to create.

My only regret here is that with a recording you don’t truly experience what this group is doing. Unless you actually see them in concert, you don’t appreciate the incredible group dynamic that’s happening during a performance, you don’t totally get the ensemble interaction that produces this result. They stand when they perform–cellist Rolf Gjelsten sits on a special raised platform–and there’s a physicality to the communication among the players that’s only comparable to a dance, a ballet. And if you can make a ballet out of Brahms’ string quartets, well, you’ve got something that’s worth listening to.

– ClassicsToday (David Vernier)