Classical Music

In Werke für Violine und Klavier, the interplay between grotesque humour and instant melodic upswings the piece demonstrates the amazing plasticity of the young Korngold’s inventiveness. Korngold draws on the classical forms in Streichsextett D-Dur, but realizes them individually; the tonal harmonies are sometimes stretched to their limits, without touching their significant function; though the six voices are conceived polyphonically, they can resound orchestrally – all this is part of the trade of the ingenious adolescent.

Classical Music

The Vogler Quartet writes: “During the musical season of 2014/15, the Vogler Quartet celebrated its 30th anniversary. To keep a reminder of this event for you and ourselves, we recorded live our four concerts at the Konzerthaus Berlin and compiled selected compositions thereof for a special release… We decided to present only works composed during the 20th or 21st century. It is common to all these compositions that they strive for beauty, and that they reach it. For example, there is, at the end of Henze's third quartet, a slight, sad reminiscence of Beethoven's 'Muss es sein?' from his last quartet op. 135… This third quartet, an unsuccessful work of Henze, shows a deeply broken, romantic spirit that may not be directly accessible because of its artistic encryption, but nonetheless reveals deep beauty. We could work out Kagel's 5th quartet just before its world premiere with the composer himself…The search for the path; at the beginning of the 20th century, before the radical change brought about by the 12-tone music, the urgency of the quest for new musical idioms was clearly perceptible, and it is in this sense that we understand Ravel's quartet. The use of far-east and Basque motives in a nearly expressionistic manner, woven into crystalline but nevertheless very touching beauty, can appear very present-day, if one decides for this view. Kurt Weill's quartet op.8 uses quite another idiomatic modus, it reminds us already of his later song-style, but it also fits well in the time of its origin, the twenties… Jörg Widmann's 4th quartet was finalized not until the night before its world premiere. Over the two weeks before, we daily received a new page of the score by fax. We assembled the final version of the quartet's score on the very day of the concert on the train from Berlin to Essen...”

The attempt to visualize this music leads us to a sort of museum with tidy showcases, each of them presenting positions and styles of the time around 1920. After returning home from WWI, the composer had to scratch a living doing musical odd jobs. Schulhoff obtained Soviet citizenship, but he was arrested in Prague the day after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. In 1944, he died in the Wülzburg concentration camp in Germany and it was to take more than 40 years until his work became known and more and more popular.

Clara Haskil gave her first concert at the age of nine, and she garnered immediate public attention. She studied with Richard Robert and later continued her studies with Alfred Cortot at the Paris Conservatory where she received the Grand Prix at fourteen. After World War I she appeared with Enesco, Casals, Stokowski and Ysaye. On these recordings from 1952-56, Haskil plays Mozart's piano concertos nos. 9 and 19 with the Radio-Sinfoniorchester Stuttgart.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Violinist Kolja Blacher, with appearances on six past phil.harmonie releases, returns for the seventh time with two works by the 20th c. Russian master Dmitri Shostakovich. Together with a cellist, pianist and three percussionists, the sextet offer interpretations of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 and the Suite für varieté-orchester, in both cases realized for these forces by Viktor Derevianko (Symphony) and Oriol Cruixent (Suite). Mr. Blacher, a Berlin native, has pursued a busy and diverse career since his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1988.

..Perhaps the beginning of this CD is, in a way, the most classic principle because the music that stood for the avant-garde at a time, today takes the place of the "Classic" Tangos. I sincerely value the Vogler Quartet artistic attitude – that is also mine – as to take the necessary risk to go on with the history of Tango that is also - in some way - part of the history of music.... "Sr. Tango" (Mr. Tango) is a parody about a Tango place that still exists in Buenos Aires where I had the fortune to play…and leave alive… The pieces for Trio - Violin, Bandoneon and Double Bass - are a very lively style. And ironic. I wanted to experience with a non-classical group and tickle with the primary tangos, except "Jeanne & Paul". "Adios Nonino" is a classic of the worldwide literature because the wedding of Princess Maxima of Holland launched it to the world space as ever before. My version is almost the contrary, let´s say a sort of "divorce". Above all for those that still think that it is not possible or it is not correct to arrange Piazzolla´s music. So here it goes my tribute to that great composer and arranger of old Tangos: Astor Piazzolla. "Bordel 1900" and "Café 1930" are two pieces where I simply orchestrated what was originally written for Flute and Bandoneon. "4 for Vogler" is a portrait of each of the constituents of the string quartet. An individual portrait of Tim, Frank, Stefan and Stephan, in that same order. It´s my humble homage to this profound, unique and brilliant string quartet. Marcelo Nisinman

A jazz musician - pianist and composer - plays Erik Satie. His stations: SOK, Synopsis, the Ulrich Gumpert workshop band (celebrated on international Festivals), the duo with G�nter Sommer; the trio with Radu Malfatti and Tony Oxley. Gumpert performing in a duo with Dietmar Diesner and Gumpertsolo, playing his own piano music - plain pieces of deep urge. It seems as if Gumpert inevitably had to come to Satie. It is not scores which are the essence of Satie's music but his attitudes. A pianist who feels strange with Satie's nature, can play the pieces key by key from the score and though disfigure them past recognition. l can't name any musician who is more able to play the early works of Erik Satie, than Ulrich Gumpert.

On the present release, a jazz musician, pianist, and composer plays Erik Satie. Born in 1945, Ulrich Gumpert first began piano lessons with his father before going on to study in Weimar where he majored in French horn. Beginning in 1967 he performed in various bands with Klaus Lenz, and in 1971 co-founded the jazz rock group SOK. That same year he founded SYNOPSIS, from which the ZENTRALQUARTETT emerged in 1984. Ulrich Gumpert has developed an idiosyncratic personal style by using the experience of jazz and European music history in an original way. "Gumpert, who as a person never pushes himself to the fore, is also characterized by his modest reserve on his instrument. Without becoming particularly loud, particularly weird or particularly fast, he has found his very own tone: lyrical, warm, substantial, to the point. A quiet giant of German jazz." (Jazzclub Tonne)

In the last years of his life, John Cage wrote a great many so-called "Number Pieces" the title indicating the number of performing musicians. While most of these pieces indicate which instruments are to be played, as well as the sounds that are to be produced, other pieces offer only general tone descriptions or a framework for choosing the tones oneself. What these pieces do have in common is time\-organization: Cage designates the measure within which the tones must be played. Should one play these sound\-sequences within the interval quickly, then one must wait for the beginning of the next measure in order to continue; should one play with an even slowness, the separate intervals are joined without interruption. And so, each performance of the same piece is different: in one instance an even flow of sounds, in another a pulsation of rapid responses accompanied by pauses (including all variations). An exception is "Two²". Here the two pianists do not play according to a stopwatch, but rather by reacting to one another: Although the piece indicates measure, it does not assign tempo or even pulse. While both interpreters play independently of each other, they may continue on to the next measure only when the other player has finished his. Cage decided on the number of tones within a measure by drawing upon the rules of Renga, Japanese linked poetry, in which the number of syllables per verse are set at 5, 7, 5, 7, 7. As the pedal is continuously depressed, the notes sound into one another and this inner structure remains undetected.

His first teacher was his father, who gave him his first violin lessons when Martin Stegner was eight. After studying with Roman Nodel at the Mannheim Musikhochschule, he switched to the viola and then went for training to Neithard Resa and Wilfried Strehle in the Berliner Philharmonikers Orchestra Academy. His first engagement was in 1993, as principal viola of Berlin\x27s Deutsches Symphonie\-Orchester. Three years later he moved to the Berliner Philharmoniker. Martin Stegner performs as a soloist and chamber musician in Europe, America and Japan. He also works with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and the Orquesta Juvenil Centroamericana and has given courses at Yale University and the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler in Berlin. He is actively involved in expanding the violas repertoire. Together with the pianist Tomoko Takahashi, he has released several highly acclaimed albums of transcriptions of lieder by Robert Schumann. He has been a keen jazz musician since his youth, and has appeared at numerous festivals, performing with artists such as Herbie Mann, Diane Reeves, Thomas Quasthoff and Nils Landgren. A co\-founder of the Berlin Philharmonic Jazz Group, he founded the ensemble Bolero Berlin in 2008 in which he and soloists of the Berliner Philharmoniker dedicate themselves to South American music. In 2015, an album was released together with the German\/Persian singer Cymin Samawatie on the ECM label. Martin Stegner is involved in other projects with, among others, Simon Stockhausen and the Chinese sheng virtuoso Wu Wei. His work has been documented on 18 albums.