It is a young, fresh, unspoiled view on the music of centuries past that has secured the Schumann Quartet, since it's foundation in 2007, the uninterrupted attention of music public. Together with Estonian violist Lisa Randalu, the ensemble's latest Ars Production release brings their unmistakable enthusiasm and breathtaking technical sovereignty to three very different works by Mozart, Verdi and Ives that have been in the quartet's repertoire for some time, maturing over many concert performances. "No doubt: The future belongs to this quartet." (Ensemble Magazine)

Classical Music

Classical Music

Traugott Maximilian Eberwein (1775-1831) was a member of the exquisite circle of artists, which was called the "Weimarer Musenhof“. Goethe was also a member and they worked under the patronage of the art-loving Duchess Anna Amalia. As an extremely productive composer, Eberwein composed numerous operas, songs, and also orchestral music, which can be heard on this recording played by the Thüringisches Kammerorchester Weimar under Max Pommer. The Thuringian Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1962 by members of the Staatskapelle Weimar, is one of the world’s oldest chamber orchestras. It is located in historic Weimar, the city of poets and phillsophers, but also of great musicians such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss. The ensemble peforms regularly at concert venues across Germany and in many European countries as well as in the Far East and Mexico. The orchestra’s repertoire ranges from the 18th to the 21st century, with a focus on composers from Weimar and its surroundings. Their extensive discography includes over 250 recordings for radio broadcast, and illustrates the ensemble’s stylistic confidence and its consistently high levels of musicianship.

The fourteenth volume in ARS Produktion's continuing series examining the music of Austrian composer Ignaz Joseph Pleyel. Pleyel (1757-1831) composed 48 symphonies and a considerable body of chamber works in his lifetime, making his a substantial and underappreciated contribution to the Classical-era's musical literature. The Camerata Pro Musica is led by conductor Christian Birnbaum.

On Chinese Dreams pianist Lydia Maria Bader plays piano pieces by contemporary Chinese composers based on traditional folk songs as well as works by Western composers inspired by China. The music is filled with beautiful melodies, which deserve to be heard outside of China. Praised for her elegant execution, beautiful tone and remarkable virtuosity, pianist Lydia Maria Bader has been described as "one of the leading pianists of Germany" (Neue Musikzeitung). Audiences and the press alike admire her charming moderation and thematically-conceived programs, which often venture into lesser-known territories of the piano literature and reflect a deep fascination with colorful cultures. Born in Bavaria, Germany, Lydia received her first piano lessons from her father. At the age of fifteen she began her studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, first with Karl-Hermann Mrongovius, then with Michael Sch�fer after graduating from high school, under whom she received her artistic diploma. Other major influences on her artistic development include a year of study at the Conservatoire National Sup�rieur de Musique in Paris with Michel Beroff and studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria, with Markus Schirmer.

Classical Music

In her musical radio play for children and young adults, Barbara Overbeck, with the musical support of the Sinfonieorchester Munster under the direction of Hendrik Vestman, tells her entertaining version of the origin and history of undoubtedly the most musical chocolate in the world. A wintery travel report with lots of fun and lots of music from the Salzburg composer.

The music on this recording with works from the period of Viennese Classicism was performed on modern instruments, using Beethoven’s instrumentation instructions from 1813. His works and also the works of Mozart and Haydn were sometimes more, sometimes less influenced by the Weimarer Klassik, which one connects to the writers like Goethe, Schiller or Herder. The Thuringian Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1962 by members of the Staatskapelle Weimar, is one of the world’s oldest chamber orchestras. It is located in historic Weimar, the city of poets and phillsophers, but also of great musicians such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss. The ensemble peforms regularly at concert venues across Germany and in many European countries as well as in the Far East and Mexico. The orchestra’s repertoire ranges from the 18th to the 21st century, with a focus on composers from Weimar and its surroundings. Their extensive discography includes over 250 recordings for radio broadcast, and illustrates the ensemble’s stylistic confidence and its consistently high levels of musicianship.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The mediation of text achieves the immediate effect that an opera aria or, in particular, a song can evoke. The chamber-musical concentration that a piano song, for example, can evoke, i.e. the arrangement of a song by a singer and a pianist, can hardly be surpassed - this in a concert genre that only became established late, in the second half of the 19th century, and has nowadays often receded into the background. It is no longer just about entertainment, or even just diversion: song composition demands truthfulness, inwardness and the ability to transmit these prerequisites as a performer and to receive them as an audience. In the 150 years since 1750, a song culture has developed in European, and especially German-language, vocal music that is unique in its music-historical significance and that has reached unsurpassed heights in the song oeuvre of Franz Schubert (1797-1828) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856). The present CD brings together piano songs to which one can attach rhapsodic, folkloristic or historicising subjects. They tell of "legends and heroes" and lead the listener into a sonorous dream world.

The Belgian-born composer Guillaume Lekeu (1870-1894) left us only a small oeuvre. One of his most important compositions is the Sonata pour piano et violon, which is dedicated to Eugene Ysa�e. The great Belgian violinist described it as "a masterpiece that need not fear comparison with Franck's violin sonata in terms of it's wealth of ideas and melodic inspiration". Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was one of the most original and versatile composers of the 20th century. His Theme et variations, composed in Paris in 1932 as a wedding present for his first wife, the violinist and composer Claire Delbos, and performed together a few months after their marriage, explores the ideas of time and rhythm in search of their possible variations. The sonata is a form that has also recently attracted the interest of Nicolas Bacri (*1961), one of the most performed and most recorded composers on the international music scene today. The Sonata No. 4 op. 148 "In the style of Brahms", which was composed between June and October 2018 at the request of Agnes Pyka and Laurent Wagschal, reflects this second tendency and is Bacri's great homage to the Hamburg master, for whom he harbours a special affection. The violinist Carlotta Malquoris and the pianist Andrea D'Amato are an established duo that performs enthusiastically at numerous concerts in Germany and abroad.

Genny Basso, a classically trained pianist, interprets some Neapolitan songs - and not necessarily the most famous ones - in an unusual way, infusing them with stylistic elements that hark back to composers of "high culture", but never with the intention of sounding ingratiating or irreverent, or of confronting the listener with a self-congratulatory exercise. What at first glance may appear to be a game of musical camouflage turns out to be the culmination of an interpretation constructed with the performer's consciousness, detecting and at times inducing allusions and references. The resulting, quite surprising interweavings are made credible by an affinity for writing and by it's emotional atmosphere. It's hard to say exactly when the idea for this album was born, says Genny Basso. "Maybe I always had a project like this in mind. As a child, I was enchanted when I listened to my mum play Piscatore 'e Pusilleco on the piano. It was the beginning of a musical passion that never left me and that I continued to cultivate along with my classical training; I looked for informal situations where it was welcome. At some point, however, I realised that so much interest on my part in the Neapolitan tradition deserved a larger and more exclusive space. And that's how my first adaptations came about, those of Era de Maggio and Carmela... and the rest is history."