Be welcome, twilight hour! With these words, the song of the same name by Johannes Brahms welcomes the twilight. The special light and the mood that comes with it create space for a soulful experience that goes beyond earthly boundaries. Here we are already moving in the midst of it, there. between. We, Sofia Pavone and Hedayet Jonas Djeddikar, invite you there with us - for years we have been united in our work by a great passion for the art form of song. Interesting for us and very close to our own experience is the preoccupation with the concept of "in-between" - as German-Italians and German-Persians we each live between two cultures; this draws our attention especially to how many different kinds of in -between exist. Between day and night. / Between dream and reality. / Between life and death. / Between worlds. / Between you and me. What exactly is this in-between? Space? Time? Possibility? What lies outside the in-between seems limited, but within this dimension there is freedom, dissolution of boundaries and departure. In-between states, in-between worlds and in-between tones have always served as inspiration for artists in their confrontation with themselves, time, love and death: themes that can be found again in the art song, which combines linguistic-literary and musical means, and which show how, for poets and composers alike, the in-between is expressed in different ways.

As it pleases - jocular, sensual, dramatic. opia delves into the musical depths of this game - merging literature from the Renaissance to the early Baroque. In this atmospheric programme, the musicians interpret sensual songs and lively dances with voice, recorders, viola da gamba, harpsichord and percussion instruments. In different instrumentations, they vary the timbres from intimate to magnificent chamber music and their own quodlibets. Inspired by Shakespeare's comedy of mistaken identity, we too move musically between worlds: Discovering the savoir vivre at the French court, hurrying to the g'sellige Viennese inn, fleeing from the plague into the warm embrace of English melancholy, crossing rushing rivers in the middle of German forest solitude, feeling the mild westerly wind of Italy on our skin, and dreaming of great love at night on the Spanish coast. opia, consisting of 6 musicians, combines sonic diversity, intensity of expression, rhythmic sophistication and experimental joy of playing. Founded in spring 2019, opia has already performed in Austria, Germany, Italy and Israel, including at the Grafenegg Festival and the Festspiele Alter Musik Innsbruck. The ensemble's focus is on lively interpretation, recomposition and improvisation of music from the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the early Baroque.

Trumpet and organ - and yet conceivably removed from the usual of this popular instrumentation: that is "O Mensch, gib Acht!" - is not only an eye-catcher but also a programme, when the world-class trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich and the Essen Cathedral organist Sebastian Küchler-Blessing place contemporary works, which were written as a reaction to the horrors of the Third Reich, in dialogue with arrangements of Romantic works: in addition to the titular slow movement from Mahler's Third, "Kol Nidrei" by Max Bruch and Brahms' "O Tod, wie bitter bist Du" are heard. Zsigmond Szathmáry, who was highly esteemed by György Ligeti, wrote an "...ad memoriam..." about the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin especially for this production. The brother and sister duo Kristina Schoch (recorder) and Andre Schoch (trumpet player with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra) also participated in other works, such as four epigrams based on Hebrew songs for recorder and organ pedal by Otfried Büsing from Freiburg. Recorded on the Rieger organ in Essen Cathedral, which was rebuilt after the destruction of the war, war is raging on European soil at the same time. Gib Acht!" has ever been more topical.

Few composers are as well known and at the same time as infamous as Carl Czerny. This is mainly due to a few collections of etudes, which were used almost excessively by some piano teachers, at least in the past, to train finger technique. The actual exercises and etudes make up only a tenth of his oeuvre, which comprises over 2000 works, of which 861 are available in print. With these numbers, it must still be taken into account that each opus can consist of up to 50 individual pieces. The largest part of his oeuvre, almost half, must be counted as arrangements.

The "Quatuors Concertants" op. 230 and op. 816 also belong to this genre, although the main titles do not indicate this and the instrumentation for four pianos with eight hands places them above the usual arrangements. The two titles "1er Quatuor Concertant op. 230" and "2me Quatuor Concertant op. 816" indicate that these pieces were intended for the concert hall. The "Quatuor Concertant op. 230" was performed on 4 April 1830 for the benefit of the victims of a Danube flood in the k.k. great Redouten-Saal in Vienna, together with the Semiramis Overture by G. Rossini, which Czerny had arranged for eight pianos with 32 hands (see CD "Up to 8 pianos"). The attractiveness of this concert was further enhanced by the fact that only aristocratic pianists, and especially female pianists, performed.

With their new CD "Hymne à l'amour"; the Duo Minerva once again shows how exciting and multifaceted classical music can sound. Their arrangements; woven with great artistry; their virtuosity and their exceptionally emotional style of music-making breathe fresh life into often-heard works. With a great deal of playfulness; the well-rehearsed duo moves between the most diverse genres and combines classical masterpieces with contemporary avant-garde; folk music and a pinch of the as yet unheard on the subject of love - entirely in Duo Minerva style.

With György Kurtág (born 1926); György Ligeti (1923-2006) and Péter Eötvös (born 1944); Hungary has produced three of the most important and internationally successful composers of the post-war era. This recording brings together piano works by Kurtág and Ligeti. It shows that the four-hand piano character piece also has musical expressiveness and genre-technical justification in contemporary musical art. Ani and Nia Sulkhanishvili were born as twins in Tbilisi / Georgia in 1988. At the age of 6 they received their first piano lessons from Svetlana Arakelova. The highlight of their career so far was the 2nd prize at the "64th ARD International Music Competition" in Munich in 2015. This was the start of an international career with performances in Europe, America and China. The piano duo has mastered a large repertoire spanning the epochs from classical to modern.

Mozart brought to life anew! Pianist Michael Wessel records all 18 of Mozart's piano sonatas: a unique cosmos bursting with unbridled ideas! Some special features are close to the pianist's heart and distinguish this release from others. Michael Wessel refreshingly combines the insights of historically informed performance practice with the sustaining; richly coloured tone of the modern Bösendorfer concert grand. The result is a lively and contrasting mixture of speaking and singing characters. In the detailed booklet; Wessel excitingly relates the respective time and life circumstances to the sonatas. On each CD, three sonatas are grouped together under a thematic focus. The series begins with "Mozart the Poet": K. 330; 331 and 332 as narration, poem and play - followed by "Mozart - Two Faces": Fantasy K. 475 and Sonatas Nos. 13; 14; 16. "Mozart the Progressive" includes Gigue K. 574; Minuet K. 355 and Sonatas Nos. 15; 17; 18.

For every cellist; Poulenc's Cello Sonata is demanding in terms of playing technique. Since he had a great affinity for woodwind instruments; his notation is not really written to suit the conditions of a string instrument. He himself was aware of this fact; so he sought expert advice for the composition from the famous cellist Pierre Fournier; who was also the dedicatee and soloist at the premiere in 1948. "Everything we see; hear and feel is connected with feeling." This is how Leoš Janácek defined his artistic attitude; from which grew an idiosyncratic tonal language hardly comparable with other models or traditions of his time. Pohádka means - translated from Czech - "fairy tale". It is based on a fairy tale by the Russian romanticist Wassilij Shukowskj (1783-1852) about the love of a prince for a princess. Janácek's enthusiasm for Russian culture is evident in this choice of theme. Sergei Rachmaninoff was in the limelight as a generous piano virtuoso; but as a composer he was more of a pensive self-doubter. His first symphony had failed with the public. This experience of failure led him into a depression and creative crisis lasting several years. Three years later; he was released from it through a new type of hypnotherapy; which was tantamount to an artistic rebirth. His second piano concerto arose like a phoenix from the ashes and was enthusiastically celebrated. Shortly thereafter; he created his Sonata for Piano and Violoncello opus 19; which is now considered one of his most brilliant compositions. Thematically and motivically; the four movements lead from darkness into light. It was dedicated to the cellist Anatoly Bradukov.

Many people associate Bavaria" with the Zugspitze, the Königssee, the Isar meadows and the vineyards on the Main, Munich with the Oktoberfest and the football stars of FC Bayern, Regensburg on the Danube with the Stone Bridge and the Domspatzen. Neuschwanstein and other castles of the fairytale king characterise the landscape, as do the Wieskirche and other pilgrimage churches in the foothills of the Alps. Cars from two famous Bavarian car brands can be seen on all the roads. Music enthusiasts from all over the world find enjoyment at the Bayreuth Festival, the Munich Opera Festival and the Tage Alter Musik in Regensburg. The Derblecken at the Nockherberg and the Franconian Fastnacht are broadcast live every year in Bavarian or Franconian dialect on the TV channels. And in cosy beer gardens Weißwürste (white sausages) with pretzels, Leberkäs (liver cheese) and Bavarian beer are served. Many of these well-known Bavarian facets can also be found in the programme compilation of this CD. But some of the selected pieces also look beyond the cliché and show new, previously unknown aspects of Bavarian cultural diversity."

With this recording - Modern Bridges - the Swiss Tetrapod Ensemble - flutist Nuriia Khasenova, clarinettist Damien Bachmann, cellist Christoph Croisé and pianist François-Xavier Poizat - proves how serious yet entertaining and how universally comprehensible contemporary music can be and be felt if one builds modern bridges to it. This CD is the fruit of many years of cooperation and international concert activities of these four musicians and unites "classics" of the border zone, of the crossover between classical music and jazz, such as Nikolai Kapustin, with well-known contemporary composers of this genre, such as Daniel Schnyder or Aleksey Igudesman. In this respect, jazz and chamber music go together perfectly: Even a jazz combo is basically nothing other than a chamber ensemble, in which the subtle art of balance and fine-tuning is what matters. And George Gershwin (1898-1937) already created timeless examples of how jazz rhythms and blues harmonies can be transferred into a classical formal language in the first half of the 20th century. Musicians such as Alexander Zfasman (1906-1971) and Claude Bolling (1930-2020) followed in his footsteps and achieved great success with their compositions and crossover projects. The musicians on this recording also contribute to this fascinating genre that transcends all too narrow boundaries. They fuse tradition with modernity. Already in the four-part layout of the programme - a reference to the cyclical form of the classical sonata or symphony - this concern becomes apparent.

The pieces on this CD belong to three different categories. First, we have some masterpieces of the repertoire for violin (from Mozart to Mendelssohn, from Brahms and Tchaikovsky to Dvorák) to which Kreisler knew how to give a special splendor: all pieces that require a perfect balance between technical mastery and sensitivity. What follows is a selection of Kreisler's thirty or so original compositions for violin and piano, largely inspired by the salon music genre, including the trilogy of Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen with the very famous Liebesleid. Finally, we hear here pieces "à la manière de", so called pastiches, written by the same Kreisler, but inspired by composers of the past (Wilhelm Friedemann Bach or Louis Couperin, the grandfather of the famous François, but also Tartini and Vivaldi) to whom he curiously attributed them. The story of these pieces is unique: intended as encores at the end of the concert, Kreisler composed them himself, taking inspiration from some Baroque composers whose scores he supposedly found in a French monastery. He put them on the program under their names, convinced that the audience's interest would be greater if they were attributed to already known and respected authors. However, when musicologists could find no further traces of these pieces, in 1935 he was almost forced to admit the hoax and defend himself with the terse statement "the name changes, the value remains".

The idea to record a CD of chamber music for clarinet and piano by composers from Germany, Denmark and Russia arose quite spontaneously. The starting point of our research was the "Fantasiestücke" by Niels Wilhelm Gade Op. 43. After we had successfully performed this cycle in some concert programs, the desire came to look at the genre of European instrumental romantic miniatures of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. So it was only logical that our choice fell on the "Fantasiestücke" by Robert Schumann Op. 73. His work is a kind of starting point for the whole CD concept. The Second Sonata by Alexander Gretschaninow came into our repertoire not long ago, but took a permanent place thanks to its luminosity, sublimity of figures and sincerity of romantic statement. The same is true of the unique "Sonata-Vocalise" by Nikolai Medtner, which is an excellent example of an organic synthesis of German and Russian schools of composers and embodies the continuity of Schumann's artistic ideals. The multidimensional term "fantasy" (in the old variant "phantasy") means "to imagine something", "to improvise". And it is precisely the rich, radiant, outstanding and - this is actually the most important thing - free imagination of the artists presented on the CD that has given us the happiness of encountering their art. This joy of fantasizing, full of inspiration, we would like to share with you.

With his Children's Pieces for Adults, Georgian composer and pianist Nodar Gabunia created an eight-part piano cycle in 1987 in the wake of such pedagogically oriented collections as Pyotr Tchaikovsky's Children's Album op. 39, Béla Bartók's For Children Sz 42, or Dmitri Kabalevsky's Piano Pieces for Young Players op. 27, to name but a few. Musical images of childhood had long been a popular topos, which probably found its culmination in Robert Schumann's Kinderszenen op. 15. Those character pieces, however, were not intended for children's hands, but were, in Schumann's own words, "reflections of an elder for elders," not actual children's pieces. The composition of the 24 Préludes op. 28 goes back to the years 1835/36, and in them the admiration that Frédéric Chopin had for Johann Sebastian Bach is evident. With this masterpiece, which gives the character piece "Präludium" or rather "Prélude" to its first and probably highest climax, the composer took up Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and its sequence of 48 preludes and fugues not only in formal aspects, but also in terms of their constructive and material condensation, inspiring composers who followed him in time, such as Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Karol Szymanovsky, but also Claude Debussy or Dmitri Shostakovich, to write comparable collections.

I feel Catalan through and through, but in my music I want to express what I feel, what I admire and what attracts me, be it Andalusian or Chinese – Enrique Granados. I hope that this album will provide a deeper understanding of the Goyescas, drawing not only the most common images of Spanish folklore such as the sevillanas or the bullfighters, but also a more complete picture of a diverse country. It was the inspiration for an artist like Goya who was at once deeply local and universal. It is this fascinating mixture of tradition and modernity, of Spain and Europe, that Granados liked and loved in his illustrious predecessor.

"Throughout the dozen years I spent in Weimar, one great idea kept me in suspense - the renewal of music through a more intimate connection with poetry," wrote Franz Liszt in an 1860 letter to his close piano student Agnes Street-Klindworth (1825-1906). But Liszt's entire artistic life oscillated even more between art and religion, between freedom of expression and the strictness of dogmatic limitations. This artistic credo becomes clear not least in his piano cycle Harmonies poétiques et religieuses p.273. This very varied cycle, which dates back to 1835, combines grand concert pieces (such as Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude or Funérailles) with simple and shorter compositions, some of which incorporate Gregorian chants, with reference to a collection of poems by the French poet Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869). This cross-section of a poetic-religious artistic life inspired the two musicians on this recording, pianist Julia Okruashvili and cellist László Fenyo, to create this CD Harmonies Hongroises, which combines music by Franz Liszt, born in 1811 in the Kingdom of Hungary, with music by Hungarian composers from the first half of the 20th century.