Roberte Mamou writes: “The CONNECTION... Carl, Johann Nepomuk, Franz, Ludwig, Wolfgang and Joseph... all in Vienna during one century! Vienna, more than Salzburg, is at this time the center of attraction for musicians and the meeting point of musical creation. It is like a little walk from one to another: Haydn was the teacher of Beethoven, Czerny was the student of Hummel and...that one a student of Mozart... I was fascinated by the impressive number of variations they wrote. Around Hummel and his charming variations I built up a cosmos of variations that excited me more and more every day... Most of them will seem familiar, like those of Beethoven or Mozart. It is always difficult to move from small pieces to others, but this program will please and appeal to you... and you will discover a different facet in each of these composers!”

Dorothy Khadem-Missagh continues the musical tradition of her family in the fourth generation. The young Austrian pianist is a multiple prize winner of the International Beethoven Competition Bonn. On her album she combines works by Beethoven with those of his contemporary Karl Traugott Zeuner (1775-1841), whose music she discovered in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien. The Austrian pianist Dorothy Khadem-Missagh leads a promising and aspiring musical career. At the International Beethoven Competition Bonn, she has been awarded the chamber music prize and the “Beethoven-Haus Preis” by the renowned members of the jury. She performs on international stages and renowned festivals such as the Wiener Musikverein, Wiener Konzerthaus, Styriarte Graz, Tiroler Festspiele Erl, Festival Allegro Vivo, Mosel Musik Festival, Norwegian Youth Chamber Music Festival and the Kyoto International Festival.

The long-awaited Beethoven year has turned out different from what everyone expected. The major project of Nike Wagner, artistic director of the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, has also had to be postponed for a year. It was to include amongst other things all of Beethoven's symphonies in the piano version by Franz Liszt, and Boris Bloch would have been involved in this project. And yet for many People Beethoven is omnipresent, and not only in 2020, but every year, indeed every day. Boris Bloch’s real work and passion for Beethoven began in New York City, after meeting his fellow student, the German pianist Michael Korstick, who is rated by critics as an outstanding Beethoven interpreter, his repertoire encompassing all of Beethoven's sonatas and concertos. It was he who sparked Bloch’s true love for Beethoven and defined his understanding of his style and spirit. On this double album recording Boris Bloch presents various works by Beethoven, including the Moonlight Sonata and the "Storm Sonata" in D minor.

With her first solo album, Emily Hoile would like to present works rarely heard on the harp until now. She takes great joy in arranging compositions for keyboard instruments and thus expanding the repertoire available to the harp: J.S. Bach's Toccata in C minor and D. Scarlatti's Sonata K.135 in E major make their debut on the harp with this release. The transcription of the Ballade by Claude Debussy is meant to underline the great importance that Paris had for harp music at the turn of the century. These arrangements are framed by two magnificent original compositions for the instrument: the surprisingly rarely played Harp Sonata by Casella and the Fantasy by Zabel inspired by Gounod's Faust.

This program contains compositions that have found their way into the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis without exception. Nevertheless, each of them - each in its own right - is an artistic reflection of other works by Johann Sebastian Bach or his work as a teacher. Against this background, the interpreters of this recording have also returned the sonatas BWV 1028 and 1029 to their original trio sonata instrumentation. Ana Ioana Oltean was born in Romania. Following initial musical instruction at the Music College and Music Academy in Cluj-Napoca Ana joined the class of Heidi Indermühle at the Academy of Arts in Berne, Switzerland. In 2002 she was awarded her soloist diploma as well as the Eduard Tschumi Prize. Ana completed her Master’s degree in Music Intermediation at the Academy of Music in Trossingen while developing her skills on the baroque flute. Kaspar Zehnder was born in Riggis-berg, Switzerland. He studied flute with Heidi Indermühle in Berne and later with Aurèle Nicolet in Paris, Siena and at the European Mozart Academy. Kaspar Zehnder is in great demand internationally as a soloist, chamber musician and conductor. From 2004 until 2012 he was the musical director of the Zentrum Paul Klee in Berne. He is the principal conductor of the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra and of the Hradec Králové Phil-harmonic Orchestra. Vital Julian Frey was born in Geneva, Switzerland. In contrast to many conventional career paths in his field, Vi-tal began to focus on the harpsichord early on, at the age of eight. He studied with Robert Hill in Freiburg, Christophe Rousset in Paris, and with Christine Schornsheim in Munich, where he re-ceived the soloist diploma.

At the age of only 28, Luxembourgian pianist Sabine Weyer was appointed professor at the Conservatory of the City of Luxembourg in 2016. A special appointment that shows how respected the young artist already is. On her latest recording 'Bach to the Future' on Ars Produktion, works by Bach and their arrangements by Busoni, Saint-Saëns and Siloti can be heard. Weyer writes of her new release: “Bach to the future. Borrowing the title from Robert Zemecki’s science fiction movie, I conceive of J.S. Bach as a central figure, as a composer with profound influence on the future course of music history, through the prism of a number of transcriptions by other composers. These works surround Bach’s oeuvre like a series of future scenarios and guide the listener through a journey of discovery.”

Konstantin Kramer has taken time (ZEIT): the recordings have "kept him alive" throughout the Corona year. They have saved him over time. They made him come to himself and forced him to deal with himself and his available time. They have helped him channel his anger and frustration. But they have also made him realize his love and passion for music and his double bass, and confirmed to him that all the time he has invested over the last few years has not been in vain.... Giovanni Bottesini's "Allegro di Concerto Alla Mendelssohn" and "Rêverie" are among the most beautiful compositions for the double bass as a solo instrument. The works are not only expressive and original, but represented a quantum leap in tonal variety and technical sophistication. Like no one else to this day, Bottesini ensured that the lowest of all string instruments conquered the concert stages as a concert solo instrument... The works of Czech composer and double bassist Adolf Míšek have formed an important part of the original repertoire for decades as the culmination of the Romantic double bass literature. In his second double bass sonata of 1910, influences of Czech folk music can be noticed... Johann Sebastian Bach most likely never experienced the double bass as a concertante solo instrument. The Sonata in D major, which he actually composed for viola da gamba and harpsichord, is one of the most popular performance pieces for the modern double bass today.... "Robert Fuchs is a fabulous musician, everything is so fine and so deft, so delightfully invented!" raved Johannes Brahms about his colleague Robert Fuchs. And rightly so: the Austrian composer is one of the true Romantics of music history.

“Why 'Reflections'? Because every kind of music affects each of us differently. That's why I chose to include three very opposite composers, but also because I wanted to show that for some "subconscious" reason they fit together perfectly.... Bach leads us to inner reflection. His music invites us to think deeply and arouses emotions. Ravel 'reflects' visions, mirroring natural events such as flowing water, trees moving in the wind, and much else. Cage, and especially In a Landscape, provokes a more unemotional reflection of ourselves. His music invites us to look at ourselves and the rest of the world from the outside. Ultimately, the magic of music lies in how it is reflected in each of us and how we share it with the audience.” (Romain Nosbaum)

The three pieces on this release have one thing in common: they combine dances with contrasting musical pieces to form a large whole - the suite. This tradition goes back as far as the Baroque period, where Bach, Handel and Rameau, among others, established this form. Later, from the Romantic period on, sequences of character pieces as well as compilations of larger works were also called suites. An interesting fact: all three composers of the suites on this album were 27 years old at the time their pieces were written.

The Bergmann Duo is made up of pianists Marcel and Elizabeth Bergmann. “Always adventurous, the married couple combines virtuosic dedication with the instincts of professional entertainers who love their music.” (Showtime Magazine) Performing works by Chick Corea, Leonard Bernstein, Pat Metheny, and other American composers, Michael Bergmann has arranged all of these works for he and his wife specifically. This release is a wonderful example of the duo’s continuously evolving musical dialogue, reflecting upon the passion the group has for jazz and improvisation.

The pianist Anastasia Yasko presents a selection of outstanding Russian piano sonatas from Soviet times. A handful of little known works by Prokofiev, Sviridov, Feinberg and Weinberg will give us a varied picture of the period. Here, different stylistic directions of new music as well as the characteristics of the Russian musical tradition are distinctly represented. Anastasia Yasko was born in Kursk, Russia. Since four years old she has been playing the piano. She studied the piano at the Moscow Gnessin Special Music School with Tatiana Shklovskaya and at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Vera Gornostaeva. From 2014 to 2017 she studied at the Mozarteum University Salzburg with Rolf Plagge and since 2018 she is studying with Jacques Rouvier and also working as a teaching assistant of Rolf Plagge. Anastasia had recitals in Russia, the Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, France and Japan.

In his musical travelogue from 1773, the English musician and musicologist Charles Burney described Bohemia as the "conservatory of Europe". The country, now part of the Czech Republic, was then part of the Austrian Empire and from here came many outstanding composers who, if they did not stay in the country, worked not only in Vienna and other Austrian cultural centers, but also at the courts of all Europe and in the German, Italian and French metropolises. The word "Bohemian" encompasses the Czech and German language areas of the Czech lands. No wonder that Czech and Bohemian music has fascinated many musicians and musicologists for three centuries.

Sounding stories of love: two of Astor Piazzolla's masterpieces form the setting of this release. At the beginning is "Le Grand Tango", truly a "great tango", which almost seems like a symphonic poem in tango time. It continues with Johanna Doderer ("Break on through" 2015), Gordon Hamilton ("Romeo & Juliet in Sarajevo" 2017) and Nikolai Kapustin ("Burlesque" op. 97, "Elegy" op. 96, "Nearly Waltz" op. 98). The end of the recording is a prayer of love. Piazzolla's instrumental "Ave Maria" was written in 1984 as part of the music for the film "Enrico IV" based on the play by Luigi Pirandello and was dedicated to the actress Claudia Cardinale. In the film, the sacred song without words sounded in tango form with oboe and piano.

Violinist Julia Smirnova and cellist Konstantin Manaev are a duo not only on the concert stage, but also in their private lives. "We play two instruments and have two temperaments," they say, "we embody yin and yang, as it were. All the works on this release are directly related to our artistic lives and open the doors to our musical world." The duo prefers contemporary music "that touches the audience's feelings." It is music that has a lot of songfulness in it - and it is pieces by composing people who belong not only to the spatial and temporal, but beyond that to the emotional neighborhood of the performers.

Located between chamber music and orchestra, the Carinthian-based ensemble minui has dedicated itself to the musical possibilities for large chamber music ensembles with elegance and finesse since its founding in 2016. While simple reductions of large orchestral works were initially on the program, opera music gradually became the great passion of ensemble minui. In the arrangements of clarinettist Stefan Potzmann, the nine versatile orchestral musicians offer listeners with their second album recording stylish new perspectives on three large-scale opera works, reduced to what is essential for them: the music!