For generations, the noble family of the House of Szechenyi have played a decisive role in shaping Hungary's destiny. Katharina Ruckgaber and Tamas Egresi, accompanied by Helmut Deutsch, have compiled a representative selection of songs from the large repertoire of poems and compositions; an impressive testimony to the wide-ranging interests and talents of one of Europe's most important aristocratic families.

Award-winning duo, cellist Doris Hochscheid and pianist Frans van Ruth present enchanting works by Daniel van Goens with natural elegance and breathtaking virtuosity. Their highly-acclaimed Dutch Cello Sonatas Project is a veritable treasure trove of musical rediscoveries and the duo was honoured with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau for their contribution to Dutch culture.

This collection of Bernd Wilden's sacred works is a great testament to the music of our time. His music draws it's archaic power from Gregorian chant, which he moulds with dramatic flair and an acute eye for tone colour. Immediately moving and transcendental in it's grandiose climaxes, this is authentic music "on par with Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky", as one critic observed.

Alexander Asteriades effortlessly manages the balancing act between ambitious artistic demands and refreshingly accessible sonority. He often finds inspiration in literary sources, which provide a fascinating glimpse into the composer's imagination. With his preference for traditional forms and a modern approach to tonal composition, Asteriades escapes the cul-de-sac of atonality.

Classical Music

Imre Szechenyi composed throughout his life- even though he really and truly had many other things to do. After diplomatic missions to Rome, Stockholm, Brussels, Paris, and St. Petersburg he represented the interests of the Habsburg monarchy as the Austro-Hungarian ambassador in imperial Berlin. Bismarck’s famous and notorious Alliance of the Three Emperors bears Szechenyi’s signature, and he played a significant role at the Berlin Conference on the Congo. His international experience is also reflected in his songs, which on this rewarding new release are now certainly being heard for the first time in very many years.Accompanied by Helmut Deutsch on the venerable “Manfred Burki” Steinway D, Katharina Ruckgaber and Jochen Kupfer once again bring these wonderful songs to life. Whether alone or in a duet, the manifold influences in Szechenyi’s musical language distinguished by internationalism invite us to discover familiar things in surprising things. Inquisitive listeners and discriminating music lovers get what they are looking for on this carefully honed Super Audio album representing recording technology at its finest!

Classical Music

Classical Music

One cannot get too much of certain good musical things. One of these things is certainly Franz Schubert’s magnificent Piano Trio in E flat major D. 929, which is one reason why this new recording by the Trio Alba is very much welcome. The Notturno D. 897 composed at about the same time as the trio and forming the perfect conclusion to this album may have been a discarded slow movement for another trio. It was not until the end of his short life that Schubert found his way to the piano trio. His two great contributions to this genre represent the culmination of the whole of his compositional mastery. During the course of the gigantically dimensioned E flat major trio he successfully forms a cyclical design attesting to razor-sharp discernment and phenomenal structuring talent. The work was first performed during one of the last “Schubertiade” private concerts held as a benefit event for Schubert. The composer did not live to read the rave review in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of Leipzig. The musicians of Trio Alba met while studying together in Graz and ever since then have regularly concertized at leading festivals throughout the world. The ensemble has a very special relationship with Schubert’s E flat major trio: “If you see the sun setting” is the first line of the Swedish folk song in the second movement- which inspires even more joyful anticipation of the dawn, “alba” in Italian!

An astonishing success story goes into its second overtime on Volume 8 of our Dutch Cello Sonata series. This time this release is really supposed to mark the conclusion, and for this occasion Doris Hochscheid and Frans van Ruth have selected sonatas by Georg Hendrik Witte and Wouter Hutschenruyter made to order for a crowning culmination. Utrecht was the hometown of both composers, but their paths also crossed in other places. On a recommendation from Richard Strauss, White gained a foothold in Essen, where he shaped its expanding music culture over many years. He had a special talent for persuading the greats of the European music world to come to perform in Essen, which until then had been a rather insignificant coal-mining town. A special high point was surely his role in initiating the premiere of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in Essen’s recently built concert hall- in a performance by the Utrecht Orchestra, which had developed into a phenomenal ensemble with Wouter Hutschenruyter as its principal conductor. The compositions of the two are closely related. Witte had received significant impulses during his studies in Leipzig. The tradition of Schumann and Mendelssohn held in the highest honor in that city is in audible evience in his works. The Drei Stucke in particular clearly reveal Schumann’s famous Fantasiestucke as their source of inspiration.

Dmitri Shostakovich was only 17 years old when he completed his piano studies in Petrograd. In the same year he published his first piano trio, nonetheless already as Opus 8. The Trio Alba juxtaposes this youthful work with the Trio Op. 67 from 1944, and with Bedřich Smetana's Piano Trio Op. 15 expands the worthwhile view of the chamber music of the Slavic cultural region. Smetana's music is Slavic: the Furiant, a lively Bohemian dance, characterizes two of the three movements. The work has a sad background - Smetana's daughter died shortly before, only four years old. The trio is dedicated to her memory, lamenting phrases and groans express the pain. Wide soloistic passages convey the impression of great loneliness. And sonorous beauty. Shostakovich's Trio op. 67 also commemorates a deceased person; the composer's deep consternation over the sudden death of a friend is expressed not only in a sensitive letter to the widow. Like a heart-rending lament, the strings play fortissimo con sordino shortly before the end - a fascinating sound effect that goes through marrow and bone. The Trio Alba is unreservedly engaged in the depths of these states of the soul. And also the rapturousness of a young love, which permeates Shostakovich's first trio, finds adequate expression with the three Austrians.