Roland Glassl presents this new album of Suites for Solo Viola. This album contains compositions by Max Reger, Adolf Busch, and Justus Weinreich. +The Suites by Justus Weinreich are receiving their premiere recording with this release. Roland Glassl enjoys a rich performing career as a soloist and chamber musician, and teaches at the Hochschule fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main.

Classical Music

With the present recording the thirty-year-old Fischer-Dieskau demonstrates his subtle art of textual exegesis, bathed in the dolcezza and suavity of his still young baritone voice. The selection from Hugo Wolf's Mörike Lieder, composed in a frenzy of creativity in 1888, comes from the archives of the former RIAS broadcasting company in Berlin (known today as DeutschlandRadio Kultur) and is now made available for the first time after careful restoration. Fischer-Dieskau is mainly accompanied by Hertha Klust, his pianist of choice in the early 50s. Hardly any musician left behind as many recordings as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whose career began in the early postwar years and only came officially to an end in 1993. Besides his commercial recordings, a number of undiscovered gems lie in the archives of Europe's radio stations. Some of them will be released by audite in the near future.

Rafael Kubelik's excellence in Mahler can almost be taken for granted. In general, his live performances offer a higher degree of risk-taking than his studio efforts, which show more care for balance and proportion (generally with no loss of excitement, it must be stressed). The pattern holds here in this live Ninth, recorded in Japan in 1975. A horn bobble here and there notwithstanding, the Bavarian orchestra plays with fire and conviction, and somewhere along the line it has acquired a decent sounding tam-tam, which does wonders for the first movement's dramatic final collapse. The performance resembles Kubelik's Deutsche Grammophon recording in most respects. His "live" tempos are a bit more contrasted in the Rondo:Burleske, and he gets punchier accents from the muted brass in the first movement, resulting in creepier quiet interludes. The finale still moves along at a flowing tempo, rising to a positively incandescent principal climax. NHK Radio's sonics make the BRSO strings sound thinner than they do on DG, but surely closer to an actual concert experience since in all other respects the balances faithfully reproduce the dynamic nuances of Mahler's score. Kubelik's way with this composer certainly was special, and no Mahlerian will want to miss this chance to hear him conduct the Ninth live. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

SCHOENBERG Pierrot Lunaire. 1 Chamber Symphony No. 1. 2 Piano Concerto 3. Fantasy for Violin and Piano 4. The Book of the Hanging Gardens. 5 Psalm 130, De Profundius. 6 3 Piano Pieces, Op. 11 7. 6 Little Piano Pieces, Op. 19 8. 5 Pieces, Op. 23 9. 2 Pieces, Opp. 33a, 33b 10. String Trio, Op. 45 11. Suite in G for String Orchestra: Movements 1, 2, 4 12. BERG Lyric Suite. 13 4 Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5 14. 7 Early Songs 15. Schliesse mir die Augen beide 16. WEBERN Passacaglia, Op. 1. 17 5 Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 10 18. 4 Pieces for Violin and Piano, Op. 7 19 & • Suzanne Danco (sop); 5 Magda László (sop); 15 Evelyn Lear (sop); 16 Irmen Burmester (sprechstimme); 1 Hans Bastiaan (vn); 1 André Gertler (vn); 19 Rudolf Kolisch (vn); 4 Erich Röhn (vn); 11 Tibor Varga (vn); 4 Ernst Doberitz (va); 11 Walter Müller (va); 1 Werner Haupt (vc); 1 Arthur Troester (vc); 11 Hans Peter Schmitz (fl); 1 Alfred Bürkner (cl); 1 Heinrich Geuser (cl); 14 Diane Andersen (pn); 19 Klaus Billing (pn); 1,14,20,21 Lothar Broddack (pn); 15 Hans Hilsdorf (pn); 16 Else C. Kraus (pn); 10 Ernst Krenek (pn); 4 Hermann Reutter (pn); 5 Peter Stadlen (pn); 3 Eduard Steuermann (pn); 7-9 Alan Willman (pn); 4 Emil Hammermeister (hrm); 20,21 Végh Quartet; 13 Bastiaan Quartet; 20,21 Günther Arndt, cond; 6 Ferenc Fricsay, cond; 2,12 Bruno Maderna, cond; 18 Arthur Rother, cond; 17 Josef Rufer, cond; 1 Winfried Zillig, cond; 3 RIAS CCh; 6 RIAS SO; 2,3 Berlin RSO; 17,18 Berlin PO 12 • AUDITE 21.412, mono (4 CDs: 299:54 Text and Translation) Live: Berlin 3 2/6/1949; 12 11/28/1949; 4 8/28/1953 (Kolisch)


& J. STRAUSS II 20 Roses from the South (arr. Schoenberg). 21 The Gypsy Baron: Treasure Waltz (arr. Webern)


Having been banned as “degenerate” during the Third Reich, by the end of World War II the experimental work of what is now called the Second Viennese School was, at best, on the fringes of German public perception. The three composers who made up the school as such were dead (Berg in 1935 and Webern in 1945) or self-exiled to the U.S. (Schoenberg). There were few performances of their work in postwar Europe and even fewer commercial recordings. So Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt, the editor of new music at the RIAS in occupied West Berlin, and Schoenberg’s conductor-colleague Josef Rufer, sought out musicians—many from the composers’ circle of students and friends—to record and broadcast some of the most important works of these three pivotal modernists. This was more than an act of national contrition for Stuckenschmidt and Rufer. They intended to revive the performing traditions that had been developing in Berlin in the 1920s and ’30s, and cultivate a new generation of performers. They hoped, as well, to create more interest in the listening public through greater familiarity.


Audite’s four-disc The RIAS Second Viennese School Project presents a selection of these RIAS performances recorded between 1949 and 1965. The pieces, written between 1906 and 1950, provide an overview of the arc of the school’s development from the quartal harmonies of Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1, to the stricter 12-tone serial techniques of works like the Two Piano Pieces, op. 33a & b, to the still dodecaphonic but increasingly personal works like his Piano Concerto and String Trio. While these works are often collectively written off as austere and unapproachable, the reality revealed here is rather different. Though the uninitiated will still find some of the going rough—there are works by these composers that are still cutting-edge these many decades later—this compilation persuasively argues that wholesale dismissal of the oeuvre of these composers is intellectual laziness. Most of the music here is not all that taxing to ears attuned to music of the last century.


Perhaps the problem in perception is one of interpretive tradition. Performers have tended to fall into two camps: those who take a coolly objective approach, and those—most often not of the composers’ close circle—who treat these pieces as they would any romantic work. This is most tellingly illustrated by the inclusion of two performances of the Fantasy for Violin and Piano , op. 47; one by objectivist Schoenberg disciple (and brother-in-law) Rudolf Kolisch and the other by famed Hungarian violinist Tibor Varga. Prewar, Schoenberg reputedly demanded adherence to the letter of the score, and often seemed to enjoy his reputation for inflexibility and aloof intellectualism. But later, the composer praised a recording of Varga’s more spontaneous take on his violin concerto, concluding that, “I wish to be younger to be able to write more music for you.” It is not hard to imagine that this more subjective interpretation of the Fantasy might have similarly earned the composer’s approval. Release annotator Wolfgang Rathert quotes Schoenberg’s concerns regarding Kolisch’s quest for executional perfection, and Schoenberg/Berg scholar Rudolf Stephan, interviewed for the program notes, states that Vargas distinguished himself in this repertoire “because he approached the piece[s] as a musician.” It takes only a measure of heart to reveal the Mahlerian late-romanticism in many of Schoenberg’s scores, and it is perhaps the lack of this heart in many performances that has stood in the way of acceptance. Indeed, this question of effective interpretation of the works of Schoenberg in particular is central to this release, and is explored at some length in Rathert’s illuminating essay and in the interview.


Schoenberg’s students Berg and Webern are represented as well, though by less than an hour of the former and barely 20 minutes of the latter. Berg’s works have always presented fewer problems to listeners. He has been accepted where Schoenberg has not in part because he wears his romantic inclinations on his sleeve and is never as unbending in his application of serial techniques. Webern was a keener serialist than even his mentor after 1925, but he is represented here by works that predate his adoption of Schoenberg’s more radical innovations.


So, is this then the ideal place for the serious listener wishing to come to terms with the Second Viennese School to begin? Certainly, as a broad sampling in several genres of historical performances of the composers’ compositions, this is quite attractive. The vocal works in particular are represented by outstanding performances. Suzanne Danco’s 1955 recording of Schoenberg’s The Book of the Hanging Gardens has been equaled only by Jan DeGaetani’s more detailed but less opulent reading. Irmen Burmester narrates a strikingly accurate Pierrot lunaire —more so than Schoenberg’s 1940 Columbia recording—which, led by Rufer, is alive to all the paradoxes of the work—art high and low—and the vivid imagery of the text. Evelyn Lear gives flawless performances of Berg’s contrasting settings of Theodor Storm’s Schliesse Mir die Augen Beide , while Hungarian soprano Magda László offers the same composer’s 7 Early Songs with less technical perfection but enormous sensitivity and beauty. The RIAS Chamber Chorus sings a fearless account of the harrowing and technically daunting De Profundis, op. 50b, though later performances—Accentus on Naïve comes to mind—have found more beauty in the severity.


Highlighting the fine chamber work performances included are a warmhearted and ultimately haunting performance of Berg’s Lyric Suite by the Vegh Quartet and an aptly neurotic performance of Schoenberg’s heart-attack-inspired String Trio, op. 45 by Erich Röhn and two other veterans of Furtwängler’s Berlin Philharmonic. Hungarian violinist André Gertler finds real warmth in Webern’s 4 Pieces for Violin and Piano, op.7, and Heinrich Geuser plays the 4 Pieces for Clarinet and Piano with uncommon tenderness. The two Strauss transcriptions are as charmingly done as those of the Boston Chamber Players (DG): high praise indeed.


I am less convinced, however, that Eduard Steuermann is an ideal guide for the piano works (but see contra Fanfare 34:4) though given his scrupulous approach, the playing is irreproachable. Peter Hill (Naxos) brings more color, Viennese grace, and a romantic sensibility, and the charismatic Mitsuko Uchida (Philips) offers a wonderful sense of mystery and atmosphere. Uchida brings similar qualities to the piano concerto, where she and Pierre Boulez find more of Schoenberg’s war-weariness than Peter Stadlen does. Ultimately though, it is the limitations of Stadlen’s 1949 live recording, with recessed orchestra and the insecurity of the RIAS ensemble at that time, which undermines his as a model. Still, other than a loving but wrong-headed performance of three movements of Schoenberg’s Suite for String Orchestra by the usually perceptive Ferenc Fricsay, the orchestral works fare well in this series. Fricsay redeems himself with a strong performance of the Chamber Symphony No. 1. There is, as well, a Webern Passacaglia, op. 1, conducted by Arthur Rother which emphasizes its Brahmsian longing, and a polished gem of a reading of his Five Pieces, op. 10, led by conductor/dodecaphonic composer Bruno Maderna.


All recordings are monaural, though generally clean and transparent with the slight edginess on the top typical of RIAS master-tape releases from this source. Some of the older tapes show signs of deterioration, but they have been repaired expertly. The earliest recordings exhibit the extreme highlighting of the soloists that was common radio practice then, but this is really only to the detriment of the Schoenberg concerto. The supporting material is brilliantly done, with the aforementioned essay and interview, plus notes on the interpreters and recordings, full recording data, and all sung texts. Collectors who already admire these works will certainly want this set for its historical significance. In the end though, I must answer my question regarding the neophyte more equivocally. Those with a musicological bent will certainly find this set fascinating. Those wishing an inexpensive introduction to the music may wish to start with the superb Robert Craft recordings of Schoenberg and Webern on Naxos in modern sound. In the end, though, this is an essential purchase on many levels and, if I haven’t made it clear already, an addition to the discography of the Second Viennese School of immense value.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

Pilar Lorengar, the Spanish singer whose adopted home city was Berlin, especially owed her worldwide but unobtrusive fame to the operatic stage. She was famous for a repertoire ranging from the youthful heroines of Mozart, the youthful dramatic heroines of Verdi and Puccini to tragic girlish figures such as Tchaikovsky's Tatiana and Janá?ek's Jen?fa. The three CDs of the present compilation with arias and Lieder contain sound documents from the singer's first Berlin years, studio and live recordings made between 1959 and 1962.

Lorengar shows herself from a rather unusual side in them, both in the field of opera and in the Lieder: she is not heard here in her established Mozart role of Donna Elvira, but as Donna Anna; in addition, she can be heard singing repertoire that was unusual for her, e.g. the prayer „Casta Diva" from Bellini's Norma, „Piangerò la sorte mia" from Handel's Cleopatra and a Handel cantata, an aria from a Scarlatti opera, the „Ernani, involiami" of Elvira from Verdi's early opera „Ernani" and the role of Rosario from the opera „Goyescas" by Granados.

The Mozart singer also reveals herself here to be an agreeable Lied singer; where she already brings her sensitivity for this genre into play with Mozart, she then enriches her programme with the inclusion of a love lament by Bellini and Lied-like aria sketches - four canzonette by the young Verdi.

With two thirds of this anthology, Pilar Lorengar then covers an area that pays homage to the musical traditions of her homeland. As a young schoolgirl in Madrid, she acquired extensive theatrical practice and presence in the music cafes and the zarzuela theatre. In her contributions to the present release, she unfolds a panorama of Spanish music history extending over five centuries, ranging from the vocal art of the 16th-century vihuelistas to the folklore collections and adaptations of Federico García Lorca. The modern guitar is the legitimate successor to the time-honoured vihuela, and Siegfried Behrend is Pilar Lorengar's congenial partner in theseart songs.

This release is furnished with a "producer's comment" by producer Ludger Böckenhoff.

The third volume of the complete orchestral works by Robert Schumann features the Cello Concerto and the 2nd version of the Symphony in d, two major works composed and revised during Schumann’s time as music director in Duesseldorf. + In both works, the movements of the classical model merge into one another without interruption. + Heinz Holliger's interpretations draw on a life-long study of Schumann's oeuvre, thought, personality and fate. + His approach imparts lightness and lucidity to these opulent scores, rectifying the widespread image of this romantic composer as a weak orchestrator.

Firmly established on the Early Music scene, soprano soloist Ulrike Hofbauer regularly performs together with renowned ensembles and conductors. A versatile artist, she not only appears on the concert platform but also on the opera stage and is featured on many studio and radio recordings as well as in films. She is particularly interested in the study of musical rhetoric, ornamentation and the "recitar cantando" style, making her an ideal interpreter of the works recorded here. Co'l dolce suono presents virtuosic Renaissance music for soprano, recorder and strings by Venetian artists around the composer Adrian Willaert and the singer Polissena Pecorina. Recorded with an ensemble of early Italian viols, painstakingly reconstructed following the latest scholarly findings, a new soundworld emerges: current research documents that string instruments of the early sixteenth century were built without sound posts and bass bars. Performing these sparkling Renaissance works, the sound of these instruments can now be experienced for the first time. The ensemble arcimboldo (Basel) was founded in 1991 by Thilo Hirsch. Outstanding reviews, numerous concert engagements, and frequent invitations to European festivals document the ensemble's success. Alongside radio recordings the ensemble has recorded several albums since 2005.

Classical Music

The Quartetto di Cremona have completed another stage in their adventurous journey through the cosmos of Beethoven's String Quartets, visiting the Quartet in G major from the Op. 18 set and the last of the Op. 59 Quartets. The performance culture and market for the string quartet in the late eighteenth century was markedly different to that of later times: the young Beethoven wrote his Quartets Op. 18 for amateurs. The G major Quartet, the second in the collection, was one such work that could bemastered by talented aristocrats and bourgeois connoisseurs - which is not tosay that its complexities or musical challenges are in any way diminished. With the so-called "Razumovsky" Quartets,the string quartet reached adulthood. And one only needs to compare the technical and intellectual demands of Op. 59 to contemporary works (such as the quartets of the young Franz Schubert) in order to recognise that Beethoven no longer composed for able amateurs, but for highly professional specialists.This becomes particularly obvious in the finale, an extended and extremely virtuosic fugue. The Quartetto di Cremona have combined these two works from Beethoven's early and middle periods for the seventh volume in their Complete Beethoven String Quartets recording series. Both works end with an "earworm" - one in the classical spirit and one in the form of a rapid fugue - finale furioso!

Schubert's eight "spontaneous inventions" from 1827 are character pieces that are among the best known and most popular works for piano. Full of rich lyricism, they are much more than trifles or whims, as the title suggests. Kemal Cem Yilmaz began studying the piano with Daniel Vodovoz in Langenhagen at the age of eight. Audiences were thrilled by his numerous public appearances as a child; already tat that time, his playing was mature and inspiring. He studied the piano with Heidi Kohler, Markus Groh, and Christopher Oakden in Hannover and with Alfredo Perl in Detmold. Concurrently with his musical studies and concertizing activities, Kemal Cem Yilmaz worked for twelve years as a taxi driver in Hannover.

Johann Bernhard Bach's four Orchestral Suites, composed for the court orchestra of the cultured duke of Saxony-Eisenach, are amongst the most varied and sophisticated musical works of the high baroque period in Middle Germany. It was not by chance that Georg Philipp Telemann, a one-time Kapellmeister at Eisenach, commented retrospectively: "I have to praise this orchestra, arranged for the most part according to the French style, for it surpassed the very famous Parisian opera orchestra." From 1703, Bernard Bach was engaged as harpsichordist in this noble orchestra. His Orchestral Suites provide the only surviving "soundtrack" of the illustrious musical life at the Eisenach court during the 1710s and 20s. And what a soundtrack: cosmopolitan, and truly European, with sparkling virtuosic brilliance, as if written by a fiery Italian, whilst displaying the elegant taste of a noble Frenchman. In other words, the "mixed taste", for which the best German composers of the late baroque period were famous, in it's finest form. Little wonder then that Bernhard Bach's suites became core repertoire for Johann Sebastian Bach's Leipzig Collegium Musicum, also influencing his compositions. All this provides sufficient motivation for the Thuringian Bach Collegium to continue their exploration through the Middle German courts for their second recording and, with unbridled enthusiasm in their music-making, to bring these jewels of the early Thuringian orchestral music back to life. Bon Appetit!

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Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

These are the original analogue tapes, which attain an astonishingly high quality, even measured by today‘s standards, with their tape speed of up to 76 cm/sec. The remastering – professionally competent and sensitively applied – also uncovers previously hidden details of the interpretations.

The conductor Leo Blech and the pianist Julian von Károlyi, whose live performance of the Chopin Second Piano Concerto given at the Berlin Titania Palast in 1950 is documented on this CD, are nowadays ranked amongst the greatest but unjustly forgotten interpreters of the twentieth century. Blech, whose sophisticated mature reading of Schubert’s Symphony in C major, “The Great”, can also be admired on this recording, had been a leading German conductor since 1908 until he was pushed out of his post by the Nazis in 1933, due to his Jewish faith, and was forced to emigrate. Károlyi, a leading pianist of his generation in the 1950s, was later accused of being routine-driven. His masterful Chopin interpretation demonstrates, however, that his ability to combine musicianship and virtuosity is exemplary even today.

The production is part of our series „Legendary Recordings“ and bears the quality feature „1st Master Release“. This term stands for the excellent quality of archival productions at audite. For all historical publications at audite are based, without exception, on the original tapes from broadcasting archives. In general these are the original analogue tapes, which attain an astonishingly high quality, even measured by today‘s standards, with their tape speed of up to 76 cm/sec. The remastering – professionally competent and sensitively applied – also uncovers previously hidden details of the interpretations. Thus, a sound of superior quality results. CD publications based on private recordings from broadcasts or old shellac records cannot be compared with these.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Audite continues its series of recordings of the works of Eduard Franck with a pair of principal works of his chamber music production. The two String Quartets deliver convincing proof of the Mendelssohn pupil's compositional mastery and count as exemplary in terms of realising the creative possibilities of the genre around 1870. The two Quartets, probably composed at about the same time, reveal a striking difference in character: the C minor Quartet, Op. 55 emphasises excited, dramatic gestures and attains great musical consistency, whereas the E-flat major Quartet is characterised by a far more differentiated stylistic variety - from reminiscences of Haydn to the dramatic 'Adagio molto espressivo' of the second movement. The Edinger Quartet attaches great value to the task of making little-known masterworks accessible to the public and has especially intensively dedicated itself to the chamber music of Eduard Franck.