Between Spheres focuses on the sound poetry of the recorder consort. Music of the 17th century interlocks with a contemporary cycle dedicated to the quartet. Both musical spheres have a poetics that captivates the ear and leaves listeners wondering: Where might one epoch end and the other begin? The Boreas Quartett Bremen presents a magical sound of the flute ensemble that switches between worlds of expression with virtuosity: It sounds like birdsong in Poglietti's Rossignolo and Schönewolf's Unter Kranichen, hypnotically occupied with low flutes in the polyphonic Ricercari of the late Renaissance, agile and highly virtuosic in fugue compositions of both epochs. Closely interwoven, the pieces merge and float between the spheres - "between spheres". The recording is the second release of the Boreas Quartet Bremen after the ICMA award-winning album Basevi Codex from 2022.

Dances are among the valuable "raw materials" that composers of all epochs have incorporated into their works. The suites of the Baroque period are based on dance forms from various countries, the classical symphonies usually contained a minuet or dance movement, and composers of emerging musical nations in the 19th century made use not only of folk songs but also, and above all, of the dances of their home regions in order to form an independent language. In this album, harpist Sarah Christ shows that dance is as rich in moods as it is in forms: On her album Un bal - named after the second movement of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique - we hear the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which moves so wonderfully freely within the framework of strict baroque models, the melancholy elegance in Chopin's and Debussy's waltzes, the folklore and rusticity in the pieces of Ferenc Farkas and Manuel de Falla, and the melancholy of Astor Piazzolla's tangos.

The Boreas Quartett Bremen and soprano Dorothee Mields bring to life a little-known musical manuscript of the Renaissance and present here, among other things, a series of premiere recordings. The Basevi Codex, a collection of Franco-Flemish chansons, motets and mass settings, was written at the beginning of the 16th century in the famous writing workshop of Petrus Alamire. In the style of Renaissance musical practice, which allowed great freedom of execution, the recorder consort, together with Dorothee Mields, interprets selected pieces of the codex, with singing or purely instrumental, and, depending on the character of the piece, also with improvised virtuoso ornamentation. This creates a colorful picture of the music as it was sung and played at the Burgundian-Dutch court of Princess Margaret of Austria in Mechelen. The recording is the second volume of a multi-part audite recording series with recorder player Julia Fritz and the audite debut recording of the Boreas Quartet Bremen.

When Franz Liszt took over the court orchestra in Weimar in 1848, people there lived on the memory of Goethe, who had previously directed the court theatre. Liszt is the direct heir to this renowned stage - but as a musician. With his Faust Symphony, which was premiered on the same day as the dedication of the Goethe and Schiller monument in front of the theatre, psychology makes its way into music; Liszt's ambition was the renewal of music through its more intimate connection with poetry"". The Faust Symphony demonstrates the power of sound, of tone painting, to evoke a fantastic, epic and psychological world. Each movement corresponds to a character whose character and psychology it depicts. This is programme music, but it does not tell a story and is certainly not descriptive music. Liszt describes the profound nature of the characters musically, offering a subtle and analytical interpretation of the story of Faust as told by Goethe. The three character pictures are sonorous psychological tableaux in which Liszt does not simply tell the story of the characters or describe their feelings: He evokes their psyches. Kirill Karabits leads the Staatskapelle Weimar in this repertoire that so defines them."

Although Maurice Ravel, in his string quartet, explicitly refers to the quartet written ten years earlier by his colleague Claude Debussy, he opts to follows his own new path and arrives at a distinctively Ravelian tone: colorful, refined, and saturated with that flair of the artificial that also characterized his beloved porcelain and glass artworks, ornamental shrubs, and bonsai trees. At the same time, the quartet is meticulously constructed and so rich in ingenious details that it offers room for discovery even after repeated listening. Over twenty years Ravel's senior, Fernand de La Tombelle wrote in a Romantic style against which the better-known composer's work stands in sharp relief.

Géza Anda performed regularly at the Lucerne International Music Festival from 1955-1969. Only from this period three recordings have survived, which are published here for the first time in their entirety. These are the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra BWV 1061 by Johann Sebastian Bach from the festival year 1955 and the 3rd Piano Concerto by Béla Bartók from 1965. Clara Haskil and Herbert von Karajan were Anda's partners for Bach, and Ernest Ansermet for Bartók, who was heard here for the last time in Lucerne. Also featured is Bartók's 2nd Piano Concerto, which Anda played with his favorite conductor Ferenc Fricsay before an enthusiastic audience. audite presents this important gap in the Anda discography in cooperation with the Géza Anda Foundation Zurich, Swiss Radio and Television (SRF), Salzburg's Eliette and Herbert von Karajan Institute, and Lucerne Festival.

Between 1950 and 1980, he was one of the most important conductors of international standing, and yet he has been somewhat forgotten: Karl Böhm was the antistar among the podium greats of his time, a decidedly businesslike servant of the music. For the first time, two Lucerne concert recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic, with whom he was closely associated for decades, are released: Bruckner's Seventh Symphony and - a solitaire in Böhm's discography - an upbeat Hindemith concerto. In the summer of 1970, Böhm, by all means an advocate of contemporary music in his younger years, performed Paul Hindemith's 1949 Concerto for Woodwinds, Harp and Orchestra in Lucerne. The three-movement work offers the five-member Concertino group grateful playing tasks and, with its quotation from Mendelssohn's Wedding March, makes reference to Hindemith's own silver wedding anniversary. In addition to Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Strauss, the symphonies of Anton Bruckner were also central to Böhm's concert repertoire. Böhm's Bruckner interpretations possess an aura, but it is neither the religiously pathos-laden one of Eugen Jochum, nor the pathetically worldly one of Sergiu Celibidache, nor the matter-of-factly austere one of Nikolaus Harnoncourt. This is also evident in the Lucerne recording of the Seventh Symphony from September 1964: Böhm never loses sight of the whole and yet plays out every articulatory detail with almost scrupulous fidelity to the text. He follows Bruckner's blocky editing technique without aggressively emphasizing it. He does not avoid the music's solemn monumentality, but neither does he exaggerate it into false, violent pathos.

A foretaste of the artistic mastery of Beethoven's late work: the "Diabelli Variations" are the last major piano work to embody the pinnacle of Beethoven's variation oeuvre and are considered one of the most extensive and important compositions of this art form. Parallel to the release of the first of a total of three CD boxes with Alfredo Perl's new complete recording of all of Beethoven's piano works, the "Diabelli Variations" are available exclusively on LP.

Both JS Bach's six Trio Sonatas and Mendels­sohn's six Organ Sonatas are conceived as tutorial pieces - an "organ school" - to help attain demanding playing skills at the highest musical level. We know from Bach that he wrote his sonatas for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Mendelssohn is known to have been familiar with Bach's sonatas and their pedagogical purpose. He gradually developed his own Organ Sonatas, originally for the English market: they are equal in number to Bach's sonatas, as well as in their intention as instructive pieces, "a kind of organ school", as Mendelssohn himself wrote to the publisher. Johann Sebastian Bach composed into his six Trio Sonatas "the sum of all the difficulties that a teacher wants a gifted pupil to master" (Marie-Claire Alain); written between 1727 and 1732, they remain a touchstone for every organist to this day. A good hundred years later, Mendelssohn created his Organ Sonatas - among other things, the independent and prominent pedal treatment (each movement features a pedal solo) and the frequent playing on several manuals challenge the player in the same spirit. Anything but monotonous studies, the results in both cases were masterpieces of the highest order.

For the first time; this edition makes available Herbert von Karajan's previously unpublished early live recordings from the Lucerne Music Festival - made in a decade in which Karajan was rebuilding his career. Included are legendary soloists such as Clara Haskil and Géza Anda; Robert Casadesus and Nathan Milstein. The Lucerne International Music Festival (today's Lucerne Festival) was the first organiser outside Austria to engage Herbert von Karajan after his ban from performing and denazification proceedings; thus enabling him to return to the international podiums. "I will never forget that," Karajan later confessed. For almost four decades; from 1948 to 1988; he was to make his mark on Lucerne Festival. His annual guest appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic (from 1958) enjoyed cult status. But already in the decade before; which this edition documents; Karajan thrilled audiences and critics alike in Lucerne and quickly rose to become the defining artistic personality alongside Wilhelm Furtwängler: with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra; but above all on the podium of the Swiss Festival Orchestra; which he held in high esteem and which he conducted in a total of nine concerts.

The preserved Lucerne live recordings range from Bach's C major Concerto for Two Keyboard Instruments BWV 1061 (with Clara Haskil and Géza Anda) to Arthur Honegger's Symphonie liturgique. The exciting; rhythmically tightly formed interpretations show Karajan to be an extremely form-conscious; textually faithful conductor of great expressive power. He spurs his orchestras on to top performances; but also acts as a sensitive and at the same time extremely present accompanist - for example in Brahms' Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein or in Mozart's dramatically pointed C minor Concerto K. 491 with Robert Casadesus. As a digital bonus; the edition includes Bach's Mass in B minor; which Karajan celebrated at the end of the 1951 festival with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra; the Vienna Singverein and a top-class quartet of soloists (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf; Elsa Cavelti; Ernst Haefliger and Hans Braun): a stylistically distant; but nevertheless fascinating audio document due to Karajan's very personal approach. The sound of the live recordings on the 3-CD box set has been carefully restored. The 62-page; trilingual booklet contains essays by Wolfgang Rathert and Erich Singer on Karajan's new career start in the post-war years and on his special relationship with Lucerne Festival. It contains numerous previously unpublished photos.

REVIEW:

Included among the contents of this set are quite a few gems. Most unexpected but welcome is Brahms’s Violin Concerto with Nathan Milstein. Karajan and his Swiss Festival Orchestra are fully ablaze, Milstein’s tone typically lean and sinewy. Overall, this is an intriguing batch of musically worthwhile live Karajan discoveries, very well transferred from clean analogue sources.

— Gramophone

Jimin Oh-Havenith shines in a compelling Brahms programme - illuminating his profound impact on piano music after Beethoven through variations, character pieces, and his breathtaking take on Bach's Chaconne.

The third and final installment of the Schumann recording series by South Korean pianist Jimin Oh-Havenith includes Carnaval op. 9 and the Davidsbundlertanze op. 6, two summit works from the 1830s which, with their unique combination of intensity and sensitivity, are undoubtedly among Schumann's best-known piano cycles and are particularly beloved by performers and audiences alike.

Viviane Goergen has not only made a name for herself with her recordings of Ernst Toch's piano works, among others, through far-sighted repertoire enrichment, but also with an interpretation concept that offered new approaches for interpreters as early as the 1980s through the use of meditation, autogenic and mental training, among other things, which also benefits her Schumann recording from 1988.