Classical Music

This is the fifth release in the series The RIAS Amadeus Quartet Recordings. This installment is dedicated to nineteenth-century Romantic composers. The Amadeus Quartet included a wider repertoire in the broadcasting studio than in the recording studio. Works by Edvard Grieg and Robert Schumann interpreted by the Amadeus Quartet can be heard here for the first time. Five works in this edition represent novel repertoire that the Amadeus Quartet never recorded on LP: Dvorak’s Piano Quintet, Grieg’s String Quartet, Mendelssohn’s String Quartet, and Schumann’s String Quartet and Piano Quintet. Only half the works recorded here belong to the string quartet genre. The Amadeus Quartet enjoyed collaborating with other musicians and did so often. In the three piano quintets by Brahms, Dvorak, and Schumann, they performed together with pianist Conrad Hansen, who had appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic under Wilhelm Furtwangler in the 1940s. In the string quintets by Brahms and Bruckner, the Amadeus Quartet is joined by South African-born Cecil Aronowitz- the musician they always turned to when in need of a second violist. And in Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet we hear Heinrich Geuser, regarded as Germany’s leading clarinetist in the 1950s.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The first of a three-part series of the famous Organ Symphonies this release commemorates the 75th anniversary of the death of organist composer and pedagogue Louis Vierne. These earliest of the Organ Symphonies steeped in rich timbres cyclic forms and the mysticism of Vierne's religious background are performed on the Goll organ of St. Martin Memmingen.

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Avant-guarding Mompou – a kaleidoscope of contemporary music. Influenced by the French Impressionists, Mompou’s Cançons i Danses are juxtaposed in the present recording by commissions from nine other composers, four of them Spanish, one Greek, one Czech, one French, one English and one German. This compilation of works reveals some surprising cross-references and at the same time helps to explain our idiosyncratic title: ‘Making Mompou our contemporary’. One of the leading lights among the new generation of Spanish pianists, Maria Canyigueral has inspired collaborations with outstanding contemporary Spanish composers such as Antón García Abril, Benet Casablancas, Joan Magrané Figuera, Josep Maria Guix and others. Her partnership with Antón García Abril has been particularly successful, attracting high praise from critics and audiences both in Spain and the UK. Antón García Abril has written Reverberaciones for Maria Canyigueral's ‘Avant-guarding Mompou’ project and Hoy es siempre todavía for her Horn trio. Having spent her formative years between Spain and the UK, she has since attracted a devoted following of her worldwide concert itineraries.

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"•Between 1899 and 1930, Vierne wrote six organ symphonies of hitherto unknown richness in timbres, mysticism and cyclical architecture. • With this volume, the three-part audite recording of the six Louis Vierne organ symphonies is complete. • The St. Martin Goll organ creates unobtrusive power and fullness of sound yet remains clear. • The work's polyphonic structures become distinct and the transparency of sound permits freshly considered tempi. Hans-Eberhard Roß is Director of Church Music in Memmingen."

Classical Music

As part of it's series of historic recordings, Audite presents another notable jewel. On March 5, 1963, two virtuosos made their Berlin debuts with orchestra in the same concert: The then 18-year-old cellist Jacqueline du Pre and the 22-year-old pianist Bruno Leonardo Gelber. This CD forms part of the Legendary Recordings series and bears the stamp "first master release."

Following the successful release of Volume I in the complete edition of Beethoven String Quartets with the 'Quartetto di Cremona', audite now continues the series. The choice of works for the second volume refers to two periods during which Beethoven turned away for good from the culture of music amateurs of the late eighteenth century. The Quartets Op. 59 of 1806, commissioned by Count Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky, were written for Vienna's most famous professional string quartet, led by Ignaz Schuppanzigh. Beethoven's musical language is no longer balanced and well-seasoned, as that of his contemporaries, but is extreme in every respect: ruthless and with feeling, dramatically operatic and full of contrapuntal finesse. The 'Quartetto di Cremona' contrasts this work from Beethoven's mature phase with his opus 127 of 1824. It is this work in E flat major with which the already deaf Beethoven began his series of late works, received by his contemporaries with alarm, but by posterity with admiration. For a long time after the dissolution of the 'Quartetto Italiano' in the 1980s, no Italian string quartets seemed to come forward to seek international renown. The four young musicians from Genoa, however, who formed the 'Quartetto di Cremona' following their studies in the violin making town of Cremona, have revived Italian string quartet playing. Since it's foundation in 2000, the ensemble has developed into the best quartet of it's country, and also into one of the most prestigious and imaginative quartets within Europe. This status is documented by the audite recording series of the complete Beethoven String Quartets which was started one year ago - a touchstone for all string quartets in it's textual dimension, as well as in it's technical demands.