Ingenuity and variety characterise Locatelli's concertos. His Introduttioni teatrali are a veritable firework of musical ideas, contrasts and effects; his Concerti grossi showcase the virtuosity of the soloists. This recording realises the concerti in a small ensemble. This was Locatelli's intention, who played with local ensembles on his travels: an interplay of highly virtuosic, demanding solo passages and simpler tutti passages. The Thuringian Bach Collegium follows on stylistically from the highly acclaimed release of the concertos of Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar and continues the series of recordings on audite.

A special selection from Ludwig van Beethoven's late period works: folk song variations for piano with optional flute part. Framing the monumental "Hammerklavier Sonata", they form an impressive contrast and show a rarely illuminated facet of the composer. This release marks the beginning of a two-part series which will subsequently be dedicated to Beethoven's early works for flute and piano.

The heyday of English consort music coincides with the exciting change in style from musical Renaissance to early Baroque between 1580 and 1630. William Byrd and his successors played a decisive role in shaping it with sacred and secular songs, fantasies and dances. This production on the 400th anniversary of William Byrd's death shows how diverse and colourful the repertoire of consort music is. On the one hand, the English composers impress with sophisticated compositional art, on the other hand, they take up popular music of their time. The result is musical atmospheres that reflect the deep melancholy, pious confidence and plump joie de vivre of Shakespeare's time.

An impressive continuation of the documentation of Gregor Joseph Werner's work, which shows Haydn's predecessor at the Esterházy court as a pioneer of further musical development. Gregor Joseph Werner was by no means a mere minor master in Haydn's immediate predecessor - this is already impressively shown by the previously released recordings. Now the newly acquired picture is further intensified: Werner, whose symphonies and instrumental concertos composed for the princely table have been lost, comes to the fore for posterity as a grand master of Latin musica sacra. With his sharpness of character and contrapuntal perfection, he proves to be not only a prerequisite and teacher for Joseph Haydn, the father of Viennese Classicism, but himself a gateway to this stylistic epoch. Werner appears to us today as the spiritual support of the rather profane Viennese Classicism. The recorded masses need in no way fear comparison with Haydn's, Mozart's and Schubert's smaller and middle masses. They unite the greatest contrasts imaginable between instrumental brilliance and polyphonic richness of the vocal. Werner is also the last great master of Palestrina's stile antico. The way in which he updated the imitated motet structure, which was already 200 years old at the time, by increasing the dissonance reveals a hidden power in the development of Western composition.

The repertoire for string trio is comparatively small, but in addition to the relevant works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Reger, it also contains surprising, newly discovered, and newly composed pieces. In the selection of pieces for the current recording, the Trio Lirico has looked off the beaten track with works by Eugène Ysaye, Ernst von Dohnányi, and Zoltán Kodály. The program is completed by a string trio by Péter Eötvös, a haunting memorial composition with a variety of different playing techniques and gestures of sound and expression.

BACH reconstructed - Neubrandenburg Concertos based on Bach's originals - On the trail of the wonder of Bach's music: resounding works of art such as the Brandenburg Concertos have awakened the ensemble's spirit of discovery. In order to better understand their inner architecture, their genius, ensemble member Christoph Harer has created baroque transcriptions from Bach's originals in exchange with solos and orchestra and combined them into three "Neubrandenburg Concertos". A harpsichord concerto thus becomes music for three competing string trios. Solo and chamber music are transformed into colorful concerto movements for different instrumentations. And a simple vanitas song is transformed into a dreamy string aria. In the process, la festa musicale reaches top form: solo parts are distributed across the whole orchestra, the concertos are carried by the virtuosity and imagination of many together. The creative play with the originals opens up new, unexpected perspectives on Bach's great music.

With Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Monologues, the piano duo Vincent and Sophie Neeb place a rarely performed masterpiece at the centre of their debut recording. The composer describes his work, first performed in 1965, as "dialogues across the ages of dreamers, lovers, sufferers and praying people", which offers a journey through music history with sophisticated collages.
Following this inspiration, the programme is completed with a contrasting selection of compositions quoted there: Works by Bach and Debussy, creatively arranged for two pianos and percussion by Johannes Xaver Schachtner, and a Mozart arrangement by the piano duo Neeb enter into a unique dialogue via this inner context?

Together with percussionists Christian Benning and Patrick Stapleton, the piano duo Neeb explores surreal dream worlds - playfully light and enigmatically profound at the same time.

On its second CD, the piano duo Neeb presents works that illustrate the beginning of an auspicious period in the life of various composers: Full of creative energy, Max Reger threw himself into creative work after surviving years of health and mental strain. Franz Schubert fared similarly after an attack of syphilis, who, in addition to a permanent position at Esterházy Palace, was even inspired to new creative vigour by a secret love. Johann Sebastian Bach was motivated to write new concert repertoire by conducting the high-calibre Collegium Musicum, while Rachmaninov overcame his depression with the Suite op. 17, which had prevented him from composing for three years after the failure of his first symphony. The piano duo Neeb illuminate these emotional worlds in their intelligent interpretation - with creative imagination and effervescent joy of playing.

The ARUNDO quintet shines with virtuosic expressiveness and a variety of sounds in the classical lineup of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn. On its second CD, "Saga," the ensemble brings to life four varied worlds of sound that immediately stimulate the imagination. Claude Debussy's colorful re-creations of a bygone ideal, Carl Nielsen's play with the diversity of human characters, and Lalo Schifrin's reinterpretation of the New Orleans style have long accompanied the ensemble and have become part of its own history as "heartfelt pieces." As with the highly acclaimed debut CD, "Origin," the ARUNDO quintet has commissioned a new work from the American composer Kevin Beavers: The "saga" continues…

The year 1810 is not only the birth year of Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann, but also of Norbert Burgmüller and Ludwig Schuncke. All four composers knew and appreciated each other in the form of artistic inspiration as well as friendly affection. While Schumann and Chopin later achieved world fame with their works, Norbert Burgmüller and Ludwig Schuncke, however, died in their youth and left behind only a small œuvre that is hardly known today. This recording brings together early compositions by Chopin and Schumann with selected virtuoso works by Burgmüller and Schuncke. All the works represent an expression of these young geniuses that is still youthful, sparkling and seeking orientation, yet already manifest due to their precociousness.

Once again la festa musicale focuses on the music of Gregor Joseph Werner, Kapellmeister and immediate predecessor of Joseph Haydn at the Esterházy court. The second album in the recording series dedicated to Gregor Joseph Werner is characterized by darkly shimmering hues between suffering and redemption. In his Requiem of 1763, Passiontide motets and instrumental oratorio introductions, Haydn’s largely unknown predecessor astounds with his contrapuntal artistry, spirituality and expressiveness. An insider’s tip for church music!

New discoveries with countertenor Alex Potter and la festa musicale – Three Venetian contemporaries named Antonio - one, Vivaldi, achieved world fame with his concerti. But who has heard of Antonio Lotti and Caldara today? In their time, they were famous composers beyond the borders of Venice, and yet some of their music has lain dormant in archives for over three hundred years. Now selected alto cantatas by Lotti as well as oratorio introductions and an "Ave Regina" by Caldara may reawaken attention: paired with the "Nisi Dominus", RV 608, and two rousing concerti by Vivaldi, the baroque orchestra la festa musicale and the internationally acclaimed countertenor Alex Potter present an album full of virtuoso and touching musical treasures by the three Antonios from the Canal Grande.

The present album is a multifaceted homage to French cello music, and features heavyweights of French cello literature, recorded by one of today's leading cellists: from Camille Saint-Saëns' "The Swan," perhaps the most famous cello solo ever, to Léon Boëllmann's Variations symphoniques, combining playful wit with highly original form, contrasted by the sense of tragedy in Gabriel Fauré's Élégie. The two concertos by Saint-Saëns and Lalo represent weighty warhorses of the French cello repertoire which require not only technical mastery but, above all, musical penetration in order to highlight their subtleties. As an advocate of the ars gallica movement, Saint-Saëns included in his first cello concerto several allusions to the French baroque tradition, but also showed commitment to French clarity, turning his back on any bombast which was considered "Teutonic". Lalo's cello concerto, on the other hand, is highly expressive, energetic and very romantic, with the solo cello almost depicting the literary heroes of the time who populated the novels of Balzac, Hugo and Dumas père and fils.

REVIEWS:

A distinguished French cellist and a French orchestra present a fine programme which celebrates the important role of the cello in late 19^th century France. This is a shrewd selection: the works by Saint-Saëns and Fauré are familiar, that by Lalo less so, and (outside the organ loft) the music of Léon Boëllmann remains obscure.

I was very glad to discover Boëllmann’s concertante work, as I suspect will be many music lovers. Its thirteen minutes contain plenty of rewarding music, and no note-spinning. The title pays homage to Franck’s piece for piano and orchestra, and it sounds to me almost in the same class as that work.

Is there a finer cello concerto than Saint-Saëns’s A minor? Maybe, but few that are over in less than twenty minutes and offer such opportunities for a skilled cellist. The soloist has a showcase for all the instrument can offer, including becoming a chamber musician, or one who is primus inter pares. Coppey’s playing is impressive. In particular, there is a rapturous quality to his playing of the lyrical music in both of this work’s outer movements. The disc inevitably [also] offers Saint-Saëns’s The Swan. This perhaps best known of all cello works is played here in Paul Vidal’s arrangement for cello and chamber orchestra, and it casts the usual serene spell.

Another arrangement for cello and orchestra, this time by the composer, is Fauré’s noble Élégie, originally a fragment of an abandoned cello and piano sonata. Coppey gives it a spontaneous-sounding account, at times almost improvisatory in feeling. The cellist’s tone and line are deployed in the service of a haunting interpretation, aided by touching flute and oboe contributions from the Strasbourg players under John Nelson, attentive collaborators throughout.

Lalo is best known for a single work, his Symphonie espagnole. His Cello Concerto could well stand alongside it if it received more performances as good as this one. The stormy opening is stirring, and the lyrical passages silken[.]

-- MusicWeb International

With this recording, la festa musicale follows up on the outstanding success of its first release with works by Venturini and once again devotes itself to high-quality but unknown repertoire: Gregor Joseph Werner (1693-1766), a titan on the threshold of Viennese Classicism, was Kapellmeister and immediate predecessor of Joseph Haydn at the Esterházy court. He was above all a supreme master of Latin musica sacra, though most of his instrumental music has been lost. Werner's compositions, including his Salve Reginas and Pastorellen presented here, display beguiling melodic invention and bold harmonic expressivity combined with enormous contrapuntal skill. Haydn profited considerably from his predecessor and actual teacher; the gallant, erudite synthesis of the late Mozart is already largely preformed in Werner. Werner's œuvre, which is difficult to access and has survived almost only in individual parts, has been researched by Lajos Rovatkay - also conductor of this recording - in decades of work. Together with the top-ranking ensemble of soloists and la festa musicale, impressive interpretations of the works of this unjustly neglected master have emerged.

With Storie di Napoli, la festa musicale now presents its third production on AUDITE and approaches the varied and expressive Neapolitan baroque repertoire with an innovative approach. Sensual arias and virtuoso concerti by composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti, Francesco Mancini and Nicola Fiorenza combine in this concept album to create a sonic collage that tells Naples' best stories and pages from the Baroque heyday of what was then Europe's third-largest metropolis. These include an encounter with the seductive siren Parthenope, to whom the mythological foundation of the city goes back, a visit to Naples' multi-layered underworld with thoroughly surprising twists and turns, and the exuberant atmosphere of typical Neapolitan street life full of festivities and joie de vivre. Together with the young, promising soprano Maria Ladurner and under the direction of the renowned recorder player Barbara Heindlmeier, who is known for innovative concepts, la festa musicale treads a completely new path in this project. Sometimes the movement sequences of the concerti are broken up and interwoven with the arias. In this way, a new, overarching storyline is told that skillfully captures the multi-layered facets of a fascinating city. The North German baroque ensemble la festa musicale stands for first-class artistic quality, which is reflected in creative, cross-disciplinary concert formats and top-class collaborations. In addition to well-known works, Storie di Napoli also features rarely heard discoveries and a premiere recording of the aria "Nel mio petto" (from Il ritorno d'Ulisse) by Giuseppe Porsile. The richness of color, the emotional density and the fast-moving contrasts of this repertoire are underlined by the baroque ensemble with variable instrumentation and - completely dedicated to the art of ornamentation and improvisation of the baroque - its own contributions, such as in the lively Tarantella napoletana alla festa musicale.

The common question as to who was the most important Hungarian composer of the twentieth century - Bartók or Kodály - would have been vehemently rejected by the two like-minded friends. On the one hand, they shared many ideas and goals, such as researching Hungarian folk music, which they recorded in the countryside before and after the First World War using a wax cylinder phonograph. Bartók and Kodály made the original music of the peasant societies, which has nothing to do with the idea of Csárdás fire and Puszta romanticism, the basis of their own idioms, which they further developed in very personal ways. On the other hand, the careers of the two composers progressed in entirely different ways. While Bartók embraced international modernism and went into American exile at the height of fascist rule in Hungary, Kodály remained in his home country even under politically difficult circumstances, devoting himself unswervingly to his great task: integrating music into the school curriculum in order to make it the basis of national consciousness and social behavior. The works that Kodály composed in this spirit during the interwar period now form part of the canon of orchestral and choral music. But there is also a lesser-known Kodály who until 1918, almost unnoticed by the international music world, wrote chamber music whose boldness was met with much hostility in Hungary. At the center of these works was the cello: the virtuosos emerging from the legendary master class of the cellist David Popper in Budapest introduced Kodály to the instrument's expressive and stylistic variety. But even for the master cellists of his time, the Sonata Op. 4 with piano, the Duet Op. 7 for violin and cello and, above all, the challenging Solo Sonata Op. 8 were expeditions into new technical and musical territory.

Weimar in the middle of the 19th century, in Franz Liszt's artistic circle: after years as a traveling piano virtuoso, he now devoted himself to composing and conducting. When the city was only feeding off its past greatness under Goethe and Schiller, Liszt re-established Weimar as a musical center of European stature; in the process, he met eminent organ virtuosos who introduced him to the multi-faceted instrument. His large-scale organ works were composed here. In a two-part series of publications, Anna-Victoria Baltrusch first presents compositions from the pens of those organists who reflected Liszt's musical innovations. She will then turn to the master himself in the second part, next month's release.

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.