Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This Varied Piano Recital Release from the Bella Musica Label of Keyboard Works Stretching Across Three Centuries and Spotlighting Six Composers Highlights the Playing of the Doyen of German Pianists, Prof. Manfred Reuthe. A Berliner of Impeccable Degree, He Has Taught for Over 40 Years in Addition to Giving Concerts and Recitals All Over the World, Yet His Playing Remains Fresh and Vigorous Still. His Recital Programs Often Feature the Virtuosic Works of the 19th C. Romantic Piano Tradition, Including Those By the Austro-German Romantics and the French Impressionists.

Classical Music

• French composer Erik Satie composed some of the most mystifyingly beautiful music in the piano literature, much of which is in constant demand for live performance and recordings. • Pianist Chisako Okano studied piano in her native Japan and then Germany, and leads a productive concertizing career.

Classical Music

Classical Music

During his last decade of life, Francis Poulenc wrote three chamber sonatas, including one for flute, that more than anything else cemented his reputation as one of the most important of 20th c. composers. The main work on this CD, it comes accompanied by a bunch of charmingly old-fashioned virtuoso pieces by Doppler, Chaminade and Hüe, whose Fantasie (1913) was composed as a set piece for that year’s Paris Conservatoire flute competition. Miyagi’s Haru no Umo (The Sea in Spring) was originally written for Koto and bamboo flute. Played by Japanese flutist Junko Ukigaya and pianist Miyuki Motoi.

• Historic concert recordings of the Berlin Symphonic Orchestra from 1959 and 1961, led by its first and chief conductor for 24 years, Carl A. Bünte. • Carl A. Bünte was a pupil of the mercurial Sergiu Celibidache and has led a distinguished international career. • These two symphonies, both their composer's second, are considerably less volatile, but no less rousing fare, than there more famous later symphonies.

Classical Music

2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the Opera Swing Quartet (OS4); this 2CD/1DVD Bella Musica release celebrates this auspicious occasion in the life of this ensemble. + Instrumental perfection, sophistication and playfulness characterize their witty arrangements, as can often be heard as well as seen in their performances of well known classical and operatic highlights and jazz pieces, with disparate styles often intermingling in the same work. + The quartet’s members are clarinetist Wolfgang Weth, pianist Wolfgang Heinzel, bassist Peter Cerny and drummer Rainer Engelhardt.

Let's face it: Christmas can get on your nerves, especially when it's the same procedure year after year. At such a time, even jazz can get on your nerves: shoddy arrangements, monotonous improvisations, and the same timeworn classics you've listened to a thousand times before. What can be done? That's an easy one: you listen to the new Christmas CD by the Opera Swing Jazz Quartet. This is old fashioned, highly refined jazz for connoisseurs played so convincingly that even people who usually abhor this kind of music will just love it.

Classical Music

Classical Music