It's one of Wiener Staatsoper's most outstanding opera productions for children: Cinderella - Viennese version for children by Alma Deutscher, the musical prodigy of our times. Based on the popular fairy tale, Deutscher tells a modern version of the story, combining humor, poetry and the magic of theatre. Alma Deutscher began composing Cinderella, her favorite fairy tale, at the age of eight. However, she does not directly follow the Brothers Grimm original, as music plays a central role in her version. Cinderella is a young composer whom her stepmother and stepsisters envy because of her talent and demote to working as a music copyist. The prince is a poet who finds Cinderella through their common love of art.

In cooperation with the International Mozarteum Foundation belvedere is publishing highlights of the Mozart Week from first beginnings until today. Contemporary history and the history of interpretation become audible on carefully restored sound documents in excellent sound quality. Moreover, the edition will also comprise current recordings from the Mozart Week and concerts throughout the season, using the most up-to-date recording and production techniques. The Mozart Week has taken place annually in Salzburg since 1956. Renowned artists have made their mark on this festival since its beginnings and created a distinct impact as regards interpretation, artistic analysis and musical performance. Concerts of the Mozart Week have been recorded on radio and television since the inauguration of the festival. The treasures in the archives of these concert recordings are now being reissued. The album "Wilhelm Backhaus plays Mozart" contains a recording of the pianist's recital from 1956, the 200th anniversary of Mozart's birth and also the year when the Mozart Week was founded, and recordings from the recital in 1967. It offers an interesting opportunity to compare Backhaus's interpretations and the implicit relationships Mozart's compositions. Wolfgang Schaufler writes: "We have to bear in mind that Backhaus worked closely with Hans Richter who conducted the first performances of some works by Brahms."

The Costa-Violin "originates from Mozart's estate and Mozart always played it. I bought it from Mozart's widow", noted publisher and composer Johann Anton André 1840. He purchased from the widow the greater part of his MSS & effects, amongst which was this identical violin. This valuable instrument was kept under lock and key by the company Hill & Sons until its dissolution. During the time Mozart lived and worked in Vienna, he possessed and played the Costa violin. It is quite likely that, now, Mozart's Costa violin resounds again in this public concert after very long time of silence. Here, the magnificent instrument is played by Esther Hoppe.

Franz Welser-M�st has conducted The Cleveland Orchestra in a series of acclaimed video and audio productions, further enhancing the ensemble's storied recorded legacy. At the Anniversary Gala on September 29, 2018, documented in the present video recording, he programmed works touching on more than a century of Viennese musical traditions. Opening with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 24, featuring soloist Lang Lang, a regular collaborator with the orchestra since 2000, it also includes works by Richard and Johann Strauss, concluding with Ravel's cataclysmic La Valse. The Cleveland Orchestra was founded in 1918. Over the ensuing decades, the Orchestra quickly grew from a fine regional organization to being one of the most admired symphony orchestras in the world. Seven music directors have guided and shaped the ensemble's growth and sound: Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodzinski, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohn�nyi, and Franz Welser-M�st. The opening in 1931 of Severance Hall as the Orchestra's permanent home brought a special pride to the ensemble and it's hometown, as well as providing an enviable and intimate acoustic environment in which to develop and refine the Orchestra's artistry. Touring performances throughout the United States and, beginning in 1957, to Europe and across the globe have confirmed Cleveland's place among the world's top orchestras. For this anniversary concert, The Cleveland Orchestra will be joined by none less than world famous pianist Lang Lang. Heralded by the New York times as "the hottest artist on the classical music planet, " Lang Lang works with many of the best classical musicians of our time. He first appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra in 2000.

Mozart’s Requiem may have been written under strange circumstances in the final months of the composer’s life, but the work itself is timeless. Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus give a powerful and poignant performance of Mozart’s masterpiece with an impressive group of solo singers, in a concert recorded live in Munich in May 2017. Even its composer’s death could not halt the success of Mozart’s Requiem. Although left incomplete on his death in December 1791, having been anonymously commissioned, the Requiem was completed by a pupil of Mozart’s, Franz Xaver Süssmayr. By the time it was premiered in 1793, it was already a famous work, shrouded in mystery. But even more mysterious than the story behind it is the magisterial quality of Mozart’s writing, from the ferocity of the Dies irae to the otherworldly grace of the Lacrimosa. Genia Kühmeier, Elisabeth Kulman, Mark Padmore and Adam Plachetka are the world-class soloists joining Jansons and his orchestra and chorus. Padmore was Artist in Residence with the orchestra for the 2016/17 season and his rapport with the orchestra is evident. His ringing, distinctive tenor voice is well matched, too, to Jansons’s eloquent and subtle interpretation. “For him it is not about rhetoric, but more about transcendence,” wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung of Jansons’s conducting – suggesting a transcendent faith in humanity, even in the face of death.

Emperor Joseph II was partial to musical contests. In 1786 he decided to regale his visitors with a contest involving what were then the two most popular forms of vocal music for the stage: Italian opera and the German Singspiel. And so he commissioned two works from two composers, both of them outstanding in their respective fields, each work to involve the same basic arrangement. For the Italian opera the choice fell on Antonio Salieri, the director of music at the Vienna Court Opera, while Mozart was chosen to write the German Singspiel. The first performance took place at a magnificent gala at Schönbrunn 1786, when two stages were set up, one at each end of the Orangery. This musical contest produced no outright winner, Joseph II having been astute enough to offer his visitors only the crème de la crème of singers and composers. Salieri’s stature as an opera composer was abundantly demonstrated by Nikolaus Harnoncourt when he conducted Prima la musica at the Mozart Week Festival in Salzburg in 2002 – but at no point was Mozart’s own reputation impugned in consequence. The performance of both works is captured on this new release.

Hanna-Elisabeth Müller writes of her new release: “A Lieder recital is sung speech. So it is my job as an interpreter on the song to lead those listeners speedily and simply into this sphere, to open the way for them into this quite different world. On this album are songs that I have grown into. Straight away Alban Berg with his “Seven Early Songs”, I definitely wanted to record them in their original version for piano, although I do sing the orchestral version as well these days. Then I searched with pianist Juliane Ruf – she is really on my wavelength – and we soon found Lieder from Richard Strauss. I am in my element with his music and it fits in well with Berg’s fin-de-siècle feeling. Then we targeted our search on songs that leave reality behind, and came upon songs with flowers as their theme. There is a lot of ambiguity in them. I believe the feelings that are portrayed, addressed, analyzed in these songs are absolutely contemporary feelings as well. Since they were composed decades have passed, there is much that we may express in different words today, as a singer, I translate that state into the present day. They are beautiful, wonderfully executed paintings of girls, miniatures on an imaginary wall, which speak directly to us.”

Brahms’s German Requiem is a work of great intensity that speaks to people of all faiths and to believers and non-believers alike. In this concert recorded at the magnificent Baroque basilica of Saint Florian in Austria, The Cleveland Orchestra and its Music Director Franz Welser-Möst pare down all traces of bombast and, together with the Wiener Singverein and the soloists Hanna-Elisabeth Müller and Simon Keenlyside, they create a meditation on life and death, hailed by the press as “an event of the first order”. A German Requiem, to Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. 45 is Brahms’ longest work, comprising seven movements which together last 65 to 80 minutes. The large-scale work is scored for chorus, orchestra, and soprano and baritone soloists.

Brahms’s German Requiem is a work of great intensity that speaks to people of all faiths and to believers and non-believers alike. In this concert recorded at the magnificent Baroque basilica of Saint Florian in Austria, The Cleveland Orchestra and its Music Director Franz Welser-Möst pare down all traces of bombast and, together with the Wiener Singverein and the soloists Hanna-Elisabeth Müller and Simon Keenlyside, they create a meditation on life and death, hailed by the press as “an event of the first order”. A German Requiem, to Words of the Holy Scriptures, Op. 45 is Brahms’ longest work, comprising seven movements which together last 65 to 80 minutes. The large-scale work is scored for chorus, orchestra, and soprano and baritone soloists.

The concert that brought together Peter Schreier, the leading Mozart tenor of the 1970s from Dresden, and Erik Werba, the Vienna-born doyen of lied accompanists on 25 January 1978 featured 17 songs, the cantata with piano accompaniment “Die ihr des unermesslichen Weltalls Schöpfer ehrt” K619 from the final year of Mozart’s life, as well as two encore pieces. Schreier and Werba obviously intended to present Mozart’s entire lied repertoire, except for those songs whose texts were too obviously written from the perspective of a female protagonist. From today’s perspective the interpretation of the Mozart songs in this recital is remarkably homogeneous. For Peter Schreier, the opera singer, Mozart was the first true romantic composer. The songs are presented in a deeply emotional, but never sentimental manner. The chosen tempos are therefore rather on the slow side of the spectrum and here as well as in the ballad-like song “Das Veilchen” K476, Schreier makes it apparent how he reads Mozart’s mature, through-composed songs as text based and text centered, as if they were foreshadowing Schubert, Schumann and Brahms.

This brilliant live recording features the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under the capable baton of Maris Jansons performing Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 in E minor op. 95 “From the New World” and Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Dvorak’s Ninth’s “sharply profiled landscape” sketched by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the incomparable Mariss Jansons is, in the words of the daily newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, a “musical feast.” Mariss Jansons and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition were predestined to come together. Few conductors are as adept as Jansons to savor all the richness and colorfulness of the paintings and sketches by the artist Victor Harmann. Michael Beyer has directed the recording of this concert.

Also available on Blu-ray

Dvorak’s most celebrated choral work. He began composing the piece in late 1875, but set it aside. Then, two tragedies befell him and he was plunged into an uncharacteristically melancholic mood. The deaths of his eleven-month-old daughter and three-year-old son compelled Dvorak to complete his masterpiece. Even though stricken with grief, Dvorak still could not resist writing simple, folk-like, melodies for his luminous Stabat Mater. On this performance, acclaimed conductor Mariss Jansons leads four superb soloists and the combined forces of the chorus and orchestra of the Bayerischen Rundfunk.

Running Time: 82 mins
Sound: Stereo
Picture: 16:9
Region: 0 (All)

The Stabat Mater is Dvor�k's most celebrated choral work. He began composing the piece in late 1875, but set it aside. Then, two tragedies befell him and he was plunged into an uncharacteristically melancholic mood. The deaths of his eleven-month-old daughter and three-year-old son compelled Dvor�k to complete his masterpiece. Even though stricken with grief, Dvor�k still could not resist writing simple, folk-like, melodies for his luminous Stabat Mater. On this performance, acclaimed conductor Mariss Jansons leads four superb soloists and the combined forces of the chorus and orchestra of the Bayerischen Rundfunk.

Playing pieces from “Miroirs” and “Gaspard de la nuit,” empathetic pianist Ragna Schirmer reveals the essence of Ravel’s artistic compositions with delicate brilliance. These musical works are animated by an incomparable union of mechanical precision and aching fantasy. In such moments it becomes clear that these mournfully beautiful sound creations are the essence of the artistic soul whose fibers Maurice Ravel wove into his compositions so assuredly. Ragna Schirmer’s exquisite interpretations bear witness to Ravel’s passionate sensibilities and that which could not be said, something he himself concealed from those around him during his lifetime. This virtuoso recording is also a bold interpretation that demands the attention of the listener. With her distinctive interpretations, Ragna Schirmer enjoys an exceptional reputation far beyond the borders of Germany. She has won the highly regarded International Bach Competition in Leipzig twice- a unique achievement in the history of the prize. Numerous awards from national and international competitions, ecstatic reviews and the receipt of two of Germany’s top classical music awards, the ECHO Klassik, reflect her remarkable career. Her teachers include Bernard Ringeisen in Paris, himself a student of Marguerite Long, friend and student of Maurice Ravel.

The Cleveland Orchestra is the “aristocrat among American orchestras” (The Telegraph) and its sovereign, Franz Welser-Möst, rules his subjects with a velvet glove. Indeed, velvet and silk keep showing up in descriptions of the Clevelanders’ sound under its principal conductor. It is Welser-Möst’s nimble alternation between smoothness and a sound that’s as “sharp-edged as a skyscraper” (The Telegraph after the Brahms’ First at the orchestra’s London Proms concert). That keeps the ensemble and the audience figuratively on its toes. Brahms’ Fourth and last Symphony could be said to glow with autumnal colors. Endowed with a strong undercurrent of subdued melancholy, it seems to pine for an irretrievable past. Franz Welser-Möst offers a “lean, propulsive performance” (The Plain Dealer) of this work with his highly concentrated Cleveland Orchestra. The swift pace of the symphony in Welser-Möst’s hands reflects the conductor’s quest for a distinctive, far-from-the-mainstream interpretation. Written nearly contemporaneously in the late 1870s, Johannes Brahms’ rousing Academic Festival Overture and Violin Concerto op. 77 bear witness to a composer at the height of his abilities, a mature master of large-scale masterpieces. The Violin Concerto demands extreme technical proficiency. As if to exemplify this, violinist Julia Fischer gears herself from the very start of this emotionally searing work to maintaining a restrained yet passionate tone.