Discover Bach includes some of this great Baroque composer’s best known works, such as Ave Maria, Air, Brandenburg Concerto, Cello Suites, Goldberg Variations, and many more.; The Discover Series from Berlin Classic aims to make classics popular, firing people up about the music presented, regardless of musical taste.; Rather than focusing on complete works, this series focuses on individual pieces that have rewritten our musical history.

Christiane Karg excels in many genres, from opera to leider, and concert to oratorio, making her one of the most sought after sopranos of our day. This album highlights Karg’s finest moments, coupling arias and lieder and offering listeners an well-rounded view of all she has accomplished. “Her tone isn’t soft- there’s flint in there- but it’s smooth and flexible, and she handles it with a cool control that never tilts into chilliness or stiltedness. She’s sophisticated but not mannered, and emotion, be it melancholy or delight, reads easily in her voice.” (New York Times)

PORTRAIT

From Vienna With Love

Discover Opera includes the themes from history’s most popular operas, including The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, Tosca, Parsifal, Fidelio, and more.; The Discover Series from Berlin Classic aims to make classics popular, firing people up about the music presented, regardless of musical taste.; Rather than focusing on complete works, this series focuses on individual pieces that have rewritten our musical history.

This album is pure poetry - taking its spark from Christiane Karg's engagement with the poetical works of Charles Baudelaire, leconte de Lisle, Paul Verlaine, Tristan Klingsor and Victor Hugo. A poetry in diction that has a wonderful affinity with Impressionist music at teh turn from the 19th to the 20th century. Christiane Karg finally decided upon works by Duparc, Koechlin, Debussy and Ravel for her new album. Her selection also includes an early composition by Benjamin Britten, which in turn was inspired by Debussy and Ravel. Christiane Karg's voice wafts this poetic scent, these colors in sound, aloft. Poetry and music, words and voice blend into "Parfum"! This selection of French poems from the second half of the nineteenth century is influenced by the Impressionism and Symbolism of the era. Most of these pieces are snapshots, intended as simple yet realistic reproductions of the authors' experiences, each containing a host of symbols and linguistic imagery which suggests that their special, unique character goes far beyond reality: like the aroma of a costly perfume that evaporates and leaves behind it just a hint of elegance. These poems explore the intangible evanescence and so I though "Parfum" seemed the ideal title for this recording. Parfum gives a lovely sense of melancholy that evaporates as soon as one is aware of it, only blossoming in the poetry and music through memory and reflection, giving the listener's imagination free reign. The "l'art pour l'art" movement (that is, art for art's sake) in which spirit these poems were written entered the art of France, Germany and all other European countries over 100 years ago; the desire for artificial and pure beauty changing between soft pastel tones to dark rich colors, but always with a transparency that is inherent in the French style. Christiane Karg is one of the most sought-after lyric sopranos of the present day, acclaimed for her embodiment of operatic roles and as a lieder, concert and oratorio singer.

Brahms LoveSongs

Reveries

MOZART:ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERA

The VocaMe vocal ensemble has committed itself to presenting exceptional female figures in early music, and the four ladies have already attracted much attention with the songs of Hildegard and Kassia. The secret of their success lies in their special approach to interpretation: against a background of thorough understanding of historical performance practice, the four singers and their musical director and instrumentalist Michael Popp feel their way into the ancient sources, which usually leave much room for conjecture. VocaMe has pursued this idea and used late medieval melodies and sounds to transform Christine's poetry into fascinating music.

Apart from his high-profile concert activities, Franz Konwitschny was inseparably associated with the foundation and development of the new Eterna label. Between 1959 and 1961 Eterna issued all Beethoven’s and Schumann’s symphonies in the then innovative stereo format. Like all of Konwitschny’s late recordings, these gramophone records are now sought-after collector’s items that offer interpretations of lasting significance. One such notable document of the great maestro is the present recording of Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony, made in June 1962 only weeks before Konwitschny’s death. The producer of this recording, Dieter-Gerhardt Worm, praises “the coherence and euphony of the interpretation. Konwitschny does nothing subjectively, he interprets the work. When I played Konwitschny the recording in hospital before his last concert tour, tears of joy rolled down his face.” Worm, who worked on most of Konwitschny’s recordings as a young production manager for the Eterna label, remembers the focused studio work and the immense artistic importance of the conductor: “As a conductor, he was always one of the greatest for me. What he did as a Bruckner conductor, for instance, was incredible. Konwitschny was more than a musician to whom one could say anything; he was someone who knew instinctively how to apply what he had learnt and integrate it into his conducting gestures.”

The conductor Herbert Kegel had an instinctive flair for unravelling sound to fill space and thus made full use of the exceptional acoustics of the Lukaskirche in Dresden, which became his regular recording studio (for the Eterna label). The challenge there was to achieve a finely balanced fusion of sound and complete audibility in the tutti sections – after all, Herbert Kegel never aspired to the opulence associated with Karajan. One might say that the composition has been put under an acoustic magnifying glass to bring out details that are little appreciated (e.g. secondary parts that are often overlooked). Although Kegel’s finely nuanced style aims to develop contrasts of both sound and dynamics, his agogics never appear arbitrary but always in line with the formal progression of the music. It is clear from the track list that this re-released recording is one of the slowest in his discography, not that this is at all noticeable at any stage of the listening experience: one might say that the composition has been put under an acoustic magnifying glass to bring out details that are little appreciated (e.g. secondary parts that are often overlooked). Although Kegel’s finely nuanced style aims to develop contrasts of both sound and dynamics, his agogics never appear arbitrary but always in line with the formal progression of the music.

Most of Suitner’s Mozart recordings with the Dresden Staatskapelle were made after his time as conductor there had come to an end, in the summer of 1964, when he moved to direct the State Opera in Berlin, where he was offered better working conditions. “I have been in charge of many recordings, and the execution was seldom so smooth. It was all so relaxed and easy-going. We always felt the joy of music-making,” producer Heinz Wegner remembers. At the same time, Suitner’s Mozart was stylistically anything but arbitrary: “He naturally had a concept and he knew how to implement it, so that his interpretations – as if influenced by some enigmatic powers – always generated a specially ‘natural’ listening experience. I never experienced that in Mozart with any other conductor.” Otmar Suitner’s great success as Principal Conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden remains a fascinating phenomenon to this day. That said, the cultural, political and economic work environment of this orchestra, so steeped in tradition, was far from auspicious, which meant that the qualities of the new man on the rostrum and his musicians faced more than the usual challenges. Seldom has a young conductor fulfilled expectations of him in such a brilliant manner. When, in 1960 at just 38 years of age, he took up his new post, few people would have believed that fifty years later memories would still regularly be re-awakened of his Mozart recordings. Producer Heinz Wegner explains: “What we hear on this recording seemed to emerge as if by magic. When he conducted Mozart, something seemed to happen to the music to the extent that it just seemed he had captured the quintessence of the composer.”

Discover Film Classics explores the great film themes from composer such as Arvo Part, Beethoven, Wagner and Barber, from classic films like “Amelie,” “A Clockwork Orange,” and “Platoon.”; The Discover Series from Berlin Classic aims to make classics popular, firing people up about the music presented, regardless of musical taste.; Rather than focusing on complete works, this series focuses on individual pieces that have rewritten our musical history.

“With his Viennese background, Suitner brought something authentic and credible with him.” Memories are still vivid in the minds of contemporaries when asked about recordings that were made over thirty years ago. Such recordings must have made a lasting impression on those involved, including Lothar Friedrich (long-standing violinist of the Berlin Staatskapelle), who is quoted above. This 1986 double LP release by the East German label Eterna, featuring works by Gustav Mahler, is certainly no exception. The main work, the Fifth Symphony, once a groundbreaking success for the composer, is joined by songs from the anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn (the boy’s magic horn). The interpreters: baritone Siegfried Lorenz, the Staatskapelle Berlin and Otmar Suitner. Suitner, the conductor who died in Berlin in 2010, was Austrian, a fact that may be key to understanding why this record was ever made at all. Suitner was general music director of the Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden from 1974 until 1991 and thus directed the Berlin Staatskapelle at the same time. “He was very relaxed, not over-focussed – a fantastic conductor, always at ease and enthusiastic. These songs needed an orchestra that produces pure expression”, said singer Siegfried Lorenz about the recording of the “Wunderhorn” lieder with Otmar Suitner. The longtime violinist of the Berlin Staatskapelle, Lothar Friedrich, adds regarding the Fifth Symphony: “When I listen to the recording now, I feel vindicated. Suitner struck an excellent balance between his emotional side on the one hand and his intellectual approach on the other.”