Il Gusto Barocco approaches Johann Sebastian Bach's suites and concertos from a contemporary and at the same time historically informed perspective. On their new album "Suite & Concertos", Jörg Halubek and the early music specialists of Il Gusto Barocco take a look at Bach's activities in the Zimmermann coffee house in Leipzig. They are not reconstructing an actual programme, but testing how the spirit of the musical gatherings in the circle of family, relatives and students can be transferred to our modern times. "We want to take a more modern look at Bach, who today is mainly seen as a strict church composer. For us, it's about the communicative side turned towards people," says ensemble leader and harpsichordist Jörg Halubek. The cello, which is slowly emerging from its basso continuo shadow in Baroque music, leads the way through the program with Bach's third cello suite. The solo concertos inserted between the suite movements extend the individual focus to the group. The tendency in concert practice to preserve the inviolability of such a cherished work is here afforded a historically-informed approach accessed simultaneously through the eyes and ears of a modern musician. We do after all know, from contemporary sources from Bach’s time, that instrumental works were not always played in their entirety. The forthcoming albums in this series, featuring new recordings and released to mark Bach’s birthday, which began last year with the recording of the Brandenburg Concertos, should be afforded a musical presenter. The aim is to spotlight the soloistic qualities of the individual musicians who together form the ensemble overall, while also maintaining their individuality. In the concertos chosen for this program the orchestra plays more than just an accompanying role.

A soloist’s career path can often be a lonely one, especially for an exceptional instrumental soloist like Felix Klieser. It is then all the more inspiring when over the course of many years playing together, there is the opportunity to build and nurture close artistic and personal contacts with other musicians. Felix Klieser’s concerts with the Prague-based Zemlinsky Quartet therefore are understandably among his annual favorites, as they present an opportunity for the five musicians to come together and to show that many years of music-making together has forged them into much more than just another artistic ensemble. “I have played so much and so often with the Zemlinsky Quartet, and so we wanted to record a program of music together,” he explains. What could be more suitable for such a project than Mozart and Haydn? “The Horn Quintet is a real favorite of mine, in fact it may be the piece I like to play most,” is the hornist’s reaction to Mozart’s chamber works for the instrument. He has amply proved that he is very fond indeed of Mozart, having already recorded the Horn Concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus. Now comes the Quintet. “It is such great fun to play this music. It’s like being a child in a sweet shop who is told: ‘you’re allowed to pick up anything and you can eat as much as you like.’ You go tumbling from one mood into another, interchanging between unbounded jubilation and deepest despair in the space of two bars; you really have to be on your toes – it’s intensive stuff.”

The chamber combination of trombone and piano is unusual and charming. On Sapphire, Peter Steiner and his pianist partner Constanze Hochwartner give an insight into how this combination can work, thereby exploding the myth of commonly-held preconceptions about what the trombone is capable of. It is not just the instrument that shall sound on the Day of Judgment; it can sing tenderly and sweetly, producing a myriad of timbres that sparkle like a sapphire. With his trombone, the solo instrument that is rarely featured in the field of classical music, Peter Steiner is at home all over the world. After studying at the Mozarteum and the Juilliard School in New York, the young Austrian not only won three solo instrument competitions staged by the International Trombone Association ITA as the first trombonist ever to achieve the feat; he went on tour round the world, from Brazil via the USA to Japan. In 2017 he got to know the young pianist and organist Constanze Hochwartner, with whom he recorded the album Sapphire in Columbus/Georgia, USA. The programme of the album combines arrangements of works by Mozart and Puccini with melodies by Bernstein and complements contemporary trombone literature with film music from the movie "The Godfather.” Peter Steiner wishes to illustrate how versatile his instrument is, and the sounds he produces are indeed astounding. Soft sounds that range through all the registers alternate with catchy and powerfully mesmerizing musical concepts.

The opportunity to celebrate, in 2020, the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven alongside the 30th anniversary of German reunification is akin to a gift for a label that has been instrumental in preserving the recording heritage of the GDR, offering as it does the opportunity for a retrospective view and assessment of the past. This series with 10 new editions from the archive of ETERNA recordings includes audio productions from the early days of the label as well as later productions from the late 80s. Partly remastered from the original tapes and provided with the original covers, these historic-legendary recordings shine in new glamour. The present volume presents the Piano Concerto No. 5 performed by Dieter Zechlin and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig.

German Brass is legendary for their virtuosic skill and their ability to jump from genre to genre, having recorded classical pieces, jazz works, and film scores. For their new release, “Bach on Brass,” the group presents a new sound for these Baroque masterpieces. Works presented on this album include Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, Easter Oratorio, Brandenburg Concerto, Italian Concerto F Major, and many more.

Isang Enders just released his third album with Berlin Classics: "Vox Humana" is exceptional not only musically but also conceptually. The cellist carefully selected French works from four centuries for this concept album. Also featured are outstanding instrumentalists with whom Isang Enders takes his audience on an exciting chamber music journey. "I believe in the magic of sound and the fascination of hearing. Although each of us who can hear does hear, all the time and as a matter of course, the way each one of us perceives what we hear is the truly unique element. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could let everyone hear what we are hearing within us? Wouldn’t we be pleased if we could wordlessly communicate what we feel? It is my instrument alone that sets limits, not my will. My desire is to find the expression, feel the words and experience the sound. That is why these works - all French music - belong here, because they have accompanied me on a voyage of discovery towards the inner voice, the human voice. Debussy’s works of art are the gateway to this inspiration. Where does it come from, where does it go? Those were my key questions." - Isang Enders

A decade in the same formation - unfortunately, fewer and fewer ensembles manage that. But the Goldmund Quartet is one of them and their new album "Travel Diaries" shows which personalities of today's music scene have influenced them and with whom they have worked over the last ten years. Ten years is a long time. As a musician, you get to know many composers during this time, interpret their works, or even work on these together with them. The Goldmund Quartet has done this with a number of well-known composers: Fazil Say, Dobrinka Tabakova or Wolfgang Rihm. They are all well-known names in contemporary music culture with whom the ensemble interpreted, rearranged or even reinvented works. The close collaboration with some of these composers played a big part in this: "While we’re working on the music we can sense how the work evokes memories and emotions in Fazil, which in turn gives new impetus to our interpretation. For instance, in the third movement he describes a cantilena in unison between the first violin and the viola as a fateful flirtation that is disturbed by the second violin using Bartok pizzicati and loud, accentuated notes emulating a hysterical voice of jealousy. The psychological essence of the work can, up to a point, be figuratively transferred to the music-making and interaction between the members of a string quartet. We strive among ourselves in order to achieve the expression of profound emotions. We go through our ups and downs too."

Teach me! The students of Nadia Boulanger is the Boulanger Trio's first album on the Berlin Classics label, an album dedicated to the trio's eponymous heroine. The three musicians present music by Bernstein, Piazzolla and Françaix alongside Quincy Jones, Aaron Copland and Philip Glass. The works are very varied in style, yet a common bond unites their composers: they were all students of Nadia Boulanger. Boulanger's special personality as a teacher and her charismatic engagement as a source of inspiration for composers from all over the world lie at the heart of this album. Would Piazzolla have ever discovered Tango nuevo without Nadia Boulanger? What form would Philip Glass's repetitive structures have taken, and would West Side Story have turned out as we know it today? Generations of music-makers were influenced by Nadia Boulanger, who supported them in their quest to evolve their own personal style. She composed no works of note, nor did she write a guide to composition or harmony. Her work focused on her relationship with her students, on exchange of ideas with them and conversations with them. The repertoire of this album is wide-ranging and imaginative. The Trio pour violon, violoncelle et piano (1986) by Jean Françaix rubs shoulders with the well-known Cuatros Estaciones Porteñas by Astor Piazzolla. The melodious love song Maria from Leonard Bernstein's celebrated musical West Side Story is side by side with Philip Glass's repetitive Head On. Other musical excursions whirl listeners away to the avant-garde with Aaron Copland's Vitebsk - Study on a Jewish Theme (1929) before landing them in film music with the main title theme to the film The Color Purple by Quincy Jones.

On her debut album for Berlin Classics, Sarah Christian performs no less a work than Tchaikovskys warhorse, his Violin Concerto, ably supported by the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Jéremie Rhorer. For full measure, she plays Tchaikovskys Sextet Souvenir de Florence. Music that revives you is an urgent necessity at times such as these. Many people have been hit hard by the Corona pandemic, music-makers perhaps hardest of all. Tchaikovsky composed both his Violin Concerto and his Recollection of Florence when he was at a spa, recovering from depression and nervous breakdown. Vigorous and virtuosic, but also tuneful and romantic, each work reflects this sense of recovery, the surge of new energy in convalescence. Sarah Christian set great store by recording these two works in the difficult year of 2020. She was concerned that despite all the checks and challenges that we musicians and others too have faced and are still facing, it should still be possible to give back something tangible, audible, something positive. This album means a lot to the soloist, as can again be seen in her bond with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, of which she has been leader since 2013. She speaks of it as her musical family, an assurance that comes across musically in the challenges of the Violin Concerto. Sarah Christian has an equally personal relationship with her fellow-musicians in the Sextet. Johannes Strake, Wen Xiao Zhen, Jano Lisboa, Jan-Erik Gustaffson and Maximilian Hornung are friends and companions with whom she can share a joke, relish thrilling experiences and discuss how to bring the music to life.

It is just 800 years since the most important inter-faith engagement in history, an early rapprochement between Christendom and Islam: on the fringe of the Crusades, there is a meeting between St Francis of Assisi and the Muslim Sultan Al Malik Al Kalim. The Pera Ensemble and Mehmet Cemal Yesilçay take a look at this historic encounter. It shows how music united the most varied nations and religions even then, bringing about a creative synthesis of two worlds. The year is 1219. Appalled by the un-Christian behavior and barbaric cruelty of the Fifth Crusade shown by men who confess his own faith, Francis of Assisi sets out for Damietta in Egypt. His aim, to seek out Sultan Al Malik Al Kalim of Istanbul in the middle of a war and convert him and his court, is foolhardy and highly dangerous. In the military camp of the North Egyptian city, however, he comes upon a deep piety and a belief in the same God to whom Francis himself prays. He is never to reach his goal, any more than the Sultan, who has assumed Francis will be able to negotiate a peace settlement. In spite of this, the weeks they share together affect them both deeply, giving them ideas and inspirations which will influence each of them, as Christian and as Muslim, in later life. Christian and Muslim songs, instrumental improvisations, hymns of praise and Sufi songs from the 13th century are brought together by the Pera Ensemble, which unites internationally renowned European specialists in period performance practice with the élite of Turkish art music. The highly meditative character of this collection draws performers and listeners alike into the world of musical dialogue and gives them a sense of how the music has taught people the art of peaceful coexistence.

In her first chamber music album Claire Huangci- together with Solenne Païdassi, violin Adrien Boisseau, viola and Tristan Cornut, cello- devotes herself to two works by Maurice Ravel and Ernest Chausson. As the debut album of Trio Machiavelli and Adrien Bosseau as support for Chausson, this album is a calling card that is worth seeing. Claire Huangci, the young American pianist of Chinese descent and 2018 Geza Anda Competition first prize and Mozart prize winner, has succeeded in establishing herself as a highly respected artist, captivating audiences with her “radiant virtuosity, artistic sensitivity, keen interactive sense and subtle auditory dramaturgy” (Salzburger Nachrichten). Her unusually diverse repertoire, in which she also takes up rarely performed works, is illustrative of her remarkable versatility.

Rebellious heroes, subversive troublemakers and living legends – Eckart Runge and Jacques Ammon celebrate their duo’s 25th anniversary and the release of the debut album with the Berlin Classics label in 2021. On the one hand, “Revolutionary Icons” is a bold, genre-crossing album concept full of energetic music of the classical frontiersman Beethoven paired with the icons of rock, pop and jazz. Besides that, it also represents a testament to the collaboration of two curious and voracious musical explorers.

The track listing reads like flipping the frequency dial on your car radio between classical station and rock radio. The starting point for the duo's exploration is master Beethoven and his Cello Sonata No. 4, op. 102/1. “Impossible (to) understand at first hearing,” wrote a contemporary in 1815 after the premiere, because of its revolutionary formal layout, yet strict counterpoint. After decades of dealing with Beethoven (for example as a member of the world-famous Artemis Quartet), Eckart Runge searches for bridges to more recent music history and finds them in the famous names of Amy Winehouse, with her probably most successful hit “Back to Black”, “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie's “Warszawa”, the “Bebop Tango” by Frank Zappa and finally "Don't You Worry 'bout a Thing" by Stevie Wonder. All these counterparts are united by their outstanding position within their genre, their courage to cross borders and, last but not least, their legendary status and influence on subsequent generations of musicians. The arrangements of the songs for the combination Cello and Piano were created in collaboration with the well-known composer and arranger Wolf Kerschek. The goal was, not only to realize the works, but to take a look at them through the tonal possibilities of the instruments and the artistic abilities of the two musicians.

REVIEW:

All of these arrangements are by the performers themselves, with, in the five non-classical works, the assistance of a third party, and they are clever and well done. Furthermore, the performers seem comfortable moving between the different genres presented in this program—that is to say, the non-classical works are not at all similar in style.

This CD won’t be for everyone, as I mentioned at the beginning, but if you are sympathetic to the concept, then there is no compelling reason not to give this a try.

— Fanfare

100 years of Astor Piazzolla! To mark the birthday of the Argentinian tango legend, brothers Claudio and Oscar Bohórquez are releasing an album together with Piazzolla's contemporary and ensemble colleague Gustavo Beytelmann - Piazzolla: Patagonia Express on the Berlin Classics label. The trio sets about playing part of Piazzolla's legacy alongside repertoire composed by Beytelmann, leading the listener on a journey to the impassioned and mysterious world of the tango. Boisterous, powerful and unique: Piazzolla's music is highly versatile, deeply rooted in the tango tradition and yet always driven by curiosity and the search for modernity. His works are complex and demanding, and he reflects more than any other composer of his time the special musical language of that era. It is not possible to categorize his oeuvre as classical or popular music. Jazz and Brazilian music influences blend with folklore from the 1950s and 60s; tango is aligned with Bachian counterpoint, rhythm converges with profusely lyrical passages. The diversity of Piazzolla's style comes out on this album too. In addition to his traditional pieces like Le Grand Tango works such as Milonga del ángel and Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas can be heard. It is interesting to note that the "four seasons" were originally not conceived as a suite, but composed at different times and in various contexts. Piazzolla himself never performed them as one entity. The motive for embarking on this album project was the encounter of Claudio and Oscar Bohórquez with Gustavo Beytelmann. "His rustic Argentinian manner, his musical and personal flights of fancy, plus the experience of having shared the stage with Astor Piazzolla so many times... all of that gave the decisive impetus to record this album," the brothers explain.

Sebastian Manz writes: “It seems only logical at first glance to unite two Scandinavian composers, Carl Nielsen and Magnus Lindberg, on one [album], and it must be said that we are talking about two works that have permanently influenced and changed me as a musician. I played the Clarinet Concerto op. 57 by Carl Nielsen in 2008 for the finale of the ARD International Music Competition and won first prize. It was a huge challenge back then for me to have to play it by heart, as the rules required. Nerves, sleepless nights and superstitions about being able to learn something better by heart by having the score under one’s pillow at night all led on stage (with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra behind me) to one of my most intensive experiences ever. This piece of music is challenging both technically and musically, to the extent that after each performance I have the feeling of being not just a better clarinetist, but a more mature human being; it makes me realize that qualitatively high-value art requires time, not just to mature within ourselves, but to be recognized as such at all.”

Following a highly personal and splendidly reviewed Brahms recording, Fabian Müller follows up with Passionato, an album centering not on a single composer, but on a "central masterwork of Western piano music": Beethoven's "Appassionata". Radiating from this hub, Müller weaves a programme that shows why he is regarded as one of Germany's most promising young pianists. It stands to reason that he is not the first pianist to apply his energies to this great work laid out on the grand scale, and Fabian Müller is well aware of this. "Each generation is entitled to rediscover these pieces for itself. Apart from that, it is simply not possible to play a piece the same way twice. So even if I know my favourite performances back to front, mine will still be the 'Appassionata' of Fabian Müller." This is the starting-point of his new album, geographically as well as musically. Having grown up between the Beethovenhaus and Schumannhaus in Bonn, he sees "much more of the Rhinelander than the Viennese" in Beethoven, flanking the Appassionata with Schumann's G minor Sonata - a work of extremes. When Schumann requires the artist to play "as fast as possible" in the first movement, then "even faster" in the coda, Müller has his own personal answer: "It is more a feeling that is too strong to be expressed in a 'normal' manner. Drop everything and play for your life. That is the key. A feeling that something is flooding out of you."