Famous horn player Felix Klieser presents Italian arias on his instrument, the follow-up project to the Pop Chart award-winning album "Baroque Arias for Horn". He is joined by the Italian orchestra I Solisti di Pavia, recorded in the famous Teatro Fraschini at Pavia. The album contains well-known opera arias from Rossini, Verdi, Puccini and Italian songs like O Sole Mio and the Nino Rota's film music from "The Godfather". All tracks have been newly arranged for Felix Klieser and the ensemble.

The renowned trumpeter Matthias Hofs performed and then recorded the concertos by Fazil Say and Wolf Kerschek during his artist residency with the Munchner Rundfunkorchester.? Both concertos were originally written for Matthias Hofs?. Fazil Say is one of the most important and successful contemporary pianist and composers whose works continue to reach a wide audience?. Wolf Kerschek is a Hamburg composer, arranger, conductor and jazz musician as well as a professor of jazz theory, composition and film music. His new concerto "The four elements" is a world premiere recording on this album.

Under the title "Bach Organ Landscapes", a new complete recording of Bach's organ works will be released over the next few years. It is based on ten historical organ builders who were relevant to Johann Sebastian Bach. With no other instrument like the organ are space and sound so closely linked. The further we look back into the history of music, the more regional developments play a role. Traveling has been part of the world of organists from the very beginning.

It is not uncommon to find discographic compilations in which one composer is at the centre of the selection of works. However, the fact that this edition focuses not on one composer but on a specific work in three different recordings is remarkable - and justifiable. At the centre is the studio recording of the 'Christvesper des Dresdner Kreuzchores' RMWV 7 from the Lukaskirche in Dresden (better suited for recordings than the Kreuzkirche) from 1993 under the direction of Gothart Stier. It is accompanied by the Eterna recording from 1964, also made in St Luke's Church, in which excerpts from the Christmas Vespers are heard under the direction of the composer and Kreuzkantor Rudolf Mauersberger. What is striking about this disc, which was very popular in the GDR, is the altered order of the individual pieces compared to the complete original work. The only audio and video document recorded in the Kreuzkirche is the MDR television recording from 2003, which gives an impression of the annual performances of the work in the designated church.

The Saint-Saens series, with young talents continues with it's third release. All recordings are made with ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, conducted by Howard Griffiths. This third album includes 'The Carnival of the animals', 'Op. 33 Concerto for Cello and Orch. No 1 in A Minor' and 'Op. 17 Concerto for piano and Orch. No 1 in D major'. The young talents are Yilan Zhao Hayoung Choi and piano duo Arya Su Gulenc and Ilyun Burkev.

The Queen of Instruments meets one of the world's leading organists, Iveta Apkalna. The repertoire of the new album includes Vasks' Viatore and Te Deum, as well as P�rt's famous Spiegel i'm Spiegel, Pari intervallo, Trivium, and Annum per annum. Two of the most important contemporary composers are united on one album, celebrating P�rt's 90th birthday in 2025 and Vasks' 80th birthday in 2026. Also captured on this release is a milestone in music history: it is the first-ever solo organ recording made on the organ of the Ventspils Concert Hall "Latvija"-one of the most remarkable concert instruments in Northern Europe.

Black Mountains features original compositions by Alexej Gerassimez and Gordon Hamilton, who also conducts this recording with the NDR Radiophilharmonie. The program explores the dynamic interplay between orchestral sound and percussion, with a highlight being the work Leviathan by John Psathas-a powerful composition for percussion and orchestra, written specifically for Alexej Gerassimez.

The Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the city's glittering new landmark, opened in January 2017. "Light & Dark" is the world's first recording of a solo organ recital in the Grand Hall. Featuring a range of appealing contemporary works, the album showcases the wide tonal spectrum of the Elbphilharmonie's organ. Built by the Bonn-based firm Klais, the organ is an instrument of superlatives. 4,765 pipes extend over five rows of seats, their lengths ranging from just eleven millimeters to an imposing ten meters. Thanks to the very open structure of the hall's "white skin" around the organ, audiences can actually look inside the instrument and some of the pipes have been coated such that they can be touched without leaving any marks. The organ fits perfectly into the spectacular architecture and has a very impressive sound. "There's nothing this organ can't do," Iveta Apkalna enthused. "It's warm and rich, with many beautiful fundamental tones that sound from everywhere, and from the depths. The sound embraces the audience." With it's modern selection of repertoire, seemingly tailor-made for both the organist and the instrument, the album compellingly draws listeners into a fascinating world of sound. At the heart of the recording is the work that gives the album it's name - Sofia Gubaidulina's "Light and Darkness", a piece of great extremes that penetrates every fiber of the body. Two composers, Aivars Kalejs and Lucija Garuta, hail from the organist's native Latvia, and the album also includes works by Leo� Janacek, Gyorgy Ligeti, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Thierry Escaich. Iveta Apkalna has made an album that brings to life the qualities of this organ with a modern and extremely diverse selection of works. Iveta Apkalna is one of the world's most famous organists and, as titular organist, knows the Elbphilharmonie instrument like no other musician. She is fully committed to seeing the glittering beauty of the organ better represented in concert halls. Iveta Apkalna is a cultural ambassador of Latvia and dedicates this album to her country.

Dance is more than movement to music. Dance is passion and pure lust for life. Celebrations call for dancing. That was as true in the palaces and the taverns of the 18th century as it is today in the techno temples of the new era. This is the surging river that ECHO-Klassik winners Spark have set out to bridge in their project 'On the Dancefloor.' The Classical Band throws an arch from the spirited ballet music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to the chamber techno penned by contemporary composer Sebastian Bartmann, finding that two seemingly contrasting worlds actually fit very well together. The question is: what can a gavotte of 1778 and a techno piece of 2017 learn from one another? In the view of Spark, the Classical Band, quite a lot. Mozart in his day knew how to build wildly throbbing structures so as to create this trance-like state that today's dance-mad club-goers still live for. On the other hand there is scarcely a techno piece that does without baroque or classical figurations. This sets in motion a stimulating, lively dialogue between yesterday and today, between the ultimate Classical maestro and the trend-setters of the contemporary composing circuit. The two centuries and more that separate Mozart from Bartmann and his contemporaries are brilliantly illuminated by Spark. The musicians have consciously chosen to keep jumping back and forth between these worlds, sparking direct connections between them. So you sense intimately how timeless dance is and how similar are the emotions aroused by the dances of quite different times and genres. There is always this boundless delight in going wild to music, feeling utterly alive and letting the rhythms stream through your body - complete surrender, total immersion in the intoxicating whirl of sound. That is just what Spark would wish for all listeners to this album: nights of wild dancing through all the ages of music!

Her life reads like the classic Baroque success story: brought up motherless in a Venetian orphanage, maturing into an "unparalleled violin virtuosa", treated as an equal by Antonio Vivaldi: Anna Maria dal Violin. Midori Seiler and Concerto K�ln depict the life of this exceptional woman in La Venezia di Anna Maria. All her life long, Anna Maria (born 1696, died 1782) lived and worked in the Ospedal della Piet�. The Venetian orphanage for girls did more than just offer a home and a refuge to girls abandoned by their mothers. It was a school, a musical conservatory and a tourist attraction at the same time. As maestro di concerto of the Ospedale, Antonio Vivaldi took Anna Maria under his wing. Starting out as her mentor and teacher, he eventually wrote over two dozen Concerti per Anna Maria. She brilliantly mastered the violin and a host of other instruments, and was praised as the "veritable embodiment of all that is good and beautiful", as a creature "ascending into Paradise". Before long everyone was demanding to hear her and it is largely thanks to her that Vivaldi's instrumental concertos blossomed as they did. Baroque specialist Midori Seiler and her congenial partner Concerto K�ln offer a virtuoso portrayal of this artistic teamwork between Anna Maria and Vivaldi.

Since Marina Baranova first played Clair de Lune as an eager nine-year-old a question had stayed with her: Was there another side to Debussy's music, one influenced by his turbulent private life and tempestuous relationships? "When you think of the great impressionist painters, you think of light, and hope, and love," she says. "But Debussy adored the darkness of Baudelaire, and was heavily influenced by Wagner. The titles he gave his pieces also hint at hidden meanings, so I thought it would be interesting to explore this 'shadow' side and my feelings towards it." Now Marina Baranova's album Unfolding Debussy will be released to mark the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Claude Debussy's death in March 2018. Despite being "absolutely in love" with Debussy, Baranova had also grown tired of playing his work in the common, classical way. Coming back to his music, she resolved to discover new ways of playing while exploring this darkness, and set about deconstructing some of his best loved pieces. It was here she had a vision, and the concept of "unfolding" his work took shape. To emulate the richness of Debussy's original compositions, Baranova sought a broader palette and different textures. "Every instrument has it's own color," she says, and so a number of different pianos and keyboards were employed to help to weave her magic. An Una Corda, a Fender Rhodes, midi keyboards and a C. Bechstein grand piano all feature, as do a number of delays and arpeggiators; anything to match the mood and the colours she could see in her head. Unusually for a classical pianist, she took it upon herself to both write and sing lyrics for various tracks, something she claims "wasn't a decision, but an intuition. At the start, this wasn't my intention, but the words just came."

Variation5'' is the title of the wind quintet's eponymous debut album - and variation5 is an ensemble if five very different characters, musicians who as winners of first prize in the ARD Music Competition are united by one thing: rather than cling to traditional performance practice and repertoire, they create new and exciting programmes and present them in their own cheeky, youthful, laid-back manner. This first joint album of theirs gives the five musicians the chance to present modern 20th century classics for wind ensemble. They push atonal preconceptions to one side; the works are catchy and offer auditory variety as well as a relaxed balance of sound such as has rarely, if ever been heard before. The five wind musicians - Magali Mosnier, Ramon Ortega-Quer, Sebastian Manz, David Fernandez Alonso and Marc Trenel are anything but your typical ''classical-music nerds''. The assumption that a wind quintet represents an exceptionally difficult combination is one they can confidently debut: they are so well attuned to one another that their instruments fall into harmony with one another and sound, when played together, almost like an organ. That gives the ensemble a unique authority of its own.

In July of 1960 Dmitri Shostakovich composed his famous String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 in the small spa resort of Gohrisch in ''Saxon Switzerland'' national park. The quartet is the only work Shostakovich composed outside the Soviet Union. To commemorate the visit by Shostakovich, in 2010, exactly 50 years later, the International Shostakovich Festival in Gohrisch was established. Since then, the festival has attracted concert-goers from around the world to the spa resort near the Elbe River. The Sachsische Staatskapelle Dresden played an important role in initiating the festival and performs in Gohrisch with well-known concert artists - and in the first year of the festival already received high praise from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: ''At an authentic setting and with the support of enthusiastic music lovers, unique festival programming was created with a balance of works that would normally be expected at established festivals such as in Salzburg or Bayreuth: a judicious and deftly concentrated concept performed by renowned artists, and refined by the charm and spirit of the location.''

Felix Klieser first began to take a serious interest in the Horn Trio of Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) at the age of thirteen. Back then he was just a junior student at the College of Music and Drama in Hanover. He bought several different recordings of the work, including one featuring the hornist Peter Damm, whom he was later to meet at a master class in Dresden. “I picked up quickly that Felix was extraordinarily talented. He was able to elicit from the horn a soft, warm sound, a distinctly Romantic horn tone,” says the former horn-player of the Dresden Staatskapelle in high praise of Klieser in the booklet text to the young musician’s new CD entitled “Horn Trios”, released on the Berlin Classics label on September 29, 2017. “The Brahms Trio is the pride of the horn literature,” according to Peter Damm, a view he shares with Felix Klieser. That led him to seek out other such works, perhaps even unknown literature from the horn trio genre. He came across the French composer Frederic Nicolas Duvernoy (1765–1838), who was hornist at the Paris Opera, Faure pupil Charles Koechlin (1867–1950) and the Mannheim-born Robert Kahn (1865–1951) who was hounded by the Nazis. The result is a programme of works spanning nearly 100 years of development of the horn trio, which bring Felix Klieser a further step towards his goal: to place the horn centre stage as a colourful and profoundly Romantic instrument. Such a plan requires the right chamber music partners, whom Felix Klieser has happily found: at the piano sits the outstanding and sensitive Herbert Schuch, while the violin is played by the Ukrainian ARD competition winner Andrej Bielow. “It was a wonderful experience for us to learn these pieces, some of them quite new to us, thereby expanding the scope of the chamber music genre in an exciting way,” enthuses Felix Klieser.

The songs and ballads written by Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) for the radio play Kalifornische Ballade (California Ballad) are among his least known works and are presented here for their first release ever. Started in Berlin in 1932, the exiled composer's work was eventually completed in London in 1934 and was broadcast for the first time on December 7 of that year, albeit in a foreign language: the Brussels radio broadcaster recorded the work sung in Flemish by Ernst Busch on lacquer discs that were recently rediscovered in a Belgian archive; they were made during the second transmission of the narrative radio play in 1935, and are now being offered to the public on record for the first time. Just 18 months after this second broadcast, Ernst Ottwalt, a friend of Eisler and author of the text to California Ballad, was arrested in Moscow in 1936, during Stalin's Great Purge; he died in a Siberian gulag in 1943. Following the events of 1933 that had suspended the writing and public performance of California Ballad, this depressing turn for the worse may have deterred the composer from contributing to a revival of the work in subsequent years.

Schumann: Fantasie - Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor

BACH:GROSSE GEISTLICHE CHORMUS

Johann Sebastian Bach is revered by musicians and music lovers around the world. The German weekly Die Zeit has described him as the “fount of all music,” and violinist Yehudi Menuhin had a very simple explanation for our continuing fascination with Bach’s works: “He represents something greater within us.” Classical saxophonist Asya Fateyeva has engaged with Bach’s oeuvre since her youth, albeit at a disadvantage to many of her colleagues- the Thomaskantor wrote no works for the saxophone. This has not put off the young musician, who was voted Best Female Newcomer at ECHO Klassik 2016: her latest release “Bachiana” featuring works by J. S. Bach and Heitor Villa-Lobos prove her to be not only a virtuosa of her instrument but also a gifted arranger. She is ably supported by the inspired Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra of Heilbronn under its principal conductor Ruben Gazarian. Asya writes: “Even when I was a child, I was really inspired by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. That was when I began to play the piano, later I switched to the saxophone- and his music was simply always there. I think every musician feels the same; Bach’s universal language knows no frontiers and when you come into contact with his music, you sense that you are in touch with eternity.”

Born in Niederpoyritz near Dresden in 1910, Rudolf Kempe was trained as a pianist and oboist at the orchestral school of the Sächsische Staatskapelle in Dresden between 1924 and 1928. After posts as an orchestra musician in Dortmund and Leipzig he made his debut as a conductor in Leipzig in 1935. After further conducting posts in Chemnitz and Weimar he was brought to Dresden in 1949 by Joseph Keilberth and made General Music Director of the Dresden Opera and Staatskapelle the following year. Semper’s famous opera house lay in ruins, like the whole of the city centre, whereas the evacuated Staatskapelle had survived the war and the post-war years largely intact. Kempe later recalled: “For my career, those were the happiest years of my life – the last glimpse of ‘Paradise’: with opera, concerts and chamber music all year round in the same place.” Eterna producer Dieter-Gerhardt Worm considers Rudolf Kempe to be one of the most significant conductors of the twentieth century and regards the recordings he made with the Dresden Staatskapelle as ideal: “There have surely been very few conductors who have fathomed the nature of the Staatskapelle so deeply and so widely exploited this orchestra’s potential as Rudolf Kempe. In the studio, he was a highly effective ‘worker’. Kempe was the only conductor I have known who did not explain to the musicians what he wanted of the orchestra but simply showed them.” Rudolf Kempe’s early death prevented the implementation of numerous planned projects with the Staatskapelle. When the present recording of Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet suite and Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem was made in January 1976 none of the participants had an inkling that it would be Kempe’s last.

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.”

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.

This new release is Daniel Behle’s Ode to his Birthplace. Life is never boring with this musician. He is one of those multitalented German tenors, and is equally at home in the concert hall, at a recital or in the opera house, from the Baroque to the twenty-first century. As a Hamburger born and bred, he loves his home city.l And there are plenty of arias and songs for classical tenors that express that love. This programmatic album puts Daniel Behle’s emotions into perspective, reflecting on a strong affinity with the North of Germany with all the passion a tenor can muster. When asked what how Hamburg sounds to him, Behle responds, “The ideal of freedom, so often sung about, is what makes Hamburg what it is. When you come to Hamburg you get the feeling: The world is at my feet. You take a deep breath and life is good. That’s what Hamburg sounds like.”

Beethoven, Mozart, Nicolai, Weber, Flotow and Wagner: German

A leading ensemble of period performance practice, Concerto Koln has been acknowledged for their rediscovery of musical rarities. Regardless, the ensemble still views the Baroque as being shaped by two driving forces- Bach and Handel. For this release, parts of three masterpieces have been coupled for the first time: Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto,” No. 5 and No. 1 of his Orchestral Suites along with Handel’s “Water Music.” Artistic Director Lorenzo Alpert explains the symbiotic nature of this release: “Our intensive engagement over the last 30 years with composers, music theorists and contemporaries from the time of Bach and Handel… opens up new vistas for us as we approach the works of these two great masters… What a joy to recreate a sound that seemed lost forever!”

Mozart: Ouvertüren