Following the success of 100 Christmas Classics (Capriccio C7331) comes Christmas Meditation, featuring 100 choral and vocal works from across the centuries. The set encompasses sacred Renaissance treasures including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Bach/Gounod’s Ave Maria, Handel’s Baroque masterpiece Messiah (‘He shall feed his flock’) and classic Christmas carols such as It Came Upon A Midnight Clear by Richard Storrs Willis and Franz Xaver Gruber’s Stille Nacht (‘Silent Night’). Featuring some of the most renowned choral institutions, Christmas Meditation offers listeners a classical Christmas to remember.

REVIEWS:

A rather sumptuous collection of seasonal choral works, instrumental pieces and carols. --BBC Music Magazine

After the success of the 5 CD box “100 Christmas classics” (Capriccio C7331), the new 5 CD box “Christmas Meditation” contains 100 choral and instrumental works from past centuries. It contains works from 43(!) composers, including excerpts from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Bach/Gounod's Ave Maria, Handel's Baroque masterpiece Messiah, and traditional and classical carols such as "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" by American composer Richard Storrs Willis, and Franz Xaver Gruber's "Silent Night”. With some of the most renowned choirs, “Christmas Meditation” offers you an unforgettable Christmas.

In addition to world-famous Christmas music, in this box you will also discover previously unknown but no less beautiful work by Bruch, Rheinberger, Carl Neuner, Wagenseil, Robert Fuchs, Johann Philipp Reichert or Johann von Herbeck. Cannot be missed!

--Stretto

The seductive, addictive potential of this music can be heard and felt straight away. His film music, an important pillar of his livelihood, embodies almost everything that characterizes Schnittke's music as a whole. It heralds a musical personality which, precisely because of its conscious use of tradition in the twentieth century, represents a solitary exception. Curious – not greedy for the old – he collected discarded or worn-out remains of music history, cleaned and polished them, and placed them in strikingly new contexts. The principle of drawing from and making use of the past was not well received in the strongholds of the avant-garde, but was all the more enthusiastically embraced by film viewers and concertgoers. 25 years ago Schnittke had encouraged the young conductor, arranger, and film music expert Frank Strobel to condense the music of his film scores into suites and to republish them for concert use. Since then, Strobel has arranged around a third of Schnittke’s over 60 pieces of film music and successively recorded them with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Start of the most comprehensive Bruckner Symphonies Edition incl. all available 19 versions. Bruckner burst out of the confines of the cathedral using that most secular of musical forms: the symphony. It is with reflexive reoccurrence in music history that supposed performance traditions burn themselves into a score as if they were a given… and the more so, the further we get from the work’s creation. So many clichés and truths about his person and his work are at last being questioned or, if they aren’t yet, are overdue some scrutiny. It is an essential aspect of this album edition to read and understand the text fresh and anew. Whence does Bruckner’s music come and whereunto does it point? With the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra Capriccio could engage two of the best Austrian orchestras for this in total 19 versions counting cycle. With about 1065 minutes of music this complete symphonic edition will be finished in 2024, when we will celebrate Bruckner’s 200th Birthday.

REVIEW:

This is the first release in what promises to be a complete cycle of all of the Bruckner symphonies in all of their various versions. It would be more exciting if the industry hadn’t already been spitting out Bruckner symphony recordings like a baseball dugout chewing tobacco, but perhaps when this series concludes, in 2024, the 200th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth, the mania will subside for a while and we can move on to other things. Of course, this assumes that the moronic apparatus known as Bruckner “scholarship” stops issuing new editions of the symphonies.

Markus Poschner’s view of the Sixth reminds me of Jochum’s. It’s a lively, rhythmically alert interpretation that permits a welcome flexibility of pulse, reserving the moments of gravity for the Adagio and such intimate passages as those in the finale’s second subject. Poschner’s careful attention to rhythm pays big dividends in the first movement’s development section, and especially in the scherzo, which is unquestionably one of the finest on disc. I do wish he had made a bit more out of the finale’s closing pages. He just plows straight through them, accepting the slight feeling of anticlimax that results; but then, that’s really Bruckner’s fault.

Of course, the Bruckner Orchestra of Linz knows the music as well as any group in existence, but what impresses most is its ability to keep it sounding so fresh. I mean, imagine growing up on a diet of Bruckner and Philip Glass symphonies. Kill me now. So good job all around, including the clean and clear engineering. Up next: the 1890 Eighth in Nowak’s edition. Keep your fingers crossed.

– ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

One of the modules in the exhibition MusicaFemina – Women Made Music, presented in 2018 in Vienna, featured 100 female composers who have characterized female composition of music from the time of Sappho to the present day. When the exhibition was open for two months and viewed by 56,000 visitors, the poet, filmmaker and composer Sophie Reyer had the idea, inspired by her ancestresses, of composing 100 poetic texts to complement the series of 100 short biographies. She offered the 100 poetic passages as texts or audio portraits to contemporary composers for composition, with the poet eagerly creating postscripts for those particularly forgotten, those whom the female composers particularly wished to be remembered. The compositional work about the ancestresses was a voyage of discovery: into the history of the female composers; into one’s own history. This poetic-musicological project represents an impressive, profound snapshot of female composing, a poetic encyclopedia, a first-time and unparalleled bridging of the chasm between historic and contemporary composing. it is an opportunity to take a look at the history of music and clear the path for further opportunities.

Mathis der Maler is the central composition of Paul Hindemith’s output for music theater. The reception began with its successful premiere of a symphony of three orchestral parts from the opera, in March of 1934 in Berlin. That was still before the composer was attacked in the National-Socialist press which prompted a defense of Furtwängler’s in a newspaper article titled “The Hindemith Case”. The opera wasn’t premiered until May 1938, in Zurich, where the Hindemith’s had emigrated to, before moving on to the United States. Much as Mathis, who found his political engagement in the Peasant’s War and his calling to paint solely for the glory of God to collide with the expectation to positions himself on religious matters during the Reformation, Hindemith found himself torn between his refusal to propagate for the Nazis, his urge to follow his inner voice, and the demand that he position himself against the regime. These highly acclaimed performances from 2012 at Theater an der Wien with Opera Star Roland Koch in the title role is finally now available as an album release.

REVIEW:

Hindemith wrote his own libretto for Mathis, an exploration of the clash between artists’ responsibility to their art and to the social and political issues of their time. The production is full of telling detail, with the climactic fourth scene depicting the Peasants’ Revolt itself, and Mathis’s vision in the sixth especially vivid. All the protagonists are portrayed with touching truthfulness too. Wolfgang Koch is the conflicted, all-too-human painter, Kurt Streit the cardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg, Franz Grundheber the Protestant Riedlinger and Manuela Uhl his daughter Ursula, with whom Mathis is in love. It’s superbly conducted by Bertrand de Billy, making the most of the opera’s visionary moments, and doing his best with its occasional longueurs.

– Guardian (UK)

Ernst von Dohnanyi was one of the most versatile and influential musicians of his time but his works are now seldom played. A gap which Capriccio want to fill now with this fifth recording of his late romantic, sensual music, deeply rooted in the Austro-German classical tradition. An appetizer is the overture of the one-act opera Tanta Simona, which has plenty of that Italian flair to show for that runs through the opera’s plot. After its premiere in 1910, the Suite in F-sharp minor Op.19 became one of the most performed Dohnányi’s works, whereas the American Rhapsody Op.47, which is full of quotations with American folk melodies, was his last orchestral work, first performed in 1954 at Ohio University. Finally his 8 years younger colleague Leó Weiner shows us in his early composition, the Serenade in F minor (1906) apart from the influence of the German and Austrian romantics, typical Hungarian colors and rhythms.

REVIEW:

Ernö Dohnanyi’s one-act comic opera Aunt Simona was premiered in Dresden in 1913. This aunt was once abandoned by her lover. Having become misandrist, she warns the younger generation against any relationships. The overture is already full of melodious inventions and is a pleasing start to this CD, on which the Suite op. 19 is the longest work.

With its variation movement, a scherzo, a romance and a rondo, it is a particularly attractive work, full of beautiful melodies and imaginative orchestral touches. Roberto Paternostro lovingly allows the melodies to blossom, but also sharpens the contrasts, making for an exciting performance overall.

The American Rhapsody, Dohnanyi’s homage to the United States, where he settled in 1949, is based on various American melodies without ultimately sounding truly American. Paternostro does well not to search uselessly for an Americana character, but to make the music simply vital or, for long stretches, with a lot of genuine poetry too.

– Pizzicato

Nowadays William Stanford's fame is largely based on his teaching activities in London while his reputation as a "great composer" has waned considerably. The list of his students reads like a veritable Who's-Who of British music of the 19th and 20th century. Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Bliss, Frank Bridge and several more were taught by Stanford. His œuvre covered a wide variety of sacred and secular music and his works carry within them elements of Irish folklore and mysticism. His many chamber works have a definite air of Brahms about them... never by way of direct quote or paraphrase, but by making Brahms' style his own.

Hear an audio sample from the album!

REVIEW:

This is an enjoyable and rewarding CD. The performances, which are presented in good sound, are extremely accomplished and I hope that this CD will help to widen the reach of Stanford’s music beyond the British Isles. As I indicated earlier, it’s heartening to see young musicians from Berlin embracing these works and performing them with such skill and commitment.

-- MusicWeb International

The composers and educators Eugen Werner Velte and Wolfgang Rihm as well as alumni whose music is presented here demonstrate the characteristics of a school. The main function of an institution such as the University of Music Karlsruhe is first and foremost as a site for studies and second, a place for individual composition and pedagogic work. The Karlsruhe School is in no way a forced stylistic unit stubbornly passed along simultaneously as a solidified traditional framework. For 50 years, the University of Music Karlsruhe has radiated as a living, recreative phenomenon of this artistic freedom, extending far into a shared future. In the music of alumni taught by Wolfgang Rihm, ideals of musical freedom and openness continue to resound in concrete form. Jörg Widmann, Rebecca Saunders and Markus Hechtle, among others, contribute to the further development of the unique Karlsruhe School at their professional homes.

In Bulgaria, both folk and art music evince an ancient tradition that strikes awe even in some of the great music nations today. The way Pancho Vladigerov incorporated these folk-music themes into his concert pieces shows not only his affinity for them but also suggests that he felt something of a calling to promulgate and champion the folk-traditions of his central European homeland. The most-performed work of Pancho Vladigerov’s is undoubtedly his Bulgarian Rhapsody op.16 “Vardar” from 1922. The most outstanding must be his Seven Symphonic Bulgarian Dances op.23 (1931), with which he might have wanted to create a counterpart to Brahms’ Hungarian Dances, Dvorák’s Slavonic Dances, or Grieg’s Norwegian Dances or similar such popular aural nationalistic postcards.

Benno Ammann’s oeuvre reveals influences from impressionism to free tonality, yet he belongs to no stylistic school. The Swiss composer wrote Missa Defensor Pacis (‘Defender of the Faith’) in 1946 for the official canonization, at St Peter’s in Rome, of Nicholas of Flüe, patron saint of Switzerland. This prestigious commission, with its complex polyphony, countless variations, and use of the cantus firmus technique, is one of the most important and extensive Masses by a Swiss composer for a cappella choir. The Basler Madrigalisten are one of the most traditional professional vocal ensembles in Switzerland and are primarily devoted to demanding repertoires from the Renaissance to contemporary music. The ensemble, founded in 1978 by Fritz Naf at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, has been under the direction of Raphael Immoos since 2013 and has toured Europe, the USA, Australia, and Asia.

In 1711 Christoph Graupner was already appointed court conductor and he would continue to work in Darmstadt for the rest of his life. Graupner’s focus shifted to sacred vocal music, which explains the sheer abundance of the 1,400-plus cantatas he composed. In 1723 the Leipzig city magistrates were looking for a new cantor at the Thomas School – and wanted him, above all. Alas, Graupner’s patron did not release him from his contract an so they had to hire Bach. Graupner, famous and widely celebrated during his lifetime, was soon thereafter forgotten. As we rediscover and hear more and more of his works, however, the judgment of his contemporaries would appear to us as increasingly germane. The present recording spans the liturgical arc from Maundy Thursday via Good Friday and Easter Sunday to Easter Monday and presents one liturgical work for each of the festive days – and each of them a world premiere recording!

REVIEW:

As one might expect, even though the accompaniment is limited to strings, the emotional content of the words, appropriate for the season, are reflected in Graupner’s progressive music. The text is never obscured, and he takes great pains to insure that rhythmic and textural variations are done gracefully. The performance by the Pulchra Musica ensemble is quite exact, with good intonation and a sense of style that allows for the variety of the music to emerge easily. Conductor Christian Bonath keeps things moving along, and the chorus Capella Vocalis works well. Sebastian Hübner’s tenor and Johannes Hill’s bass have the lightness of sound and flexibility for this sort of music, and the richness of countertenor Jan Jerlitschka complements them well. My only concern is that the one-on-a-part strings are perhaps too thin, and there are times when the orchestral accompaniment fades almost into obscurity. The recording of these sensitive and lyrical cantatas would have been enhanced by a thicker orchestral texture. But that being said, the performances are well worth adding to the growing collection of this master of the Baroque church cantata.

-- Fanfare

Completed! This is the last release in a set of 12 albums comprising the Dopplers' complete music for flute(s), including various arrangements. Flutist and mastermind Claudi Arimany presents works by different composers, dedicated to Franz Doppler or arranged on motifs from his different operas. Arimany spent decades researching this project, inspiring many famous musicians to become involved in its realization. After 4 years and 12 Volumes we are proud to close now another gap in musical history.

Despite a certain inner distance to the Communist regime, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny was considered one of the most distinguished artistic personalities in East Germany. Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan were only two of the distinguished conductors to champion his music. Although he himself was not regarded as a stylistic pioneer, the way Wagner-Régeny took up and blended old and new elements formed a highly individual musical diction that might well be defined as a personal style. Genesis (1955/56) is a blend of oratorio and cantata. It was written prior to East Germany’s ambivalent attitude towards the church. The latter represented the strongest opposition to the regime and was discriminated mainly during Walter Ulbricht’s tenure as the chairman of the Central Committee.

The Doppler brothers played a dominant role in the K&K Monarchy’s musical life as composers, conductors, musicians and as orchestral soloists. They were on good terms with acknowledged artists of the era, such as Ferenc Liszt, Ferenc Erkel, or Jozsef Bajza. This is the eleventh release in a set of 12 albums comprising the Dopplers' complete music for flute(s), including various arrangements. Flautist Claudi Arimany spent decades researching this project, inspiring many famous musicians to become involved in its realization. Featured on this album alongside Arimany are Janos Balint, Aleksandra Miletic, Sara Blanch, and more.

‘This West Indian tragedy has remained the sole dramatic work of a heroic world in pre-Columbian times that, after a flourishing heyday, was abruptly terminated by foreign violence.’ Egon Wellesz (1925). In musical terms, the Opferung shows Egon Wellesz at the zenith of his creativity. In this music, Wellesz’ emancipation from his mentor Schoenberg and his aesthetics has progressed even further, as throughout his life Egon Wellesz was interested in evolving his own, unmistakable musical diction. The events of 12 March 1938 put a sudden end to this so successful career: As a Jew, monarchist and the writer of ‘degenerate music’, the 53-year-old musician was immediately removed from all of his posts and wanted by the police after ‘the seizure of power’. Following a long illness, Egon Wellesz died in Oxford in 1974.

100 years ago the composer Max Bruch died. His remarkably long life of 82 years covered a period in contemporary history that was determined by scientific progress and comprehensive industrialization, developments that also found expression in art. Shortly after the turn of the century the scandals concerning the compositions by Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg were already rocking the musical world, however, Bruch met the tide of events as stoically as a rock: conservative, patriotic and above all unconditionally beholden to Romanticism in music. The present program was recorded during a Max Bruch Jubilee Concert in Halle and focused besides the famous Suite on Russian Themes also on the rarely performed Concerto for 2 pianos and orchestra.

REVIEWS:

This fine disc presents two Bruch rarities, composed towards the end of his life, both of which started out in other guises. The five-movement Suite on Russian Themes is an adaptation (with new material added) of his Songs and Dances Op. 79, originally for violin and piano. It is remarkable (even for a composer in his mid-60s) that music of such Mendelssohnian deftness and sparkle could have emerged during the first decade of the last century. But putting aside issues of chronology, those who delight in the charming rusticity of, say, the Scottish Fantasy, should find these well-crafted miniatures enchanting.

-- BBC Music Magazine

‘It simply cannot be gauged what music has lost with him’ (Gustav Mahler) Hans Rott was a composer from Gustav Mahler’s time who had been unknown or known only by name even to most pundits. Many people have expressed the opinion, perhaps justifiably, that only his tragic fate prevented him from going down in the annals of music as Mahler’s equal and establishing a permanent position in the repertoire. A member of Bruckner’s circle within the music scene in Vienna, he developed a pronounced antipathy towards Johannes Brahms. In view of many of his works, it is difficult to comprehend that during Rott’s lifetime presumably not one of them was performed in public, but that only presentations took place under the aegis of internal conservatory events. With these recordings Capriccio attend to fill the gap with his (some of them reconstructed) orchestral works and document these fascinating worlds of music for the eternity.

REVIEW:

The young British conductor Christopher Ward directs Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra in Capriccio’s first volume of Rott’s orchestral works with obvious commitment and makes no attempt to batten down the Wagnerian elements that course so freely; nor should he. With a thoughtfully balanced recording and concise notes this is a revealing document of Rott’s music, and the reconstruction of the Hamlet overture has the advantage of being heard in its world premiere recording.

– MusicWeb International

From the diversity of Bulgarian musical culture Pancho Vladigerov stands out as undoubtedly the most important composer for the musical self-conception of modern Bulgaria. In the 1920s he worked as a conductor, pianist and composer in close association with Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. He also associated with many German-speaking writers, such as Stefan Zweig, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler and Hugo von Hofmannsthal as well as with many fellow composers of the time (including Bartók, Kodály, Strauss, Ravel, Glasunov, Hindemith, Schoenberg, Rachmaninov and Szymanowski). In this light, it is difficult to understand why the imaginative and colorful music by the sound wizard does not possess any appropriate status in European concert halls today. In terms of style, despite his unmistakable personal note it is not wrong to see his piano concertos in succession to the great Slavonic Romantic concerto tradition, such as it was continued after Tchaikovsky by his Russian compatriots Rachmaninov and Medtner. With these recordings, produced in the 1070s in Bulgaria, Capriccio releases an 18-album Vladigerov-Edition to preserve this colorful music also for the next generations.

“But tell me, who could have written a better libretto than my friend Heinrich von Kleist. When I was searching for a language in combination with which my music could produce something new, a diction targeted by my music, I hit on the Prince. . […] The tension between the life of the individual and raison d’état, issues as to the disregard of law and order, man’s quivering before the might of ruling authorities and the courage to resist it, all of that might happen today or might have occurred one or two thousand years ago. […]Many of my endeavors in works of recent years appear through this drama to have reached a new point, i.e. a new polyphony and its concomitant, freely chosen rigor.” (Hans-Werner Henze) This production of The Prince of Homburg is presented by the Staatsorchester Stuttgart and Cornelius Meister.

The Doppler brothers played a dominant role in the K&K Monarchy’s musical life as composers, conductors, musicians and as orchestral soloists. They were on good terms with acknowledged artists of the era, such as Ferenc Liszt, Ferenc Erkel, or Jozsef Bajza. This is the tenth release in a set of 12 albums comprising the Dopplers' complete music for flute(s), including various arrangements. Flautist Claudi Arimany spent decades researching this project, inspiring many famous musicians to become involved in its realization. Featured on this album alongside Arimany are flutists Jean-Pierre Rampal, Paul Edmund-Davies, pianists John Steele Ritter and Zsolt Balog, and the renowned Iberian Flute Trio.

Throughout his life, Philipp Scharwenka (1847-1917) was eclipsed by his younger brother, Franz Xaver Scharwenka (1850-1924), who made a world-renowned career as a piano virtuoso. It is only from the historical perspective that it becomes clear that Philipp was superior to his brother as a composer. This is demonstrated by this album, supplementing Philipp Scharwenka’s meager discography with his works for violin, viola and piano. Violinist Laurent Albrecht Breuninger heads up this project, joined by violist Lise Berthaud and pianist Oliver Triendl.

Who would assume today that after its premiere in 1910 Ernst von Dohnányi’s dance pantomime spread like a wildfire over the stages of the world. The ‘Wedding Waltz’ from Der Schleier der Pierrette could regularly be heard on musical request programmes on the radio, enjoying similar popularity to the waltz sequence from Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. Dohnanyi’s choice of the genre of pantomime was entirely in keeping with the spirit of the age that, following the large-scale, plot-laden ballets of late Romanticism, sought to find in pantomime a more intimate and more naturalistic form of expression. It may come as a surprise that the source for Dohnányi derived from none other than Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931), one of the salient representatives of fin-de-siècle Austria. With this first complete recording again an important gap is closed in the knowledge of repertoire of this fascinating epochal time of musical history.

Busoni never came closer to his dream of Italian music than with that night on May 11, 1917 of double performance in Zurich, which he calls himself "La Nuova Commedia dell' Arte" I ("Turandot") and II ("Arlecchino"). In the unusually short time from December 1916 to March 1917 Busoni reworked the already existing material to the Incidental Music of Gozzis "Turandot" into an opera. This happened 4 years before Puccini started to work on the same content. "Arleccino", though in immediate neighborhood to "Dr. Faust" looking almost like a secondary work, is perhaps the composer's actual key composition. The speaking hero of his "theatralische Capriccio" represents a role model, which is at times more important to him than his aesthetic Faust, especially as the World War was increasing in intensity.

REVIEW:

Gerd Albrecht (so persuasive in unusual repertoire) conducts a spirited account of Turandot, attentive to both its smaller detail and its more majestic moments, and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra respond with some stunningly inspired playing. Coupled with some excellent contributions from RIAS Chamber Choir and a vivid, suitably atmospheric recording.

Josef Protschka is a particularly fine and formidable Kalaf, and a superb trio of performances from Robert Worle Johannes Werner Prein and Gotthold Schwarz as Truffaldino, Pantalone and Tartaglia (the equivalent of Puccini's Ping, Pang and Pong).

Albrecht's reading of Arlecchino is equally authoritative.

– Gramophone

Certainly, the 'quietest time of year' is also the time when music is to be most frequently heard - not only in public, in shops or markets, but also in the countryside, where Christmas is the time when perhaps the most singing is done. The music author Marius Schneider once underlined this fact by writing:"God hungers for songs." And thus the time which celebrates the symbolic birth of the Lord is a great time for music - even for people who may have no direct religious beliefs. With this 5CD-Set Capriccio presents in total 100 Classical Christmas titles, sung by most famous choruses and soloists. And draws a bow from the high classical Christmas Oratorio by Bach to more simple songs from the country side. And of course the most famous song can't be missed: "Silent Night, Holy Night."

In terms of style, with his works linked to basic tonalities Weigl drew on the sound realm of late Romanticism, from whose aesthetics he never departed in favour of more progressive contemporary trends. Whereas Weigl’s Symphony No. 1, written in 1908, associatively evokes the mood of a composer thinking of new territory and inquiring into the future, the dissimilar pair of his Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6 shows the musician’s intellect at historically distinctive periods, allowing an assessment to be made as to whether what could be expected, intended and hoped for at the time of his early works was achieved or whether it developed in an entirely different manner. The background to Symphony No. 4 in 1936 was the emergence of dictatorial Austro-Fascism. Symphony No. 6 of 1947 is in a certain sense a continuation and a conclusion following the end of the Nazi terror and a war that did not remain without profound changes and far-reaching effects for almost all the countries in the world.

In his late years Hanns Eisler concentrated more and more on compiling his film music scores for the concert hall. That's the case also with his Leipzig Symphony which was not completed when he died. The (at that time) young composer Thilo Medek recognized this gap and completed the symphony with different pieces out of Eisler's film music scores. The compilation of Funeral pieces from Film Music scores was realized by Tobias Faßhauer and Jürgen Bruns in 2015. The scores use film music from the 1947/48 Hollywood movie ‘So Well Remembered.’

At the end of 1955, Eisler wrote the music for the KZ Documentary Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog) for the French movie director Alain Resnais (1922–2014). After many successful concert performances (with and without film) this piece can now be listened to for the first time on album.

REVIEW:

The performances by both the MDR-Sinfonieorchester Leipzig in the first two works, and the Kammersymphonie Berlin in Night and Fog, all under the direction of Jürgen Bruns, are excellent. Both orchestras are on top form with the excellent recorded sound and the wonderful booklet notes helping to bring out the best from this music. A very fine disc, one which will enhance any collection of Hanns Eisler’s music and of late twentieth century music as a whole.

-- MusicWeb International

With his opera The Diary of Anne Frank (1968/69), by virtue of the subject alone, Grigory Frid could be sure of attracting attention beyond the borders of Russia. The remaining enormous oeuvre by the composer, covering mainly instrumental works, songs, radio and film music, still remains to be discovered and explored in depth. Both prior to and after the collapse of the Communist USSR, Frid was awarded the highest honors, e.g. the title of Artist of Merit (1986) and the Moscow Prize (1996). It is not erroneous to view Frid’s aesthetic position in a propinquity to Dmitri Shostakovich, as well as a generation of younger composers such as Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke. As in the cases of these composers, Frid’s music is also positioned within a field of tension between following the great Russian tradition and the quest for possibilities of expression in keeping with new, modern and international trends.

When Kent Nagano assumed the direction of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in autumn 2006, he had intended a new production of Richard Strauss’ Salome as one of the first premieres. He wanted to precede the challenging one-act opera after Oscar Wilde’s drama with a new music theatre work. He turned to Wolfgang Rihm. ‘I replied’, Rihm said in an interview with Die Zeit: ‘There’s only one thing: the final scene from Schlusschor by Botho Strauß. Nagano’s commission became the catalyst in transforming this desire into reality. This is the genesis of Das Gehege. A nocturnal scene for soprano and orchestra. Kent Nagano and Jean-Pascal Beintus (* 1966) met in the orchestra pit of the Opéra de Lyon in 1988. After considering the first orchestral manuscripts, the maestro, known for his openness and great erudition, encouraged the young man to expand his musical career. Several pictorial projects came to Nagano’s mind, which he entrusted to Beintus’ musical imagination: first, Wolf Tracks for recitator and orchestra (recorded with the speakers Bill Clinton and Michail Gorbachov), for which Beintus was awarded a Grammy in 2004, before in 2008 writing for the family concerts of the German Symphony Orchestra in Berlin a suite on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s omnipresent The Little Prince.

Many of the today-distinguished Soviet composers in the second half of the 20th century knew how to steer a middle course, enabling them to supply what was officially desirable all the while remaining faithful to themselves, writing the music they wanted to write. Kabalevsky was a Jack of all musical trades and, as a specialist for children’s music especially, cultivated a highly personal style, keeping easily within the bounds of comprehensible tonal aesthetics. His works are characterized by some of the features typical of Kabalevsky’s overall oeuvre: a cornucopia of melodious imagination, dance rhythms, above all in the fast movements, expansive slow sections and a positive, often cheerful tone. The present release presents a selection of his orchestral works alongside his violin concerto.

“I have given every operetta the style demanded by the space and time in which it is set.” (Eduard Künneke. Driven by success, Künneke committed himself to the genre of the operetta in the 1920s and 1930s. The diversity of his many operettas reveals Künneke’s enormous adaptability to the stylistic currents of entertainment music at that time. He had most international success with Der Vetter aus Dingsda (1921), with which Künneke has almost exclusively been identified up to today. His successful operettas were even adapted for London and New York. Herz über Bord was premiered in 1935, initially at the Zurich Opera and was performed almost 500 times between 1935 and 1937, including in Dresden, Stuttgart, Stockholm and Berlin. The Berliner Zeitung noted: “Once again, we can listen to operetta music written by an artist, a man of taste. Every number has its own weight.”