"Look, when they tell me that in my music I am mainly concerned about bringing a bit of nostalgia and lots of good humor and optimism, well, I think that’s exactly how I’d like to be remembered: With a bit of nostalgia, lots of optimism, and good humor."

If only we listen to enough of his music (and not just his film music), Nino Rota’s wish should well come true. Not the least, if we lend our ears to his third (of ten) and most popular opera, the snappy Florentine Straw Hat (Il cappello di paglia di Firenze), which Rota wrote in Bari, after the War ended, and orchestrated a decade later for its premiere in Palermo.

REVIEW:

The whole cast works hard under Daniele Squeo’s direction, which has verve. The recorded sound is clear. The opera is fun, the performance excellent and there is a feel-good factor to enterprise.

-- Opera Now

If you know the cellist-professor-composer Georg Goltermann (1824-1898) and his eight (!) cello concertos, you’re either a cellist or married to one. In his lifetime and for a while thereafter, the instrumental virtuoso-cum-composer was popular and well-liked enough to have the Cantilena of his Cello Concerto recorded by Pablo Casals – but not much since. That’s a shame because that lyrical-melancholic, never gratuitously virtuosic op.10 is a picture-perfect, delightful romantic cello concert. The symphony, then well received and Goltermann’s pride, too, goes down nicely in a post-Brahms vain rather à la Bruch or Gernsheim, especially the exquisite, lively hunting Scherzo with its sweeping Trio.

REVIEW:

The Symphony, the third of the works in the key of A minor, is receiving its first recording here. It was premiered in Leipzig, and I think that is quite significant, because it owes much to the memory of the recently deceased Felix Mendelssohn, in particular his Scottish Symphony. It was very well-received by public and reviewers. I was amused by a quote in the notes from a newspaper report of the premiere, which stated that even in 1851, critics were bemoaning that the quality of melody was no longer being adequately appreciated by composers (but Goltermann was excused from this criticism).

I’d not heard of Turkish cellist Jamal Aliyev before, but he has performed at the Proms and won a number of prizes at international competitions. It is not hard to see why; he is very good, giving these little-known works his fullest efforts. Under the assured direction of Howard Griffiths, such a champion of the unsung composer, the ORF Vienna orchestra sound superb. My only quibble with the sound quality was the occasional sharp intake of breath from Aliyev (but hey, he’s got to breathe).

This is one of those unsung composer discs that really does “sing”. Goltermann might not have had the most original of compositional voices, but he knew how to write concentrated, melodic pieces, and now we know that even in the mid-19th century, melody was in short supply (what would those critics have thought of the 20th century, I wonder?).

-- MusicWeb International

After being forced out of his Soviet-occupied home in Bukovina (Chernivtsi), Radu Paladi was an exceptional, extraordinary talent, whether as a composer, pianist, conductor, or lecturer. In the 1950s, a time that was politically as well as artistically particularly tricky, Radu Paladi managed to find his artistic path and own distinctive voice, incorporating and elevating Romanian folklore in his highly elaborate compositional technique to fascinating effect. His music, combining depth, brilliance, and vitality, spoke to listeners with an immediacy that made hearing his music an exhilarating experience.

REVIEW:

Radu Paladi (1927-2013) was an important musical personality in Romania—as a composer, conductor, interpreter, and pedagogue.

We are dealing here with very expressive music that focuses on emotion.

The piano concerto, with Oliver Triendl as soloist, starts like a whirlwind, and all the musicians put their full energy into this at times ecstatic bundle of music. A wonderful contrast is provided by the second movement, a lament in which soloist and orchestra listen very delicately into the silence. Eugene Tzigane stretches the tension to bursting point and shapes the climax of the movement passionately and stirringly. The finale, in turn, is a single bubbling fountain of virtuosity and tonal brilliance.

No less expressive is the Violin Concerto from 2002, which begins with a moving elegy that suddenly leads into an orchestral outcry. Here, too, the performers live the music with every fiber of their souls, especially again in the slow middle movement. There is a little wink in the finale with the surprising reminiscence of Vivaldi’s Seasons as well as lively folk dances, brilliantly played by Nina Karmon.

The two concerti are accompanied by Eugene Tzigane’s colorful and rousing interpretation of the symphonic suite ‘Das Zauberflötchen’.

-- Fanfare

You might consider him one of the many Missing Links between Frédéric Chopin and Karol Szymanowski, who shaped Polish music between the second half of the 19th century and the dawn of modernism… but somehow never entered the repertoire. We are dealing with a composer of the high, late-romantic tradition – a style that Stojowski never found any reason to reject and with a strong gift for melody. His work proves the composer’s deft hand at colorful instrumentation, which suggests Russian and French influences. Entering the U.S. in 1905, he enjoyed a fine reputation as a composer, pianist, and increasingly pedagogue but his lack of presence on the continent meant that Stojowski faded into obscurity.

REVIEW:

There is so much music of genuine interest and reward in both works that their relative neglect is a surprise. Hopefully the excellence of this disc will encourage listeners and performers to seek out this music. Another disc of real interest and value from the ever-impressive Capriccio catalogue.

-- MusicWeb International

A superbly performed selection of Dohnányi works from players entirely immersed in his musical voice, led by a conductor who inspires them all the way.

Of the works Ernst von Dohnányi wrote for the stage, only his ballet pantomime The Veil of Pierrette received any particular acclaim. His concert music, meanwhile, was much more warmly received. With this already sixth recording of his late romantical, sensual music, deeply rooted in the Austro-German classical tradition, Capriccio presents three of his concerts. Apart from two piano concertos and two violin concertos, Ernst von Dohnányi wrote three more, which are concertos in all but name Variations (for piano and orchestra), Concertino (for harp and chamber orchestra), and Konzertstück (for cello and orchestra); the names subtly hinting at their specific character.

REVIEW:

Variations on a Nursery Theme, an unjustly neglected and once-popular work, receives a truly superb performance. Similar delights abound in the rarely heard Concertino for harp. A superbly performed selection of Dohnányi works from players entirely immersed in his musical voice, led by a conductor who inspires them all the way.

-- Gramophone

It took Frank Martin a long time to heed his deep-seated inner calling to write a Requiem: 'What I have tried to express here is the clear will to accept death; to make peace with it.' The Requiem was composed in 1971/72, Martin utilizes the whole bandwidth of orchestral sound and explores all opportunities for interplay among the vocalists, as well. Leoš Janácek’s setting of the Otcenáš, the Lord’s Prayer, is not a conventionally religious work. The Czech composer was more interested in its social aspects than any theological musings. Conductor Leif Segerstam, Chief conductor of ORF Vienna radio Symphony Orchestra from 1975-1983 loved to surprise his public with non-mainstream repertoire. Two of these live recordings are now restored, re-mastered and first time published for the future.

REVIEW:

Frank Martin’s operatic background is to the fore in his setting of the Requiem. Written towards the very end of his life he had apparently delayed setting the text and once completed declared that his work was now done. Some decidedly 20th Century techniques, such as semi-spoken passages, can be heard in this music which is full of drama and displays a real affinity with the text. Janacek’s settting of the Lord’s Prayer is apparently written from a more detached view, with the composer apparently less committed to the meaning of the text in itself. However, this is still moving music, making for a fine pairing of lesser known liturgically inspired 20th Century (the Janacek only just!) works.

-- Lark Reviews

Addendum! After already 12 CDs comprising the Dopplers' complete music for flute(s), including various arrangements, Flutist and mastermind Claudi Arimany presents additional works he discovered in different libraries after the last release. Arimany spent decades researching this project, inspiring many famous musicians to become involved in it's realization and he close now again another gap in musical history.

Music by the marvelous, criminally underrated composer and “Aural Alchemist” Charles Koechlin is always a discovery and invariably. “Koechlin can daub with notes as Seurat daubed with bright pigments on canvas [he] could, whenever he wished, bathe his music in the impressionist glories of Debussy and Ravel or give it the delicacy of Fauré and then toughen it up with some Roussel-like grinding rhythms.” (Robert Reilly)

Koechlin is an impressionist dreamboat. With a title like The Seven Stars Symphony (the seven are Douglas Fairbanks, Lilian Harvey, Greta Garbo, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jannings and Charlie Chaplin) and following so closely on the heels of the equally enchanting Vers la voûte étoilée (Toward the Vault of the Stars), you’d think the work was some spectacular colorist bonanza of celestial ambitions. Actually, it’s Koechlin’s ode to his favorite film characters as portrayed by these actors – but no less bewitching for it.

REVIEW:

The Basel Symphony Orchestra’s performance under Ariane Matiakh has a wonderful lithe elegance, which matches the beauty and refinement of Koechlin’s writing in every respect.

-- The Guardian (UK)

Charles Koechlin was a prolific composer with a list of works encompassing more than 200 opus numbers. His interest in film stars resulted in several compositions, the most spectacular being The Seven Stars’ Symphony written in 1933. He was a skilled orchestrator as evidenced in this work. He employs a gigantic orchestra, comprising substantially expanded woodwind and brass sections, including an alto saxophone, a large assortment of percussion, and in the third movement, an Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument, invented just a few years before the work was written. Stylistically there are influences from most French composers, from Berlioz and Fauré (who was his teacher) to a modernist like Messiaen. Formally it isn’t a symphony, rather an orchestral suite in seven movements, each movement a portrait of a famous actor in Hollywood at the time the suite was composed, but all of them are still well-known today. His interest in movies emanated from the then quite recent arrival of the sound film, when he saw The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings.

That [Lilian Harvey] was the ageing composer’s dream-girl, is clear from the second movement of the symphony: jolly and charming, light-toned music with glittering flutes creating an aura around her. It is the shortest movement, lasting just over two minutes. The contrast between Harvey and the cool and mysterious Greta Garbo is striking. This is slow, almost melancholy music, and the use of the Ondes Martenot with its eerie glissandi paints a picture of an icy Nordic princess...Clara Bow['s] movement is racy and full of life – the scherzo of the symphony, and the finale is rather boisterous, presumably illustrating the hectic stream of fan letters – in January 1929 she received 45,000 letters!

...Marlene Dietrich is still well-remembered...Her movement is slow and beautiful with a deep clarinet solo featured. It is a set of variations on a theme that is built on the letters of her name. [Emil] Jannings’ movement is dramatic and dark, and the end is gloomy. The final movement is devoted to Charlie Chaplin, and it is by far the longest, occupying more than one third of the total playing time of over forty-three minutes. Though it refers to some of his merry pranks in silent movies like Gold Fever and Circus, a surprisingly large part of the movement is contemplative and chamber-music like, transparently orchestrated.

This effort by Sinfonieorchester Basel under Ariane Matiakh fills the need [for new recordings] admirably. The playing is excellent and the recording very good. Whether the work is the masterpiece some pundits maintain is another question. Koechlin’s masterly orchestration cannot be called in question, and that is reason enough to wallow in the music...This issue is well worth getting to know.

--MusicWeb International (Göran Forsling)

Kapustin uses jazz as his musical language and then composes quasi-improvisations that sound as though they flowed right from Oscar Peterson’s or Erroll Garner’s fingers. He is one of the few who were able to have the structures of composition and liberty of improvisation come together to such an organic whole. After his first successful release with the piano- and double concerto of Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin, Frank Dupree presents the original jazzy solo piano pieces of the still mostly unknown master, enlarged with bass and drums. The genres of jazz and classical music melt together into a fascinating new formation.

REVIEW:

Nikolai Kapustin has been described as ‘A Russian in Gershwin’s clothing’ and on listening to this disc it is immediately understandable as to why. Like Gershwin Kapustin was classically trained (by Alexander Goldenweiser among others) and never considered himself a jazz pianist though as he explained he had to become one to create and play his compositions.

All the selected pieces that German pianist Frank Dupree has put together for this disc were originally written for piano solo. Frank has cleverly used the piano’s left hand plus harmonic structure to form the double bass part while drummer ‘Obi’ Jenne does improvise upon the other two musicians’ product. All three musicians are at the top of their game here and make the most powerful case for the chosen material. The result is a hugely enjoyable disc of brilliantly scintillating jazz that has a smile on its face from beginning to end. I had come across the composer last year and enjoyed what I heard but can honestly say that the addition of bass and drums has lifted the compositions to a new level and made them more enjoyable and I believe will attract a wider audience. This can only do the reputation of Nikolai Kapustin a great deal of good and open up his other compositions to greater public interest.

21 of the 23 tracks on the disc are original compositions by Kapustin while the closing pair are his tribute to Ary Barosso’s Aquarela do Brasil and Kenny Dorham’s Blue Bossa. This is a delightful disc that will surprise and thrill every jazz piano fan who might not have thought a product of Soviet times could compose such life-affirming jazz.

--MusicWeb International (Steve Arloff)

It would be worth striving towards a style that can combine the highest level of craftsmanship, originality, and high quality with the greatest popularity and folksiness.' – Hanns Eisler. This latest release in Capriccio‘s Hanns Eisler Edition contains songs and chansons from all periods of Eisler’s creative life. It also contains some of the fascinating orchestral suites that he had mostly assembled as adaptations of film scores from the 1930s. Notably, the programme contains the world premiere recording of his incidental music for Die letzte Nacht – the epilogue to Karl Kraus‘ monumental, satirical work The Last Days of Mankind. The mastermind behind this project was the great composer, conductor, and chansonnier HK Gruber, arguably one of the greatest authorities on Eisler.

His works have accompanied generations of beginner instrumental students on their first foray into contemporary music. But with works like his Concerto for Piano, Strings, and Percussion Jenö Takács clearly placed himself in a line with the great paragons Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. Early he started out with the impressionist coloring and the influences of Hungarian folk music. Studying with Joseph Marx added a strict contrapuntal note to it. Getting to know Bártok further increased the Hungarian element (topicality, rhythm, bitonality). Jenö Takács was a humanist, a ‘musical cosmopolitan’, an eyewitness of almost the entire 20th century.

REVIEW:

The Serenade after Ancient Contradances from Graz consists of six cheerful movements for string orchestra, similar in style to Grieg’s Holberg Suite. It is relatively brief (7 minutes), and the tossed-off ending leaves me wanting more of its enjoyable swagger.

Takacs wrote the Concerto for piano, strings, and percussion in 1947 and revised it a few times. The piano part is steely as in Bartok’s concertos, but simpler textures and relatively more conventional harmonies make Takacs more approachable. Although there are many scintillating passages, a lot of the material seems to be waiting for another theme to take the lead—except it never does. The sections never quite build into something sweeping and fulfilling.

The Passacaglia is one of his most serious pieces, though it is not forbidding, even when it pushes up against the boundaries of tonality. The dramatic arc is quite satisfying.

The Three Pieces for string orchestra are cleverly thought-out and should be better known.

The playing in everything is wonderful; Karmon has a lush tone, and Triendl’s piano is fire and steel. The sonics are reverberant, and the string orchestra glows.

-- American Record Guide (Stephen Estep)

World Premiere Recordings of Christmas Cantatas from the Archive of Assisi Monastery.

Max Meyer-Olbersleben, born in 1850 in Olbersleben, Thuringia, studied at the Weimar Orchestral School under Franz Liszt, and later at the Royal Music School in Munich under Gabriel Josef Rheinberger and Peter Cornelius. He settled in W�rzburg as a professor of counterpoint and composition and served as director of the Royal Conservatory of Music until his retirement in 1920. During his lifetime, 114 works were published, primarily smaller forms such as choral works, songs, and piano pieces. Through his studies in Weimar and Munich, Meyer-Olbersleben was familiar with both the traditionalist and the new German musical language of that era, and thus the chamber music gems recorded here for the first time bear witness to profound Romantic sensibility and the spirit of a new musical awakening.

Christmas Songs from different Scandinavian Countries. Sung in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Icelandic.

Most popular and traditional Christmas Music and Songs from the Austrian Mountain Regions.

After a prolonged period during which they were ignored wholesale, the compositions of both Philipp and Xaver Scharwenka are performed again - occasionally, anyway-and some of them have been seen the light of day on record. However, no discographic attempt has yet been made to explore their music in relation to each other, which might seem surprising, given their very similar artistic influences and the close connection between the two composing brothers. In this collection, Yoerae Kim and Matteo Weber demonstrate their sensitivity to a dramaturgically cohesive program, which highlights those intriguing biographical connections. They pair a violin sonata by each brother with a serenade and a suite, spanning a creative period of some 35 years.

Julian Walder (*2000 in Vienna) is first prize winner of numerous international competitions, including the NYIAA - New York International Artists Association Violin Competition. He is the Grand Prix winner in all categories at the Grumiaux Competition in Belgium and was awarded, among other distinctions, the 3rd prize at the 2023 International Henri Marteau Violin Competition in Germany. The Chaconne by BACH, a source of inspiration for countless composers over centuries, forms the heart of this CD. Around this fundamental Baroque masterpiece, many currents, influences, admirations, and tributes have emerged. The title of the CD, "(R)-EVOLUTION", encompasses the word "evolution," signifying how, through the adoption and application of Bach's compositional techniques, his structures continue to live on in many works across the ages. The "revolution" refers to the deliberate transformation of his defining style by other composers over time.

Praised for "her mastery of phrasing and of the dramatic dimension" (Diapason), "astonishing virtuosity" (Revelation Classiques) and "her infinite delicacy" (Le Populaire du centre), French violinist Irene Duval is establishing herself as a uniquely compelling performer with a strong interest in combining works central to the repertoire with little-known gems. Born in France to a French father and Korean mother, Irene Duval grew up in Japan, Indonesia, and Hong Kong before returning to France at the age of eleven. She studied with Suzanne Gessner and Jean-Jacques Kantorow, before entering the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris in 2008 in the class of Roland Daugareil; in 2014 she joined the Kronberg Academy in Germany, where she studied with Mihaela Martin for three years.

The German composer Johanna Senfter was a student of Max Reger, who recognized her musical talent and encouraged her to pursue advanced studies in his composition class in Leipzig, which she completed with distinction in 1909. In 1910, she was awarded the Arthur Nikisch Prize for the best student composition of the year. Born into a well-to-do industrial family, she was financially independent and able to devote herself entirely to her creative work throughout her life. In addition to numerous chamber music pieces, she left behind nine symphonies. From the youthful Sturm und Drang of her first symphony (1914) to the thoughtfully moving ninth (1949), composed after two world wars, the development of her musical language can be discovered here with this world premiere recording.

Mozart, W.A.: Serenade No. 9, "Posthorn" / Symphony No. 32

Kreisler, F.: Violin Music

Bach, J.L.: Motets

Choral Concert - BORTNIANSKY, D. / BACH, J.S. / MOZART, W.A.

Christmas Songs (Leipzig Thomaner Choir, Rotzsch

Schutz, H.: Geistliche Chormusik