“He was too modern for the conservatives, and he did not manage to catch up with the 'New Music', despite his close personal relationship to Schönberg" - This brief characterization of Zemlinsky’s compositional style shows that the composer 'feil between two stools' even while he was alive. The opera was written at the suggestion of Gustav Mahler between 1903 and 1906. In 1907 he was engaged by Mahler as director of music at the Court Opera; at the same time, his third opera "Der Traumgörge" (Görge the Dreamer) was accepted for its first performance. Following Mahler's resignation, however, the opera was dropped by Mahler's successor, even though it had already been rehearsed, and it stayed untouched till the 1970s when the scores and parts have been found in the archive of Vienna State Opera. It's time that this recording - who was the first complete recordings - as well as Zemlinsky's masterpiece turn back to the awareness of the musical life.

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

The fate of the lovesick monk Ekkehard unfolds against the historical background of the battle against heathenism and the Hunnish invasion - things which the broad and lavish grand-opera framework not only justifies but virtually demands. Abert set this very motley text to music in such a way that each of the various worlds and situations is given its appropriate expression, emulating "just about all the styles represented in opera today". However, his approach is not one of simple eclecticism; the entire work is set in the fully individual tonal language he had developed in his previous operas. The young tenor Jonas Kaufmann with his brilliant timbre had the best requirements to present the main-role in this nearly unknown opera. This production was one of the first recordings in general for him, now re-mastered and new released again.

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.

From the outset, Ernst Krenek stood between the sometimes antagonistic musical worlds of his mentor Franz Schreker, on the one hand, who wrote in the world of late Romanticism, and Arnold Schoenberg, on the other, who broke new ground. So, his own development towards becoming a unique personality in modern music history progressed correspondingly slowly. In his subsequent travelling years, as a composer he was on a quest for new means of expression, finally culminating in two such contrasting works as the jazz opera Jonny spielt auf and the technically strictly twelve-tone opera Karl V. Afterwards, he occasionally resorted to these earlier stylistic devices like we can hear on this recording as example of the 1927 composed Potpourri and years later written Tricks and Trifles (1945)

The Symphony No. 1 in D minor op. 9 belongs to Dohnányi’s early years of success. Among all the influences of the late Romantic tradition, that by Brahms’ music can be discerned here once more. From it, Dohnányi forms a kind of early Neo-Romanticism that can be viewed as a continuation of the 19th century while avoiding the Expressionist, sprawling violence of the beginnings of Modernism in the 20th century. Reminiscent of Mahler and Strauss is the sovereign treatment of the large orchestra, in which many details stand out, making a major contribution towards the quality of the work. The Symphonic Minutes op. 36 was written in 1933 in the context to compose a Hungarian dance game.

With this release Capriccio started a new Edition with recordings of these still less well-known but powerful music from the hungarian Composer Ernst von Dohnányi.

REVIEWS:

The First Symphony in D minor was composed in 1901 and contains five movements. The first movement is in sonata form. Immediately, one is struck by a lush romantic sound, and interesting harmonies. One certainly can hear the influence of both Brahms and Bruckner here, but Dohnányi’s is very much an individual voice.

The symphony is followed by the five-short-movement Symphonic minutes, Op 36, written thirty odd years later. This work is cheerful, colourful, has a national flavour and colour, and ends the disc in style. The writing is dazzling and virtuosic, and it certainly makes me wish that the composer had written more.

-- Classical Music Daily

I wasn’t prepared for this brilliant reading of Dohnányi’s First Symphony. I haven’t heard the Botstein recording, but comparison with the Bamert results in a toss-up: Paternostro is a bit broader in most movements, but the playing is equally incisive and Capriccio’s recording is wonderfully clear and full, with marginally more audible detail than Chandos gives Bamert. The only clear advantage for Bamert is his more energetic Scherzo, although even here Paternostro’s rhythms are a bit clearer. Solo woodwind work and the brasses altogether are truly distinguished. If you don’t yet have a recording of the Symphonic Minutes, Paternostro scores over Bamert in the choice of fillers; Bamert gives us the American Rhapsody, a less important work from Dohnányi’s last years.

In short, this is a real treat.

-- Fanfare

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 “Première Portraits” Capriccio set an example for the support of young and talented artists and invite them to release their première album for a worldwide audience. Melba Ramos, Puerto-Rican Soprano, studied at Pablo Casals Conservatory of Music in San Juan, capital city of her home country. She distinguished herself by winning several opera singing prizes. After being active at the Opera Studios in Cologne and in Wuppertal, she made her way as coloratura soprano to the Ensemble of the Volksoper in Vienna in 2003 to which she is still dedicated today. In parallel, numerous guest engagements led Melba Ramos to esteemed places to work at as the Komische Oper Berlin, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and further Opera Houses in cities such as Bonn, Mannheim, Bremen, Kassel, Hamburg, Hannover, Saarbrücken, Nuremberg and many more.

“Yesterday, with genuine pleasure I attended a kind rehearsal of the opera ‘Peter Schmoll und seine Nachbarn’ by my pupil Mr. Carl Maria von Weber, and I cannot help attesting with truth, [...] that I consider it only right and proper that I recommend this, my favorite pupil, be welcomed by the entire musical and sensitive world.” (Johann Michael Haydn, 1802) After the artful overture, which may make an absolute claim to autonomy, Peter Schmoll shows a colorful succession of a total of 20 numbers, as was customary in the musical comedies composed in this manner for about three decades. In Peter Schmoll, we see glimpses of the ‘typical’ Weber, based primarily on the melodic idea, such as we know him today from Der Freischütz, written in 1817.

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.

Joseph Martin Kraus, also named as the "Swedish Mozart", has been many years a shadowy existence in music history. Gluck and even Joseph Haydn saw "a real genius" in his virtuosic and nearly early-romantic works. His position as composer at the Swedish court under Gustav III made it possible to have a fixed income and a blithe creativity. This new release gives us an overall musical impression of his compositions in all genres: Beginning with the incidental music to Amphitryon, the high virtuosic Italian Cantatas, his Symphonies from different life periods, till the early String Quartets- it is clear that Gluck and Haydn were not mistaken in their assessment of his skill and prowess.

The Austrian composer Gottfried von Einem got to know the mechanism of this process himself, and it was ultimately thanks to some good fortune that he did not become one of the countless victims of the Nazi system of injustice. He was one of those great composer personalities that played a major role in rebuilding the waste of the Austrian music scene after 1945, following the devastating cultural policies of Austrofascism, which were above all hostile to modern trends, and even more so those of the Nazis. Catchy thematic and melodic ideas, sharply accentuated rhythm, strong gestural and dance-like vigor and a pronounced feeling for differentiated timbre characterized von Einem’s highly personal musical diction, which can also be discerned in the opera Der Prozess. Einem-pupil, composer and conductor HK Gruber made an amazing, by audience and press enthusiastic celebrated concertant performance during the Salzburg Festival 2018, which is documented on this recording.

After the great success and Grammy nominated album of Piano Concertos by Russian composer Zara Levina, this recording focuses now on different types of chamber music compositions by the same composer. Again, the Riga-born pianist Maria Lettberg plays the leading part on this recording and shows the high creativity of the unjustified forgotten composer. Zara Alexandrovna Levina, born 1906 in Alexandrovsk (Ukraine), witnessed two world wars, the Revolution as well as the collapse and totalitarian reconstruction of her homeland. She was under the constant ideological pressure of the existentially threatening state censorship, which was particularly exerted by the notorious RAPM (Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians) in the 1920s and 1930s, driving her to the brink of a creative and health disaster. However, Zara Levina was able to retain her own and unmistakable voice in her music. She died in Moscow on 1976 as a respected and much-performed composer beloved of musicians such as David Oistrakh, Maria Grinberg, Victor Knuschewitzki and the public alike.

REVIEW:

Zara Levina’s Piano Concertos made something of an impression when Capriccio brought out its disc in which Maria Lettberg featured prominently, as she does in this latest disc devoted to Levina’s music. Here the focus turns to instrumental and chamber music.

There are two piano sonatas. The first dates from 1925 when she was 19 and is an exercise in ultra-compression; it’s the size of a Scarlatti sonata at rather less than six minutes in length. As is so evident in her concertos she was profoundly influenced by Rachmaninov, and the intensity of the chording reinforces the fact in this taut, descriptive work. Over a quarter of a century later she wrote her second sonata, cast in three conventionally-sized movements. There’s almost childlike innocence in its opening Allegretto, a pellucid sense of generosity too, though the central Andante sees the music deepen in expression that encourages a fiery and passionate Allegro finale. The work progresses from sweetness to purposeful drama by a process of clarification of expressive intensity. Maria Lettberg is the perfect exponent.

In 1928 she wrote a Poème for viola and piano, a sliver of a piece shorter even than the First Piano Sonata. Nevertheless, it manages to convey a rich and refined elegance and allows the viola a brief central panel to muse rhapsodically. The Violin Sonata, a work that predates the Second Piano Sonata by a year, is a piece that combines attractive themes with pellucid writing. The solemn nobility of the central slow movement also sports a beautiful lyric section that swings deliciously before returning to the melancholic tread of the opening paragraphs. The finale, meanwhile, has puckish Prokofiev-like leanings and proves another opportunity for enlivening variation of mood and tone from Levina.

The Three Piano Pieces of 1940—a Wiegenlied, Dance and Toccata—exude light spirits. The first is played with a rich sentiment that almost defeats the chilly acoustic, the second is fulsome and energetic, and the third is a darting, exciting affair with some unusual Iberian-flamenco evocations. The Fantasy on Bashkirian Themes is another six-minute piece, this time for violin and piano dating from 1942. The dancing airs are delicious; there are quirky folkloric elements at work, too, and plenty of virtuosic flourishes for the fiddle. Interesting too, that those Bashkirian themes sound to my ears very like Gershwin and Robert Russell Bennett. Despite the 1943 date the Canzonetta for cello is deft and relaxed. This leaves the Hebrew Rhapsody, a work that occupied her for 25 years, on and off. It was finally completed shortly before her death but written for two hands. Here we hear a four-hand arrangement made by Katia Tchemberdji who joins Lettberg for this 11-minute piece. The music moves, perhaps expectedly given its rhapsodic and ethnic nature, from exuberance to melancholia to fiery drive. It’s really only in this work that Jewish elements are uppermost in her music. There’s no real clue as to why a four-hand version was played instead of the original—perhaps the added density may have something to do with it.

It’s the arranger who has written the pertinent booklet notes. All the performers—I’ve only mentioned Lettberg by name as she appears so often—are excellent and the recordings are, as noted, just a little chilly but very clear. Levina’s music continues to impress. In addition to studio recordings I can’t help wondering what, if anything, has survived in radio archives.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

Note: Also included in this set is a bonus CD of Christmas songs.

The Vienna Boys’ Choir is one of the oldest boys’ choirs in the world and still a living tradition after more than 500 years. Even Haydn sang there and Schubert also commenced his musical career there. Antonio Salieri was a member of the admissions jury. What is captivating about these recordings is, on the one hand, the clarity of the textual and musical declamation and, on the other, a very special authentic charm deriving from the slight Viennese accent. In the performance by the Vienna Boys’ Choir, it is a question not just of perfect pronunciation and intonation, but also of a sensual musical element that is frequently overlooked in Mozart and Haydn, but that is absolutely vital.