Classical Music

Exclusive Collection of Christmas Carols Many renowned German-speaking singers - amongst others, Jonas Kaufmann, Angelika Kirchschlager and Christoph Pregardien - and ensembles have recorded their Christmas carol exclusively for the song project. The recordings are presented in two lavishly equipped CD boxes with elaborate illustrated booklets.

Volume 11 of the Carus recording project documenting Heinrich Sch�tz's complete works presents the composer's Matth�uspassion SWV 479 (St. Matthew Passion). Sch�tz, who lived well into his eighties, wrote this magnificent edifice in his last decade of life. A compellingly austere work not yet full-throated in it's overt emotionalism, it is supplemented with additional pieces for Passiontide, including the Litania SWV 458. Under the direction of Hans-Christoph Rademann, the Dresdner Kammerchor performs together with soloists Georg Poplutz (as Evangelist) and Felix Rumpf (as Jesus)

Most tellingly, Christmas songs render the joy and anticipation of children at Christmas time. + The children’s choir “SingsalaSing” of the Landesakademie for young musicians in Baden-Württemberg, Ochsenhausen, sing 26 traditional and new yuletide songs from Germany and its neighboring countries. + This CD is part of the “Lieder Project” an effort that promotes and benefits singing with children. + It emphasizes quality and is designed especially for children. + Proceeds from the Lieder Project are donated to causes furthering singing with children.

Very little secular music by Heinrich Sch�tz has survived today. His songs and other secular pieces are a valuable testimony to the masterful art of madrigals which he acquired during his years of study in Venice. Through this release, we can get to know this side of Schutz- the Schutz who naturally provided music for wedding celebrations, and who set the great emotions of life in the 'madrigalian style.' It is hoped that this album at the end of the first Schutz Complete Recording will evoke another image of Schutz among listeners. The colorful works paint a new, different picture of the composer, which reveals his vitality, his often playful linguistic images and his fine wit. Solo voices (Dorothee Mields and Georg Poplutz, among others) and obbligato instruments - cornets, violins, trombones and viols - meet here and entwine each other in beguiling melodies.

Classical Music

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Frieder Bernius - these names are often mentioned in one and the same breath. Bernius's complete recording of Mendlssohn's sacred choral music with the Kammerchor Stuttgart, which has won many prizes, is a major feat of both interpretation and editing, and has extensively contributed to Mendelssohn's complete oeuvre becoming part of the concert repertoire, a fact which today is taken for granted. On the occasion of his 70th birthday in June, 2017, Frieder Bernius has now produced a recording of the high quality associated with him of Mendelssohn's most well-known secular choral songs under the title of ''Liedern im Freien zu singen''.

Heinrich Schütz’s compositions were hugely influenced by the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War. He continually assimilated his anxious and painful experiences into his works, but in the process created an optimistic, peaceful view of the future. His Kleine geistliche Konzerte II are also a highly sensitive response to the social conditions of the time. This new recording of these works is now being released as part of the Schütz Complete Recording. This is one of the last recordings with the harpsichordist, organist, and conductor Ludger Rémy, who died in 2017 after a long illness. Ludger Rémy has won numerous international prizes for his recordings, including as nominee for the Cannes Classical Award 1997 with Les Amis de Philippe Orchestra and as its recipient with Alta Ripa of Hannover in 1998. As a conductor, he was recipient of the German Record Critics Prize 3/2000 and again as nominee for the Cannes Classical Award 2001 for Georg Philipp Telemann's Der Tod Jesu.

Carus Verlag presents a selection of choral arrangements included in the Freiburger Choral Collection, celebrating various holy days in the Christian tradition.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Apart from his ingenious music for Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music for plays remain overshadowed by his symphonies and vocal works. With his hallmark recordings of the complete oratorios and choral works, the German conductor and Kammerchor Stuttgart founder and director Frieder Bernius long ago staked a claim for consideration as one of the world’s foremost Mendelssohn experts. Bernius’ highly praised recent recordings of three of the composer’s incidental music compositions are now published for the first time in boxed form.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Wiegenlieder-Projekt (Lullaby Project) bu Carus Verlag in 2009 succeeded in drawing broad public interest for singing together in the family and in rejuvenating many of the songs that have been handed down. This marked the start of the Liederprojekt, which was pursued successfully in the following years. A unique, high-quality archive of German-language songs was developed that has been expanded since then to include international repertoire. Following the various themes such as lullabies, children's songs, folk songs, Christmas songs and love songs, the Liederprojekt now devotes itself to some of the oldest song forms alive today: the psalms. One composer, whose oeuvre finds an exceptional variety of equally impressive and moving psalm settings, is placed here front and center: Heinrich Schutz. The ''father of German music'' created a ''psalms project'' of a breadth and depth unlike any other composer through the musical arrangement of the Becker Psalter and of many other works. He is thus representative of all composers who have devoted themselves to the psaltery over the centuries, with the aim of continually reaching people - whether as singers or as silent listeners - through the settings of these oldest songs.