Of all the major Russian composers, Reinhold Gliere is one of the least well-known in the West. His life spanned a vast period from the Czar's reign to Soviet dictatorship, and he made it through the Stalin era relatively intact by mostly avoiding conflict without losing face. Such dilemmas were to haunt the lives of Gliere's pupil Prokofiev, and especially that of his colleague Shostakovich, 30 years younger, but they were not yet current in 1900, when 20 year old Gliere, still a student, injected all of his youthful verve into composing his String Octet in D Major Op. 5. The work soon gained immense popularity in Russia. Shostakovich's Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11 let us look back upon the beginning of an outstanding musical carer that was overshadowed by harsh difficulties. These two pieces with the headings Prelude and Scherzo are from the period when Shostakovich was still a student. Reynaldo Hahn was a student of Maurice Ravel at Paris Conservatoire. He studied composition with several professors including Jules Massenet. He gained considerable renown with his song cycles, operettas, and ballets. His Piano Quintet in F Sharp Minor is a rhapsodic work in the lineage of French Late Romanticism.

As a piano trio, we find it particularly interesting to discover music that is seldom recorded or performed. We enjoy the artistic challenge of interpreting such works using our own individual approach and it enables us to offer interesting and diverse programming. The idea of uncovering and recording lesser known pieces for our first album led us to include a wonderful early work by George Enescu, his Trio No. 1, along with the youthful Benjamin Britten's Introduction and Allegro. Finding our own voice with these scores, free from preconceived musical ideas or influences, is a process that inspires us. It is an exploration that we regard as an invaluable experience. Both Enescu and Britten found inspiration through Ravel's music and this in turn led us to his Piano Trio in A minor, hailed as one of the great masterworks of the 20th century... (Amatis Trio)

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German-Turkish artists Gulru Ensari and Herbert Schuch present this album of Monologues by Bernd Alois Zimmermann. The duo writes of this release: "As students we had already been allowed to take a peek inside the Monologues, but we only had access to a couple of photocopied pages. When the 100-year-celebration of Zimmermann's birth came around, we remembered the impression they had made upon us. When we finally got to see the entire score, however, we took a deep breath: it demands the most incredible acrobatic feats! From the very beginning, we were particularly charmed by the way Zimmermann cites other composers: the quoted passages rise up in the midst of an agitated storm, like islands of tranquility and beauty. The works quoted by Zimmermann are not for piano duo, but we find that they have certain parallels with the other pieces on this recording. The cocky, unpredictable, whimsical aspect of Mozart's C Major Sonata is also present in Zimmermann. It is fascinating to note how he quotes Debussy's prelude Feux d'artifice in the 4th and 5th Monologues, thereby transplanting that shimmering French flair into his own musical environment. Debussy, for Zimmermann, is more than just a source for quotes. The frothy, pastel sonorities in the Monologues are so untypically German, so much more beautifully poetic than anywhere else, except in Debussy."

It would be wrong to classify Nikos Skallkottas as a National Romantic composer. However, only certain works such as the Greek Dances for orchestra or the Two Little Suites for violin and piano have kept his name from falling into oblivion. The Two Little Suites reflect a shift in his last creative years: while maintaining typically strict structural control, Skallkottas was nevertheless evolving toward a less complex style. George Enescu was Romania's true musical ambassador. He belonged to the first generation of composers born in the relatively young Kingdom of Romania, but left his native land as a seven-year-old prodigy to study in Vienna, then i Paris: from then on, he led a cosmopolitan life. He would soon become a world-famed celebrity: first as a violinist, soon aslso as a composer, pianist and conductor. Yehudi Menuhin, his most renowned pupil, referred to Enescu as the most extraordinary human being he ever encountered. Several recordings of Enescu playing the violin have been preserved, including his own Third Violin Sonata with Dunu Lipatti, his godchild, as a sensitive accompanist on th epiano. begun before the Tzigane but only completed thereafter, the Violin Sonata in G Major was dedicated by Ravel to the above-mentioned Helene Jourdan-Morhange, a violinist who was both his friend and advisor. In the meantime she had contracted rheumatism in her fingers and could no longer play the sonata in public. None other than George Enescu stepped in to ensure the work's resounding success in its world premiere with Ravel at the piano.

Andreas Willwohl writes of his new release: "Brahms’ Sonata in F Minor, Op. 120 was one of the first works Daniel and I played together 22 years ago. We already noted the work’s weighty, intense urgency: with wide interval leaps and abrupt emotional shifts from the onset, it feels like a voyage between continents. The beginning flows like lava; later on, the second theme raises its sweet melody in soft hues, striving toward heaven. Through the years, Daniel and I have explored and played many works by Brahms. Daniel has gotten to know Brahms’ lieder output particularly well; in my case, I have become quite familiar with the chamber and orchestral music. Each new exploration of a work by Brahms has added something to our insight; our current interpretation of the late sonatas, Op. 120, has profited from that accumulated experience. Thus we have worked through his output from back to front, so to speak.”

We already start to uncover a wide range of interpretations and perspectives when we attempt to summarize the life of composer Matyas Seiber, for he is not easy to pin down. Was he a Hungarian composer of the early 20th-century Budapest school? A music entertainer on an ocean liner in the 1920s? Was he the first jazz professor in music history, with a chair in Frankfurt? Or was he more of a British artist- since in London, during and after the war, he also worked as a highly respected choir director and composition professor with an international network of contacts? Matyas Seiber was all of those. His music, especially his chamber music, displays that same great variety, sometimes in crazy, witty mixtures. This album features several works where Seiber shone the musical spotlight on the clarinet or on the human voice. Perhaps half a century had to pass for a new generation of open-minded musicians to unearth and rediscover all the humor, felling and energy that this music still holds in store for us, with its fearless self-assurance and its healthy disregard for limitations of genre or national borders. Many of these pieces are thus recorded here as world premieres. Seiber’s attitude was well ahead of its time and remains up to date, as necessary as ever.

Alteration and transformation, influence and interaction! The horn and the piano have gone through immense changes over the course of time, as this recording with works by Beethoven, Schumann and Klebe intends to illustrate. The natural horn, the Romantic valve horn and the modern horn enter in dialogue with the fortepiano, the Romantic piano and the modern grand. On this release, Premysl Vojta and Tobias Koch have embarked on an adventurous musical expedition in the recording studio by dealing with three different types of horns and three different keyboard instruments in the course of three days, thereby attempting to span a wide musical range that depicts the transformation of the historical timbre ideal, condensed as a time lapse. The duo's intention is to show how the language of musical composition itself has undergone profound change on the basis of certain instrumental modifications. The distance covered is immense: from Beethoven's Horn Sonata, still entirely immersed in the style of the late 18th century, passing through Robert Schumann's Romantic attitude and leading to Giselher Klebe's Alteration of Beethoven's so-called Moonlight Sonata, thereby creating a technically challenging work with perspectives that mirror a multitude of tendencies. It is no coincidence that this programme, in so doing, returns to Beethoven, albeit experienced in a very different way: in Klebe's work, innovative, revolutionary elements of composition and instrumental technique are directly noticeable.

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Franziska Holscher on the freedom enjoyed by the composer and the difficulties faced by the performer Felix Schmidt: "It would seem that the works in album programmes are usually chosen for popularity; originality and artistic quality are often bypassed to optimize sales. On this album, however, you have made no concessions to popularity... Regardless of what other people may think, popularity is not a criterion for me. I want to draw listeners' attention to these works, which, in my opinion, are among the most important compositions of their time... Berio's Sequenza VIII for Violin was my point of departure. As one of the essential 20th century works for violin, it occupies a central place in my repertoire, and has been part of my life for many years. Every time I come back to it, the Sequenza reveals new dimensions of sound. We can likewise note a certain tension between contemporary and early music in the works of Berio's compatriot, Salvatore Sciarrino. His distinct style often explores the boundaries of timbre; Sciarrino's typical nervousness in fast movements is reminiscent, in turn, of the music of Robert Schumann. And Sciarrino's figures of rhetoric hark back explicitly to Baroque music. Schumann's sonata likewise associates Baroque forms- specifically, a chorale- with progressive techniques of composition and means of expression. Thus, the relation between the present and the past is the central theme connecting all the works on this album... "

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