Cuarteto SolTango combines the luscious sound of traditional orquestas tipicas with the verve of true chamber musicianship. While most traditional bands performed with a singer, Cuarteto SolTango almost exclusively plays instrumental arrangements, where the melodic line snakes in between parts in all instruments allowing each member of the quartet his moment in the spotlight. The title of this album and it's opening number is, aptly, Sin Palabras ("without words"). This album aims to transport the listener straight into the atmosphere of a traditional milonga, and it is structured in tandas, all separated by cortinas. Each tango tanda is in the style of a famous band leader from the golden age. Today tango DJs play cortinas from a variety of different genres ranging from pop to jazz to classical music. In between each tanda, the members of Cuarteto SolTango present short solo or duo pieces that reflect their background as diverse and creative musicians. Collectively they bring their personal stories together to explore the rich heritage of tango.

Georgian pianist Tamar Beraia writes of this release: "It is an enormous pleasure for me to introduce my second solo album, featuring works by Beethoven and Liszt. These two composers have exerted a strong influence on me throughout my life and played a paramount role in forming me as a musician. I could be wild and unlimited in expression in Liszt, sincere and firm when playing Beethoven. The two, in tandem, always helped me convey my complex individuality. I was 17 years old when I experienced my first encounter with the most sublime works these two composers ever wrote. Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata in B flat Major, Op. 106 and Liszt's Sonata in B Minor introduced me to new worlds of imagination, sounds, forms, and shapes. I was riveted by their intensity of expression, by the contrasts and the poetry they contain. It felt like diving beneath the surface of the ocean to discover a completely different universe with new colors, shapes, and unusual movements, or like being catapulted to the cosmos, surrounded by infinite space and time, exposed to the wonder and mystery of the universe."

The gate opens. The music should sound solemn and magnificent, like an overture: majestic, like Beethoven’s Eroica. That is how Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti begins Musica ricercata, one of his early works from the early 1950s. In exemplary fashion, the cycle blends minimalist structures with a sumptuous array of colors. Behind each note lurks the exigency that nothing should escape the pianist’s attention: he should be aware of all that takes place in the present, while remaining prepared for everything that can occur in the next moment. Such challenges await the performer in Ligeti as well as in Beethoven. Long before he thought of coupling the works by Beethoven and Ligeti on album, Herbert Schuch had tried out the combination in the concert hall. “I quickly get a feel whether a programme works well, or whether it’s just something I’ve conceived in my head. Of course I was aware that these cycles were never intended to be picked apart. I find it important to feel assured that I’m not undermining their essence, and that the new order also makes sense. Such a coupling would certainly not work in the case of a sonata.”

The art of variation has close ties with the art of improvisation. Audiences revere musicians who can extemporize on a given theme, presenting it with refinement and elaborately increasing its effect. That kind of spontaneous music-making boomed in Mozart and Beethoven’s day: competitions pitting one star pianist against another were all the rage. Such improvisations gave rise to sets of variations which introduced the theme at the beginning and declined it according to skill. Gunilla Süssmann has selected three sets of variations featuring themes with widely different origins and treated in thoroughly different ways.

The early 20th century is a period that fascinates me. The prevalent musical aesthetic was disrupted by a new generation of composers who maintained their roots in tradition, but felt a great desire to expand music's horizions: they formed a multitude of currents and embarked on a number of different paths, all driven by the idea of transfiguring everything they had previously known. For this album I have chosen to retrace the path originally taken by Arnold Schoenberg. Born in Vienna in 1874, Schoenberg had an atypical career. Upon his father's death, he had to leave school as the eldest sibling at the age of sixteen to take up a profession. As an autodidact he learned the essentials of composition by sight-reading great repertoire and by playing chamber music on the cello and the violin. Married to the sister of Alexander Zemlinsky, Schoenberg took some counterpoint lessons from that composer and soon started teaching harmony and counterpoint himself, from 1903 on. His teaching activity remained central throughout his life, both in Europe and after having immigrated to the US. Profoundly aware of the continual evolution of Art as a historical necessity, Schoenberg introduced an important change into composiiton at hte beginning of the 20th century. He took it over the brink into the unknown by dissolving the classical functions of harmony, then by eliminating all familiar points of melodic and thematic reference. Schoenberg's Op. 11 is the first truly atonal work for piano ever written....

If I try to put the essence of these works into words, I find it hard to remain objective, for subjectivity is this music's true core. Indeed we are confronted here with a series of different forms: sonata form, ABA form, theme with variations, rondos and dances. Yet those very forms start to metamorphose as we approach the threshold of musical Romanticism - and its forerunners were Romantic poets, several of whom Schubert counted among his close circle of friends. In contrast with cosy Biedermeier placidity, the painful isolation and yearning of deeply sensitive individuals is something equally omnipresent in that troubled age, and ultimately it does not make any difference whom or what the yearning is for. Here we have brooding meditation, fragments, inner disruption, the dissolution of the borders that separate reality from the world of appearances, life form death: nature experienced as a projection of one's own inner emotions, inside is outside". Instead of an old-fashioned doctrine of the affections, Schubert traces a psychogram. That is the context within which I view the Four Impromptus D 899 and the so-called "Sonata-Fantasia" D 894. These works have been part of my life since early youth. My view of them has obviously shifted several times, and will hopefully continue to do so. This recording not only reflects the influences of daily life and the encounters I have enjoyed with wonderful people and literature: it likewise captures a glimpse of my attitude in a fleeting moment, particularly my experience with historical instruments - a passion I have been pursuing for almost twenty years." - Sheila Arnold

If you take stock of all the lieder composed by Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler, Strauss, Debussy, and of course, Schubert, you will note that the majority are slow, meditative, contemplative. Virtuosity is not an essential part of the equation in the lied genre, at least not in the sense of rapid vocal coloraturas or thundering piano passages. The song automatically comes with a text included, and this opens up another world entirely. This has musical implications as well. In Schubert’s case, a great poem whose verses convey a striking message is provided with a magnificently sensual musical frame that allows the text to exude a powerful influence on the listener. “Wandering,” or, better yet, “strolling” through nature is part of the very essence of the Romantic poet, with all his loneliness and longing. He contemplates nature, he listens to the silence, he describes inner emotional states. “Wandering” could also imply a sort of movement, but in Schubert’s lieder we are actually dealing with an individual subject who is moving, “wandering” through the time allotted to him on this earth. We are confronted with a series of snapshots, doubts, and fears. Whenever Schubert depicts the inner emotional state of the soul, he is always honest and truthful. This is Andre Schuen’s third album. His first two have been rave-reviewed all over the globe. Schuen counts as one of the young stars in the world of vocalists, and not only participates in the highest level of festivals, but also in the world’s biggest opera houses.

Even frequent concertgoers will find it difficult to imagine what to expect under the heading "English viola music." A few symphonic works by Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten have found an established place in the German concert repertoire; violists also know William Walton's concerto. Other composers of the British Isles, however, have remained unknown to the German public in spite of their prolific output: names such as York Bowen, Benjamin Dale, or Frank Bridge. These three, featured on this release, belong to a generation of musicians who centered their activities around London toward the turn of the century and ushered in a new period blending Late Romanticism with Classical Modernism. All three of them had a particular penchant for the viola's dark and melancholy timbre: the viola could serve as the perfect musical correlate to the fin-de-siecle mood that had taken over the minds and hearts of so many artists, authors and intellectuals. Bowen's Sonata, Dale's Phantasy and the six pieces by Bridge all stem from the period between 1901 and 1910- a time when the first composers on the Continent were starting to eschew major/minor tonality.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music