In each volume of my complete recording of the piano sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven, I have clearly chosen the order of pieces with autobiographical criteria in mind. Over the past 15 years, my work as a pianist has increasingly migrated toward music-making in partnership with others. Whenever I was asked what became of my solo playing, I had to answer with a shrug, explaining that I needed a sort of sabbatical to let me practice solo repertoire undisturbed before I started giving solo piano recitals again. Then, covid struck. All of a sudden, I had time on my hands.

Beethoven und Schulhoff in Dialogue
Schuch:"Indeed, it’s quite exciting to look at what was going on exactly 100 years ago – perhaps because 1923 doesn’t seem all that distant to us.
Certain events and circumstances seem to mirror one another a century apart. From a musical point of view, Erwin Schulhoff’s piano concerto is a truly interesting work that has not attained the recognition it deserves…
In terms of style, the piano concerto, composed between 11 June and 10 July 1923, is one of those works where Schulhoff radically deals with the dance types of jazz, which had crossed the Atlantic at the end of the First World War and spread out from Paris until taking all of Europe by storm…
No other pair of composers could be more different – on paper – than these two.
Schulhoff always took a decisive stance against traditionalism. Indeed, he may have been something of an iconoclast, but he was also a talented and well-trained pianist – a pianist who wanted to earn success in that very role. Of course, Schulhoff studied the Beethoven concertos, performed them, and ultimately also took the opportunity (like many other composers before him) to put his stamp on these works by writing his own cadenzas…
…It was also in Berlin – in February 1923, to be exact – that Schulhoff conceived and worked out the cadenzas for the first four Beethoven piano concertos…" (Excerpts from the booklets notes)

Severin von Eckardstein: The idea is a journey from the earthly to the light, it is about the question of how life and death are connected. Now you can say that it is generally a function of music that it catapults you into a new level of consciousness. But I think the four works on this CD do that in a special way, they radiate a tremendous power. They reflect different personal worlds, were written at different times and spring from different genres and sound ideas, yet they all have a similar function.

Next to the quintets of Brahms and Mozart, the clarinet quintet by Max Reger is one of the "war horses" for each clarinet player. Reger had a very prominent female composer student, Johanna Senfter, who was only discovered in the early 21st century. In a WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING her Clarinet Quintet shows, what a talent and professionality she developped.

Born in 1860, Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz was mainly a pianist and wrote primarily for the piano. More than any other musician, he succeeded in incorporating the Spanish guitar idiom and folklore into his style. Thus it is no wonder that many of Albéniz’s piano works have also been performed on the guitar. But things are different when we come to Albéniz’s Iberia, a suite of piano pieces so complex that few solo guitarists have ever attempted to transcribe and perform them. My selection stems from Albéniz’s most well-known cycles: Iberia, Suite Española and España.

A dream comes true, CUARTETO SOLTANGO negotiated for a long time with the star Tango singer LEONEL CAPITANO until he came to Munich for the production - a co-production with Bayerischer Rundfunk. Arranger and pianist Martin Klett and Leonel Capitano have put together 16 tangos in different styles of famous Tango composers. There are famous styles and their founders: Aníbal Troilo, Osvaldo Puglieses, Horacio Salgán, Oswaldo Tarrantino. Elías Randal, Virgilio Exposíto, Acho Manzi, Sebastián Piana etc. provide the music.

This is the fifth album of the Feininger Trio, members of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra – after a Dvo/Smetana album, Debussy/Ravel album – and now BRAHMS plus, a series planned on three CDs, highlighting the young composers following the Brahms times, along the Brahms Piano Trios. After Zemlinsky and Krongold, it is now the turn of Ernst Krenek. A 10-minute work in one sole movement such as this Trio-Fantasia by Ernst Krenek provides a welcome, fitting complement to an incredible masterpiece.

The programme on this CD begins and ends with transcriptions of works by Beethoven. The first piece is the Allegretto (2nd movement) from Beethoven’s 7th Symphony in the arrangement by Franz Liszt, and the programme ends with a solo piano version of Beethoven’s song An die Hoffnung, created especially for this CD. The two pieces form a framework of sonorities and emotions that set the basic mood for this musical journey. The Allegretto serves as a prologue: it looks ahead, indicating the direction we shall be taking. At the other end of the programme, the song transcription serves as an epilogue: it looks back, taking stock of all that has occurred. On the one hand, there is a somber mood that runs through the entire programme: we find it in the Allegretto’s passages in minor, in the Schumann variations, in the third movement of the Beethoven sonata, and in the recitativo-like passages of An die Hoffnung. These are complemented by episodes of light: the A-Major sections of the Allegretto, the first, second, and fourth movements of the sonata, and, ultimately, the hopeful, optimistic sonorities we find in the song transcription with the final cry: “O, Hope!” (Aris Alexander Blettenberg)

Premiered in 1919 in Zurich by the leaders of string sections of the Tonhalle Orchestra with Frank Martin himself at the piano, it displays a wide variety of influences, all forming part of a 29-year-old musician’s search for his own artistic voice. At the same time, the Quintet’s style is thoroughly individual, notably in its choice of rich harmonies. Providing a marked contrast to Frank Martin’s filigree, pared-down early style, César Franck’s profuse, monumental Piano Quintet in F Minor (1879) is typical of the Franco-Belgian composer’s late output. All of Franck’s characteristics seem to blend together in this work which he wrote at the age of 57: Wagnerian chromatic harmonies, dramatic developments similar to those we know from his symphonic poems and oratorios, and a polyphonic musical thinking “in organ registers”

Vinyl Version – The only LIVE recording of this colossal piece of the German composer Max Reger. The Piano Concerto is a fairly special pieces: very heavy, very long, very difficult, it requires a permanent and nonstop action of the soloist

The Linos Piano Trio’s In Search of Lost Dances recording centres on the time of greatest change in Ravel’s life, juxtaposing his seminal Piano Trio, written weeks before the outbreak of the First World War, with Le Tombeau de Couperin, written between 1914 and 1917—each of its six movements dedicated to a friend lost to the war. The most important news on here is that LINOS PIANO TRIO is playing on period instruments music by Maurice Ravel – who died in 1937!! which means a grand piano from the thirties of the 20th century, gut strings and a different tunebase than today.

Both highly in demand on a worldwide scale as unique, exceptional chamber music performers, Antje Weithaas and Dénes Várjon each ideally combine the highest degree of enthusiasm and precision: their energetic, passionate playing is the result of intense concentration. In Vol. I of their complete recording of Beethoven’s violin sonatas, Weithaas and Várjon have chosen not to follow chronological order, but to seek out thrilling contrast and fascinating variety instead – thus making Beethoven’s rapid evolution as a composer all the more astounding.

Two World Premiere Recordings are making this unusual album very attractive, not only for friends of french horn; the sounds and sound combinations are thrilling. Perfectly high caliber the artist crew: Premysl Vojta is one of the leading french horn player in Europe; Florence Millet is very much part of the contemporary music scene, giving master-classes and organising festivals; Ye Wu is Primaria in the Symphony orchestra of the WDR.

This is Andreas Bauer Kanabas’ first solo Lieder CD. He made himself rare on the recorded market, however he is worldwide travelling and singing on the major opera houses. His bass voice is a rarity on the Lieder market and shows many different colours in the well known Schubert songs.

The first group of songs on texts by Ludwig Rellstab starts out in a relatively carefree, rapturous tone: a mood of spring is in the air. In Frühlingssehnsucht, “swelling desire” is colorfully illustrated by images of nature such as the silvery gurgling brook – an evocation of splendid vitality. But clouds soon darken the horizon: the brook becomes a raging torrent of negative emotions. Euphoria gives way to disappointment. The rapturous attitude is curbed: we hear of farewell, with a clear touch of bitterness. In the next group of settings of texts by Heinrich Heine, the story returns to its onset: now less rapturous, somewhat more aloof, and with even more bitterness at the end. We have chosen to order these songs in a meaningful succession that begins with the awakening of love and soon reaches its prompt demise. Is this about love, or only lust? Why does everything feel so unsatisfactory and painful in the end? Are the fisher maidens of this world too clueless to sense that the poet has some truly admirable qualities? Otherwise, why does it always end in defeat?

“My heart is entirely like the sea: there are storms, there is ebb and flow, but in the depths, you can find many beautiful pearls.” Does this passage hold the key? With cheerful frankness, he who longs for fulfillment starts out by admitting he has a tendency toward capriciousness and seduction. He feels helplessly pulled to and fro by his emotions as if they were ocean tides. Pressing his suit, he longs to win the fisher maiden’s trust – but she would have to dive very far down to find a beautiful pearl. By the time we have reached the next song, the two are staring at one another in sheer incomprehension. Tears flow silently, and separation is already underway. “And oh, I cannot believe I have lost you,” we hear in the second-to-last song. He who searches and never reaches his destination, never achieving redemption or a homecoming, ultimately suffers under his own nature. The “world of sorrows” he must bear is nothing else than his own unfulfilled yearning: a yearning to be loved, and to love. The CD closes with Die Taubenpost, which stands for itself, yet also allegorically summarizes what all these songs have in common: yearning.

All Mozart String Quartets complete. The Armida Quartett is seen today as one of the best quartets coping with the giant W.A. Mozart. Rave reviews from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. The Box has been recorded and released in close cooperation with the famous Henle publisher.