“Arrangements, paraphrases, copies – in the music world, these are just a few of the terms that designate the same genre, which has probably existed as long as art itself. What is an arrangement? Is it more or less a copy of the original, or is it an independent work in its own right? How far can the arranger stray from the original? Who is the main author: the composer or the arranger? Even from a legal point of view, this subject is so complex that no clear answer has yet been found. Throughout his life, Bach often arranged works by other composers and continually rearranged his own. This was something he found natural, and in his day and age it was nothing unusual. In the case of a great number of his works for keyboard, we are not sure whether they were intended for harpsichord, organ, or even clavichord. I have always found this subject of great importance: as a pianist, if one chooses the modern grand as the medium for these pieces, one is performing Bach exclusively in “arrangement” form. In this context I decided to examine the creative interrelations among works by several composers separated by time and space: from Vivaldi to Busoni, from Bach to Franck and Liszt, in order to conceive a programme for this album with the figure and the oeuvre of Bach as connecting element: “All Around Bach.” (Stephan Simonian)

The duo Jonian Ilias Kadesha and Vashti Hunter write of their new release: “When choosing the title of this album, we were immediately drawn to the title of the first piece in our recording, Dhipli Zyia by Xenakis, which simply translates as ‘a band of two folk musicians’. After delving more deeply, we discovered that Zyia derives from the ancient Greek word ‘balance’, which is such a vitally important element of chamber music, and indeed – in any relationship. Fittingly, Zyia is also another name for Hera, the Goddess of marriage from ancient Greek mythology. This album symbolizes an important part of a journey for us – not only as partners in chamber music – but also as a celebration of our friendship...Our recording centres around pieces which celebrate the joy and vibrancy of folk music, opening with music by Xenakis from the Balkans in Greece, Jonian’s birthplace, then venturing north to Hungary for the Kodály, west to Switzerland/France for the Sonatina by Honegger and finally returning to Greece for a rarely performed duo by Skalkottas. We are both in love with folk music, particularly from the Balkans, and hope to pass on some of the joy it brings us when playing it!”

Although they each spent their childhood in thoroughly different circumstances, Herbert Schuch and Gülru Ensari feel somehow connected through memories of their first musical moments. Herbert grew up until the age of nine in the Romanian countryside near the Hungarian border, during the bleak last years of communism. Born in Istanbul, Gülru grew up as a city dweller. “We both had a record player at home”, she remarks, to show what they had in common. Now, as a married couple and piano duo, they have found time and leisure during the pandemic to look back on the past. Overjoyed by the birth of their daughter, they shared memories of certain moments from their own childhood that seem to stand still in time. For this album, “In search of...”, they looked for music they associate with those moments. In so doing, they were also searching for their own identity. Herbert belongs to the minority of the Banat Swabians: “Although there was no direct Hungarian lineage in my family, the language and culture of Hungary played a significant role in our lives. Conversely, although we were in Romania, we practically had no points of contact with Romanian culture”, he remembers. “The pieces we played at home back then would have seemed out of place on this album; in my parents’ home, we exclusively played the Hungarian operetta tunes that were en vogue. My uncle sang, and he was accompanied at the piano by my father, who had brought back LPs from the GDR.”

“The Armida Quartet endeavors to find dissonances lying like sleeping metaphors on the seabed of Mozart’s music, in order to bring them to the surface and back to life – yet without making them too obvious. In so doing, the musicians commit themselves to follow the original sources, which they are intensely studying in collaboration with expert musicological counsel. But they are also committed to their chosen name, “Armida”, which evokes a widespread opera subject stemming from Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (“Jerusalem Delivered”).In that well-known story, Armida stands for what we would call cognitive dissonance. The Christian knight from the West and the pagan beauty from the East are fascinated with one another and fall in love. Despite her infatuation, however, Armida must surely also be an evil sorceress, since she is distracting Rinaldo, the crusader, from his holy mission of war. Armida’s final submission is sealed once and for all with a battle victory and a baptism: this is obviously a Western projection we need to view with a greater deal of nuance. With its apparently irresolvable dissonance arising from contradictory feelings, the fear caused by the seductive outer appearance of beauty, and the ostensibly unappealable validity of cultural norms, the fictional Armida material is a true aesthetic and cultural litmus test... (Excerpt from the booklet notes by Hansjörg Ewert)

On this release, father and daughter duo Lars and Isabelle Vogt perform German ballads and melodramas. Lars Vogt is one of the most sought after and versatile musicians of our time. He has performed in all the major classical venues of the world, often in collaboration with the most illustrious conductors of our day, including Sir Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Harding, Paavo Järvi, Robin Ticciati, and Christian Thielemann. As conductor, Vogt himself was appointed Music Director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Gateshead (UK) from 2015 to 2020; he is currently Music Director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. Born in 2002 in Berlin, Isabelle Vogt cultivated a passion for theater and drama since early childhood, and today she remains faithful to her vocation in a multitude of activities. In 2013, in Berlin, she star-ted attending the Goldoni Drama School, where she now teaches. Isabelle has participated in a number of theater performances in her native city (with the companies Theaterkollektiv Dokumentartheater Berlin, Theater 28, Grips Theater Youth Club, and others), and she has played roles in television series produced by Sky and Amazon Prime. She has also appeared as narrator in radio feature productions recorded and broadcast by Deutschlandfunk.

Like the 2020 concert season, the concert season 2021 suffered under the pandemic restrictions. Again and again the Klavierfestival Ruhr management tried, with great help of their very flexible agenda, to fix new dates. And that made it possible to record some of the evenings, programmed in this release, which is Vol. 40 in this Edition. The classical program includes a world premiere from Kit Armstrong (for Alfred Brendel). Like in previous years the 3rd album in this release has been reserved for a Jazzline performance, executed and composed by A Bu who installed an energetic, exciting and diversified agenda with 12 tracks.

“Playing with other instruments is always fascinating: it’s not only great fun, but also an important experience for me as a pianist, every time. The piano is actually just a mechanical toolbox that we can operate without having to use our breath. Thanks to its mechanism, the sound is immediately produced; once the hammers have struck, it can no longer be influenced, and the note unavoidably fades away. It is thus essential for a pianist to imagine what it is like to play another instrument, and to study the sound of other instruments in depth. They can be wind or string instruments, or the human voice. Sometimes I imagine I am playing with a string quartet; at other times it can be a full orchestra. With a woodwind quintet as musical partner, I cannot help but breathe with the music: my colleagues are constantly putting that ability on display. It starts with the very first attack. If I just “played piano” as usual, we would never be together on the beat; thanks to the piano’s immediate mechanism, my note would always be there a little earlier. But if I imagine the gentle attack of a bassoon or a clarinet while listening closely, I can make an attempt not to be overly “on time” when I strike the key. I can also execute certain chords as a quick arpeggio, with the notes not quite together. Of course, such a mental image of breathing while playing can also be of great help when I am giving solo recitals: imagining wind attacks, or the upbow and downbow on the violin. The piano is an instrument designed to create illusion: the toolchest produces the most wonderful things, but to achieve them, we, as players, are required to use our imagination.....“ (from the artists)

In the 19th and 20th centuries, French music achieved a unique profile and was widely acknowledged on the international scene. This success was due in part to symbolic figures such as Camille Saint-Saëns, Claude Debussy, and the “Groupe des Six,” in spite of their divergent aesthetic tendencies.

After France's loss in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Saint-Saëns became one of the founders of the Société Nationale de Musique, with the goal of promoting French music of his time. Forty years later, the “Groupe des Six” would pursue similar objectives, but with very different aesthetic ideals. Claude Debussy had passed away three years earlier, but these young composers were already embarking on completely new musical paths. Saint-Saëns agreed with his younger colleagues about the need of foregoing the monumental bombast and Wagnerian pathos of (German-dominated) late Romanticism. But Debussy and the “Groupe des Six” were more decisive in venturing further back in time, orienting themselves toward Baroque and Classical models, which led to a flowering of neo-classicism. -Pedro Obiera

Without wanting to detract from the genius of Schubert or Schumann, we [Re: Sarah Wegener & Götz Payer] have a different answer: we would have loved to live at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, “fin de siècle”, amidst the transition from Naturalism to Modernism with the currents of Jugendstil and Impressionism. These songs have been part of our lives for many years; among our personal favorites. It is a wonderful feeling to be able to grow and mature in tandem with music we have known and loved for a long time. If we were to write down our own personal experiences associated with Richard Strauss in a book, we would recount precious moments such as the pleasure of performing his orchestral songs under the batons of Mariss Jansons and Vladimir Jurowski.