“There are countless reasons for loving Bach’s music. Certain musicians and music-lovers are fascinated by its complexity, its flawless craftmanship. Others treasure it for its emotional, spiritual significance with total absence of sentimentality. Others, still, are seduced by Bach’s appealing mixture of transparency and warmth.. When I learn that a composer of Bach’s stature published his impressive collection of partitas under the modest title Clavierübung (“Exercise for Keyboard”), and when I read his statement that music’s only purpose should be “the glory of God and the recreation of the human spirit”, I see that he was manifestly excluding his own person – a gesture that stands in stark contrast with my own generation’s chronic hubris and boundless egocentricity.” (Schaghajegh Nosrati)

On these three albums I am thrilled to present seven highly gifted young pianists who gave their d�but performances at the Ruhr Piano Festival 2019 -promising artists from whom we can expect and are sure to hear much more in the future. The most recent volumes of our Ruhr Piano Festival Boxed Edition mainly featured work of the 18th and 19th centuries, in accordance with each Festival edition's chosen themes; this year, however, we can feature Baroque und Early Classical repertoire on almost two entire albums. On the third we then plunge headlong into the Romantic 19th century with major challenging works by Brahms and Liszt... (Excerpt from the forward by Franz Xaver Ohnesorg, Director)

In this great program of music, Daniel Raiskin and his Koblenz Orchestra prove they are at the highest standard, producing superb sound and very musical playing.

Luca Guglielmi: “Bach himself did not see the autograph manuscript as a 'definitive' version. He kept it as an 'open manuscript' on the rack of his harpsichord up to his death, using it as a 'textbook' for the lessons he gave to his students, never ceasing to insert a series of corrections, reworkings, improvements, small variants and even performance instructions. Bach's hands-on approach to his work in progress proves just how modern he actually was and remains. Through a truly 'holistic vision' we can embrace artistic parameters inherited from our 18th-century forebears: a profound, venerable legacy that remains unknown to the ones who approach the musical art on 'scientific' methods based on calculation and measurement. For this recording we have had the fortune to use an original Christian Zell 1737 harpsichord, a favorite of Gustav Leonhardt to whose memory this volume 1 is dedicated.”

Theo Plath writes: “I always found that the music of Impressionism and Late Romanticism was an object of longing for me as a bassoonist; Saint-Saëns was one of the few composers of his time who helped to expand the repertoire of “one of these otherwise so neglected instruments”. He was unfortunately rather alone in that endeavor – which I find all the more regrettable, since I regard the bassoon’s timbre as quite appropriate for the music of that period. With this album I have fulfilled my personal dream to revel in the music of Romanticism and Impressionism, an era otherwise mostly lost for the bassoon as a solo instrument. Art often depicts our yearning for what is lost in the past. Proust, more than any other author, evoked memory as a source of artistic inspiration in his multi-volume novel In Search of Lost Time, to which this album’s title refers.”

Although Karol Rathaus (1895-1954) and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) were contemporaries, they could hardly have led more different lives. Both biographies nevertheless exemplify the 20th century with its catastrophes, persecutions and destruction, and it is thus worthwhile to feature their music together in the same programme. Karol Rathaus as one of Franz Schreker’s favorite students, he followed Schreker to the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he passed the entrance exam with flying colors with his First Sonata for Piano in C Minor, op. 2 (1920). Unlike the 3rd Sonata, the 1st Sonata still follows conventional, post-Romantic paths. In 1927, Rathaus wrote the 3rd Piano Sonata. The music is freely tonal Rathaus achieves an almost boundless improvisational freedom. This sonata sounds to me like a portrait of the 1920s, describing the moods and turbulences of a big city (Berlin?). In December 1926, 20-year-old Dmitrij Shostakovich presented his 1st Piano Sonata, op. 12. On 6 June 1943, in the midst of World War II, Shostakovich premiered his 2nd Piano Sonata op. 61.

In a series of 3 albums, the Beethoven Trio Bonn explores the confrontation between one of Beethoven’s standard works for piano trio with a further “house music” arrangement of one of his orchestral works. More than providing an interesting pairing, the Beethoven Trio Bonn was keen on interpreting an original work for piano trio alongside an arrangement of an orchestral work “downsized” to piano trio format. Here the very well-known Piano Trio No. 4 (Gassenhauer) with his enormous witty playfulness (we listen to the version with the violin instead of the clarinet) and his three (!) movements is partnered with the Symphony No. 6, in an arrangement of the Brahms friend Christian Gottlieb Belcke.

Stepan Simonian writes: "Why Bach? Why Goldberg? Johann Sebastian Bach was a true "essence" of music: a composer who brought literally everything together in his output, bridging all periods from Gregorian chant almost all the way to Viennese Classicism. In his seven early keyboard toccatas we encounter a young man gifted with genius, enriched by a multitude of musical influences, and still tempted to adapt to the musical developments of his day... Musical cycles such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, The Musical Offering, or The Art of Fugue constitute the ne plus ultra in terms of Bach's mastery of instrumental polyphony. The Goldberg Variations, conversely, present a compendium of his skill in composing variations. Since this variation cycle is written for a two-manual harpsichord, we can assume that Bach himself regarded it as an important milestone in his art as a performer on that instrument. Whether this supposition be true or not, there is no doubt that the Goldberg Variations represent one of the most outstanding works in the entire musical repertoire... Each time I perform, hear, or study these variations, I uncover new dimensions. They are brimming with the finest nuances, implications, and emotionally charged associations. The familiar path to that familiar home remains the same path, but the way I walk down it becomes thoroughly different every time."

Violinist Antje Weithaas stands for highest musicality, exquisite technique, and fabulous playing and artistry. On this release, she plays the solo part of these works, and also leads the Camerata Bern Orchestra. She explains her own reading of the score which in some cases is different from the “standard” reading: “I wanted to record Tchaikovsky for several reasons. Most importantly, I love Tchaikovsky’s music, particularly the two works featured on this recording. I wanted to coax the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto out of the corner of virtuoso tradition, which it has occupied until now. In certain aspects, an established way of playing it has become somewhat cemented over the last decades. But neither do I see that approach justified in the score, nor does it correspond with my view of Tchaikovsky as a musician and a human being. We all found it thrilling to challenge and question our previous experience with this piece, both as performers and as listeners, and to tackle it as if it was new to us…”

This release is Erwin Stein's chamber arrangement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4. In 1921, Arnold Schoenberg organized a series of private concerts, performed by small ensembles. Schoenberg and Stein combined their ingenuity and created "sophisticated versions" of important orchestral works. These arrangements were usually for a few woodwinds, a string quintet, percussion and piano. Stein also added a harmonium, which was quite rare at the time but the organ adds a unique timbre to this arrangement.

Very few permanent ensembles of five string performers can be found on today's chamber music scene, despite the fact that the string quintet genre features a number of beautiful works by the likes of Mozart, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak. The Bartholdy Quintet has been devoting itself to this wonderful sector of classical chamber music ever since it was founded in 2009. With it's debut release featuring Alexander von Zemlinsky's Two Movements for String Quintet and Anton Bruckner's Quintet in F Major, the ensemble is fulfilling it's desire to make relatively rare works in the genre known to a wider audience. "Long before we went into the recording studio, we had already been working intensely on these two pieces - we performed them often in public, with much pleasure", recalls violinist Ulf Schneider. "Each one of these works is outstanding in it's own right; the symphonic dimension in Bruckner's music and Zemlinsky's quite unusual work with a virtuoso final movement. Moreover, apart from such unique compositional traits, each of the composers had something very personal to say. That is what fascinates us teh most - and as we have gone on performing them in concert over the years, we have come to love these two quintets. Their inclusion as the two main works on our first release as a permanent string quintet was thus a matter of course."

It was Antje Weithaas’ own idea to jointly record Johann Sebastian Bach’s six sonatas and partitas for solo violin in conjunction with Eugene Ysaye’s six solo violin sonatas. “The works by Bach are rather well-known,” she remarks. “But what about the Ysaye sonatas? Ysaye is invariably shoved into the virtuoso corner, but as a composer he is to be taken quite seriously!” These solo works by Bach inspired Belgian violin celebrity Eugene Ysaye to write his Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, op. 27, dedicating each one of them to a great violinist of his time. Ysaye is regarded as the main representative of the Franco-Flemish violin school, closely associated with the fin-de-siecle period when architecture was awash with flowery ornaments. In painting and poetry, meanwhile, symbolism and sensuality abounded. Artists either adored or detested Wagner, who became the main subject of musical discussions throughout Europe. Ysaye is said to have conceived the plan of the Six Violin Sonatas within the course of one day in 1924, when he was 66 years old.

After winning the BBC Musica Award as the Best Orchestral Music album in 2018, Adam Fischer continues his Mahler's survey with the great cycle Das Lied von der Erde. He is supported by two great singers as Anna Larsson and stuart Skelton. The conductor writes: ‘From the onset, the music in Das Lied von der Erde is permeated by a special mood. Even the texts, based on Far Eastern poetry, are more mood than content. Mahler repeatedly abandons the words’ meaning, but the mood remains. The music implies so much more than the words! For instance, the third poem evokes the reflection of a mirror image in water, but I don’t see those images anywhere in the music. Mahler is not concerned with helping us understand every syllable. If the voice, in its anguish, is drowned out by the orchestra, that is what the music is trying to achieve…”

Tanja Tetzlaff writes: "We come to hear Bach's works differently because Encke's unfamiliar sonorities startle and disturb us. Inserted between the suites, Encke's pieces open up an entirely different world of sound. With his two pieces, Encke builds bridges among the three suites and refers to them directly in his music. I find that the two works are quite different in character: Cracks is loud and noise- fragile, as well- whereas Clouds is more melodious at the onset... Both pieces feature powerful, incredible drama within a small space. Both pieces are threatening, but also gorgeous. While you are out on the thin, dangerous ice, you can survive if you manage to enter into the right sort of vibration. You can go on gliding in that beautiful ice-skating rhythm without falling through..."

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)

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.

Katharina Konradi and Catriona Morison are counting as one of the young, fresh and international well reputated top female vocalists. Ammiel Bushakevitz has established himself in the top league of the piano partner for singers. On the market there basically no recordings of the special genre of duets for Lieder. They are regared as especially lovely music.

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.

“…Weithaas and Várjon have a great deal to say and are not afraid to say it, but their focus of interest is always and emphatically Beethoven – not themselves.” (MusicWeb Intern’l July 23).

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 and precision, combined with a large portion of musicality.

“In Antje Weithaas’s und Dénes Várjon’s complete edition of these sonatas in three volumes, each individual release is designed to illustrate those stages of artistic development (instead of featuring the works in strict chronological order). From the onset, Beethoven ascribed utter importance to the principle of dialogue between the two instruments, as we can infer from a letter he wrote to Artaria on 19 June 1793…
The current Vol. 2 release contrasts the third sonata (in E Flat Major) of the early Op. 12 group with the second and third sonatas of Op. 30. The CD begins with the C Minor Sonata Op. 30, which is undoubtedly one of the two most dramatic sonatas among all ten works in the same genre (the other one being the “Kreutzer” Sonata Op. 47).

The E Flat Major sonata is also the most dramatic one within Op. 12. On the other hand, the last sonata (G Major) in Op. 30 provides a contrast in the form of a cheerful “final dance” (Kehraus), a function it also fulfils on this CD in the wake of the E Flat Major Sonata Op. 12.

A late discovery of a most important female composer from France for the musical world. Mélanie Hélène Bonis, known by her artistic pseudonym Mel Bonis (21 January 1858 – 18 March 1937), was a Romantic composer in the late years of the 19 c. and first half of the 20c.. Sheila Arnold and Sandrine Cantoreggi initiated this album and discovered not only a piece - Soir - never played or was registered before, but kept her choice also mainly to their own instruments Violin and Fortepiano (on a Bluethner Fortepiano 1871). Two Trios (one with Cello, the other with flute) embrace the program of small short pieces for Violin and Fortepiano, highlighting in particular the larger Violin Sonata, Op. 112.

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.

John Cage (1912-1992) holds his own special place amidst this stylistic pluralism. Although Cage did not specifically write a trio for horn, violin, and piano, his work Music For (1984) can be easily fleshed out in this instrumental lineup. Music For is a bundle of 17 parts that can be randomly associated with one another. Each possible combination represents an entirely valid version of the piece – ranging from a solo performance to piano duet, string quartet, or ensemble with voice. The version for horn trio is called Music For Three.

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.

The recording of this CD�stood entirely under the motto of Richard Wagner, reflecting our desire to put on several of his works in arrangements for chamber music ensemble. Thus, with this Wagner Project, we present several rarities along with a world premiere.�For one, we are thrilled to introduce Engelbert Humperdinck's almost entirely unknown arrangement of the prelude to Tristan und Isolde.�We also have the particular pleasure of presenting Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in the composer's own chamber music arrangement, a particularly gratifying piece for small ensemble.

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)