Art song had blossomed into a multifaceted genre by 1800, and the debate whether to favor recurrent stanza structures or through-composed form was well underway. Lieder, as the lyrical genre per se, marked out the territory in which musicians could express the most profound emotions. The best composers therefore increasingly chose to through-compose their songs- a logical step, thanks to which they were able to closely follow the content and the speech of the poems they were setting to music. Beethoven already took that very step in his earliest Lieder. The emotional value of a song such as Adelaide op. 46 even managed to convince a late-19th century Vienna music critic otherwise well known for his harshness-Eduard Hanslick, who wrote in 1886: “No depiction of a youth’s enthusiastic love could be more faithful and exemplary than this Adelaide by Beethoven. What sweet, secret bliss shivers in every note of this golden melody!...” Beethoven’s contributions can be described as new arrangements and harmonizations of pre-existing melodies. These were true “songs without words,” since considerations of language could not be taken into account.

Classical Music

George Antheil (1900-1959) had a double life. In the twenties, Antheil was trying to establish his reputation as the torchbearer of the avant-garde: he lived mostly in Europe, scandalizing the public with his iconoclastic music and furiously percussive piano playing. However, in a dramatic turn following a profound personal and artistic crisis, Antheil re-emerged, now in his early forties, as a neo-romantic, fully-integrated American composer, even, to some extent, a conservative. The four sonatas in this first volume of his violin music exemplify the two periods of his creativity. They document Antheil's musical evolution from the percussive First, to the Dadaist-cubist Second and the more neoclassical Third. A hiatus of 25 years separate these early scores from the so-called Second Violin Sonata (i.e. his Fourth Sonata), composed in 1947-48, which is clearly a more classically structured composition.

This album is a compilation which is a fairly typical reflection on the programming of the Spannungen Festival. Most of the pieces in the programme are suggested by the musicians themselves, as they simply want to play those pieces with their colleagues as a way of trying to present unknown music of high caliber that is not often played in usual concert programmes to audiences. The Spannungen Festival is an annual, one-week chamber music festival held in June each year. The concerts are held at the Heimbach hydropower plant, Germany's most beautiful Art Nouveau Power Plant, which is nestled in the idyllic landscape of the Rureifel. The festival first was held in June 1998.

Trio Jean Paul is one of the world's best-known trios, regularly touring around the globe. *Trio Jean Paul/Eckardt Heiligers: piano/Ulf Schneider: violin/Martin L�hr: cello.

Christian Immler writes of this new release: "What remains? And to what extent are composers, when they compose, aware of how urgent that question is? In my opinion, these are the main themes that confront us in a "swan song" (a composer's last work- or, as in the case of our recording, the last opus in his vocal output). In the second part of Schwanengesang- in the songs based on poems by Heine- Schubert attains an unprecedented economy- or rather concentration- of means: the demands thereby made on the performer are literally "unheard of." The text and the music express themselves so directly that the listener can find no refuge in musical solace. Brahms's Vier ernste Gesange, written in 1896, one year prior to his death, paint an entirely different picture. I find that they reveal his inner struggle for personal truthfulness, his hope to attain an all-subliming love after so many years of painstaking sacrifice, while somehow managing to retain a certain kind of faith... Samuel Barber's last vocal work, the Three Songs Op. 45, has fascinated me ever since my student years, because of the songs' multi-faceted style, their refined text and the music's melancholy, morbid beauty. The second song, A Green Lowland of Pianos... elegantly whisks us off into an entirely different universe... As ambiguous as life itself, and undoubtedly as scintillating and multi-facetted as Leonard Bernstein's own personality: that is how his swan song, Arias and Barcarolles, presents itself. This musical potpourri of daily-life situations acted out by singers makes an explosive Broadway entrance in the first song."

Spannungen Chamber Music Festival is one of the few musical events where one can stumble upon four rare gems such as these, hitherto almost entirely absent from concert repertoire. The flute sparkles in virtuoso passages, the piano tackles and overcomes daunting technical challenges, while the clarinet and the oboe play fracefully, "in the best manner". One can clearly tell that these first-rate chamber musicians highly enjoy serving these jewels to their audience on a silver platter. This release features an exciting discovery: the Sketches, Op. 12 by Alexander Krein, who was the main representative of the Jewish Russian School in the early 20th century. Alexander Klughardt's Reed Songs would be unimaginable without their obvious model, Schumann's Fantasiestucke. Thus, this album offers an unbroken chain of gorgeous as well as entertaining chamber music.

This new release is the third installment in the successful ongoing Mahler cycle by Adam Fischer and the Duesseldorfer Symphoniker. Adam Fischer writes in his booklet notes: “I am delighted to perform and record the complete symphonies of Gustav Mahler with the Dusseldorfer Symphoniker. The result, we hope, should be something special: a rendition that stems from an active collaboration in which we mutually inspire one another. This should not be “my” Mahler, but “our” Mahler… Gustav Mahler premiered his First Symphony at the age of 29. For personal reasons I feel a close bond with that 29-year-old Musical Director of the Hungarian State Opera. 120 years later, I was named General Music Director of the same opera house. We both hastily abandoned the institution after 2 ½ years. I would still like to relate a personal reminiscence of one of the performances of “my” First Symphony. The First Symphony was the first occasion I ever heard music by Mahler live on stage: in Vienna when I was nineteen years old, and the experience marked me for life.”

In February 2016 the recording took place in the Studio 2 of the Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich. Dina Ugorskaja pursued the finishing process of the master with great impulse and unbelievable energy during all the time when her health abated, even to the point where she selected and approved herself the booklet notes by Tatjana Frumkis. This project will stay simply as a singular milestone, there was a lot planned by the two artists “…They were also ambivalent toward one another. Prokofiev accused Shostakovich of “devouring everything” (the fact that the younger composer dared to incorporate the street genres of entertainment music into his classical compositions), and affirmed that Shostakovich had no gift for melody. Shostakovich, for his part, occasionally found Prokofiev’s music too crude, too clearly illustrative. Yet in spite of the largely unfair criticism they directed toward one another, each one never let his counterpart entirely out of his sight, or, to be more exact, of his ears. Ever since the 1920s their music was featured on joint recital programmes. The young Shostakovich acknowledged Prokofiev’s influence on certain of his own works. Prokofiev, when abroad, encouraged “chemical exchange between Russia and Europe” and promoted Shostakovich’s works in particular, even expressing the wish that his younger colleague be allowed to perform abroad, too. But that was not to be. From the late 1930s to the early 1950s, their paths went on crossing in the territory of the totalitarian Soviet Union. Ever since then, the Prokofiev-Shostakovich dichotomy, an undeclared competition, has never ceased. (From the booklet lines notes by Tatjana Frumkis).

Classical Music

Once again in 2015, the Spannungen Festival presented two works that reveal the great breadth of European musical culture in the 1870s. Today we have the privilege of counting these masterpieces among the crown jewels of the period. Spannungen means “tensions.” This chamber music festival takes place in the acoustically superb turbine hall of a hydroelectric power plant, and tensions are also what the emotionally charged musical interpretations at this event promise. In 1873 Verdi wrote a string quartet- the only work of chamber music in his entire output. It was intended to serve as a pastime during a long stay in Naples. Only later did he make clear to the world that he was not indifferent to this work’s quality. Six years later, Dvorak wrote his tenth String Quartet. This live recording impressively juxtaposes the Romantic styles of Central Europe and the Mediterranean.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music