Korngold's Violin Concerto was completed in 1945. This is a beautiful, late Romantic work that harks back clearly to Korngold's earlier compositional style, when he was a younger man living in Vienna. But had he really turned his back on film music he was used to composing in America? Every movement of the Concerto is scattered with fragments from a range of his film scores. The Violin Concerto was a huge success at it's premiere, not least due to the performance by Jascha Heifetz as soloist. The 1950s, a period when Korngold's career and indeed his life were drawing to a close, were a most productive time for Leonard Bernstein. He was achieving major successes on Broadway with his musicals. The Serenade for violin, strings, harp and percussion had it's premiere in Venice in 1954. There were two factors behind the composition. He had accepted a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation. Also, he had long been promising a new piece for his close friend, the violinist Isaac Stern. Both of these commitments coincided in the Serenade, an extremely lyrical, five-movement work, akin to the violin concerto.

Classical Music

Schubert composed his first five symphonies while still a teenager, but they represent just one facet of his prodigious fluency. At this time some of his musical ideas bear a family resemblance to certain themes from Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, but already his own musical character is evident. He began his Second Symphony in December 1814 and had finished it by March 24th of the following year. He completed the Fourth Symphony in about three to four weeks during April 1816. We should not read too much into the Fourth Symphony's "Tragic" appendage, added by Schubert as an afterthought. It may be merely an example of the flippant comments which he wrote on some of his youthful scores, but nevertheless the symphony has more gravitas than it's predecessors. Schubert also includes a second pair of horns to enrich the texture. Actually, this is the only piece of non-programmatic music to which he gave a descriptive title. After completing the symphonic cycles of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, Jan Willem de Vriend now undertakes Schubert's complete symphonic output. This is the first volume in that series.

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Second volume in the ongoing series of Beethoven's Piano Concertos with Hannes Minnaar and Jan Willem de Vriend conducting the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra. Surely among the most interesting and sought-after pianists of his generation, Hannes Minnaar received international acclaim after winning prizes at the Queen Elisabeth Competition (3rd Prize) and the Geneva International Music Competition (2nd Prize). Volume one of this series received raves from Gramophone, Fanfare, Crescendo, Classical Candor, and more.

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This "meeting of titans" features G�recki's String Trio (1962), a rarely-recorded and performed work, alongside Korndorf 's String Trio (1986), a masterpiece of personal minimalism. And as far as we know, these are the only currently available recordings of both pieces!

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A brand-new recording by Ton Koopman, on the wonderful restored Hildebrandt organ dated 1726. Some pipes of the organ date back to the 18th century, something that inspired Koopman to play not only Bach and his contemporaries, but also earlier composers such as Sweelinck and Pachelbel. Naturally attracted by historical instruments and fascinated by the philological performance style, the young Koopman concentrated his studies on Baroque music, with particular attention to J.S. Bach, and soon became a leading figure in the "authentic performance" movement. Among his most ambitious projects has been the recording of the complete Bach cantatas, a massive undertaking for which he was awarded the Echo Klassik Award, the BBC Award, the Hector Berlioz Prize, and was nominated for both a Grammy Award� and a Gramophone Award.

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Classical Music

Classical Music