This new release from Angela Brownridge continues her survey of Romantic composers’ major masterpieces. Today it is difficult to appreciate the impact Chopin’s music had on his first listeners. His mix of Slavonic passion and Gallic precision created a world of such imaginative daring that it left his audiences bewitched, bothered and bewildered. Enigmatic to the last Chopin held aloof from such comments and left the more fancifully inclined to draw their own subjective conclusions. Like Faure after him, Chopin disdained his published tempting tell-tale additions. More pragmatically, Piano sonata No. 2 is Chopin’s darkest, large-scale masterpiece, ranking among the composer’s supreme creations. Remarkably you are left with a work of an astonishing, if wholly novel coherence. The shock of the new continues with the Four Ballades. Finally, the F minor Fantasie.

The voluminous oeuvre of Fritz Kreisler for violin and piano includes many themes of composers from the Baroque to the beginning of the twentieth century and pieces composed by the great violinist himself. We were especially interested in the last category, from which the three Viennese dances Liebesleid, Liebesfreud and Schon Rosmarin are the most famous ones. For this album we chose to record the complete collection of original pieces, no adaptations of other composers. When composing the list of original pieces we had concerns about two pieces not being sure that they are purely Kreisler. The theme of the Rondino in the style of Beethoven could possibly be a lost piece for winds, but we could not find any proof of that. In the Grave, in the style of Friedemann Bach it was also impossible to find the hand of Bach. Thus we included these pieces. The most curious piece on this album is the song, Op. 6. We found it in a collection of works where it seemed untouched. Until now we have found no recording or even a record of a performance. Be it so, we recorded thi smelancholy little piece as a premiere. With this recording, we tried to follow as many notes he made regarding bowings and finger positions. Violin playing has changed since the time of Kreisler and the knowledge of period style performances influences the way we play. Inevitably, our own ideas and taste also influence the way we perfrom on the album.

Classical Music

A brand-new arrangement, for saxophones, of Haydn's Seven Last Words featuring famous soprano Claron McFadden reciting the words before each movement. A totally original project!

Camiel Boomsma writes: "Many of the pieces on this album I have been carrying with me for many years already. In choosing these works for the recording, I was very conscious of that fact. The longer you carry a piece with you, the more you see 'who' the piece is rather than what it is. Liszt's music is like an unspoiled landscape. It's raw, fragile, strong, uncontrolled, poetic and paradoxical. One of the very first works I discovered was Vallee d'Obermann. When I play this piece, I ask myself to open up to this and observe the story that unfolds. To unfold is essential as well in Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3, Au bord d'une source and Chasse Neige. The common character of these pieces is in a way averse of expectations. It is as if Liszt himself as well did not know exactly how the musical story would unfold. And when the pieces unfold, they all communicate something very profound. The three works by Schubert- Gretchen am Spinnrade and Impromptus D899 No. 1 and No. 3- are in a subtle dialogue with Liszt. They represent my own inner dialogue as well, a dialogue between a certain poetic discretion and passion. With this album I have attempted again to search for the layers of the soul, that very specific moving language. Every piece I play is about this endless search. The beauty and expression lie in the fact that I will never find it. It is a continuous journey."

An intriguing project, whose programme is based on Lieder and traditional songs arranged for two tenors and piano. Well-known father and son, Christoph & Julian Pregardien, present these gentle and thoughtful, improvisational and communicative arrangements for two voices. The conditions under which Schubert’s art of the song developed into a kaleidoscopically incandescent spectrum that crossed over genres and the institutionally set, historical boundaries disappear today as a rule under the pedestal that the late nineteenth century began to erect for the composer. The traces of improvisational practice were increasingly lost within a music culture that stylized the printed manuscript into a quasi sacred object. A particularly successful way of leading back to a fundamental impetus in Schubert’s art of the song is through an approach towards the songs that takes the moment of spontaneous performance seriously as a communicative act, without denying the work character of Schubert’s music. The idea of ‘one’ universal human voice seems to materialize with particular intensity in the commingling of two voices of similar timbre, which can permanently interchange and double their identity. Based on our knowledge for instance of the Schubertiade reminiscences of 1868, remembered and noted down by Moritz von Schwind, can we not imagine that the ‘Schubert singers’ Johann Michael Vogl and Karl von Schönstein might indeed have sung alternately (or even in unison)? This is an interesting project, with programme based on Schubert’s Lieder arranged for two tenors and piano.

A new account of the most important published chamber music work by Handel! The experienced, renowned, and awarded ensemble Al Ayre Espa�ol imbues this performance with their usual drive and intensity. Founded in 1988 by conductor Eduardo L�pez Banzo, Al Ayre Espa�ol sought to challenge the pervading clich�s that often surrounded the performance of Spanish baroque music at that time. The spirit of the ensemble has always been to refute these clich�s with musicological rigor and performance excellence, and they strive to give new life to music from the past, thus o pening it up to contemporary audiences.

The structure of Shostakovich's First Violin Concerto is particularly original, with a sequence of four movements - slow, fast, slow, fast - entitled Nocturne, Scherzo, Passacaglia and Burlesque. The opening movement (Nocturne) is a beautiful song, blossoming from a single melodic fragment. The Scherzo is biting and dazzling virtuosic, like a carousel gone wild. The ensuing Passacaglia is, quite simply, the pinnacle of this concerto; a masterpiece - mature, elegiac and highly lyrical. The passacaglia theme is repeated nine times with contrapuntal elaborations. This is followed by a large-scale cadenza that forms a bridge to the finale. The concerto closes with a Burlesque, in which the theme from the Passacaglia has one final, piercing reappearance. Shortly after the premiere of Gubaidulina's Offertorium (1981), the Swiss patron of the arts Paul Sacher asked her to compose a further violin concerto for the German soloist Anne-Sophie Mutter, but nothing came of this due to lack of time. It was only in 2007, eight years after Sacher's death, that Gubaidulina completed In tempus praesens, which was given its premiere by Mutter at the Lucerne Festival. It is a work of extreme contrasts in which very deepl infernal passages are juxtaposed with extremely high, celestial episodes. Much more so than Offertorium, In tempus praesens is a spectacular work for the violinist, who plays virtually from start to finish and barely has a chance to pause for breath. The virtuosity demanded by the work is never an end in itself.

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Peter Orth writes: "While it may seem that everything has been recorded in the classical canon, I've found there still is room for new interpretations. Oddly, the piano music of Johannes Brahms has by no means been exhausted. In my experience with American music teaching, the great masters were very much handled with a certain distant reverence - when in actuality they need to be approached naturally. Coming to live in Germany where the composers lived and worked removes these pedestals in favor of understanding their lives in the context of their surroundings. Having been in the same room to hear the likes of Callas, Baker, Bernstein, Celibidache, Horowitz, Rubinstein, Serkin, to mention only a few, showed me viscerally what kind of fire is involved in making a musical statement. Perhaps having been witness to a time now gone, arguably the last of the great performing generation, has informed in my ethos a kind of measuring stick against which to measure myself and be responsible to. Whether I can live up to any of it is not for me to say."

Classical Music

W.A. Mozart grew up in a musical environment. His father, Leopold Mozart, was a composer, performer and theoretician. Leopold gave his children musical tuition and guidance, also encouraging composition from an early age. Wolfgang write his first compositions- an Andante and an Allegro for piano- at the age of five. Leopold mounted an elaborate publicity campaign in order to win renown for his prodigious children throughout Europe. The younger they were the greater the sensation. Thus, setting off with them, Leopold visited the musical centers of the time. In 1764 they arrived in London, where Wolfgang composed his first Symphony in E flat K 16, assisted by his father and influenced by J. C. Bach. His initial symphonies are clearly experiments, but they are nevertheless well-crafted, fullfledged, miniature works. Leopold Mozart was a composer of an entirely different caliber than his son. His conscious aim was to write simple, understandable music. In his time, “the ordinary man” had started becoming interested in composed music. Since the level of the amateurs was not such that they were able to perform the virtuosic music of the court ensembles, a demand rose for more simple music. Leopold filled this gap. Leopold often used uncommon instruments to give additional color to his music. An example is Die Bauernhochzeit, which draws on a set of bagpipes. In addition, the musicians have to cheer and clap. Leopold also supplemented many of his scores with simple indications for performance. A typical example of the above is Cassatio ex G ‘mit der Kindersinfonie.’