This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

Lullabies of my sorrow", that is how Brahms described his short pieces for piano, the intermezzi, capriccii, Klavierstücke and others. In the small form he expresses his deepest musical thoughts, full of tenderness and melancholy. A new recording with Norwegian pianist Håkon Austbø, who shows his deep insight into this complex music. Austbø already revealed his great artistry in his recordings of Erik Satie and of the complete Lyrische Stücke of Edvard Grieg, which received rave reviews.

V 2: FRESCOBALDI EDITION - CAN

This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording

6 MONOLOGUES FROM JEDERMANN &

Here's a double-barrelled surprise: gripping new music for violin and piano and a performing style that revisits a sweet-scented immediacy more typical of previous generations.

Here's a double-barrelled surprise: gripping new music for violin and piano and a performing style that revisits a sweet-scented immediacy more typical of previous generations. Maria Bachmann, a pupil of Ivan Galamian and the late Szymon Goldberg, has a bright, winsome tone and a heartwarming interpretative manner. The works that particularly suit her are Corigliano's 1963 Violin Sonata and the two pieces that were written with her in mind, Albert Glinsky's Toccata-Scherzo and Paul Moravec's Sonata. Of the latter two, the Glinsky is the more memorable—a sort of Sarasate for the 1990s, its lyrical centre-piece flanked by brilliant outer sections. The Moravec is busy and pleasant, but even Bachmann's dextrous advocacy can't quite mask its stylistic anonymity. The Corigliano, on the other hand, harbours the kind of juicy 'tunes' that modern players search for in vain but hardly ever find in contemporary music. The Lento is strikingly memorable, whereas elsewhere Corigliano demands all the tricks of the fiddler's trade—harmonics, pizzicatos, sal pondcello and so on, all couched in an appealing musical context that might best be described as Stravinsky-cum-Samuel Barber.

Turning then to Fratres and comparing Bachmann with Gidon Kremer (ECM), I was interested to note how Bachmann arpeggiates pizzicato chords, a gesture totally in keeping with her warmer, less spidery approach. Ksemer's rougher-edged but rather more ethereal reading still gets my vote, but Bachmann provides an engagingly demonstrative alternative. Messiaen himself said of his "Praise to the Immortality of Jesus" that it "specifically addresses the second aspect of Jesus, namely His human aspect, the Word that has become flesh, resurrected immortal to give Him life." And it's as well to bear that in mind when listening to Bachmann's unusually sensuous performance, an affectionate, this-worldly option to the more withdrawn manner of, say, Luben Yordanoff (with Barenboim on DG).

Bachmann receives sympathetic support from Jon Klibonoff and both are nicely recorded. I thoroughly enjoyed this recital, and I sincerely hope that there's another on the way. But if and when it arrives, I do hope that RCA drop their tiresome idea of fold-up annotation: within a day or so, my copy was already beginning to look like an old shopping list. Booklets are far better. Incidentally, why photograph the immensely personable Maria Bachmann entangled in net curtains?

-- Robert Cowan, Gramophone [12/1993]

2009 10 X CD box set collection. Historical Russian Archive live recordings from 1964-1988 conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky. Includes orchestral works by Haydn, Dvorák, Fleischmann, Shostakovich, Shebalin, Shaporin, Rakov, Agadzhikov, Volkonsky, Belimov, Polovinkin, Mosolov & more.

MacMillan: Veni, veni Emmanuel

MUSICA SACRA: MOZART'S REQUIEM

HARRIS GOLDSMITH PLAYS BEETHOV

BOHEMIAN SONGS

V 3: PIANO WORKS

KLAVIERSTÜCKE

Mozart, W.A.: String Quartets Nos. 14, 15

V 11: COMPLETE SONATAS, K 476-

“Weil and his [Tafelmusik] players convince us that Beethoven can sound as radical in the 21st century as he must have done in the 19th”- Gramophone Magazine. Tafelmusik is thrilled to present its recordings of the complete Beethoven symphonies, six CDs packaged in a striking box set. Recorded under the direction of conductor Bruno Weil over a twelve-year period, Tafelmusik’s cycle marks the first time a North American orchestra has recorded all nine Beethoven symphonies on period instruments. Recorded in Toronto at Koerner Hall and George Weston Recital Hall between 2004 and 2016, these performances chart Tafelmusik’s evolution as it expanded its repertoire to explore the music of classical and early romantic composers. The set contains recordings originally made for the Analekta label, including the JUNO Award-winning Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6, and the JUNO Award-nominated Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8. Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, and the JUNO Award-nominated Symphony No. 9 were recorded live in concert on the Tafelmusik Media label. Under the direction of Bruno Weil, Tafelmusik first performed a Beethoven symphony (No. 2) in Toronto in 1993. Maestro Weil also directed the orchestra in international performances of Beethoven symphonies at the Klang und Raum Festival in Irsee, Germany, during its 19-year tenure there as orchestra-in-residence. Much admired by the international music press, Tafelmusik’s Beethoven interpretations have been praised for their “transparency of articulation and balance … remarkable precision, vitality and tonal focus. Beethoven benefits mightily from the silken strings, woodsy winds, clarion brasses and pinpoint timpani” (Gramophone Magazine). “We approach the Beethoven concerts and recording as if they were the very first performances, as though the music had been composed yesterday. There’s no sense of routine with Tafelmusik musicians and everybody’s playing with a full heart and a full soul and spirit. That is the secret to a great performance,” - Bruno Weil. “Although the Beethoven symphonies are familiar to many music lovers, few have had the privilege to experience them as Tafelmusik and Bruno Weil have over the past many years. Our journey with Bruno exploring these great works has been a profound and intensely personal one.” - Jeanne Lamon, Music Director Emerita

V2: FACE CHALLENGE IN MUSIC

DOPPELCHOERIGE GESAENGE

V2: MADRIGALI LIBRO

sCORDAtura is an Italian concept that implies the tuning of strings in different combinations through which the instrument receives a special sound, rich in colours and resonant in certain tones. CORDA, means "string" and comes from the Latin word CHORDA, which according to Aegidius of Zamora, a theorist from the 13th century, comes from CORS, meaning "heart". The action of the string on the instrument symbolizes the beating or the pulse of the CORS, being the motor that gives it life. Originally from Alicante, the viola da gambist and cellist, Fernando Marín has specialized in bowed instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, historical interpretation and chamber music. He studied at the Conservatory of Oviedo, the International School of Music and Fine Arts in Prague, the Conservatory of Music in Cologne and at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. Quartz released his first solo CD, eVIOLution, which traces the origins of the viola da gamba. He has also written articles on musical rhetoric and gut strings, which have been published by Nassarre, a journal for musicology, and an article on ornamentation and improvisation for the magazine Quodlibet. As a result of his research he has invented his own historical gut strings, which he has patented.

Felix Klieser first began to take a serious interest in the Horn Trio of Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) at the age of thirteen. Back then he was just a junior student at the College of Music and Drama in Hanover. He bought several different recordings of the work, including one featuring the hornist Peter Damm, whom he was later to meet at a master class in Dresden. “I picked up quickly that Felix was extraordinarily talented. He was able to elicit from the horn a soft, warm sound, a distinctly Romantic horn tone,” says the former horn-player of the Dresden Staatskapelle in high praise of Klieser in the booklet text to the young musician’s new CD entitled “Horn Trios”, released on the Berlin Classics label on September 29, 2017. “The Brahms Trio is the pride of the horn literature,” according to Peter Damm, a view he shares with Felix Klieser. That led him to seek out other such works, perhaps even unknown literature from the horn trio genre. He came across the French composer Frederic Nicolas Duvernoy (1765–1838), who was hornist at the Paris Opera, Faure pupil Charles Koechlin (1867–1950) and the Mannheim-born Robert Kahn (1865–1951) who was hounded by the Nazis. The result is a programme of works spanning nearly 100 years of development of the horn trio, which bring Felix Klieser a further step towards his goal: to place the horn centre stage as a colourful and profoundly Romantic instrument. Such a plan requires the right chamber music partners, whom Felix Klieser has happily found: at the piano sits the outstanding and sensitive Herbert Schuch, while the violin is played by the Ukrainian ARD competition winner Andrej Bielow. “It was a wonderful experience for us to learn these pieces, some of them quite new to us, thereby expanding the scope of the chamber music genre in an exciting way,” enthuses Felix Klieser.

Sibelius: Piano Works Vol. 1

The songs and ballads written by Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) for the radio play Kalifornische Ballade (California Ballad) are among his least known works and are presented here for their first release ever. Started in Berlin in 1932, the exiled composer's work was eventually completed in London in 1934 and was broadcast for the first time on December 7 of that year, albeit in a foreign language: the Brussels radio broadcaster recorded the work sung in Flemish by Ernst Busch on lacquer discs that were recently rediscovered in a Belgian archive; they were made during the second transmission of the narrative radio play in 1935, and are now being offered to the public on record for the first time. Just 18 months after this second broadcast, Ernst Ottwalt, a friend of Eisler and author of the text to California Ballad, was arrested in Moscow in 1936, during Stalin's Great Purge; he died in a Siberian gulag in 1943. Following the events of 1933 that had suspended the writing and public performance of California Ballad, this depressing turn for the worse may have deterred the composer from contributing to a revival of the work in subsequent years.

SCHNITTKE: Cello Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 / Epilogue / Musica no

A delightful program of Lullabies put together by Polina Osetinskaya with her young family in mind. This is a program that lulls the listener into dreams and daydreams. You can take a trip from the early 20th century, to the 19th, then to the 21st and back to the 19th and experience Batagov and Liszt suddenly becoming contemporaries with Schumann; Tchaikovsky and Desyatnikov seemingly becoming blood-brothers!