Andreas Tarkmann is one of the leading arrangers of our time. He has won numerous awards and collaborated with Placido Domingo, Anna Netrebko, Albrecht Mayer and James Galway. However, he also appears as a composer, especially in the field of children's and young people's audiences. On this recording his two operas for children “Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse” (The Princess on the Pea) and “Der Mistkäfer“ (The dung beetle) are presented by the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn under Ruben Gazarian.

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This hybrid SACD of Coviello is, if you will, something for the brave, for it holds masses of sound at the ready, which can be a challenge for some stereo systems (and neighbors). + For the first time all four organs of Freiburg Minster are simultaneously operated by one player. Organist Gerhard Gnann has chosen original Bach works and romantic adaptations of his music for this program. + The acoustic conditions for this were also a big challenge, but sound engineer and label co-owner Moritz Bergfeld fully mastered the challenge. + The result is far more than just an audiophile experience.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

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For the new recording of Johannes Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, Chorwerk Ruhr decided to use the version with four-hand piano accompaniment created by the composer himself. A comparatively small ensemble of singers ensures perfect comprehensibility of the text. This rarely played version opens up new perspectives on the seemingly familiar work. CHORWERK RUHR is one of the most important chamber choirs in Germany. Founded in 1999 by the Kultur Ruhr GmbH, the Kommunalverband Ruhrgebiet, the City of Essen and the State Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Urban Development, Culture and Sport, the vocal ensemble has become a solid pillar of vocal art in German-speaking countries. The extraordinary goal of the choir is to meet the special requirements of solo ensembles as well as to achieve a perfect fusion of the ensemble in the choir sound.

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Antje Rux and Lee Santana venture on an unconventional spiritual journey in their latest release. They found inspiration for their song cycle in the poet Angelus Silesius, who made a particularly deeply felt religiosity the basis of his texts. The Breslau court composer Georg Joseph set the 200 poems of his Heiligen Seelenlust to music as early as the 17th century. Lee Santana selected 14 of them and made them the starting point for further arrangements with ritornellos and preludes. Antje Rux explains the unusual principle behind this compilation: 'We have combined the Silesius songbook by Lee with a small, fine selection of Georg Joseph songs, harmonised in terms of content. Since both composers use modal keys, it will sometimes not be immediately recognisable to the listener whether they are musically in the 17th or 21st century.' These interweavings create extraordinary sound effects that make the spirituality tangible.

MELODIA MEDITERRANEA is a collection of art songs based on the folk music of the Mediterranean region. It draws upon melodies and traditional texts, many of which are still sung today in Italy, Greece, and Spain. The project was born from a musical encounter between Yannis Tsanakaliotis, Andreas Nebl, and Lee Santana with soprano Maria Palaska. This meeting developed into a long-term collaboration, characterised by a shared longing for the sounds and images of the Mediterranean. In this project, the three instruments - piano, accordion, and vihuela - merge in a unique way with the voice, creating a distinctive musical atmosphere.

His life, shrouded in mystery, offers plenty of room for speculation and fantasy: Large parts of Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli's biography lie in unexplored and now probably also unexplorable darkness; he appears in various places, first secured in Innsbruck in 1660, then in Upper and Central Italy, he is preceded by a legendary reputation as a violin virtuoso, he publishes violin works, apparently without worrying about a stringent opus narrative, and it probably comes to a dramatic climax when he kills a fellow musician in a dispute in Messina in 1675 and then flees to France and finally to Madrid. His sonatas are no less fascinating: To many they did indeed seem 'baroque', i. e. overloaded and bizarre, but today we recognise in them a fascinating link between the virtuoso Italian and the southern German-Austrian baroque instrumental style, with it's typical harsh contrasts and surprise effects. Daniel Sepec and his colleagues present them with their usual precision.

After it's Baroque heyday, the oboe did not have an easy time of it in the 19th century. The Romantic period favoured the warmer, fuller sound of the clarinet, and the former star among the wind instruments was rarely featured in solo works. Reason enough to remedy this situation, thought the famous master arranger Andreas N. Tarkmann and set to work. It was no coincidence that he chose Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, whom he considers to be the consummate composer of the early Romantic period. From seven selected 'Songs without Words' - typically Romantic short piano preciosi - Tarkmann creates a fascinatingly dense suite for oboe and string orchestra. A much larger work inspired him to create a homage to Mozart and his concerto for flute, harp and chamber orchestra. Tarkmann takes up this instrumentation and gives Mendelssohn's concerto, originally scored for violin, piano and chamber orchestra, a completely new tonal guise.

Giuseppe Verdi wanted his seventh opera to be passionate, fiery and action-packed, and he wanted a real prima donna to take centre stage. He found the ideal subject in one of the most famous female figures in world history: Joan of Arc. Verdi was highly satisfied with Temistocle Solera's libretto. It was, he wrote in August 1844, 'almost of an unusual beauty'. In fact, the title role brings a special radiance to the opera, which is not necessarily one of the composer's most prominent roles on the repertoire today. However, it was celebrated by the premiere audience, and the day after the premiere Verdi wrote to his friend Francesco Maria Piave: 'Without exception and without doubt, it is the best of my operas'. A few successful performances followed, but then the work faded into the shadows of Verdi's later, even more famous operas. It is high time to bring it back to light!

In Baroque works, everything had it's meaning: The shapes and proportions of musical works often did not come about by chance, but were based on symbolically charged numbers - whether from geometry, mythology or architecture. Bach was a great friend of this numerical symbolism, and his colleagues Barriere, Forqueray and Couperin also often had hidden extra-musical interpretive levels. This new release from Wunderkammer explores these composers and the symbolism they tucked into their compositions. Wunderkammer is an ensemble founded by Sarah Perl, Mira Lange, Martin Seemann and Peter Uehling in Berlin. With infinite curiosity and the building blocks of inspiration, knowledge, and affection, Wunderkammer sets out to further explore the music of the baroque and thus preserve it for us all. With their instruments harpsichord/organ, cello, and viola da gamba, they form a stable basis for bringing the music of the 17th and 18th centuries to chamber music.

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