In 455, the tribe of the Vandals lived up to their name when they, along with their king Gaiseric, paid an unforgettable visit to the eternal city of Rome. The literal birth of Vandalism forms the backdrop to this spectacular opera. On 13 July 1722, Georg Philipp Telemann demonstrated with this stage work that the hanseatic city of Hamburg had just appointed him as it's new opera director for the best of reasons. Der Sieg der Schonheit (The Victory of Beauty) is an intricately baroque love story with a quadruple happy ending, over the course of which all kinds of uncertainties have to be overcome. The composer pulls out all the musical and dramaturgical stops at his disposal, including captivating arias, grand choruses, martial music and intimate emotions. The result was a resounding success with audiences, a victory of beauty that - as can be heard here - still echoes today.

At first glance, the street singer and florist Sonja could be taken for Eliza Doolittle's cousin. But while she unwittingly becomes part of a linguistic experiment conducted by two elderly friends and blossoms into a fair lady, the protagonist of the operetta, composed by Leo Fall in 1922 to a cheerful libretto by Lo Portem and August Neidhart, she deliberately allows herself to be used as the subject of a bet. American millionaire Brown wants to marry his daughter Mabel to inventor Mr George for financial reasons, but she has her eye on George's secretary and will only comply if her official fiance can turn any street girl into an 'interesting woman' within three weeks. Exquisite, inventive music accompanies the cheerful events peppered with local dialects, whose tongue-in-cheek ending turns the tables on the original bet

Franz Xaver Richter, along with Johann Stamitz, is regarded as one of the driving forces of the so-called Mannheim School and the renowned Court Orchestra that was founded thanks to Prince Elector Carl Theodor of the Palatinate. In contrast to his equally influential colleagues, he represented a more reserved type of composer, clearly rooted in Baroque music, which may have hindered his own career, but certainly did not damage the reputation of this epoch-making circle of musicians. Consequently, this portrait presents us with an astonishingly broad spectrum of musical expression. There is no shortage of contrapuntal composition, lively gallantries, or examples of subtle genre pieces, which indulge in capricious playfulness with programmatic indications-ensuring an enjoyable listening experience.

Outside his homeland; Vitezslav Novak is not nearly as well known today as his compatriot and colleague Josef Suk; even though he also enjoyed great international renown during his lifetime. Like his friend Antonin Dvorak; who trained him; Novak was a composition teacher and later rector of the Prague Conservatory. He left behind a wide-ranging oeuvre that extends from chamber music to ballet and opera. Clear influences from national folk music; a humorous approach to "exotic" elements and a refined sense of sound characterise the language of this artist who began as a fervent post-Romantic. The juxtaposition of the piano concerto; composed in 1895; and the two ballet pantomimes; written some 35 years later; creates a field of tension that compels the listener to engage with this fascinating luminary.

Hans Koessler is a composer whose name is well known, even if his work is not widely familiar. In this case, his partial renown is due to the fact that this Bavarian composer taught the next generation of Hungarian musicians-including Bart�k, Kod�ly, and Dohn�nyi-in Budapest and was ultimately awarded the noble title "von." Although some students complained behind his back about his professorial stringency, Koessler's own works tell a different story. The great creative power, poetic sensitivity, and tonal confidence of his B minor symphony are complemented in the violin concerto by remarkable formal originality-there are probably few works of this genre that unfold their eloquence as a powerful passacaglia.

To the singer of the valley is etched on a memorial stone for the composer Johann Gottlieb Naumann. It would be hard to pay him a more fitting tribute. Three dozen operas; nearly two dozen masses; Italian oratorios; a wealth of German sacred music; as well as a fair amount of chamber music - the man from Blasewitz near Dresden, who enjoyed success at the Royal Swedish Opera before settling permanently in his hometown, knew more than just how to sing on stage and in church. His collections of songs for voice and piano are full of little gems that any of the muses would have fought over. Marie Luise Werneburg and her accompanist Sebastian Knebel have compiled just such a programme here: tastefully interwoven with three small-scale quartets, the songs transport the listener to intimate salons where domestic music-making grew into an increasingly powerful medium.

The fact that Johann Sebastian Bach was able to take up the post of the cantor of St. Thomas in 1723 is thanks to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. He refused to release his court Kapellmeister Christoph Graupner to Leipzig. He declared the appointment of the magistrate there to be invalid and increased the salary of his subordinate. In this way, he was able to long admire the diversity of the man who wrote outstanding works in all areas of composition. For example, in orchestral music, he sought out unusual experiments with unique results by combining seemingly disparate instruments and ignoring formal conventions. Would he have been as successful with the honourable councillors on the river Pleisse as he was under the aegis of his aristocratic employer? After hearing a two-and-a-half-hour selection of Graupner's works, we must thank His Excellency for not letting him go three hundred years ago

Of his important contemporaries, Hans Pfitzner was certainly the one who devoted himself most strongly to chamber music. Often described as the last Romantic, Pfitzner also represents this epoch in a very personal way in his chamber music works.

If you talk about the Viennese School at the beginning of the 20th century, his name will certainly be mentioned alongside Schonberg, Berg and Webern, even though he broke away from the "twelve-tone" school early on and went his own harmonic way: Egon Wellesz, born in Vienna, one of Schonberg's first pupils and a musicology student of Guido Adler: he would need both of these educations in his life. Until the outbreak of the war, he was one of the most frequently performed composers in the German-speaking world, and his five operas were successfully performed at the largest German theaters. At this time, however, he was already a professor of musicology and had specialized in deciphering Byzantine musical notation. Then came the break: in 1938 he was forced to emigrate to England, although he was able to continue his university career at Oxford. The composer Wellesz remained silent until the end of the war, only then did he return to full creative power, writing almost half of his works after the age of 60. The nine symphonies are undoubtedly the main works of this late period. The emigrant deliberately drew on Austrian symphonic music; for him, his symphonic works probably also meant coming to terms with the loss of his homeland.

Mendelssohn composed in all genres common at the time, from piano music to opera. Chamber music also played an important role with 30 works: In addition to four piano quartets, two sonatas each for violin and piano and cello and piano, two string quintets, a piano sextet and an octet, he wrote seven string quartets, which are now available in their entirety in the gripping interpretation of the Minguet Quartet in this set.

She was a great musical talent and a sensitive soul, the child of a socially aspiring family who forbid their daughter to marry the love of her life; instead she was forced into a utilitarian marriage with a respectable husband, but later had an affair with her first sweetheart after all - the stuff of a sentimental novel. Yet Mel Bonis (1858-1937) was no fictional character. She was one of the strongest composers of her time with a focus on piano, chamber music and art songs. She also enriched the repertoire of impressionism with numerous original gems and arrangements for orchestra. Her particularly modern Ophelia, her purring melodie of an enamoured tomcat on a roof at night, her Spanish gypsy waltz and her dances for orchestra are just some of the enchanting discoveries you will find here. Our recording pays a well-deserved tribute to this noble woman.

Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important luminaries of the 18th century as a composer and theorist, although he kept his compositional and scholarly activities so carefully separate that his pieces show no trace of the considerations of this "sonic scholar". The subject matter of his stage works is something else entirely. Les Indes galantes, for example, draws on the latest ethnological explorations of Asia and America, while the grand opera Zoroastre is based on research into the Persian religious founder Zarathustra, who after considerable trials wins the hand of his beloved and the throne of Bactria. One of the most surprising aspects of this fantastic production is how effectively yet discreetly these exotic subjects were incorporated into the established dance forms of the Baroque period, and that Rameau was even able to stage a Native American rain dance.

After hearing just the first few numbers of this operetta, it is easy to believe reports that it's composer Joseph Beer (1908-1987) was a musical prodigy. Charleston and tango, oriental melismas and quickstep - his effervescent mind was so full of invention that the amazed jurors at the Vienna Conservatory exempted him from the first four years of study. When the Zurich Opera House premiered Beer's Prinz von Schiras on 31 March 1934 and it's tremendous success was later repeated at the Theater an der Wien, nothing should have stood in the way of a great career. But the men in brown shirts were opposed to him, and so the comeback of this exquisite high society love story had to wait almost 90 years. This revival is so convincing, of course, that we need not worry about the future of the seductive American Violet - she is on her way to great heights with her prince Nadir.

Who doesn't know this loveable master of light entertainment? asked an admiring critic in 1925, when Berlin composer and publisher Siegfried Translateur celebrated his 50th birthday. Although this rhetorical question does not likely garner even a nominal response today, 150 years after his birth, concert halls were once filled with thunderous applause. The man from Upper Silesia did well for himself with his compositions, not to mention that his student work Wiener Praterleben had just become the hymn of Berlin's Six Day Race and had been transformed to the "Sportspalastwalzer". When Reinhold Franz Habisch aka "Krucke" whistled, the "Nudeltopp" boiled over. But Translateur is so much more. He knows what flowers are dreaming of, he takes a stroll through the big city, waltzes jauntily through life - a charming proponent of a silver era that never really went away.

A few years ago, composer Friedrich Gernsheim was hailed as a "romantic who invented the Winnetou melody." His music was said to be "accessible in a way," and rediscovering it "great fun." The recognition of his artistic value is certainly no more helpful than the anachronism of coincidental similarity to other musical material or disparaging his output as superficial entertainment. A work such as his Fourth String Quartet (1900) is a clear enough example to demonstrate the seriousness of Brahms's friend. Elegiac in character, seasoned with an enchanting scherzo and burning with dramatic conciseness, this masterpiece of the highest calibre leaves a deep impression. Serious and perceptive listeners will notice initial traces of the work in the first string quintet, a good thirty years older.

After Hugo Kaun ended his American adventure and returned to the Old World, he began to pour the exotic events of his life into two symphonic tone poems. These have been in our catalogue since late 2023 under the title I'm Urwald (In the Primeval Forest). He soon rose to become one of the most highly regarded German composers (thanks primarily to his noteworthy works for male choirs), and in 1905 turned his attention to programme music. Sir John Falstaff, the incomparable charmer from William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor and the drinking companion of the future King Henry V, has been given a well-deserved place in the musical gallery of famous literary heroes alongside Till Eulenspiegel, MacBeth, Don Quixote, Don Juan, and Zarathustra, all to whom he certainly does justice from this, his first self-assured appearance. It also provides an excellent introduction to the powerful Second Symphony, which was completed five years later - further evidence of an orchestral maestro who had mastered the late Romantic repertoire with consummate skill.

The Minguet Quartet concludes it's four-volume set here, which now includes all of Mendelssohn's string quartets - not only the seven works by the fortunate Felix, who had a musical career open to him from childhood, but also the only quartet by his older sister Fanny, for whom music was only ever allowed 'to be an adornment, never the foundation of life,' as their father Abraham decreed with the declamation of a patriarch. And once again, the question arises as to why it is permissible to shackle unmistakeable talent with the chains of convention. This unique work by the then 30-year old composer soars to masterful heights with it's individual form and exuberant emotions. It is an ideal counterpart to the classical mood of the E flat major quartet with which Felix completed his Opus 44 four years later.

Alessandro Stradella loved taking risks of an amorous nature. These put him in danger repeatedly. He was wounded several times, and they ultimately caused his premature death when he was murdered on 25 February 1682 in Genoa. This unsolved crime story inspired no fewer than six operas between 1837 and 2017, but it also cast a shadow over the Bolognese aristocrat's actual talent, who could soften just about any soul with his talent for melodies and his refined dramatic sensibility. He was not only renowned in the opera house, but also with his intimate chamber cantatas that often summarized the content of a whole life as captivating snapshots: Seneca's demise, the fall of commander Belisarius, Nero's delirious triumph in the face of Roman conflagration, and the Addio of Marcus Antonius may possibly have saved Stradella - if his murderers would have listened to his music.

The psaltery is one of the oldest string instruments in human history. In the German-speaking world, it is described rather coarsely as a Hackbrett. In Farsi, it is known as a santur and in Hungarian a cimbalom (not far from the Italian word for harpsichord - cembalo). But in Italian, it lost it's first letter and was used for a multitude of elegant compositions as an obligato salterio. The fine, delicate sound of the struck strings is the focus of our newest production, with which the ensemble nuovo aspetto lives up to it's name. The musicians, led by virtuoso "top striker" Elisabeth Seitz, perform a series of Romanesque rarities from a new perspective. Thanks to the subtle yet prominent solo instrument, they seem to have achieved weightlessness for a time.

On 13 April 1716, the long-awaited heir to the Habsburg throne was born. All of Europe rejoiced, for it was expected that the Spanish War of Succession so recently ended would not rekindle into another disastrous conflict. The city of Frankfurt am Main, where emperors were elected and crowned, marked the event on 17 May with a huge celebration, and Georg Philipp Telemann contributed two large-scale works for it. The performances in the Barf�sserkirche and on the R�merberg were part of a day-long series of festive activities with hours of carillons ringing and hundreds of cannon salutes-but it was music director Telemann who emerged victorious in the end. Understandably so, as the first recording of the two festive pieces reveals. These two gems further enrich our label's Telemann catalogue.

Classical Music

As Adolf Tegtmeier, the alter ego of Jürgen von Manger, knew quite well, overtures exercise an important function in the opera: “They begin, you see, right off with the curtain and start by playing all the melodies in a row, everything that happens to come up later. But this is just to give you the chance to familiarize yourself with the music. And of course it’s important … so that later on you don’t get such a big shock.” The orchestral overtures brought together on the present recording make the listener eager to hear each of the particular works following them. Even those who do not recognize the fine details of their design will enjoy the inexhaustible wealth of their melodies, the irresistible rhythms and lyricisms, and the skilled details of their instrumentation. In their entirety the works on this album invite us to approach Jacques Offenbach’s sumptuous oeuvre by way of unknown paths on the occasion of the two hundredth anniversary of his birth – without having to worry about “later getting such a big shock.”

The German-Dutch composer Johann Wilhelm Wilms lived during the interesting transitional period between Classicism and Romanticism and therefore numbers among the composers who built on Haydn and Mozart and formed the bridge to Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Chopin. His two Piano Quartets op. 22 and op. 30 were published in 1808 and 1812 but must have been composed a few years earlier. Although they continue to adhere completely to the spirit of the eighteenth century, above all in formal matters, they make use of all the advances in intensified virtuosity and harmonic freedom, so that they operate on the same high level as the masterpieces composed during the same period by Franz Danzi, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, and Carl Maria von Weber. Wilms was not only a flutist and a pianist but also a master of instrumentation and more successfully than other composers of his times maintained the difficult balance between the concertizing piano, which mostly brilliantly and triumphantly shines, and the strings, which skillfully accompany it while also enjoying their share of the spotlight as soloists.

Includes work(s) by Ludwig Thuille. Ensemble: Bolzano-Trento Haydn Orchestra. Conductor: Alun Francis. Soloist: Oliver Triendl.

Listening to these works is synonymous with pure joy: Graupner's expressive chromaticism, the uncommonly manifold instrumental color artistry in the arias, and the most highly proficient application of the Baroque doctrine of the affections are enchanting and gripping. All of this is more immediately understandable and emotionally more heartfelt than the works of Bach. This is what klassik-heute. Com wrote following the release of our Vol. 2 with the Passion cantatas of Christoph Graupner. And now - for the Passion season - we are releasing Vol. 3. Once again the instrumentation has been designed with great variety, and it is here that the key to Graupner's personal style is to be found: he captivates listeners not so much with impressive, highly memorable �melodies� but with intensive playing with the various tone colors made available to him by the court chapel members and their instruments on each particular occasion. For all their individuality and rich variety, however, the cantatas are linked together: the three works for Quinquagesima, Passion Sunday, and Holy Thursday presented here adhere to the formal structure with seven numbers as a rule most frequently employed by Graupner. Their design is largely symmetrical, with framing choral numbers and one soprano aria and one bass aria. These cantatas have in common a contrast principle assigned central importance and employed on a textual and dramatic level as well as in the musical design. It is precisely here that Graupner's original background as an opera composer is reflected, a circumstance that had enabled him to gather experience with pronounced dramaturgical oppositions.