Adalbert Gyrowetz, born precisely between Mozart and Beethoven, was among those who witnessed the upheaval of changing times in especially drastic fashion. When he died in 1850, Schumann was 40, Liszt 39-and Chopin, who had debuted in Warsaw in 1818 with a piano concerto by the Bohemian, had already been dead for six months. Gyrowetz's instrumental music had once been widely celebrated: published in large numbers, frequently performed, and eventually forgotten. The composer turned to the stage, wrote sacred music, and created a late period for himself in which he may have looked back with melancholy on earlier works, pieces sometimes thought to rival Haydn at his best. This sampling from the "good old days", compiled by tireless rediscoverer Howard Griffiths, shows how such impressions came about. The orchestra is no coincidence: Gyrowetz once enjoyed high esteem even on the Thames. Now he is back.

Five years younger than Johann Sebastian Bach, who survived him by all of eight months, Gottfried Heinrich St�lzel was among those Central German musicians who made a name for themselves beyond their regional sphere of influence. It is no coincidence that the sacred works of Gotha's long-serving court conductor in particular have now found a suitable home in our catalogue. The passions, oratorios, and cantatas that have already been released are now joined by five pieces of Protestant sacred music in which the extensive Catholic liturgy is reduced to Kyrie and Gloria. The missae breves selected here confirm once again that their author was 'one of the most reasonable, learned and great composers' to whom Johann Mattheson rightly accorded a place of honour in his Ehrenpforte of 1740. All should know.

Under the title "It is good for me", the words from the 73rd Psalm, love songs, jubilant and psalm chants from the 17th century by Johann Rosenmüller, Claudio Monteverdi, Nicolò Corradini and others can be heard with the tenor Georg Poplutz, who is highly esteemed for his "expressive yet sensitive interpretation" and is now one of the most sought-after interpreters in baroque music. Here are his personal words about this album: "It is now also a pleasure for us to be able to present this program to you, which we hope will give you as much pleasure in listening to it as it gives us in making mu-sic! I would like to thank Arno Paduch for his tireless research and rediscovery of new (for our generation) works of this already old music. I am very pleased that we have now been able to record all these treasures and present some of the settings on album for the first time. To sing these works is indeed good for me - once more to God's glory and to the people, yes, to you for edification and joy!

It is often forgotten that Bernhard Romberg not only was a virtuoso but also as a composer was once numbered among the most important representatives of his generation. Statements to this effect are easy enough to find: Romberg was “one of the leading violoncello players on earth, also as a composer and an expert in the art of music” (Hamburg, 1801); he was regarded as “one of the most outstanding composers and as the most consummate of all cellists now living” (Leipzig, 1807). Romberg’s fourth cello concerto numbers among his most beloved compositions; younger cellists like Justus Johann Friedrich Dotzauer and Maximilian Bohrer even had it in their repertories. As far as forms and movement types are concerned, Romberg adheres to traditional precedents, but the design of the large forms does not at all stand in the way of many interesting and innovative individual traits. Romberg’s first documented performance of his sixth cello concerto, known as the “Concerto militaire,” was held in St. Petersburg in 1812. As everywhere was the case, the work and its performance were greeted with enthusiasm. The local reviewer for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung wrote: “Here too he received more applause than all the musicians who have been here. Those who heard him seemed to be quite genuinely enchanted.”

“Here loving service is done to a composer who is perhaps Sweden’s most important symphonist and certainly its most popular one.” This is what FonoForum wrote of Vol. 2 of our edition of symphonic works by Hugo Alfvén, who numbers among the most productive and most versatile Swedish cultural personalities. Alfvén’s Symphony No. 2 brought him a success that he termed his definitive artistic breakthrough. A second performance was held during the same year, and it was not long before it was also being presented in foreign countries. This work became his most popular symphony and the first of his compositions to appear in print (1900). At the time national Romantic tones had long dominated music by Swedish composers, while Alfvén adopted a taste that was more Continental – a fact that reviewers registered with astonishment. His Swedish Rhapsody No. 3, a composition featuring impressive work with motifs from Swedish folk music, rounds off this album.

Until their dissolution, the Verdi Quartet was one of the most prominent ensembles in the German chamber music scene for over three decades. They have made invaluable contributions far beyond their home with their highly-regarded complete recordings of Schubert and Brahms and the, until now, unique recordings of the string quartets of Ernst Toch. Cpo has now released the "farewell gift" of the quartet, fulfilling a long-held wish by the ensemble - the three quartets of the British "late Romantic" Ralph Vaughan Williams. These again offer the "Verdis" the opportunity to live out their much-praised virtues in all their intimacy and go full circle from his early declaration of love for the English folk song to the consoling swansong that the great composer wrote in the darkest of times at the age of 72.

Following the success of its recording of Georg Caspar Schürmann’s opera Die getreue Alceste, the barockwerk hamburg ensemble very much wanted to discover more music by this wrongly neglected Hamburg composer. His opera Jason enjoyed great success at Hamburg’s Gänsemarkt Opera during 1720-22 and was repeated no fewer than thirty-one times during these years. And the fact that Schürmann occupied himself with his Jason for thirteen years also clearly indicates that it was regarded as a highly promising work. This recording presents a considerably abridged version of this bilingual stage work containing elements of the Italian and German Baroque opera and lasts about two hours. Along with the highly effective coloratura arias, the harmonic and melodic language of the recitatives also not least merits special mention because it is highly expressive and bold as well as finely nuanced. Medea’s part is throughout the most multifaceted one, and a broad spectrum of emotions can also be heard in her recitatives – ranging from enamorment through doubt, jealousy, revenge, and seduction to desire for power and delight in victory.

Our successful Reger edition can finally continue, and critics continue to be more than enthusiastic about the previous installments, Musik & Theater even claiming, "These recordings are among the best currently available in organ music by Reger." And now the penultimate volume No. 8. The focus is on Reger's op. 67. In May 1901, Reger informed Straube of his intention to "write 30 chorale preludes to the best-known chorales." Over time, the project grew to 52 preludes. In the letter of October 22, 1902 to the publishing house Lauterbach & Kuhn in Leipzig, Reger wrote with regard to the collection Zweiundfünfzig leicht ausführbare Vorspiele zu den gebräuchlichsten evangelischen Chorälen op. 67 that he could "probably say without arrogance that no such collection has been published since J. S. Bach." In fact, Reger is to be agreed here without any reservations: Reger's op. 67 was a work that can be compared to Bach's "Orgelbüchlein" in terms of content as well as scope and pedagogical intention.

Of Carl Loewe's oeuvre, his comprehensive Lied edition is best known. In contrast, his two symphonies are rarities that we do not want to withhold from you. Unfortunately, nothing is really known about the exact circumstances of the composition and premiere of the two symphonies. With regard to the E minor symphony, Loewe himself at least left the note that the composition was completed on December 15, 1834. With regard to the D minor symphony, it is assumed that it was composed in 1835. Especially the D minor symphony, which was composed later, comes up with surprises in its formal layout. The instrumentation is very similar to his first symphony in E minor, but the frequent use of four horns is striking, with which Loewe takes a step further towards the typical Romantic instrumentation. When looking at the sequence of movements, the interchange of slow movement and scherzo is striking, and in the harmonic structure Loewe allows himself an extravagant excursion into F-sharp major in the introduction of the fourth movement. The album is completed with Loewe's Themisto Overture, a compressed drama whose atmosphere comes to a head with tremolo surfaces, falling lines and syncopated counter-motives.

The composer and pianist Eduard Franck was from an art-loving Breslau banker’s family and revealed his musical gifts at an early age. Later Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy became his teacher and even performed together with him. His friendly acquaintance with Mendelssohn and kindred musical spirits like Robert Schumann and William Sterndale Bennett showed Eduard Franck the way. However, he increasingly emerged from the shadow of his models, and today he is honored less as a follower and more as a mediator between the generations who in his time anticipated many a new development by great masters such as Brahms and Bruckner. Franck’s Piano Concerto in D minor op. 13, his first broadly dimensioned orchestral work, generates its appeal above with its imposing and stormy main themes and brilliantly virtuosic broken chords in the piano part. The second concerto recorded here was previously available only in a manuscript of the score and a piano reduction from 1879. The virtuosic interplay between the orchestra and the piano, as heard on the present recording premiere, in particular makes us sit up and take notice.

Ludwig van Beethoven and the stage: this is the story of a predominantly unhappy love affair with an unexpected happy ending - the late breakthrough of Fidelio. If this paean to husbandly love had not triumphed at the third attempt, there would be little more left in the dramatic field, apart from some very fragmentary operatic attempts, than the festival music for The Ruins of Athens and King Stephen, Hungary's First Benefactor, which Marcus Bosch and the Capella Aquileia have already recently recorded for cpo. Of course, the "more" also includes two pieces for dance theatre: the cute music for a knight's ballet written in Bonn's time and - far more weighty - the extensive score for the work by the famous choreographer and dancer Salvatore Viganò, which premiered under the title The Creatures of Prometheus at Vienna's Burgtheater on 28 March 1801. What the audience saw was a rather idyllic excerpt from the wildly eventful life of the disobedient titan. He has just formed his creatures out of clay, but they cannot get beyond mindless emotions. In his anger, Prometheus at first wants to stomp them out, but then he takes them to Parnassus, where the Muses teach them basic knowledge and artistic behavior under the eyes of Apollo. A general dance performance brings the predominantly cheerful, charming event to a close.

Ferdinand Hiller was a figure of European renown during his lifetime, but unfortunately his work and activity were quickly forgotten after his death. The two works recorded here, the 3rd Piano Quartet (1870) and the Piano Quintet op. 156 (1872) represent the mature Hiller's weightiest contributions to chamber music. But despite their initial success, even these demanding pieces failed to gain a lasting foothold in the concert repertoire. While Hiller's early works were still clearly in the tradition of Hummel, the late ones clearly reflect the new standard that Schumann had set with his works of the 1840s. For his piano quartet, Hiller chose the key of A minor, which was considered passionate in the High Romantic period. For long stretches, this key determines the work's basic dramatic tone, which only brightens into a radiant A major in the finale. The piano part is too demanding to be performed in the context of house music. His Piano Quintet proves to be more of a lyrical counterpart to the Piano Quartet. The real surprise is that the theme of the final movement turns out to be a variant of the main theme of the first movement, bringing the quintet as a whole closer to a cyclical form.

The program of this album offers a varied selection of chamber music with piano written by Hans Gál between 1922 and 1940. Among these, the main work on the album is undoubtedly the Piano Quartet written for the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein. The work consists of four substantial movements, and each of the movements is uniquely melodic; moreover, there are strong contrasts between the two light and airy movements II and IV on the one hand, and the dignified opening movement and delicate Adagio on the other. Richness and variety characterize this most productive period of composer Hans Gál. The rest of the program is of a decidedly lighter character than the Piano Quartet and shows Gál at his most fluid and melodic.

Volume 9 & finale of the long-running series! The volcanic presence of composer Max Reger from the Upper Palatinate region of Germany does not make things easy for his interpreters or his listeners. Almost everything he wrote features such a bounty of musical ideas that only gradually is the persona behind it revealed. The organist Gerhard Weinberger is among those who have the proven ability to break through this facade. On his CDs no. 17 and 18, which comprise the ninth volume of this complete recording of colossal proportions, he also proves himself to be the ideal medium of a world view in which all is in continuous and inextinguishable motion. He has the organs of Chemnitz and Schwyz at his disposal – two stylistically appropriate instruments to produce the perfect Reger experience.

Sebastian Ochsenkun’s Tabulature Book for Lute, with its Latin motets, German psalms and songs, and Italian and French pieces, was published in 1558 as a collection of contemporary vocal music arranged for solo instrumentalist. Josquin des Préz is the most prominently represented composer, but other renowned composers, such as Nicolas Gombert from the Spanish court of Emperor Charles V and Ioannes Mouton from the court of King Francis I of France, can be heard on this recording as well.

Ochsenkun was the lutenist of Prince Elector Ottheinrich of the Palatinate. Rising to a technically challenging task, he always produced the complete texture for his instrument by transcribing all the voices into lute tablature where contemporaries settled for two or three. Nevertheless, Ochsenkun’s intabulations are excellently suited for having a voice sing to them, as demonstrated on this recording. Renowned singers Dorothee Mields and Jan Kobow join for several tracks. Viewed historically, Ochsenkun’s work is regarded as testimony to the high level of lute playing during the middle years of the sixteenth century in Southern Germany. With his aspiration to high quality, he reaches beyond his times and his instrument to touch us today.

Born just months before his father's early death, Franz Xaver Mozart represented the great hope of his mother, Constanze, who envisioned the continuation of the musical lineage in the younger of her two surviving sons. She, therefore, ensured that he received a first-class education, and he strove with all his might to prove himself worthy of the trust placed in him. He became a distinguished and recognized pianist, while over the years he created a small but refined body of work dominated by intimate ensembles ranging from lieder to chamber music. His character, as revealed through his compositions, is not unlike that of his father: behind the classically elegant and occasionally humorous language lies a quiet, touching melancholy, which in his piano quartet presses stormily into the world of the Romantics.

From the works Matthias Weckmann wrote for the Collegium Musicum, eleven autograph sonatas are preserved in the Lüneburg Council Library. While two of the sonatas call for a conventional trio of two violins and bass (in the tenth sonata a viola da gamba and in the eighth a dulcian), the remaining, more extravagant pieces are written for a heterogeneous quartet of cornettino (treble zinc), violin, trombone (in two sonatas alternatively viola da braccio and viola da gamba), and dulcian or bass shawm. In the pieces for the Hamburg Collegium Musicum, Weckmann pushed all of the instruments, but especially the trombone and cornettino, to their absolute limits. An important characteristic of the sonatas are the strong contrasts. Typical features are: abrupt changes of tempi, meter, and tessitura (sometimes accompanied by echo effects), close and wide harmonies, and alternating polyphonic and homophonic passages in which three instruments occasionally play parallel chords as in a faux bourdon. Notwithstanding these commonalities, each sonata is an individual piece and not forced into any prefabricated mold.

Here it is, my poor little Mass. Have I truly composed sacred music, or merely something sacrilegious? With these words, the 72-year-old Gioachino Rossini addressed the "dear Lord", to whom he wished to dedicate his most extensive and, at the same time, one of his most significant and original late works - a sacred composition of nearly full-length dimensions akin to a grand cathedral Mass. However, the instrumentation consists only of instruments commonly found in any well-appointed 19th-century household. A piano and a harmonium accompany the soloists and choir, enriching the performance with lively rhythms, intricate figures, and distinctive sonic textures. The treatment of the liturgical text is not entirely orthodox: "I was born for opera buffa. You know that well!" Rossini confessed to the Lord more than thirty years after composing his last opera. And he expressed his gratitude for this special gift with "a touch of skill and a touch of heart" - enough to captivate both earthly and heavenly audiences alike.

The wife of a duke resists the advances of a powerful lecher and is "punished" by being cast adrift at sea. A well-meaning overseer of a mining operation rescues the shipwrecked woman and, under a different name, shelters her as his niece for ten years. At last, the duke-widowed for a second time-arrives at the place of her exile. They are reunited, and the villain meets his well-earned fate... Nothing new, one might think. Yet L'inganno felice ("The Fortunate Deception"), this one-act opera first performed in Venice in early 1812, is so brimming with Rossini's most fiery spirit that we forget the familiar plot entirely over the course of it's roughly 90-minute runtime: it ignites and sparkles, glitters and whirls with the most beautiful melodies, the most tingling rhythms, and the most furious orchestral surges the master of The Barber of Seville was capable of. The festival was far from the only one to be enthralled!

Mogens Pedersøn was a pupil of Melchior Borchgrevinck, later royal kapellmeister, and in 1619 he became royal vice kapellmeister. His major work, Pratum Spirituale ("Spiritual Pasture"), was published in Copenhagen in 1620, containing 21 five-part hymns and a mass, three motets, and a number of responsories. The works directly reflect the church-musical requirements of the time, which made available in print some kind of offerings for ultimately all situations of Lutheran culture.

In addition to the hymns that were part of the core liturgical program for the three feasts (Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost), there are Danish hymns, ten psalm hymns, and nine "free" hymns, partly from the distinctly Danish hymn tradition, partly from Luther's closest repertoire. The stylistic world that Pedersøn reveals in "Pratum Spirituale" is unquestionably only a very narrow segment of what this internationally experienced musician mastered: schooled between organ playing, Italian madrigal, Venetian double choir and English "consort music".

Bruno Walter is probably still known today, well over 50 years after his death, to all music lovers as a great conductor. He came to public attention as a composer mainly in his early Viennese years (1901-1912). In 1903 the famous Rosé Quartet played his String Quartet in D major, and it also took on (with the composer at the piano) the Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor in 1905. Until recently, only movements Nos. 2, 3, and 4 of the quartet survived in Walter's estate. But in the course of the present production, the question of the 1st movement arose, and indeed a copy of the entire composition was found in the music collection of the Austrian National Library, which could now be recorded in its entirety by the Aron Quartet!

His Piano Quintet was such a great success at the time that the "star critic" of the Wiener Zeitung, Robert Hirschfeld, gave the work the following praise: "It is rich in beautiful and deep, peculiar thoughts, passionate in the corner movements, the slow movement, a confession of the soul, flowing from true, heartfelt feelings, is certainly among the most significant that we have encountered in modern chamber music."

The three cantatas brought together here are from Telemann’s last printed annual cycle, which was published in Hermsdorf (near Hirschberg), Silesia, in 1749. Each cantata has a title page indicating the particular Sunday, registering the ensemble parts under it, and displaying a decorative figure modeled on a putto as an ornament on the lower half of the page. Since the putto was also understood as an angel, the cycle came to be known as the »Engel-Jahrgang« (Angel Cycle). In addition, the title contains a pithy motto that seems to be referring to Telemann: »You glorify the sweet harmony of the art of music and sanctify it.« As in his other annual cycles issued in printed form, the compositions were presented in Hamburg churches prior to their publication or along with it. These are joyful works of dancy verve to which Telemann supplied additional splendor in many movements through the use of trumpets.

During the late nineteenth century countless composers modeled their operas on Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, hoping that this strategy would likewise bring them success. These composers included not only Leoncavallo with his Pagliacci but also the young composer Pierantonio Tasca. Although Tasca had grown up in Sicily, in A Santa Lucia he depicted Naples, Italy’s largest city and a metropolitan world plagued by poverty and the everyday struggle for survival. This opera celebrated its premiere not in Naples, not in Rome or Milan, but at the Kroll Opera in Berlin on 16 November 1892 and enjoyed great success. For some years this captivating, impassioned, and tender music and its highly atmospheric local color earned Tasca the rank of the most esteemed “young Italian” composer in Germany, right along with Mascagni and Leoncavallo.

Together with Wolfgang Brunner on the fortepiano, the successful violinist Lena Neudauer now turns to Franz Schubert’s four violin sonatas on cpo. The first three works from 1816 have continued to be incorrectly labeled as sonatinas because the original publisher, Anton Diabelli, issued them under this title in 1836 in order to increase their sales potential. The Sonata in A major composed only a year after the first three more strongly develops Schubert’s characteristic lyricism, the formal structure is more varied, the piano part is of greater tonal refinement, and the work as a whole is longer than the three earlier works. Wolfgang Brunner has selected two different fortepianos: an original instrument from ca. 1810-15 from Franz Münzenberger’s workshop for the earlier sonatas and a Romantic Hammerflügel by Conrad Graf for the grand Sonata in A major. Lena Neudauer performs on a Lorenzo Guadagnini violin from 1743 with gut strings.

The Finnish artist Christoffer Sundqvist is one of the leading clarinetists of his generation, and we are very happy to have won him for our complete edition of Louis Spohr's works for clarinet and orchestra (partly first recordings!). Not only the extremely brilliant and masterful four clarinet concertos can be heard, but also all the other works for clarinet and orchestra, composed at that time for the virtuoso Johann Simon Hermstedt. When Hermstedt played Spohr's potpourri on themes from Winter's opera "Das unterbrochene Opferfest" op. 80 in Leipzig on October 13, 1812, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung commented: "The potpourri for clarinet was not only very happily composed from ideas of the sacrificial feast, but these ideas were also mostly quite excellently processed; and so it would like to stand at the top among the works of this genre. An indispensable complete edition, not only for clarinetists!