Fran�ois-Adrien Boieldieu numbers among the most important exponents of the op�ra comique of the French imperial era and the subsequent restoration. With La dame blanche (1825) he even produced one of the internationally most successful works of this genre; it served as a model example for other composers and played a significant role in the further development of the op�ra comique. Fran�ois Boieldieu received his early training in music in particular from Charles Broches, the organist at the Rouen Cathedral. In 1796 he went to Paris, where he met Cherubini. From 1803 to 1811 he was the court music director in St. Petersburg, and in 1817 he became a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory. In the overtures of his op�ras comiques Boieldieu usually anticipates thematic material from the particular opera. As a result, the overture not only prepares the listener for the atmosphere and tone color of the particular op�ra comique but also provides for a recognition effect when the themes familiar from the overture reappear in a later phase of the stage action. The great wealth of melodic invention and the pronounced melodic cantability particularly characteristic of Boieldieu's music and the Piano Concerto heard here inspired his contemporaries to call him "the French Mozart."

Today the composer Francois-Joseph Gossec is closely associated with the music of the French Revolution. However, the symphonic cycle being presented here for the first time in complete recorded form was written thirty years prior to 1789. Born on 17 January 1734 in the village of Vergnies, today’s Hainaut (Hennegau) in Belgium, Gossec’s beautiful boy soprano’s voice earned him admission to the church choirs in Walcourt and Ste. Aldegonde in Maubeuge before he became a member of the choir at the Antwerp Cathedral around 1742. He received excellent training in composition and counterpoint as well as in violin and harpsichord, moved to Paris in 1750 or 1751, and is thought to have been hired as a violinist for de la Poupliniere’s orchestra in August 1753. He remained true to this orchestra until the death of his employer in December 1762. Gossec’s some fifty symphonies doubtless make him the most important French symphonist of the second half of the eighteenth century. However, he wrote most of his symphonic works prior to about 1780; after this date the increasing popularity of Haydn’s symphonies in Paris may have caused him to lose interest in this genre. His six Symphonies op. IV appeared in print around 1758. When compared with the first series from 1756, they offer considerable innovations even in purely formal matters: they have four movements, and oboes and / or horns have been added to the instrumentation used in op. III, which was exclusively for strings. The symphonies are distinguished primarily by attention-grabbing initial displays, though the last two form exceptions to the rule. No. 5, the “Pastorella,” has a title indicating that it is a work of pastoral character, that is, of country expression, while No. 6 does not make use of the characteristic stylistic elements, such as long crescendo passages and sudden forte-piano contrasts, presumably imparted to Gossec by Stamitz. In any case, the interpretations by Simon Gaudenz and the Neuss Chamber Academy anticipate future revolutionary times.

Michael Lakner selected an absolute operetta rarity for a premiere during his last season as the director of the Lehar Festival in 2017: Kaiserin Josephine (Empress Josephine) by Emmerich Kalman. The operetta in 8 scenes by the Hungarian composer features German libretto by Paul Knepler and Geza Herczeg. It premiered in Zurich at the Stadt Theater in 1936, but has been rarely performed since then. In 1961 Eduard Macku founded the Bad Ischl Operetta Festival – today the Bad Ischl Lehár Festival – and made the Franz Lehár-Orchestra a permanent fixture of the festival. After the death of Eduard Macku Gabriel Patocs assumed conducting duties of the orchestra in Vienna, while Walter Erla was appointed conductor of the orchestra in Bad Ischl. During the festival directorship of Martin C. Turba (2000 – 2003) and Michael Lakner (2004- 2017) the Franz Lehár-Orchestra performed under such notable conductors as Franz Bauer-Theussl, Herbert Mogg, Alfred Eschwé, Wolfgang Bozic, Marius Burkert, Vinzenz Praxmarer, and Oliver Ostermann.

Before the Austro-Hungarian composer Carl Goldmark conquered the international concert halls and opera houses with his Ländliche Hochzeit and Queen of Sheba, he initially attracted attention with some chamber compositions. When his overture after the drama Sakuntula by the great Indian poet Kâlidâsa then celebrated its premiere in Vienna in December 1865, the news of this masterfully designed, tonally beautiful music spread like wildfire beyond his home terrain. In view of this trailblazing success it is not surprising that Goldmark repeatedly returned to the overture form during the course of the next twenty-five years or so. Examples here include his reflections on the tragedies involving Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons (after Heinrich von Kleist), and the Greek poetess Sappho (after Franz Grillparzer) in one-movement works that may very much be termed variants of the symphonic poem. The three female protagonists of Goldmark’s overtures are heard here along with his two Scherzos for Orchestra – works in which the composer reveals his flirtatious side.

Columbus: Dramatic Cantata for Soloists, Male Choir, Mixed Choir, and Full Orchestra op. 11, which celebrated its premiere at the Graz Music Society Concert Hall on 4 December 1870, is an extraordinary work within Heinrich von Herzogenberg’s oeuvre as a whole and differs greatly from many other compositions by him. During his younger years Herzogenberg was very much attracted to Wagner and the “New German” style – which also had an impact on his Columbus. He designed his musical occupation with this subject in an innovative manner, producing a work that is a combination of the stage and concert genres. Like Wagner, he wrote the libretto himself and did so while following the model provided by the typical four-part sequence of a drama with a presentation, an intensification, a climactic or turning point, and a resolution. After the successful premiere a review appeared in the Grazer Tagespost that is all the more interesting insofar as it was penned by Friedrich Hausegger, a member of the “progressive camp.” If we think merely of Herzogenberg as the Brahms emulator of his middle and later creative phases, then Hausegger’s words correct our one-sided picture of the composer: “We were most pleasantly surprised by his Columbus. With it the composer proved not only that he can assemble little elements, perhaps ones formed in imitation, to produce a well-formed whole but also that he can draw on impressive resources, that he is able to master a significant subject with a bold and sure hand.” Unlike his later practice with his model Brahms, in his Columbus Herzogenberg did not end up following Wagner to the extreme stylistically. However, it is precisely his thoroughly independent as well as inspired musical treatment of this subject that is a source of special fascination.

As a famous music authority and critic once wrote, the life story of the Austrian composer Franz Schreker and the reception history of his oeuvre would have offered fine material for a magnificent novel with a musician as its protagonist – if not for the fact that everything had actually occurred in real life: his childhood spent in poverty; the difficult initial path to local prominence in Vienna; the breakthrough to superstar status in German-language opera houses; his appointment as director of the Berlin College of Music; his failure to resist the seductive powers of flatterers; the gradual loss of favor among audiences and critics that many seeming friends followed with malicious spite; and then the final blow, when the new »master race« turned the world upside down – all of this was fact, not fiction. Following the release of several operas by Franz Schreker during past years on cpo (some of them in premiere recordings), our label now turns to the orchestral works of a man who in some circles continues to be dismissed as a mere »sound magician,« even though he was a melodist and harmonist of the first water and had learned his craft so thoroughly at the Vienna Conservatory that he himself became a sought-after teacher. The present program traces Schreker’s path from his studies with Robert Fuchs to his first enduring success – the captivating pantomime The Birthday of the Infanta (1908) after the fairy tale by Oscar Wilde, which definitely numbers among the finest creations of the musical art nouveau.

Friedrich Schneider: Symphony & Overtures. During his lifetime Friedrich Schneider was regarded as “the respected head of the Northern German school” and was a musical institution in Central Germany. He was active as the court music director in Dessau from 1821 until his death, and for two reasons his fame during these years was considerable: because of his wholehearted support of Beethoven’s works and because of his own compositions – in particular his oratorios. Today his Weltgericht continues to be regarded as a link between Haydn and Mendelssohn. Schneider’s Symphony No. 16 displays majestic chords, and its movements of song character win over listening audiences with their charm and naturalness while also offering their share of surprises, mirth, and high spirits. In contrast to his symphonies, which all remained unpublished and were more frequently performed only in Dessau with the composer as their conductor, his overtures for a time enjoyed great popularity far beyond his home region. Apart from his opera preludes, Friedrich Schneider wrote a total of twenty overtures, three of which are heard here.

This project featuring the complete recording of Beethoven’s piano concertos on original Beethoven fortepianos has close ties to the performances at original historical sites in Vienna. During past years the concert series “Resound Beethoven” has brought back Beethoven’s works to the places where they are documented to have been performed. It has been possible to perform and in part to record the complete cycle in halls such as the Eroica Hall in the Palais Lobkowitz, the Festsaal of the Akademie der Wissenschaften, and the Niederösterreichischer Landhaussaal. For Gottlieb Wallisch this was a unique experience, a veritable immersion in the sound world of Beethoven’s times: “The combination of the fortepiano sound with the original-sound orchestra results in a fascinating opportunity to shed new tonal light on Beethoven’s music and to understand it in new ways. The sound of this fortepiano from the period around 1820 captivates the listener with its special color in the various registers and its elegant purity while already discreetly looking into the future with its somewhat greater volume. The main characteristic in performance with the orchestra is the appealing transparency of all the voices, especially in the dialogue between the piano and the woodwind instruments.” Beethoven’s transcription of his Violin Concerto op. 61 for piano and orchestra – in music history the rare case of a transfer of a work from a stringed instrument to a keyboard instrument – gains authenticity and musical logic through performance on the fortepiano. His Rondo WoO is heard in a first-time recording; it originally formed the concluding movement of his Piano Concerto No. 2.

Nikolai Tcherepnin (not to be confused with his son Alexander!) represents a generation of composers who not only combined two diametrically opposed epochs – the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – but also followed the path of stylistic change leading from late romanticism to impressionism and from impressionism to modernism. His name stands not only for the culture of his native Russia but also in equal measure for Western European art – and especially that of France. In the symphonic prelude Princesse lointaine, a short early work, Tcherepnin develops his compositional aesthetic, and we already detect what later would be a dominant element in his mature works: an interest in legends and sagas. The ballet music for Narcissus and Echo forms the focus of this album. Tcherepnin realized the underlying ideas of the designer Léon Bakst and the choreographer Michel Fokine in his score and did so not merely in an illustrative way but on the strength of his own expressive means. The colorful gradations that Bakst discovered as an optical solution, sometimes the contrast between the Dionysian and Apollonian principles, and the contrast between the bright attire of the Booetians and the dark, muted color of the nymph Echo, who laments her unrequited love, are reflected in the changing orchestral coloration of the music. Tcherepnin’s music, in part pervaded by a tenor’s vocalises and a vocal ensemble, becomes a brilliant, highly pictorial subject. This is a stylized antiquity with an exquisiteness, beauty, and refinement integrated into a cult, and these characteristics situate the Narcissus score – one of the interesting aesthetic artistic monuments of the early twentieth century – in the vicinity of impressionism and modernism.

As the court music director in Zerbst, Johann Friedrich Fasch had to deal directly with current religious trends and was obliged to occupy himself with Pietism. After all, from the beginning of his tenure there his duties had included the composition of the church music for every court religious service and for all the church feast days. Fasch had a special mission in mind when he penned his cantatas: he was very much interested in having hislisteners not remain indifferent to the texts that were sung. And so he employed all sorts of compositional tricks to capture their attention and to emphasize words of special importance to him. This procedure is impressively revealed already at the beginning of the cantata »Ich danke dem Herrn vom ganzen Herzen.« After a short instrumental introduction the opening Biblical text is presented not as usual by the choir but initially by the solo soprano. Then in the Missa in G major almost all the facets of Fasch’s musical talent are shown; from arias with obbligato solo instruments to grandly dimensioned chorale fugues placing the greatest demands both on the singers and the instrumentalists, it was composed in its entirety for the entertainment and edification of his noble employer and to the glory of God. One of Fasch’s overture suites of extraordinary quality rounds off this album. In his autobiography he acknowledged : "On this occasion I cannot avoid publicly acknowledging that I then learned mostly everything from the beautiful work of my most revered and beloved friend, Mr. Music Director Telemann, by constantly taking the same as a model for me, especially in the overtures".

Our first collaborative venture with the Constanze Quartet from Salzburg also marks the production of the first complete recording of the string quartets of Felix Draeseke – a German composer, a representative of the new German school, and a contemporary of Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and Johannes Brahms. Draeseke’s string quartets are unique in style. In them we often encounter influence from Wagner, even if not in the form of an imitation of Wagnerian compositional style but as a creative continuation of the legacy of Classical composers such as they were transmitted to Draeseke through Wagner. The idea of a “melodic thread” holding the music together while serving as a unifying element is in evidence everywhere in these works. Both quartets impressively demonstrate the words of the Draeseke expert Christoph Schlüren: “Draeseke is primarily lyrical in nature but at the same time has his appealing harshness and explores the dark, introverted expressive worlds with a unique imagination. The far-reaching melos is tailored for contrapuntal suitability, and for German circumstances the rhythm is particularly zestful and highly varied. Stylistically, relations quite obviously exist not only between Draeseke and Beethoven but also between Draeseke and Mendelssohn inasmuch as Draeseke’s highly colorful harmonic language, in part pervaded by surprising modulations, is an individual continuation and development of the New German “progressive” stance proceeding from Wagner and Liszt. Draeseke’s outstanding stature as a string quartet composer rests above all on his entirely original architectonic mastery in a genre in which Beethoven and Schubert created unsurpassable music, but where Draeseke, together with Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and the late Dvorák, proceeding from the experiences of Schumann and Mendelssohn, produced decidedly new music.”

Our first release featuring music for string orchestra by British composers presents works by Hubert Parry, Edward Elgar, and Gordon Jacob. The last-mentioned composer wrote a Symphony for Strings with clear contrapuntal textures and a slow introduction beginning with broadly striding octaves and dissonant sixteenth contrasts. Parry demonstrates his sovereign command of a whole range of different techniques and textures in his First Suite for String Orchestra and succeeds in producing a full, one-of-a-kind sound: Very British, indeed! Edward Elgar’s Organ Sonata represents a special case on this album, where it is heard in the version for string orchestra by Hans Kunstovny. Some authors even earlier spoke of the sonata as a “thwarted symphony” because of its structure and design. The premiere of Kunstovny’s Elgar arrangement was held in Pforzheim in October 2006 under Sebastian Tewinkel before Douglas Bostock included it in his program in January 2020. The present recording was produced following this concert. Kunstovny, who assigned the subtitle “Swinnerton’s Dream” to his arrangement, was also present; it refers to the organist and choral conductor Charles Swinnerton Heap, the sonata’s dedicatee, who lent his support to Elgar’s works during the last decade of the nineteenth century.

After the London premiere of the symphonic poem The Raven the critics sang ecstatic hymns of praise to a work luxuriating in unique orchestral colors and to its young composer Josef Holbrooke (1878-1958). This breakthrough brought him renown as an innovative and original contemporary composer, one obliged to the musical language of the late 19th c. with its primacy of expressive elements and constant quest for new tonal effects amidst rich and refined coloring. Both programmatic and impressionistic, this nine-work Holbrooke chamber music overview features three first recordings.

Charpentier & BEMF Again at their Best. In 2015 our most recent Charpentier recording to date, La Descente d’Orphee aux Enfers with young soloists and the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble, received the Grammy Award for the “Best Opera Production” of the preceding year and Gramophone’s “Editor’s Choice.” Our new album featuring two “mini-operas” by Charpentier again offers enthralling performances of this court music of charming dance character and elegance. In contrast to Charpentier’s other operas, Les Plaisirs de Versailles is directly associated with Louis XIV. The title of the manuscript score registers very clearly and unmistakably what is involved in this composition, and its equation of the “plaisirs,” the “pleasures,” with the king’s residence not only serves to reveal the subject but also the context: on the one hand, the work describes the pleasures that could be experienced in the royal palace; on the other hand, it itself is supposed to be one of these pleasures. Once again a beautiful and top-quality work from opera history is made available to listeners of the twenty-first century: “An important addition to the Charpentier discography” (Toccata).

The seven works brought together on Vol. 4 of our complete recording of Kuhnau’s cantatas offer a remarkable cross section featuring sacred works – and more. They have also been transmitted in all sorts of different ways. The spectrum ranges from extant autographs and original printed editions leaving no doubt about Kuhnau’s authorship to copies from what was clearly a later time or sources from rather peripheral lines of transmission in which the materials themselves as well as the stylistic findings offer reasons for critical skepticism about the ascription of the works to Kuhnau. The most reliable sources as far as authenticity is concerned are those for the two burial songs “Gott hat uns nicht gesetzt zum Zorn” and “Ach, Gott, wie lässt du mich verstarren.” These two works are from Kuhnau’s early period but nonetheless pieces of great artistic mastery and have to be regarded as model examples of the church style that exercised an absolutely enormous influence on the formation of the church styles of Bach, Handel, and Telemann.