Maria Bach, who studied with Joseph Marx at the University of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna, was able to establish herself as a serious, successful composer during the 1930s. She received outstanding newspaper reviews, and renowned publishers were interested in her music. For example, Doblinger published her Volga Quintet. Her relationship with the Russian composer and conductor Ivan Boutnikoff came during this period of her first great successes; he instructed her in instrumentation, and she traveled with him throughout Europe. The three works recorded here for the first time – the Volga Quintet of 1928, the Sonata for Cello and Piano composed in 1924, and the String Quintet of 1936 – provide a representative overview of her chamber oeuvre.

Maria Bach writes with incredible virtuosity and on the highest level for the piano while never concerning herself with mere effects but instead developing tonal wealth and compelling compositional force. In the Piano Quintet she ventures to the limits of the doable and does so as can be done only by somebody who very precisely knows what the instrument has to offer. The same applies to her employment of the stringed instruments: the highly nuanced tone colors of her string parts attest to a profound understanding of the technical and tonal possibilities of these instruments. In 1943 the critic and composer Fritz Skorzeny aptly summed up the fascination produced by her music when he wrote in the Wiener Tagblatt: “In Maria Bach’s oeuvre, manifold elements, exoticism, gripping writing, poetically inspired, are combined.”

REVIEW:

Her dates tell you that this is not a very unexpected release of music by Johann Sebastian’s first wife, Maria Barbara. In fact, Maria Bach (or to give her her full name and title, Emilie Marie Baroness von Bach) would appear to have no connection to the famous Thuringian family.

She was born into a wealthy and very artistic family, which encouraged her musical talents. She was taught composition by Joseph Marx and studied violin with the concertmaster of the Vienna Court Orchestra and piano with the virtuoso Paul de Conne. After the First World War, she established a reputation as a composer in and beyond Vienna. However, her star faded quickly, partly I’m sure because of her gender, but also because she stuck to tonal music, when the world was changing.

I was totally unprepared for how beautiful the opening of the Piano Quintet would be. It brings to mind the opening of Fauré’s first Piano Quintet. Despite her background, there is a delicacy in her music that is more French than German/Austrian. The second movement is a set of fourteen variations on “The Song of the Volga Boatman”, and very ambitious at almost nineteen minutes, pushing the Quintet to well over thirty minutes. There is a marvellous diversity in the moods of the different variations: one of the early ones, with the cello given a solo role and the violins playing pizzicato is just glorious. The finale is a splendidly joyous dance. Through this very substantial work, I can’t recall a moment when I felt the inspiration faltering. I don’t feel that it is an overstatement to describe this work as not far short of a masterpiece, and one that should be in the standard repertoire for piano quintets.

The String Quintet is a much harder nut to crack, and certainly the most “modern” of the three works by some margin...the jagged folk rhythms of the Sacred Dance finale would have had Bartók nodding with approval.

The Cello Sonata is another cracking work. Its opening movement has the same tempo marking as that of the equivalent movement in the String Quintet: Energisch bewegt (energetic and emotional). While the Quintet seems to concentrate almost exclusively on the energetic part, the Sonata is much more deeply felt. The middle movement this time doesn’t involve variations, but rather a rhapsodic Romanze. The restless and heavy-footed rhythms that recur in the rondo Finale create a mental picture (for me) of two cartoon figures engaged in a pursuit, though there are moments of repose.

Performances of totally unknown music are always difficult to judge, but these seem entirely satisfactory to me. Certainly, the impression made on me by the Piano Quintet would have not been the same had the performance been below par. There were times when I would have liked a slightly warmer violin tone, but that is something I tend to say frequently. Cellist Mathias Johansen, who is an ever-present across the three works, is very impressive in the sonata.

--MusicWeb International (David Barker)

Long before the founding of the Trio Vivente, Anne Katharina Schreiber, the trio’s violinist, heard a radio broadcast about Shostakovich’s Romance Suite and the circumstances of its premiere. She was so deeply moved that she later absolutely wanted to incorporate the suite into the Trio Vivente’s repertoire. However, the search for the right Russian-language female vocalist long remained without success – until she met the singer Kateryna Kasper. While studying Weinberg’s trio, she discovered just how closely the two composers had worked together. It thus seemed only natural to combine their works, and since Weinberg’s Jewish Songs also exist in a version for soprano and trio, a perfect circle was formed. This is how this album featuring trios and songs by these two expressionistic composers came about – and it is filled with expressive power!

REVIEW:

Trio Vivente have produced a most intelligent reading of all the works on this disc. Weinberg’s Piano Trio is the highlight for me but his songs too get remarkable performances. Kateryna Kasper, the young Ukrainian soprano, is a wonderful exponent. I have every admiration for her impressive and convincing achievement in singing in Yiddish. She is a powerful advocate. She also gives a magically beautiful performance of Shostakovich’s songs. They are not easy fare but she manages to inject just the right amount of darkness into them. None of my praise should detract from the excellent performance of Shostakovich’s youthful trio. The entire disc is highly recommended.

-- MusicWeb International

On the present recording the Peñalosa Ensemble brings together works by the two composers whose sacred music forms the chronological frame of the Golden Age of Iberian vocal music: its namesake, the Spanish Renaissance composer Francisco de Peñalosa (motets, Magnificat), and Tomás Luis de Victoria (Missa, motets). If Peñalosa may be said to belong to the first generation of composers who assimilated the Franco-Flemish style of Josquin Desprez, then Victoria’s death in 1611 symbolically closed the Iberian Renaissance through the adoption of Italian influences from the Age of Mannerism. The unique, highly emotional manifestation of Iberian Marian piety also influenced both composers – just as it also left its imprint on the visual arts in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Compositions by Tomás Luis de Victoria not only experienced successful, rapid, and continuous dissemination over the whole of Europe owing to what was beyond any doubt their sublime quality but also received additional impetus from printed editions of music – so that his music was interpreted without interruption until the nineteenth century and was elevated to the status of a symbol standing for an entire musical epoch.

For the third time Kolja Lessing, one of the most versatile musicians of our times, dedicates himself to the multifaceted composer Carl Czerny and specifically to his Systematische Anleitung zum Fantasieren auf dem Pianoforte op. 200 (Systematic Introduction to Improvisation on the Pianoforte). “If a finely written musical work can be compared to a noble architectural edifice in which symmetry must predominate, then a successful fantasy is a beautiful English garden, seemingly without rules but brimming with surprising variety and intelligibly, meaningfully, and planfully executed.” It was with this poetic comparison that Czerny, writing in the introduction to his Anleitung zum Fantasieren, characterized the nature of improvisation, contrasting it with a composition elaborated in writing. It is scarcely surprising that Czerny, quite early marked by many years of the closest contact with his mentor Beethoven and his unique art of improvisation, presented this compendium in 1829 in his effort to grasp music encyclopedically. As an instructive work, it systematizes all the different kinds of improvisation then in use and illustrates them with numerous models, often ones honed with the finest artistry. In his compendium Czerny addressed the knowledgeable, technically uncommonly well-versed player. In his accompanying texts he refers to models that at the time were almost completely unknown such as Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and Art of Fugue, to exemplary works by his contemporaries Beethoven, Clementi, Hummel, and Moscheles, and even to his own publications in respect of each improvisational genre. It is thus that Czerny’s op. 200 offers fascinating insights into the musical practice of the early nineteenth century at the crossroads between Classicism and Romanticism – while he himself already belongs to the Romantic period by virtue of his encyclopedic thought bringing together all the epochs of music history.

At long last, CPO is able to release Auguste Fauchard’s complete organ works in these congenial interpretations by Friedhelm Flamme.

Fauchard was highly successful as a student in Paris, where Vincent d’Indy was his composition teacher and André Marchal and Louis Vierne were his organ teachers. Vierne had the greatest influence on Fauchard the composer. Four symphonies representing the highest compositional standards and the most demanding playing technique form the heart of Fauchard’s organ oeuvre, and in them we repeatedly catch glimpses of his Vierne's model.

Emmerich Kálmán: Countess Maritza. “When the evening falls, when the sun sets, when the song of the violin is heard from the puszta …” or “I too was once a fine csárdás cavalier.” The operetta and the Munich Radio Orchestra – now that is a passionate relationship that has grown over many years. Now we are releasing one of the most performed works in German-speaking Europe: Emmerich Kálmán’s successful operetta (with which he rounded off the dozen) Gräfin Mariza (Countess Maritza), which according to the German Music Information Center in 2016 was No. 10 on the operetta hit list. For the conductor’s job the Munich Radio Orchestra once again sought out a proven operetta specialist: Ernst Theis. The work tells the story of a countess who amidst much confusion finds her true love in an impoverished count. The music with hits like “Komm mit nach Varazdin,” “Komm Zigan, spiel mir was vor!,” and “Wo wohnt die Liebe?” made the operetta famous and a favorite with the public.

Vol. 3 in our successful series with Music for Strings by British Composers features works by four important women composers, some of whom initially were underappreciated and whose music only later was performed again and received proper recognition. However, the period from 1893 to 1934 was still an extremely favorable time for British women composers who wanted to present their works on their country’s concert stages inasmuch as they could count on support principally from Sir Henry Wood at the Proms and Dan Godfrey in Bournemouth. Ethel Smyth (familiar to our listening audience from cpo albums with works by her) and Susan Spain-Dunk in particular profited from this support. In addition, this release presents recording premieres of string compositions by Constance Warren and Ruth Gipps, in part in editions by the conductor Douglas Bostock himself. On Vol. 3 the Southwest German Chamber Orchestra of Pforzheim once again “explores the works with a lot of understanding for the particular personal style and with a fine sense of sound. Douglas Bostock knows how to bring out manifold colors from the orchestra and also, when needed, how to sharpen the tone and to place the sonority of the whole in the foreground” (klassik.com 4/2021 of Vol. 2).

During her lifetime Marianna Martines was a highly regarded composer. In 1772, for example, the English music historian Charles Burney praised her “very well written” compositions, her keyboard artistry as “masterly,” and her own person as a singer who was “more perfect than any singer I had ever heard.” Pietro Metastasio, her mentor, valued her talent and art just as very much as did Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who frequently participated in her “musical evening entertainments.” With these evenings, which were held “at least once a week,” she exercised a considerable influence on Vienna’s music life.

The cantata “Dixit Dominus” after Psalm 110 represents something like this composer’s visiting card. She applied for admission to the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna with it and became the first woman ever to be accepted to this elite circle of internationally renowned musicians. Although the cantata primarily bears the imprint of Italian Early Classicism, it juxtaposes contrapuntal work in the old style with galant and empfindsam elements in keeping with those times, and her instrumentation of it is richly varied and colorful. The sacred cantata “Come le limpide onde” was the starting point for the present recording because it contains as a special feature two arias with an obbligato part for salterio (the Baroque forerunner of today’s dulcimer). A stirring “Storm-and-Stress” symphony by Marianna Martines rounds off this album.