Rontgen’s Piano Concertos Vol. 2. Our second album featuring piano concertos by Julius Rontgen presents impressive Romantic music by this composer who was also an outstanding pianist and often interpreted his own compositions. His Piano Concerto No. 3 of 1887-88, by way of exception in four movements, is more reminiscent of Brahms and not at all of the New German School of Liszt adherents. In December 1929 Rontgen began composing his last two piano concertos, both of which are heard on this release. His Concerto No. 6 has one movement and lasts a mere fifteen minutes. The theme consists of repeated gentle wavy motion that recurs at the beginning, in the middle, with the cadenza, and at the end and reflects the bitonality so diligently practiced by Willem Pijper and Paul Hindemith, two composers whom Rontgen held in admiration. His Concerto No. 7, his last such work, has three distinct movements and an ABA structure that would enable it to stand alone. It is Rontgen’s posthumous triumph that his two last concertos have never disappeared from the repertoire and have continued to be regularly performed together. Now for almost ninety years!

Following the successful albums Hymnus and Magnificat with music by Orlando di Lasso the Singphoniker are now concluding their little Lasso cycle with a recording of his complete Penitential Psalms. It was around 1559 that the Bavarian Duke Albrecht V commissioned a manuscript in which the textual, pictorial, and musical dimensions were to be combined. Orlando di Lasso was assigned the task of setting the seven Penitential Psalms, a group of texts regarded as a unit since ancient times, and rounded off this work with praise of God in the form of a motet on Psalms 148 and 150. Lasso set the texts verse by verse, in this way drawing on an old liturgical model for Psalm settings. This method means that relatively short textual units produce a self-contained musical whole with component parts of rather limited extent; the musical form, the structure of the composition of an entire psalm, is developed from the design of the text. Just how very much the composer was thinking of the traditional manner of singing is shown in particular by the sixth Penitential Psalm, in which he bases his setting on the monophonic liturgical singing of psalms in the Lydian mode and uses it as a cantus firmus. It is certainly no coincidence that in the nineteenth century the first significant edition of Lasso’s music was dedicated to the Penitential Psalms: Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn (who, by the way, taught Clara Schumann and Mikhail Glinka) published it in 1838. This is finely crafted and highly impressive music – and again and again the Singphoniker amaze us with their sonorous renderings of it.

Our new complete recording of the organ works of Johann Pachelbel, the most important composer of the Southern German organ tradition, concludes with a total of three albums – all of them once again in SS and with first-class organists performing on selected organs. Our three protagonists, Michael Belotti, Christian Schmitt, and James David Christie, have produced enthralling recordings on which they demonstrate their expertise in performances on outstanding historical instruments. This final volume of our complete edition adheres to the same policy as Vols. 1 and 2: it too is based on the new collection and edition of the composer’s extant oeuvre. The order of the works on the recordings initially follows that of the chorale arrangements in the edition, which results in programs with the following thematic emphases: Passions, Psalm Settings, and Chorale Partitas. The new recording invites all listeners to rediscover the mastery and versatility of the keyboard composer Pachelbel. Toccata wrote of Vol. 1 of the edition: “Here everything is in order: very good interpretations on appropriate instruments, with an informative booklet in which we also find descriptions and the disposition of the organs played as well as information about the registration of each individual work. The project has what it takes to become one of the most important of this time.”

By his own account, Erasmus Kindermann was pressured by friends into setting poems by Martin Opitz to music and did so in works such as his Opitianischer Orpheus. The poems that he chose for the most part were selections from the Bucher Deutscher Poemata. The texts of the songs mostly focus on themes taken from ancient models: “carpe diem” and “memento mori” as well as love’s joy and love’s grief. Poems with moral and religious content and for special occasions and entertainment are also represented, and the pastoral idyll often provides the scenic background. The instrumental preludes and interludes consist of only a few measures but very skillfully render the character of the particular song and underscore its textual message. In the subtitle of his Opitianischer Orpheus Kindermann terms his poem settings “Musical Delights,” in this way clearly emphasizing his intention not to compose laments on sad times but instead to convey joy, intellectual stimulation, and pleasure. Instead of designing the music for the poems in his Opitianischer Orpheus as an opulent work in multiple voices for a larger concert setting, Kindermann very deliberately chose chamber music as his medium. He presumably had in mind, both in view of the performers and the audience members, a group of music lovers with literary ambitions who had received a humanistic education and met for social gatherings in order to present songs or to listen to their recital. The composer intentionally refrained from including broad melismas in the song melodies. As a result, the individual songs develop a characteristically strong succinctness that continues to resonate and invites listeners to sing and play along in enjoyable social settings.

The Vogler Quartet Interprets Dvorák, Vol. 3. Individuality developed and revealed in ensemble performance – herein surely lies the secret of the Vogler Quartet, which has pursued a unique career with an unchanged membership ever since 1985. FonoForum wrote of Vol. 1 of our complete edition featuring all of Dvorák’s quartets, “The Vogler Quartet seeks rich sonority, sharp rhythmic contouring, and warm, earthy colors. In every respect a successful beginning for this complete edition.” Vol. 3 of our edition by these highly acclaimed interpreters, which also includes the String Quintet and Piano Quintet, presents more quartets by Dvorák. His Quartet No. 3 in D major, over sixty minutes in duration, ranks as what is surely one of the most extensive string quartets in the entire literature. The fact that he composed it immediately around the time of the premiere of Wagner’s Meistersinger no doubt also contributed to the work’s expansive dimensions. Dvorák’s String Quartet in E major composed in 1876 belongs to his middle compositional period, during which he did a great deal of experimenting with form and harmony. The slow movement may already be interpreted as a forerunner of later dumka movements. The Ukrainian word dumka – as a Pan-Slavist Dvorák in no way was influenced merely by the folklore of his native country – can be derived from dumatj (“to think”) and means as much as “contemplative melody.” This folk ballad in which songs and dance melodies are linked together is not bound to a particular form. Exciting listening!

Between the operas and ballets, the symphonies, tone poems, and concertos, and the songs and piano miniatures representing most of the significant entries in Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s work catalogue, the major genres of string chamber music register their presence as a salient minority. However, these works merit our full attention because they range over practically the whole of Tchaikovsky’s compositional horizon – from the rising of his creative sun to its premature setting. The Quartet Movement in B flat major from his final years as a student already attests to his narrative ambitions as a composer. Between 1871 and 1876, in his three full-size quartets, he then succeeded in producing a compelling synthesis consisting of discipline and boundless imagination, folkloristic nuances and individual expressivity, and transparency of compositional technique and impassioned communicativeness. In 1890, riding on the wave of his last worldwide opera success (The Queen of Spades), Tchaikovsky drew on his memories of Florence for his String Sextet, in order to cross over the border separating chamber music from symphonic music. The dreams and passions captured in this powerful work, its wealth of ideas, and its pure joie de vivre end up calling into question all the speculations concerning the circumstances surrounding his unfortunate death.

Burlesque & Colorful – Excerpts from “Schwanda” and More …. Jaromír Weinberger’s “one-hit wonder” was definitely his opera Schwanda, the Bagpiper. Two thousand performances of this opera were held within four years, and it was translated into seventeen languages. Weinberger’s score is rich in symphonic orchestral numbers that we now have brought together on this album. Already the virtuoso overture reveals between just what musical extremes Weinberger found his unique place. Here Smetana and Max Reger meet, and it was with Reger that Weinberger had studied in 1915 / 16. The dances also convey Bohemian burlesque wit and late-romantic harmonic spice. The two works following the excerpts from Schwanda were composed in 1929, directly after the great boom of Weinberger’s opera success and in its shadow. The six Bohemian Songs and Dances striking subtler musical tones and the overture to the opera The Beloved Voice make us eager to learn what is coming next.

While the music world is getting ready for next year’s 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth, this year’s bicentennial of the birth of the Polish national composer Stanislaw Moniuszko has gone practically unnoticed outside Poland. For this reason, this new recording of his two string quartets is all the more welcome. The composer who would become the celebrated master of the operas Halka and The Haunted Manor wrote these quartets during or shortly after his Berlin study years and in a style continuing to draw on the vocabulary of classical models. At the same time, the twenty-year-old student displays a sense of humor, melodicism, and chamber finesse that not only make for a genuinely rewarding listening experience but also are worth hearing again and again. A “late” creation by Moniuszko’s young fellow Pole Juliusz Zarebski is being presented here together with the quartets. At the end of his life this favorite pupil and confidant of Franz Liszt wrote an absolutely “avant-garde” piano quintet that might have launched a bold and daring oeuvre but ended up serving as a farewell: when this virtuoso pianist and composer delighting in experiment died in 1885, he was a mere thirty-one years old.

Georg Druschetzky is a name that people who know their music history associate with charming but innocuous wind partitas and truly out-of-the-ordinary concertos for six, seven, or eight timpani and orchestra. The latter category comes as no surprise; after all, Druschetzky was an “Upper Austrian Regional Timpanist” (a title actually bestowed on him in Linz in 1776), and so why shouldn’t he offer compositional tribute to his instrument? But there’s more: Druschetzky enjoyed a successful career that took him all the way to the court of the Palatine of Hungary, Archduke Joseph von Habsburg, in Ofen (today’s Buda), where he held the posts of court composer and music director and wrote masses, symphonies, two operas, and numerous chamber compositions. His chamber works include a cycle of ten oboe quartets (1807-8) from his late years that make an astonishing and lasting listening impression – because of his rich imagination and his compositional wit and spirited harmonic daredevilry that we otherwise encounter only in the “surprise artist” Haydn. This discovery is so significant that we in any case intend to present all ten quartets in congenial recordings by the Grundmann Quartet on historical instruments. The present release is volume 1 in this project.

The L’Orfeo Baroque Orchestra under its conductor Michi Gaigg created a sensational stir with its first two Mendelsohn recordings. klassik-heute declared: "This music absolutely sparkles with élan and joie de vivre. And the realization sends sparks of enthusiasm flying." Most of the first six symphonies from Felix Mendelssohn’s youth do seem to owe a lot to the music of Bach’s sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emanuel, but the two symphonies on Vol. 3 of the present complete recording of his early symphonic oeuvre already breathe the spirit of a Haydn or Mozart. A dramatic scene for alto and string orchestra modeled on the dramatic structure of recitative, cavatina, and concluding cabaletta from Beethoven’s famous »Ah! Perfido« op. 65 and other works rounds off the album. These component elements depict the dilemma of a heart oscillating between fervor and horror, and in the musical interpretation the string part mostly contrasts with such profound despair and wild passion, thereby opposing the emotional states rendered in song.

Friedrich Gernsheim’s chamber music figures significantly in his extensive oeuvre, where it occupies a position next to his symphonic music. Along with his works scored for piano and his diverse sonatas, it is above all in the genre of the string quartet that Gernsheim achieved great merit. On Vol. 1 of our complete recording the Diogenes Quartet interprets his first and third quartets. It is primarily in the latter work that he demonstrates his masterful command of compositional technique. The first movement requires performers with a firm metrical feel; agogic insertions occasion the blurring of time structures. The last movement is a variation movement and again a masterpiece, and after a lento it leads to a powerful and sonorous conclusion. Once you’ve heard these string quartets, you’ll wonder why after the leaden years prior to the war and then after it this genius never again returned to the concert halls. Why was there no Gernsheim revival, when Mendelssohn and Mahler revivals took place in German concert halls? Our four previously released albums and these quartets by this composer demonstrate that quality could not have been the reason for his exclusion.

The three compositions brought together on this release demonstrate how Telemann could be relied on to compose not only church music for ordinary religious services but also works for extraordinary sacred events and special occasions. Telemann’s dedicatory music for the church in the St. Hiob-Hospital in Hamburg, "Kommt, lasset uns anbeten," is scored for an ensemble that is noticeably smaller than those of his other compositions for the dedication of churches. This does not reflect lesser status but owes to the small church space. As a result, the composition convinces the listener with its intimacy, while the ensemble limited to a few musicians contributes significantly to the exquisite impression made by this lovingly designed music displaying many beautiful details, above all in the melodic and harmonic spheres. By contrast, the stylistic modernity and wealth of imagination in Telemann’s sung poem "Geschlagene Pauken, auf!" – which has been recorded here for the first time – makes us sit up and take notice. And the motet "Laetare iuvenis in iuventute tua," composed in 1758 to a text from the Old Testament, numbers among the few works by Telemann attesting to his activity in the educational field as the music director of Hamburg’s Latin School (the Johanneum).

In his Opus 300 Carl Czerny compiled a unique keyboard compendium of all the stylistic facets of European music from the Baroque until far into the Romantic era – an audio history of music en miniature featuring preludes as our guides and an overwhelming variety of characters, forms, and pianistic invention. The 120 finely chiseled preludes range from the aphoristic extreme of ten to twenty seconds in length to the just as aphoristically packed narrative and rhapsodic forms of a maximum of three to four minutes. Their numerical midpoint is formed by sixteen very short interludes that are brilliant examples of modulations, each proceeding from C major to all the other major keys. Like most of the preludes from No. 60 to No. 71, they represent variants of this art form originally distinguished by improvisation: as interludes they build audio bridges from one (imaginary) work to the next and link what would appear to be beyond linking. The work of course is interpreted in its entirety on this release – by none other than Kolja Lessing, one of the most versatile musicians of our times and a violinist and pianist who combines interpretive and musicological work in his many significant contributions to music culture.

The works for violoncello by Karl Weigl, a Viennese composer practically forgotten today, qualify as a twofold revelation. First, they offer us an opportunity once again to hear one of the musical voices that was the talk of the town in fin-de-siècle Vienna; second, the CD contains music for violoncello that in its »singability« is clearly modeled on Brahms but does not imitate him. And what is even more remarkable about this production is that its principal work – the Concerto – had never been heard at all until the present recording. In this monumental and expressive concerto Weigl sheds constantly new and impressive light on his melodic material. In contrast to the rather operatic "Love-Song," the "Wild Dance" is a theatrical piece making ample use of flageolets and sul ponticello. The Moderato in A major very simply offers time for a breather before the energetic beginning is repeated and the movement concludes with a fiery and forceful Presto con fuoco. Both works were dedicated to Arturo Toscanini.

Vol. 3 of the symphonic works of Josef Holbrooke contains further orchestral works demonstrating that he very much could also compose with humor and joy. Holbrooke’s symphonic poem Birds of Rhiannon has a great wealth of melodies that rightly enabled it to achieve great popularity and to register higher performance figures than all other works by its creator. The noisy and highly effective introduction in op. 37, 2 is followed by the presentation of the theme and fifteen variations in which Holbrooke is allowed to develop freely as a brilliant master of instrumentation. In the third-movement of his third symphony, Ships, he once again shows that he is a great master with an enormous wealth of ideas and skillfully employed orchestral colors at his command. In the finale we can practically see the merchant ships leaving the harbor and heading for their particular destinations with their categories of cargo. As a result, Great Britain is portrayed as a nation ruling the waves of flourishing, international sea trade – which at the time when Holbrooke composed his work, it definitely was.