Paul Graener was a “latest romanticist” with a strong inclination for French impressionism – which as a composer in the Germany of the first half of the twentieth century makes him a unique case. This month cpo is presenting three of his concertos on our fourth Graener album. Once again it is shown that this music more than deserves to be rediscovered. Hardly any other companion of Paul Graener’s so intensely supported his oeuvre as did the cellist Paul Grümmer, the dedicatee of this composer’s Cello Concerto and the soloist at its premiere in 1927. The critic Adolf Diesterweg wrote in a review: “Graener’s new Cello Concerto contains naturally invented, succinctly formed music enabling the cellist, thanks to the transparent orchestral part, to sound his instrument effectively. In my view the most beautiful movement is the highly cantabile and atmospheric Adagio. The Violin Concerto has harmonically original, fascinating sound elements showing us Graener at an absolute creative summit. The time of composition of Graener’s last finished composition, his Flute Concerto, coincides with the increasing bombardment and destruction of Berlin. Here it is above all the last movement that stands out and attracts our attention – and does so not so much because of its neoclassical guise, something already to be encountered in Graener’s works of the 1930s, but rather on account of his choice of the life-affirming folk song, which displays a cheerful mood that can be harmonized neither with the difficult circumstances of Graener’s life nor with the wartime events taking place at that time.”

César Franck’s great Violin Sonata in A, arranged for piano by Alfred Cortot, forms the focus on our new solo album featuring the gifted and successful pianist Michael Korstick. “The version without disturbing scratching noises does indeed have its appeal,” Korstick ironically opines and then explains, “I know that I’m now making myself extremely unpopular with all violinists, but some things come across even better in the version for piano alone. One doesn’t miss the violin.” This is of course a controversial statement, especially since it refers to the embodiment of the sensuous romantic violin sonata. “The fact is that Franck almost always thinks starting from the organ,” thus Korstick’s argument continues, “and Cortot so genially distributed the voices of the octaves that the polyphonic structure becomes clearer.” The audience at its premiere in Paris in 1885 was immediately enthused, and most pianists continue to be so even today. Michael Korstick regards this work as Franck’s “most important, central solo piece,” and the Franck expert Jörg Demus views the Prélude, Aria et Final as one of the few “lucid” compositions of the late romantic period and pardons it for its difficulty in playing technique: “But what do difficulties mean when the emotional content compensates one for it in such a rich way!”

The Hamburger Ratsmusik – an ensemble looking back on a five-hundred-year history – teams up with the young countertenor Benno Schachtner on this recording of Georg Philipp Telemann’s Six Moral Cantatas. During the decades between 1720 and 1750 the middle class of the early Enlightenment sought moral education and ethical improvement deriving from human nature and reason as part of its never-ending quest for earthly happiness. It was with wit and charm that in his Moral Cantatas of 1735 Telemann set to music a poetic document conveying the spirit of this Enlightenment period. His only recently rediscovered Fantasies for Solo Viola da Gamba, published at the same time, are presented here in alternation with his Moral Cantatas, the title with which they were announced in a catalogue dating from August 1735. These two collections first performed together during a concert of the Hamburger Ratsmusik at the last Telemann Festival are now being presented here for the first time. These two works by Telemann were intended for professional and amateur musicians alike, and they seem to have met with special resonance among those interested parties who wanted to perform at home in smaller ensembles.

Boris Papandopulo: his name sounds Greek, and yet he has to be regarded as the most important Croatian composer of the twentieth century. Our third release featuring this uncommonly versatile composer presents his Concertos for Piccolo and Harpsichord. As in many of his concertos for solo instruments and orchestra, here too Papandopulo draws on neoclassical, that is, Baroque, sources in his Harpsichord Concerto. The three characteristic movements follow the model fast-slow-fast in their sequence. In the introductory cantata the composer incorporates dodecaphonic features into the musical structure in a most highly individual and original manner in order then to blend them with compositional-technical elements of the Baroque. He employed the piccolo in many ways his works. It usually enables him to evoke nature with musical means – the country idyll, the sounds of shepherd’s pipes and birdcalls, and the stylized folk dance. Such a sunny, idyllic, Arcadian atmosphere also radiates throughout the Prelude with its stylized birdsong forming the beginning of the Little Concerto. His orchestral songs round off the album. Papandopulo’s music concentrates as much as possible on the text in these little genre pictures, a fact reflected in his thoroughly recitative treatment of the words as well as in his neo-impressionistic compositional technique. This tonal coloration is shown not only in the subtle chords of the harp but also in his frequent use of bitonal sound layers.

Giovanni De Macque was a member of the last generation of Franco-Flemish composers during Europe’s early modern period. Although he is hardly known today, he enjoyed great esteem during his lifetime. The lion’s share of De Macque’s oeuvre is formed by madrigals for four to six voices. Moreover, he composed pieces known as madrigaletti (the diminutive refers to the smaller ensemble and the »lighter tone« of the content and the music), a collection of Latin motets for up to eight voices, and instrumental works, some of which are heard in a representative cross section on this release. All of the pieces heard here are from the Sesto libro de madrigali de cinque voci, which was printed in Venice in 1613, a year prior to De Macque’s death. The collection covers a broad spectrum of verbal and musical registers. The texts set to music draw on Arcadian mythological topoi and also treat moralizing and religious themes. Carefree delight and the vivifying power of nature as well as lover’s grief, despair, and sorrow – De Macque expresses all these feelings, situations, and impressions in his pieces. His madrigals may also be said to exhibit a considerable thematic and stylistic variety. His music for keyboard instruments also occupies an important place in music history and in particular significantly influenced the development of the seventeenth-century Neapolitan school.

Following Mandolino e Violino in Italia we are now releasing Mandolino e Fortepiano with the acclaimed mandolin virtuoso Anna Torge, who “inspires fascination above all with her surprisingly cantabile, most finely articulated, melodically and harmonically intelligent playing, as is extremely rarely the case on a plucked instrument” (Neue Musikzeitung). A mandolin with four courses is used for the selection of works heard on this album. The elegant and sensitive sound of the instrument was produced with gut, copper, and silver-plated strings plucked with a quill or plectrum made of bark. In 1804 Johann Nepomuk Hummel composed his festive and graceful Grand Sonata, which today may be regarded as the last great work of what is known as the classical zenith of the mandolin. The Sonata by Gabriele Leone will transport listeners to the sound world of the galant sensitive style and demonstrate the highly developed performance artistry of this period. The mandolin’s association with the network of Europe’s noble families led to its dissemination and popularity in all the countries of the Continent. For example, the National Library in Lisbon contains in its holdings Sonatas for Mandolin and Piano by the Portuguese composer Porto Feliziano. Even the young Beethoven, attracted to the beauty and charming mandolin playing of Comtesse Josefine Clary-Aldringen, wrote ravishing works for mandolin and keyboard.

Woldemar Bargiel was Clara Schumann’s half brother and Robert Schumann’s brother-in-law. Already in the nineteenth century hardly any lexicon failed to note these relational circumstances, surely more to Bargiel’s disadvantage since it for many years led to his relegation to the “second ranks.” It is only recently that the study of his private papers, which somehow miraculously managed to survive two world wars, has inspired increasing interest in his oeuvre. His papers include manuscripts as well as more than 1,500 letters demonstrating that he was a sought-after personality in the European music world. Moreover, in 2010 Dean Cáceres published a study based on analytic methods laying the foundation for what is an impressive demonstration of Bargiel’s personal style – which the Orpheus Quartet now thoroughly confirms on its complete recording of the composer’s string chamber music. Bargiel’s chamber compositions display the most skillful formal elaboration. Like Beethoven, Bargiel attached more importance to the elaboration of the thematic material than to the melodies themselves. On the whole Bargiel may be regarded as one of the most important academic composers of the first half of the nineteenth century. During his lifetime numerous fellow musicians, among them Brahms and Draeseke, highly valued his works.

The Loreley is one of the most famous figures of the romantic era, and even today the massive rock in the Rhine is notorious for threatening the river’s skippers with shipwreck. The legendary female figure with her seductive beauty today no longer haunts the river, but her story continues to resonate in the imagination. In 1861, when he was a mere twenty years old, Max Bruch, a Rhinelander born in Cologne, devoted an opera to the Loreley, a work based on a libretto by the great Emanuel Geibel himself. This opera in four acts is only rarely performed and until now has never been recorded on album. The Munich Radio Orchestra will now change this state of affairs: in a concert performance initiated by cpo the orchestra presented the work under the conductor Stefan Blunier, who was the General Music Director of the City of Bonn – that is, in the vicinity of the Loreley – when the recording was produced. The marvelous Michaela Kaune interpreted the title role in a top-quality performance, and Thomas Mohr was her male counterpart. Bruch set the Loreley story, in which everything, both in ambience and action, constituting a “Grand Romantic Opera” (thus the work’s subtitle) is present, in a highly romantic musical language. It is not without reason that Hans Pfitzner lent his support to this forgotten gem throughout his life.

Why Another Christmas album? Because the Christmas season ideally offers free time and opportunities for leisure, meditation, and self-reflection – all of which need not necessarily occur exclusively in the sphere of religious spirituality. We can also put our holidays to good use simply by doing nothing, not planning too much, and taking advantage of the opportunity for everything beyond the limits of our “to do” agendas. Time! For encounters, conversations, and ideas. Free space and time enable us to suspend our everyday routines and perhaps to entertain the eyes with pictures that we haven’t seen in a long time or haven’t ever seen before – and the ears with ditto sounds. This release is intended especially for this “chronotopos!” Here the Singphoniker in no way wish to encroach on your time-space, providing it with an audio background or supplying the musical accompaniment. But if you want to close your eyes and open your ears, then the Singphoniker will be happy to join you. They would like to offer entertainment and to transmit joy in the form of many wonderful melodies and moods: the joy that comes with so many astonishing developments and combinations, with so many different elements and contrasts, with Christmas swing, with the classical tradition, with folk-song tones, and that ranges from the Singphonic special arrangement to the timeless classics of the modern era.

Our highly acclaimed Bach series featuring the Concerto Copenhagen and Lars Ulrik Mortensen continues this month with a release on which the master’s Brandenburg Concertos and the successful Danish ensemble are heard in surround sound. The Brandenburg Concertos are practically synonymous with Baroque music; for the general music public these six instrumental concertos represent the quintessence of the Baroque musical era. Bach himself presumably would have been surprised to learn of their symbolic status. After all, he happened to compose them by pure chance and over a longer period of time. After the Brandenburg Concertos had slumbered for a century, these »Sleeping Beauties« were delivered from archival obscurity in 1850 – when the Bach Society of Leipzig was established and undertook the publication of a complete edition of the works of its composer on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his death. However, another century passed before the concertos came to enjoy the great popularity they have today. Concerto Copenhagen conveys the unique experience of an artistic depth connected and united with the celebration of life, erudition, and spontaneity representing the true hallmarks of Bach’s music.

A radically systematic logic stunningly manifested itself quite early in the music of Richard Strauss. He avoided the instrumental genres, was attracted to the tone poem right from the very start, and worked toward the goal of making the opera his central focus. And yet his beginnings lay in chamber music, a fact demonstrated on this release with two examples in new recordings. The Piano Trio No. 2 is lengthier than its predecessor and very ambitious both in its tonal register and execution. The formal norms – sonata form, song form, scherzo, and then another sonata movement – are upheld with completeness and elegance. The piano trio had a long line of tradition going back to Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, but the composer who set standards in the middle of the nineteenth century is particularly clearly recognizable here in a model function: Mendelssohn. Only about seven years passed between this trio and Strauss’s only Piano Quartet, but in 1885 too he was still a very young composer. The quartet displays impressive advances in technique; now Strauss apparently could draw on all the compositional resources then available, and the higher virtuosic demands on the instrumentalists are also quite evident. Strauss attracted the greatest attention with his large-format op. 13 lasting almost forty minutes, a work that even brought him a prize from the Berliner Tonkünstlerverein.

It is really not at all surprising that a composer of dance music might eventually get around to writing a full-length dance composition. But did you know this: that the music for the full-length ballet Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) amounts to the swan song of Johann Strauss? Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to complete the work. Before his death he had orchestrated the first act and half of the third act. The versed ballet composer Josef Bayer was assigned the task of completing the work, and he used the extensive sketches to produce a performable version. Over the years a lot of new source material has surfaced. On the basis of these sources the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra of Vienna has made a new recording of this work so very rich in melodies. The result is also a sort of rediscovery of Aschenbrödel. Our conductor is the Strauss specialist Ernst Theis.

Jacques Hotteterre’s suites form the focus of the last volume in our complete edition of his chamber music. The Italian idiom, Hotteterre’s affinity for Italy and its music, distinguish the structure of his works, and this proximity to the goût italien can also be heard in the four Suites op. 5. Hotteterre modified the French suite type consisting of many pieces in the same key and replaced it with a model practically verging on the sonata form. L’art de préluder, a course offering instruction in the so very important capabilities necessary for improvisation, is another highly interesting work by Hotteterre. Here the composer writes short preludes that could be used to introduce suite cycles in the corresponding keys and were supposed to school and inspire the musician’s own gifts of invention. In his pieces from the valuable volume entitled Airs Ornez d’Agremens Hotteterre arranges familiar melodies of French provenance for two or three flutes and writes Doubles for flute solo. These greatly embellished variations are unrivaled in their marvelous display of the ornamental improvisational style of French flute artistry.

In September 2015 the Salzburger Hofmusik under Wolfgang Brunner presented a semi-scenic performance of the “Salzburg Haydn’s” Singspiel MH 118 during the Salzburg Haydn Week and in cooperation with the Michael Haydn Society and the Mozarteum University of Salzburg. More than two centuries had passed since its premiere in Salzburg, and Die Wahrheit der Natur (The Truth of Nature) is now also finally available on this album. Salzburg’s rich theatrical tradition was once inseparably linked to the Benedictine University. The final comedies presented by students at the university at the end of the academic year along with the participation of members of the court ensemble were in particular very popular and open to all local residents. As the music for this delightful comic and didactic poem penned by the Benedictine priest Florian Reichssiegel demonstrates, Michael Haydn also made original contributions to this genre. Reason, in the guise of Mentor, seeks true art with assistance from the three Graces, the daughters of Nature. During their quest for knowledge the four again and again meet curious types like the vain master of song Vollstreich, the braggart painter Wurmstich, and the ill-mannered schoolmaster Bockstolz and his wife Urschel. The plot includes scenes in which the quest for art is portrayed not only as a series of lessons but also as an entertaining adventure.

"Gade’s chamber music is marvelously written and does not deserve to disappear into the footnotes of musical historiography. The Ensemble MidVest is completely committed to Gade’s cause and performs these works recorded in perfect balance with an open naturalness showing his music in the most favorable light." This is how FonoForum reviewed Vol. 2 of our Gade recordings based on the new historical-critical complete edition of his works. The compositional history of many of these works is long and complicated because he often submitted his earlier works to later revisions. One exception is his String Quartet of 1851, the first complete quartet of his authorship. It is not known why he later distanced himself from this composition inasmuch as it is distinguished by a expressivity stronger than that encountered in his later works. With his one-movement Quintet in F minor he created a work comparable in expression and form to the one-movement dramatic concert overtures with which he had occupied himself ever since his earliest youth.