In 1884, Antonín Dvořák undertook his first concert tour to England. This was to become a highlight of his career to date and brought him international recognition and economic security. It was a time of private and professional bliss. It is interesting to note, however, that the Seventh Symphony by no means reflects a consistently pastoral, idyllic atmosphere. On the contrary, the music often has a dramatic and sombre effect. It is possible that Dvorak was coming to terms with the blows of fate he had suffered: he had lost his mother and three children. Four years after the premiere of the Seventh Symphony, Dvorak set to work on his Eighth, which differed substantially from it. In the Seventh, he still adhered to the form of the classical symphony according to Beethoven, but here he gave preference to melody over form. It leads through the work, creating the impression of a “sequence of atmospheric poetic pictures.”

Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen has been chief conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie since 2017 and Music Director of the KBS Symphony Orchestra in Seoul since 2022. He has conducted many renowned orchestras, including the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

Born in the Champagne countryside in 1837, Théodore Dubois developed his talents at the Reims Cathedral, which explains why the Catholic sacred sphere influenced him throughout his life. Even today he continues to be known in France above all as a composing organist and a composer of sacred music for liturgical use who compiled a massive oeuvre. He also continues to be much discussed in educational circles as the author of the standard manuals in music theory of a strictly conservative nature. We are now releasing three of his violin compositions, which, by contrast, have been neglected and wrongly forgotten by posterity. His Violin Concerto was dedicated to none other than the violin legend Eugène Ysaÿe. The quality of this work is manifested most impressively in the Adagio middle movement in the form a long-drawn-out melody with a mighty amplitude; the deepest depths are fathomed with big sound, and iridescent heights are scaled. Here the whole individual value of French violin culture is revealed. And his only Sonata for Violin and Piano also contains the name of a great virtuoso in its dedication – Henri Marteau – and was composed to order for him.

For over 60 years, repeated efforts have been made to capture on recording Robert Schumann’s Complete Works for Piano solo, a fascinatingly broad and varied spectrum ranging from highly virtuosic pieces for the concert hall and valuable literature for teaching purposes. This attractive and yet challenging assignment was not always approached with the necessary intellectual rigor, quite apart from any purely artistic shortcomings, and so none of these sets can justly be deemed “complete”. Schumann had published a string of works in two more or less divergent versions, so that it is highly questionable whether an edition can be labelled “Complete Recordings” if it only contains one of those versions or worse still, makes a misguided attempt to combine two of them. Meanwhile, works that were published at remote locations or remained unpublished have hitherto been taken into account only in exceptional cases.

The first true complete recording of Robert Schumann’s works for piano solo on 17 albums (in 15 volumes), played by Florian Uhlig, seeks for the first time to offer imaginative compilations containing all original works for pianoforte written between 1830 (Abegg Variations op. 1) and 1854 (Ghost Variations) according to the newest critical editions and/or first editions. Several of these albums also contain premiere recordings, often of fragments that were amenable to completion. After the project was completed in 2021, it was evident from a further critical inspection of the five Studien- und Skizzenbücher held in the University and State Library in Bonn, and from the volumes of the complete piano works for two hands that have so far appeared in this comprehensive and groundbreaking edition, that there is a string of either very short complete or longer fragmentary pieces dating from about 1830 to 1837 that are worthy of attention.

The tenor Julian Pregardien joins ALPHA for several recording projects that will showcase every facet of his talent, notably lieder and oratorio. His first album on the label is devoted to one of the greatest masterpieces in the history of music, Winterreise, but in a version with orchestra composed by Hans Zender in 1993. He scored the work for orchestral forces very differently from the ensembles used in the nineteenth century. Hans Zender describes his work as a ‘creative transformation’: “My own reading of Winterreise does not seek a new expressive interpretation, but systematically takes advantage of the freedoms that performers normally allow themselves in an intuitive way: slowing down or accelerating the tempo, transposition into different keys, emphasizing and nuancing colors.” Following a staged production of this version of the work, Christian Merlin wrote in Le Figaro in 2018: “A spellbinding Winterreise . . . The tenor Julian Pregardien, at once an exceptional singer and a committed actor, gives an incendiary performance combining vocal expressiveness, loving attention to the words and theatrical presence with sensitivity and intelligence in equal measure.”

In 2013, Florian Uhlig released a recording with French Piano Concertos and it received excellent reviews from critics all over the world and became one of that year's bestsellers. Uhlig is here again, accompanied by the German Radio Philharmonic under Pablo Gonzales - a collaboration which already made his first recording a massive success. This album contains again, piano concertos by Ravel and Francaix, which supplement the concertos of the 2013 album, and rarely performed and very imaginative works for piano and orchestra with concert character by Germaine Tailleferre and Nadia Boulanger. Tailleferre's Ballad for Piano and Orchestra passed through different phases from 1920 - 1922, starting as a pure orchestral work, then becoming a solo piece, and then finally as work with concerto character in the final version. Boulanger originates from a musical family and is famous for her pedagogical passion. Among the concertos on this album, her work was inspired by her idols Cesar Franck and Sergei Rachmaninov.

A collection of well-known hits ("Schlager") made famous by singers like Joseph Schmidt, Richard Heuberger or Mischa Spoliansky, many of them composed for popular movies of that time. They maintained their popularity until nowadays and are performed on this album by the young rising star from Austria, the tenor Martin Miterrutzner, accompanied by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under the baton of Christoph Poppen, who has already established his reputation with original and innovative repertoire. Mitterrutzner is an extraordinary gifted tenor with a wide repertoire from Bach to Britten, whose voice is also perfectly equiped for an exquisite rendering of the emotive hits of the 1930’s.

Sebastian Manz writes: “It seems only logical at first glance to unite two Scandinavian composers, Carl Nielsen and Magnus Lindberg, on one [album], and it must be said that we are talking about two works that have permanently influenced and changed me as a musician. I played the Clarinet Concerto op. 57 by Carl Nielsen in 2008 for the finale of the ARD International Music Competition and won first prize. It was a huge challenge back then for me to have to play it by heart, as the rules required. Nerves, sleepless nights and superstitions about being able to learn something better by heart by having the score under one’s pillow at night all led on stage (with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra behind me) to one of my most intensive experiences ever. This piece of music is challenging both technically and musically, to the extent that after each performance I have the feeling of being not just a better clarinetist, but a more mature human being; it makes me realize that qualitatively high-value art requires time, not just to mature within ourselves, but to be recognized as such at all.”

The present recording of the Fourth Symphony of Johannes Brahms is the last one produced by OehmsClassics with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. Thus many cycles lie dormant on CD and no more will follow. Nonetheless, a special birthday present for the phenomenal maestro is being prepared.

During the summer of 1883 Richard Strauss composed two large-format orchestral works in traditional genres, the lengthy Concert Overture in C minor and the Symphony in F minor op. 12, both of them also with the same instruments. The overture is anything but a secondary effort; it also cannot be understood as a simple »work of his youth.« Although the key and the opening stance of the overture clearly point to Beethoven’s Coriolanus Overture, the subliminal irritations, frictions, surprises, and saliencies already present here become even much more apparent in the symphony. As in the overture, so too in the symphony: the composer abstains from any sort of allusions to content, and – even more strikingly – he does not include a dedication, even though the work was immediately published. And the finale pursues an unusual course, not with a breakthrough but over a festive path leading to a hymnic theme followed by an absolutely wild conclusion. Following our release of early chamber music by Richard Strauss, we are now presenting two more significant early works by him!

For many people Christmas time has come when the broadcasting stations start playing the specific music everybody knows and hears each year. However, not always music performed around Christmas has originally been composed for Christmas too. Especially our earliest and therefore most emotional memories are closely related to this festivity. The music we associate with these emotions does not necessarily have to be Christmassy, but should intensify and reflect those feelings. In December 2022 the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under chief conductor Pietari Inkinen performed a festive concert in the main broadcasting studio of the Saarländischer Rundfunk in Saarbrücken. Entitled "Festklänge" (Festive Sounds), the concerto was a compilation of Christmas music and music associated with Christmas, featuring the soprano Sarah Romberger and the mezzo-soprano Elsa Benoit as soloists. It contains next to Hely Hutchinson's excerpts from Humperdinck's opera Hansel and Gretel as well from Tchaikovskys' The Nutcracker.

Shostakovich never wrote an original composition entitled “Chamber Symphony”. Works known under this title are arrangements of the composer’s string quartets by the conductor Rudolf Barshai and authorized by the composer. The String Quartet No. 1, Op. 49 was written in 1938, after the Great Terror from 1937 and can be considered as an act of inner emigration. The String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 was written 22 years later, within three days, from 12 to 14 July 1960, in the Saxon health resort of Gohrisch. The Piano Concerto No. 1 in C minor, Op. 35, written in 1933, is one of the last works written in Shostakovich’s first creative period which was not yet overshadowed by Stalinist repressions and is peppered with a great deal of parodistic allusions. With the present recordings the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under its young, energetic chief conductor Pietari Inkinen draws a dramaturgically convincing bow across Shostakovich's work.