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.

Here we present a new installment in the complete recording cycle of Dvor�k's Symphonic Works with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, containing not only the symphonies but also rarely recorded opera ouvertures of the Czech composer. The new chief conductor of the orchestra, Finnish maestro Pietari Inkinen, continues the Dvor�k Cycle begun under the baton of Karel Mark Chichon. In September 2017 Pietari Inkinen became Chief Conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbruecken. Inkinen is also Chief Conductor of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, a post he has held since the beginning of the 16-17 season. He has also been Chief Conductor of the Prague Symphony Orchestra since 2015. Also an accomplished violin soloist, Inkinen studied at the Cologne Music Academy with Zakhar Bron, winning various awards and prizes for his solo work, before taking further studies in conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. He continues to enjoy play-directing and performing chamber music with his regular musical partners.

The Ninth Symphony, which Antonin Dvorak himself titled 'From the New World', was a huge success when it premiered on 16 December 1893 at Carnegie Hall in New York: 'The newspapers say that never before has a composer enjoyed such a triumph.' However, it was by no means uncontroversial - Dvorak had been invited to the USA and given the task of creating an American national music. He therefore studied the music of the indigenous population, the descendants of slaves and various other inhabitants, and created the symphony with all these sources in mind. Though many critics did not consider that the goal of an authentic American national music had been achieved, the work itself belongs until today to the most popular symphonies ever written. Much earlier, Dvorak had composed the Serenade for Wind Instruments, Violoncello and Double Bass in D minor. He was probably inspired by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 'Gran Partita', and the unusual instrumentation of Op. 44 - with two oboes, clarinets and bassoons, a contrabassoon, three horns, two cellos and double basses - is a strong indication of this. Finnish conductor Pietari lnkinen has been principal conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie since 2017. He will step down from this position in the summer of 2025 to focus more on his international commitments. He has received numerous awards, including the Franco Abbiati Prize. In October 2023, the film portrait 'A Baton and a Passport - Pietari lnkinen Conductor' was released.

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.

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.

Karel Mark Chichon was Principal Conductor of the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra Saarbrucken Kaiserslautern from 2011 to 2017; the programmes he presented during his seasons there were celebrated by the public and lauded by the critics in equal measure. One magnificent result of this period is the present recording with works by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and de Falla. All are ballets whose rhythms made an enormously modern, almost revolutionary effect at the time; the dancers had quite a lot to learn about how to coordinate their movements to this music. For more than ten years now, the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra has been an integral part of the German orchestral music scene which is like no other in the world. The orchestra was created following the merger of the Saarbrucken Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Radio Orchestra Kaiserslautern. As one of the ARD radio symphony orchestras, it performs at the orchestra’s resident locations in Saarbrucken and Kaiserslautern as well as participating in the Saarlandischer Rundfunk and the Sudwestrundfunk cultural programmes or giving concerts on the SR/SWR an dARTE television channels.

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.”

Claire Huangci went from being "clearly a pianist to follow" to the status of internationally established and acclaimed young pianist even before winning the Mozart Prize at the Concours G�za Anda in 2018. Following on from four successful solo albums from arrangements of Russian ballet music through Scarlatti to Chopin's complete Nocturnes and all of Rachmaninoff's Preludes she now releases her first orchestral album with Berlin Classics. Together with the aspiring young South Korean conductor Shiyeon Sung and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie she plays Chopin's Piano Concerto No 1 and contrasts it with Paderewski's concerto. Chopin's Piano Concerto No 1 is well established on the world's concert platforms. Huangci is well aware that there are two sides to Chopin the man who composed the piano concerto and the creator of the Nocturnes In comparison to Chopin, Paderewski is relatively unknown, yet he was an intensely interesting man and his piano concerto is rich in ideas and resources. The configuration of the recording is ideal- two artists who composed their works early in their careers, interpreted by an equally young pianist. Huangci perceives the youthful verve of the compositions:"Both composers exude a true joie de vivre, a love of life, attributable to their youth. The concertos were clearly written by men who looked with hope to the future." She brings the same youthful elan to her interpretation.

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.

Bassoonist Theo Plath is currently the talk of the town: After winning the 2018 German Music Competition, which awarded him this Primavera Edition prizewinner album, he also impressed audiences at the 2019 ARD Music Competition. Be it as a soloist, chamber musician, or solo bassoonist with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Theo Plath simply thrills his audiences. On his solo debut recording, he combines Romantic bassoon concertos by Carl Maria von Weber and Bernhard Crusell with modern French compositions by Marcel Bitsch and André Jolivet. Accompanied by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under the baton of Leo McFall, he lets the broad spectrum of the bassoon's expressive possibilities resound, from melancholic lyricism to witty charm.

Rarely recorded Ballets by Tommasini, Milhaud, Sauguet + Exceptional richness of musical colors + First Class, rousing interpretations.

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.

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 1 in g, “Winter Dreams.” Capriccio Italien • Christoph Poppen, cond; Southwest German RO • OEHMS 760 (57:57) Live: Saarbrücken 12/2007; Mainz 1/2010


This appears to be a sequel to Tchaikovsky’s Fourth with Poppen, reviewed in Fanfare 33:3. Is it part of an emerging cycle? I don’t know. I was not overly enthused with the earlier release, only because I felt Poppen’s reading of the Fourth, one of the composer’s more nervous-tic-ridden scores, needed a bit more in the way of the frenzied and the frenetic than the performance delivered. I concluded that if Poppen had brought as much urgency to the symphony as he did to the 1812 Overture that complemented it on the disc, the venture would have been more successful.


Tchaikovsky’s “Winter Dreams” Symphony is another animal altogether. Aside from the flash of drama here and there, the work is one of the composer’s loveliest lyrical creations. For Tchaikovsky, this first-born among his symphonies was perhaps his greatest labor of love. He worked on it tirelessly for at least eight years, from 1866 to 1874, making constant and sometime drastic revisions. I’d even go so far as to say that if he had left only four symphonies instead of six, the Second and Third would not be missed, for neither surpasses the First in formal construction, handling of materials, or sheer melodic inspiration.


My last encounter with a “new” Tchaikovsky First was a 1995 Arte Nova recording with Samuel Friedmann leading the Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic, reviewed in 32:1. I thought it was very good, not quite equal perhaps to my longtime favorite with Michael Tilson Thomas and the Boston Symphony Orchestra on a 1970 Deutsche Grammophon recording, but still quite successful in capturing Tchaikovsky’s musical portraiture.


Much the same may be said of this recent recording by Poppen and his Southwest German Radio Orchestra forces. The recording has excellent perspective and presence, and Poppen’s reading of the score is well balanced and nicely characterized. I especially liked his fantasy-spun Adagio (“Land of Desolation, Land of Mists”), which morphs perfectly from a feeling of finding oneself alone and forlorn into that most human of reactions to such circumstances, escape into a state of semi-conscious reverie.


With so many recordings of the symphony and the Capriccio Italien (nearly 100 of the latter!) competing for your attention and dollars, it would be a tough case to make that Poppen’s, at full price, can lay claim to being better than any number of others. Just saying it’s at least as good as any number of others, and perhaps better than a few, seems to me recommendation enough, should you happen to be in the market for a new recording of these works.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Beethoven Project is John Neumeier's choreographic tribute to Ludwig van Beethoven, blending elements of Narrative and Symphonic Ballets. Based on the "Eroica Variations", Piano and Chamber Music, the "Prometheus" Ballet and the "Eroica" Symphony, John Neumeier describes his idea of the Beethoven Project: "My ballet - an attempt to give physical shape to the form and emotion of Beethoven's music. The music continues to offer me the most direct biographical material. But, my choreography does not aim to illustrate any historical picture. I'm rather interested in the contradictory aspects of our image of Beethoven. As a choreographer, I look for equivalents that are communicated by movements alone." (John Neumeier)

This is the first album of Pietari Inkinen as chief conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie. Inkinen, as well as Lise Lindstrom and Stefan Vinke who are already known as highly experienced Wagner performers. Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen took up his position as Principal Conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie in September 2017. He is also the principal conductor of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, and the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele. As guest conductor he has been on the podium with many well-known orchestras, including the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and others. Inkinen is not only a successful conductor, but also a successful violinist. He studied under Zakhar Bron at Cologne Music College before continuing his education as a conductor at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem was initially conceived as a 'cantata of grief' - it was the death of his mother and the desire to create a memorial to his friend Robert Schumann that makes this music so intensely personal. With it's radiant messages of humanity, consolation and comfort, the Requiem caused a sensation and made Brahms famous virtually overnight. The work is heard here with it's 'ad libitum' organ and contrabassoon reinstated, enormously intensifying the depth of tone colors and lower sonorities. For the conductor Ralf Otto flexibility, diversity and transparency of sound have always been essential for his work with orchestras and choirs. Otto believes that understanding the compositional structure of a piece of music is an indispensable prerequisite to achieving intensely emotional expression. The conductor's reputation is based on his gift for interpreting different musical styles, from the Renaissance to the music of today. Since the beginning of his career, he has been a strong advocate for the performance of early music according to historically informed performance practices. His numerous recordings and broadcasts are a testament to his artistic achievements.

Since Oscar Straus began his career in the cabaret, it was only natural for him to bet on comedy in his first operetta, Die lustigen Nibelungen (1904), a parody of the Nibelungenlied, Wagner, and Wilhelminism. In this way, Straus, more than any of his Viennese contemporaries, became the heir to Jacques Offenbach, the founder of the genre, whose last period of flourishing influenced Straus (who was born in 1870) as well as Franz Leh�r, Leo Fall, and Emmerich K�lm�n. Straus's Serenade for String Orchestra is written in an always-radiant classical style. Especially the last two movements, "Walzer" and "Alla marcia," have an elegant structure already anticipating the later operettas. The highly romantic Piano Concerto in B minor displays a very different compositional design. Even though the three movements based on Franz Liszt's "New German" model form a seamless whole, they remain clearly recognizable and follow the pattern of the Classical-Romantic piano concerto, a form to which his teacher Max Bruch adhered until the very end. Oscar Straus's claim that he was Bruch's "favorite pupil" is made understandable by this romantic piano concerto, but he very much moves beyond his teacher, is bolder harmonically, and is more reminiscent of Liszt, whom Bruch rejected, along with his idea to have movements form sequences without breaks.

Schumann: Complete Works for Violin and Orchestra

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!

William Walton and Edwin York Bowen are among the composers who were hardly able to achieve a lasting international breakthrough. The viola also has a similar role to play. It's qualities were simply ignored by many composers, and the solo and concert repertoire for this instrument is correspondingly small. It is thanks to the English violist Lionel Tertis who was famous at the time that Bowen and Walton wrote the concertos featured on this album. The result is an important addition not only to the viola repertoire, but also for all lovers of classical music. The violist Diyang Mei, first principal violist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, has been steadily advancing his international career since his brilliant success at the coveted ARD International Music Competition in 2018. He has already performed as a soloist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie as well as at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Schwetzingen SWR Festival, the Black Forest Music Festival and the Mozart Festival in Wurzburg. His conductor is none other than Brett Dean, who enjoys an international reputation as a violist, composer and conductor.

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.

Dutch violinist Niek Baar joins the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under the direction of Christoph Poppen to perform two classic violin concertos from the mid-19th century: Robert Schumann's Violin Concerto in D minor and Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor. Both of these violin concertos were written for the legendary Joseph Joachim, who had a hand in shaping the final form of both pieces, although ultimately his changes to the Schumann were rejected by the composer. The highly original, introverted and melancholic concerto is a moving self-portrait of the 43-year-old Schumann a few years before his death, and Bruch's No. 1 is one of the most beloved concertos of the entire repertoire.