Anatolijus senderovas, one of the most interesting voices in Lithuanian music, passed away in 2019. This production presents all the string trios by the composer, who was awarded the European Composer Prize in 2002. Senderovas had a lifelong friendship with cellist David Geringas, who can be heard here as cellist of the Grand Trio Vilnius. The piano trios represent the most important phases of senderovas' work: Beginning with Piano Trio No. 1, which the 26-year-old wrote while still under the influence of Dmitri Shostakovich's music, to the late works "Song and Dance" and "Pages from a forgotten book," which reveal a composer who has grappled intensively with the roots of his Jewish heritage.

The live album by Syrian clarinettist Kinan Azmeh is dedicated to the memory of his father, who died in 2024, but it also celebrates the musical friendship between the four musicians, who first played together in New York in 2006. Many of the pieces on his album were composed during the Syrian uprising in 2011 and are characterised by anger and sadness, but also by unwavering optimism and hope. Azmeh is convinced that making music is an act of freedom and has ultimately prevailed against violence and tyranny in Syria.

Aynur is the best-known Kurdish singer of our time and stands for modern Kurdish folk music. Like very few artists, she reaches people of all ages with her music and connects the younger generation with the roots of Kurdish music by sensitively and imaginatively combining the heritage and treasures of her homeland's musical past with a musical language of today that has been praised internationally. The successful album Rabe, released in 2023, is now also available as a high-quality vinyl version.

With Wu Wei, Ingolf Burkhardt and Florian Weber, three outstanding musical personalities have come together in the Silk Jazz trio. Their music is created freely - no agreements, no notes, just pure listening and interaction. Over 90 tracks of freely improvised music were created during the recording session. With Into the unknown, the trio succeeds in developing a musical narrative from the sheer endless material that conveys the naturalness of playing together as well as the adventurousness and enthusiasm to search for and find new colours.

Mahler: Symphony No. 7

“Time is a strange thing. While one is living one’s life away, it is absolutely nothing. Then, suddenly, one is aware of nothing else ...”, sings the Marschallin in Richard Strauss’ opera “Der Rosenkavalier”. With these words she reflects on (her) getting older, but beyond that she also addresses fundamental issues about the perception of time. In his writings Saint Augustine emphasized the relativity of human perception of time, in which the past, present and future - in the sense of memory, perception and expectation - coincide in thinking. This is particularly evident in the reception of music, because a Schubert song is just as present in the listening experience as a work of New Music. And in turn, music’s ephemeral appearance as a temporal art means that it passes at the moment of its creation. Its existence propagates from moment to moment, sound to sound, leaving a trail of fading memories in its wake. Against this background, music is predestined to make ‘coming into existence’ and ‘passing away’ sensually tangible - and the fact that every person experiences them differently in the process of sound realization draws attention to each and every person’s individual sense of time: to the respective time of the individual between life and death. Dream and Reality. On the CD “ … die Tiefen der Zeit” the accordionist Margit Kern and the viola player Axel Porath reflect on these questions on a tonal level. They open up a broad spectrum, from contemporary music, to songs from Franz Schubert’s cycle “Die Schöne Müllerin” (1823), transcribed for their two instruments. It is true that this cycle, Wilhelm Müller’s poems (1821) and Schubert’s setting, is more optimistic than “Winterreise”. However, motifs such as lingering and wandering, love and failure, dreams and reality are also unmistakably present in the “Schöne Müllerin”.

With his 1979 narrative “The Meeting at Telgte”, Günter Grass created a fable of young writers (poets) meeting in the immediate aftermath of the Thirty Year’s War in 1647 to discuss current affairs. The selection of the excerpts for this production focuses mainly on those passages in which the story takes up the theme of music. The compositions, which are alternately played to passages read by Helene and Günter Grass, are related to the text in many ways. Sometimes reflective, sometimes affirmative, the pieces aren‘t found rigidly between the text passages; rather they are interwoven with them.

The legacy of Sergei Rachmaninov encompasses a staggering plethora of musical styles and sensibilities and a fascinating bridge between the Romantic and modern musical eras. His 2nd Symphony is, at it's core, imbued with the ancestral Russian temperament, and permeated with longing is given a pitch perfect performance by the Dortmunder Philharmoniker (Dortmund Philharmonic) led by the conductor Gabriel Feltz, considered to be among the vanguard of emerging baton masters.

Already lauded for their ongoing Mahler symphony cycle scheduled for completion in 2016 on Dreyer Gaido, this first release of Beethoven's Third and Fifth Symphonies by Gabriel Feltz and the Stuttgart Philharmonic marks the launch of these same forces' Beethoven project. General Music Director of the Stuttgart Philharmonic from 2004-13, Mr. Feltz's extensive discography continues to show him as one of the outstanding conductors of his generation, and the orchestra as one of the most respected German ensembles both nationally and worldwide.

This performance by the Syrian singer Ibrahim Keivo and the Wolf Kerschek-led NDR Big Band was judged a triumphant success. + Kerschek spoke afterwards in euphoric terms about working with the Syrian musician: “I hung on his every word and could not escape the magic. He made us feel why each one of us started making music and devoted a lot of time and finally our life to this.” The different musical traditions were not mixed here in pleasing uniformity, but treated with respect. DREYER-GAIDO recorded this memorable concert, capturing a great example of making music together.

The Morgenland All-Star Band unites several of the most outstanding musical personalities from the Near Orient with European jazz greats such as Frederik Köster and Bodek Janke. Traditional Kurdic music meets Uighur Funk-Rock from Northwest China and jazz from Azerbaijan. Special guest jazz trumpeter Amir El-Saffar combines his musical biographical roots - Iraqi Maqam - and American jazz: a global sound web full of tension, juxtapositions and surprises. This event was recorded live at the NDR Concert Hall in Hanover, Germany.

Yu Jung Yoon was once celebrated as a wunderkind in her childhood. She won several competitions in her homeland Korea, and at the age of 14 she was admitted as the youngest student ever at the Conservatory in St. Petersburg. She is at her best on her debut CD for Dreyer-Gaido playing works by Scriabin.

Friedhelm Dohl Edition, Vol. 9

Capella de la Torre specializes in performing historical music on period instruments. They aim to give listeners an experience of the rich and rare repertoire of medieval and renaissance music. Their name pays homage to Spanish composer Francisco de la Torre.

Two musical worlds stand next to each other: 'Kiev' stands for the late 19th c. Russian revolution, 'Chicago' for the cosmos of jazz. + What relationship is there? + I found two relationship aspects very interesting: one external, such as the 'groove' in some of the 'Pictures' or the somewhat jazzy harmonies in the Scriabin Preludes. + I was especially interested in the inner connections between 'Kiev' and 'Chicago': it is the compositional or improvisational freedom, colors, generosity, temperament, surprise potential and sensuality that is the program’s bridge. (Markus Becker)