Carl Amand Mangold - never heard of him? Then it's high time you did! There is a great spirit of originality in the music by this mid-19th century genius. With their reputation for surprising audiences with unknown masterpieces by unjustly forgotten composers, the multi-award-winning Berolina Ensemble perform a selection of Mangold‘s chamber music recorded in MDG’s innovative 2+2+2 technology on Super Audio CD.

Ewald Straesser (or Sträßer) was highly respected during his lifetime, and the list of his interpreters reads like a "Who's Who" of music: Furtwängler, Abendroth, Mengelberg, Nikisch and Pfitzner conducted his works, and the pianists Elly Ney and Max van der Sandt repeatedly included him in their programs. Today, Straesser's music has completely disappeared from the repertoire in the succession to Brahms; the new recording of three chamber music works by the Rhinelander-born composer by the Berolina Ensemble, which is eager to make discoveries, is all the more commendable. Straesser composed intuitively; according to his own statements, a deeper "intention", possibly even a political or educational one, was alien to him. This made him suspect in avant-garde circles, and since he himself made little fuss about his person and tended to avoid public appearances, his artistic star by no means shone as brightly as his works deserved. As the critic noted at the time, the premiere ensemble in 1903 was probably not able to meet the high demands of the wind quintet. It is good that the Berolina Ensemble now provides an adequate interpretation! With a traditional foundation and excellent technical skills, Straesser is often seen by contemporaries as a successor to Brahms. However, he was ahead of Brahms in his ability to write wide-ranging melodic arcs, which can be heard particularly beautifully in the Clarinet Sonata written in 1932 shortly before his death. Together with the Clarinet Quintet of 1915, these three works span an entire composer's life, which shows an interesting development, especially from a harmonic point of view. Without ever getting into atonality or twelve-tone technique, Straesser finds his own way into a modern tonal language, chromaticism increases, surprising dissonances sometimes remain unresolved... The Berolina Ensemble traces all this with audible enthusiasm and adds another highlight to its now considerable discography.

Whenever the Berolina Ensemble performs - expect the unexpected. The young Berlin musicians have been seeking out unknown chamber music in unusual scorings - and with the works of Waldemar von Baussnern, they have scored another bullseye. Baussnern's works blend the influences of the conservative and New German schools into a highly individual style; it is to his position as Academy secretary that we owe the appointments of Schoenberg, Schreker and Hindemith to the Berlin Academy of Sciences.

An Echo Klassik for Hofmann, an Opus d'or for von Bausznern, and now for the third time the Berolina Ensemble steps into the spotlight with a spectacular discovery - and once again we are at a loss to explain how it was that such magnificent works could ever be forgotten. The ensemble's newest release is dedicated to Ernst Rudorff. His opulent String Sextet, Romance for Violin and Piano, and a series of enchanting piano pieces offer extensive documentation of the chamber oeuvre of this Berlin composer, who also numbered among the pioneers in the field of conservation.