Matthias Kirschnereit and the hr-Sinfonieorchester under Michael Sanderling have compiled a compelling, captivating programme of music from the last days of the Classical era, on the cusp of the Romantic. This half-way house in the best possible sense accommodates the compositions of Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Carl Maria von Weber and Felix Mendelssohn. On his latest album, the soloist makes the boldness of this musical venture audible: I was attracted by the fact that these rare jewels were created at a time of change, of new horizons. With over 40 album releases to his credit, the German pianist cannot be praised too highly for his inventiveness and initiative in exploring unfamiliar terrain. It was this spirit of discovery that led him to a fascinating program centered on Hummels Piano Concerto in A minor op. 85, flanked by Webers Konzertstück in F minor op. 79 and Mendelssohns Capriccio brilliant in B minor op. 22: all of them works whose fabric pulses with inner relationships, allusions and cross-references, united too by the fact that they are rarely to be heard on the concert platform. There is so much thrilling music that has fallen from favor. I was looking for a new combination, reflect Matthias Kirschnereit. Michael Sanderling is a conductor he has often worked with, and in this case Sanderling was his first choice: These works, which represent just as great a challenge for the orchestra, require a high degree of precision, virtuosity and elegant musical discourse. The teamwork with Sanderling and the symphony orchestra of Hesse Radio can only be described as an act of providence. This session rounded off the Corona year with an exhilarating highlight. And so may this music, which conjured up the spirit of a new era with defiant optimism two centuries ago, give us too a future to look forward to in our own times.

Recorded live in concert, Paavo Järvi created and conducted this thrilling programme of orchestral arrangements of chamber music works. The result is a world-class encounter between some of the most important names in music history. Works by Brahms, Shoenberg, Bach, and Webern are included. Currently in his third season as Music Director of Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Paavo Järvi and the orchestra have just returned from a very successful tour to China and. Previous tours have taken them to major European Festivals, including the BBC Proms, the Rheingau Musik Festival in Germany and the Robeco Summer series in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

The celebrated young Colombian maestro Andres Orozco-Estrada continues his critically acclaimed series of recordings for Pentatone with this release of the evocative tone poems Macbeth and Ein Heldenleben by Richard Strauss, performed here with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony. These gripping works, with their intricate scoring and compelling narratives, are orchestral tours de force, demonstrating Strauss's gift for filling a huge orchestral canvas with vivd and exquisite details while maintaining a sense of drama. And they are stunningly brought to life in this recording with Pentatone's state of the art multi-channel surround sound. Strauss's brooding tone poem Macbeth is a psychological portait of the main protagonists in the play, the insecure and vacillating Macbeth and his wife, the ambitious but deranged Lady Macbeth. Strauss's often highly charged score suggests the mounting horror and dread of the ill-fated couple and their domestic unease, the work ending on a sombre ntoe following their deaths and the triumphal march of Macduff. In Strauss's striking and florid masterpiece Ein Heldenleben, there's little doubt who the real hero is but Strauss himself. While he was roundly mocked at the time for his audacity, there's also little doubt that this bold and dramatic tone poem is no mere cornucopia of orchestral effects - it's a life-affirming work which ends not in a triumphal blaze, but in a mood of quiet resignation.

Sharon Kam discovers Hindemith on her third album on Orfeo label. Even if some people still consider him “too modern” today, Hanau-born Hesse Paul Hindemith is undoubtedly one of the most influential German composers of the generation after Richard Strauss. Few of his immediate colleagues have found their way into the international repertoire to the same extent that he has, or influenced subsequent generations through comparably extensive educational work. All three works for clarinet featured on this recording date from years of extensive travel: the Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano was written in 1938 around the time of his emigration to Switzerland, the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in 1939 during the course of the tours of the USA that immediately followed the emigration, and finally, the Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in 1947 (written for and premiered by Benny Goodman) when Hindemith left his American exile to visit Europe again for the first time after the Second World War. Sharon Kam has teamed up with her long-standing musical partners Enrico Pace , Antje Weithaas , and Julian Steckel for the chamber music part of the album, and with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony under the musical direction of Daniel Cohen for the clarinet concerto.

In 1907, Florent Schmitt composed music to accompany a ‘mimodrame’ danced by Loïe Fuller, La Tragédie de Salomé. His score is bursting with colour, energy, and voluptuousness – and also with oriental influences stemming from his travels to Morocco and Constantinople, where he discovered the howling dervishes. The final scene features the heart-rending ‘Chant d’Aïça’, an oriental melody sung by a soprano. This music, though bold and modern for the listeners of 1907, nonetheless aroused the admiration of another composer, Igor Stravinsky, to whom Schmitt dedicated the Symphonic Suite he subsequently derived from the work. However, Alain Altinoglu, at the helm of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra of which he has been Music Director since 2021, has chosen to record the original version of this landmark of early twentieth-century French music. The beautiful Chant élégiaque, in its 1911 version for cello and large orchestra, completes this programme.