Freude, sch�ner G�tterfunken! (Joy, fair sparks of the gods) seems to be the cry of the fifth and penultimate GENUIN album by the Camerata Musica Limburg of the complete recording of Schubert's works for male choir. The title of the program is "Elysium," which says it all. The release is a pleasurable stroll through heavenly realms: known and unknown, from poems by Schiller, Klopstock and many, many other wonderful poets. The interpretation is on par with the entire collection: an immaculate ensemble sound and an interpretation wonderfully worked out by conductor Jan Schumacher and his masters. The only drawback? The next release in autumn will be the last of this series.

The young Polish accordionist Maciej Frackiewicz takes us on a real adventure trip. On his album, one of the prizewinner recordings of the German Music Competition, he presents himself virtuosic, fast and at the same time sensitive and indulgent: Frackiewicz pushes his instrument to the limits of what is possible. He presents contemporary and new music, often connected to his homeland, from Schnittke's surrealistic Gogol Suite to Krauze's Portrait of a Lover dedicated to the performer. If you are not yet an accordion fan, be careful: by the time you listen to this release, you will have become addicted to the instrument!

Cheerfulness and depth, youthful urgency and ageless serenity: all this is found not only in Mozart’s most famous works. We also encounter these astonishing contrasts at every turn in the enchanting duos presented by renowned violinist Annette Unger and her piano partner Robert Umansky on their new GENUIN release. The program features sonatas and variation cycles from “middle-period” Mozart to the years of maturity. The interpretation offered by the two Dresden musicians impresses with its vividness and transparency together with a great love for the details of these musical gems.

Once upon a time … there was a wonderful era in which composers were not divided into those who wrote folk music and others who created art music. The Duo Escarlata – cellist Daniela Hunziker and accordionist Ina Hofmann - does its best to bridge this current divide on its Genuin debut CD. Martinu's little gems sound as if they came from a Bohemian dance floor, Schumann's Pieces in Folk Style are of childlike beauty and Dvorak's Polonaise skillfully alternates between the rustic and refined.

Listening to music is always a journey for the listener - but with the Ensemble Cicerone's new GENUIN album, the composers were already adventurers - people who, in the Baroque era, took to the dangerous roads on land and water all over Europe and ensured that musical styles met and mixed. The musicians of the ensemble, which bears in it's name the great travel guidebooks, teach at the Mozarteum and at the Cologne University of Music: they let the intricate paths of emotions arise before our inner ears in the wonderful music of Handel, Muffat, Telemann, and others and thus cast a spell on us. Better than Baedeker! For the Cicerone Ensemble, just playing music is not enough. Listening to historical music is only part of the experience the three young musicians set out to provide. Their goal is to showcase music and bring it to life like a tourist guide would an old painting or an ancient building, hence the name "Cicerone" (in Italian- "Guide").

Franz Schubert was deeply attached to the piano! You can sense this when you hear Robert Franz' magnificent transcription of Schubert's quartet Death and the Maiden, with which the duo Lontano (Babette Hierholzer and J�rgen Appell) open their second GENUIN album. In a recording that exclusively features Schubert's music, the structures and the relentlessness of the work are mercilessly and yet beautifully sculpted in all their grandeur. Suddenly the quartet is very similar to the great F minor Fantasy, while the Notturno, originally for piano trio, is given a new sense of levitation. A great ensemble, two wonderful pianists, three summits of chamber music! Duo Lontano was founded in 2004. The two artists can look back on years of successful concertizing on extended tours to Italy, Germany, Venezuela, Mexico, Russia, Poland, and the USA. Recent concert highlights have included appearances in Wurzburg, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Palermo, White Plains, and Petropolis.

On it's 60th birthday, the Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen is giving itself and it's audience a youthful present: virtuoso orchestral music by the ever-young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The elite chamber orchestra's second GENUIN release, following the highly acclaimed recording of Mozart's Horn Concertos with Christoph Ess as soloist, features symphonies from all phases of Mozart's life: from early works to the great symphony in G minor. The award-winning conductor Johannes Klumpp let's his ensemble play this filigree yet passionate music extremely fast and at the same time with deep feelings. A real pleasure! Energetic concerts, bold and inquisitive programming and musical excellence are the trademarks of the Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen. In it's concerts, the young international ensemble under the direction of Principal Conductor Johannes Klumpp explores musical boundaries and introduces experimental formats, genres, and styles with considerable success.

Schumann and Schubert's music is never simply cheerful: their dark sides attack us suddenly, unexpectedly, either like a storm or by stealthily creeping up on us. Natalia Ehwald has selected two such works for the follow-up release to the highly acclaimed GENUIN production Fantasias for Piano: Schubert's late Sonata in A major and Schumann's early, "sad" Humoresque, op. 20. Ehwald does not try to smooth out anything; she never overlooks the roughness of the music but instead becomes involved, creating associations and thereby achieving a pianism of great suggestive power. This album is a lovely new discovery of two major works!

Relaxed, transparent, breathing: these are the enchanted sounds of Fr�d�ric Chopin and Franz Liszt that the pianist Nuron Mukumi presents on his first GENUIN album. Anyone who listens to them no longer feels the importance of the Uzbek pianist having won numerous competitions despite his mere twenty years, or that he was regarded a child prodigy and has already completed his studies as an instrumentalist and conductor. The listener is simply delighted, impressed, and inspired by Franz Liszt's thoughtful transcendence and the violence of Fr�d�ric Chopin's Sonata in B minor. A veritable ascent!

All the things that can be found when going for a walk along the sea on a fresh, stormy morning: the album Strandgut is the second recording released by the new music ensemble LUX: NM at GENUIN. The previous release was already on the German Record Critics' Award "Quarterly Critics' Choice" and this box is also full of treasures: The music of Gordon Kampe, Birke Bertelsmeier and other composers of the younger generation sounds dazzling, new and unexpected. All pieces are world premiere recordings and commissioned works for the ensemble, which then tackles the suggestive music at the highest level. The average listener rarely get this close to new music - it's more than exciting!

Rhapsody is the theme of fabulous duo debut album featuring clarinetist Kymia Kermani and pianist Alba Gentili-Tedeschi. With great intensity, the young musicians plunge into the music of the twentieth century - music that, in the improvisational tradition of singers and bards, searches formally for new ways as if born in the moment. The piano and clarinet sound equally free on this recording: the trills rejoice and the glissandi sob in works by Debussy, Gershwin, Borris, Boutry and others - four world premiere recordings are offered on this exceptional album. This is truly a stroke of luck, not only for curious chamber music fans, but for fans of all quality music!

In a time when life seemed to offer little joy for many people, at least that is how it seems to us today, they sought inner, "true" joy and poured their thoughts and feelings into music, capturing this radiance, this wellspring, and transforming it into sound: on their new GENUIN album, Consort Ripieno Concertino presents Baroque ensemble music that brings joy to our hearts and a smile to our faces! The program features works by Johann Ludwig and Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Sammartini, and Jean-Marie Leclair - delicately scored, transparently, and melodiously played. A source of warmth from days gone by.

The GENUIN debut album of Moscow-born and Hamburg-based pianist Elizaveta Don brings together "Preludes" by three great composers: Claude Debussy, Dmitri Shostakovich, and the lesser-known yet equally significant works by Frank Martin. Elizaveta Don's words about the "Preludes" of the great Swiss composer also apply to the tiny treasures of the other two composers: they are "a journey through uncertainty and hope, reality and surrealism, irony and tragedies." What a stroke of luck for us: We get to embark on nearly forty of these journeys, guided by Elizaveta Don, ensuring the highest musical experience possible!

Duo Arp Frantz is back for their third time on Genuin with their album Time Isn't Passing. This young dynamic duo has won several first prize awards in international competitions and is frequently invited to perform at prestigious festivals around the world.

"• Singers Alison Browner and Sharon Carty as well as the pianist Andreas Frese pay tribute to the great English art song tradition. On their new GENUIN CD, they present rarely performed English treasures: songs by John Ireland, Michael Head and Benjamin Britten. • Rarely recorded Irish and English art songs • 3rd GENUIN CD with pianist Andreas Frese"