Over the past decades, the German Music Competition has repeatedly given a stage to great chamber music formations! And, for many years, GENUIN, the German Music Council, and Deutschlandfunk Kultur have presented these ensembles in high-profile CD productions. In this recording, we become acquainted with the promising Trio E.T.A., featuring Elene Meipariani (violin), Till Schuler (cello), and Till Hoffmann (piano), performing works by Joseph Haydn, Roman Pawollek, and Bedrich Smetana. The piano trio at its best with a well-balanced program of classical, passionate romantic, and exciting new territory!

"Über Glaube – Ein Portrait" (About Faith – A Portrait) – This is the title of the debut CD of voicemade – the outstanding Leipzig a cappella ensemble. With their program, the six young musicians span centuries to combine music of the Renaissance with modern times. The track list includes music by William Byrd, Giovanni Gabrieli, and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, compositions by Volker Bräutigam, Günther Ramin, and Bob Chilcott, as well as works by Robert Pohlers, Damien Kehoe and Paul Heller, the three youngest composers on the CD, all of whom were born in 1990 or later. Their works are heard here as world premiere recordings. Tonal beauty and textual comprehensibility, used in the service of expression and depth of interpretation, are obvious instruments for voicemade. An extraordinary CD in repertoire and programmatic approach!

Ever since Pablo Casals awakened Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites from a slumber of over 150 years back in 1900, they have fascinated and inspired composers, performers, and audiences alike. They are a mountain range with six peaks, which cellist Felix Vogelsang is now releasing on GENUIN on three albums. Complementing them are six additional works for solo cello, five of which Felix Vogelsang commissioned especially for this production. In addition to Ernest Bloch’s dark, much too rarely played Suite in C minor, we hear works by Jérémie Rhorer, Gerhard Gemke, Carl Theodor Hütterott, and Paul Glass. Vogelsang works out the relationships of the works to each other with richly nuanced and precise cello playing - repertoire additions to Bach’s beautiful suites that are worth listening to!

“Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!” These were the words of Robert Schumann when he spoke of the young Chopin. His bold, virtuoso music not only enthralled the musical elite of the Romantic period but still grips us today. Alexey Lebedev, winner of the Busoni Competition, the Maria Canals Competition, and numerous other competitions, is now releasing early works by the Polish-French composer on GENUIN. Among them is Chopin’s first major work, the Rondo in C minor. With this brilliant production, Lebedev also illustrates how much the young rising star drew from the traditions of his time, presenting, among other things, Chopin’s Don Giovanni variations, as well as his first mazurkas – at that time, a completely novel combination of folk and modern salon music.

For his debut GENUIN release, the young pianist Yuxing Chen chooses two great sonatas. He combines Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata and Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, repertoire he also performed at his graduation concert at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre in the summer of 2022. Both sonatas, each a milestone of considerable duration and the highest degree of difficulty, are almost larger than life in every respect. Yuxing Chen makes us forget all that when he interprets the two works of the great composers and pianists with an abundance of naturalness as if stemming from the moment. For him, music is not only an outlet for the most profound emotions – it is the universal and ever-changing language of life.

The debut album of pianist Friederike Sieber, Seelenübervoll is featuring lieder from the late Romantic period and works by Alma Mahler, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Richard Strauss, and Alexander von Zemlinsky are performed. This production of five outstanding young singers resurrects the musical salon’s idea and gifts us a wealth of rarely performed songs. The turn of the century 1900 was a time “brimming” with sensation and an exuberant soul: the exceptional young performers enable us to feel extreme emotional states through their interpretations, which tell of an extraordinary and artistically fruitful epoch.

A live recording from Leipzig featuring soprano Anne Schwanewilms, pianist Manuel Lange and actor Wolf-Dietrich Rammler is now being released by GENUIN. The program of this top-class evening included the Seven Early Songs by Alban Berg, the poems of Hilde Domin, and the song cycle Dennoch by Stefan Heucke. The latter is also based on poems by Hilde Domin and is presented here as a world-premiere recording. Anne Schwanewilms, Manuel Lange and Wolf-Dietrich Rammler take us on an intensive journey, carefully arranged in a sequence of music and text: From personal life journeys to the universal – a humanitarian appeal of great poetry and music!

On their first GENUIN release, the young musicians of the Gellert Ensemble from Central Germany bring an absolute repertoire rarity to life. Under its conductor Andreas Mitschke, the ensemble has produced the oratorio The Raising of Lazarus by Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, the so-called "Bückeburg Bach," on the Leipzig label. Bach wrote his dramatic work together with the Sturm und Drang poet Johann Gottfried Herder, a colorful and nuanced portrait based on the unbelievable story from the New Testament. The Gellert Ensemble presents historical performance practice at the highest level in an impressive, spirited performance!

An unusual trio, winners of the German Music Competition in the "New Music" category, presents the new GENUIN album Breathe. Paula Breland (clarinet), Jennifer Aßmus (violoncello) and Anna-Katharina Schau (accordion) make up the Trio Klangspektrum – a confluence of instruments that, despite their significant differences, are nevertheless all "breathing” instruments. This is reflected both in the organic music-making style of the young musicians and in their selection of lively works of contemporary music. The program includes music by Katzer, Kuwan, Goldmann, Tiensuu, Rojko, and Fagerlund – examples of how new music can narrate stories passionately and sensually.

During the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, death was part of everyday life. The ensemble il capriccio and the countertenor Franz Vitzthum offer the Thomaskantor's musical perspective on life and death on their new GENUIN release. The texts of the recorded arias and chorale arrangements by Bach deal with death, eternity and the promise of eternal life. The musicians juxtapose the works, some of which have been carefully arranged, with selected sections from the Art of Fugue. The result is an artistic and moving musical tapestry, interpreted by Franz Vitzthum and the ensemble il capriccio with intensity and sensitivity.

Songs without words in the velvety smoothness of a splendid brass instrument: this is what we are offered by the new GENUIN release of the Duo GIOVIVO from Switzerland. Fabian Bloch (euphonium) and Muriel Zeiter (piano) take us on a journey through three centuries of masterpieces to which they lend a new voice. Beethoven's Ich liebe Dich and Kreisler's Liebesleid, Fauré's Berceuse and Bach's famous Wenn Schafe sicher weiden can be found here. With its title Rather Romantic, much of the music on this album is not only genuinely romantic but also revolves around the eternal theme of love. As Robert Schumann's famous Widmung says, "Thou my world, in which I live, my heaven thou, to which I aspire…"

Composer Christian FP Kram devotes himself to an almost forgotten genre: he writes piano lieder - intimate, lyrical, pointed miniatures of text and music. Mareike Schellenberger (mezzo-soprano) and Christopher Jung (baritone), as well as the pianists Jan Roelof Wolthuis and Olivier Lechardeur, present five of his song cycles, almost all of which are world premiere recordings on a new GENUIN album. Among them are songs based on texts by Hermann Hesse, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sargon Boulus, Katerina Rudcenková and Kevin Perryman. Kram's songs are fascinating soundscapes: compositionally differentiated, but always in their creator's original and concise musical language.

Musicians in the Baroque period had to reinvent themselves time and again: their repertoire was not fixed. Instead, they improvised, adapted, and transcribed - something that was not seen as theft, but rather as an act of high virtue and ingenuity! Recorder player Max Volbers, the winner of the 2021 German Music Competition, revives this tradition on his solo debut album with GENUIN: he gathers top-class musicians around him for the recording of his own arrangements, paraphrases, and pastiches of works by Bach, Monteverdi, and Vivaldi. Works that are partly familiar to us, but which we have never heard before in this form - full of soul, inspired, and knowledgeably performed!

Once again this year, the MDR Radio Choir is delighting us with an album of Christmas carols: the elite vocal ensemble is continuing its successful series, showcasing carols from Germany and around the world. Popular and well-known titles as well as rarities are here to discover: We travel through Spain and Scandinavia, through Slavic countries, to the North American and Australian continents. "Glory to God in the highest", from tender lullabies to magnificent angelic praise and heartwarming winter magic: Gloria in excelsis deo!

Straddling the fine line between so-called classical music and jazz is an award-winning duo on their new GENUIN album. Violinist Matthias Well and pianist Lilian Akopova present syncopated, blue note-soaked sounds by Astor Piazzolla, Maurice Ravel, and George Gershwin, as well as two spectacular pieces of recent date: Alexander Rosenblatt's virtuosic Carmen Fantasy and Vladislav Cojocaru's first melancholy, later groovy Kaleidoscope. Dedicated to Akopova and Well, it is recorded here for the first time. A release full of creativity and color, perfect for fighting the autumn blues!