Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

In 2005 Helene Kenyeri, oboe, Mirjam Schiestl, clarinet and Marion Biber-Janda, bassoon came together to form the ensemble Trio Mignon Vienna. This special kind of ensemble first established itself as independent chamber music formation in France at the beginning of the 20th century, when renowned composers such as Henri Tomasi, Eugene Bozza and Jean Francaix, whose works are featured on this album, wrote for this special cast. Besides arrangements of Baroque and Renaissance repertoire, another focal point of the young musicians' artistic work constitutes contemporary music by (Austrian) composers such as Thomas Heinisch and Helmut H�dl, whose works also appear on this album. Above all, it is the passion for the beautiful, enchanting and inspiring sound of this combination of instruments that from the start provided impulses to the ensemble for conveying music to the young and elderly.

On this release, recorded in 1978 and 2007, Paul Badura-Skoda and Jorg Demus present works by Schubert for piano four hands. The artists comment: “There are no such things as the two of us - two studious, open-minded young Viennese musicians who want to serve their darling Schubert with all their Four Hands in what is probably the most beautiful chamber music hall in the world, which Brahms loved so much that it later was named Brahms Hall, in the venerable house of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde - among the founding members were Beethoven and Schubert - on the most Viennese of all pianos, the Bösendorfer with its singing, downright Schubertian treble. Both of us had just escaped physically and spiritually sound from the turmoil of war; one thought of creating a new world of the beautiful and the good, both of us at least in music. We had a unique generation of great masters to look up to: Wilhelm Backhaus, probably the greatest of all Bösendorf players, Walter Gieseking, Edwin Fischer - we were even granted to study together in Lucerne in 1948; Paul remained connected to him throughout his life. Above all, the wonderful violin sound of the Vienna Philharmonic delighted us, and in Furtwängler the brilliant overall conception: Have you heard "His" Unfinished, or the Great C major symphony? Schubert's songs delighted us with the wonderful voices of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Irmgard Seefried, and soon also by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Joseph Krips had just presented the opera with a Mozart style that was fully natural. The whole world seemed to breathe a sigh of relief (it was before the darn Iron Curtain) and Vienna was once again the capital of music. And so we played the piano with our Four Hands, above all Mozart and Schubert, as faithfully as possible to the scores of Schubert, but we were happy to incorporate temperament, feeling and inspiration into our ten fingers.”

Classical Music

Classical Music

While the theme of this album may seem contradictory, the chamber music of powerhouse composer Richard Wagner has been taken by Gerald Schubert and proven to be of substance and beauty. Gerald Schubert, who is a long time member of the Vienna Philharmonic, joins with pianist Bernadette Bartos for this recording. The works on this recording include Wagner’s Duo for Violin and Piano on Motifs from Wagner’s “Tannhauser”, Walther’s Prize Song from “Die Meistersinger von Numberg,” Five Poems for a Female Voice after Texts by Mathilde Wesendonch, and Isolde’s Love Death from “Tristan and Isolde”, Sigfried- Paraphrase, and Parsifal-Paraphrase. +

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Beethoven performing seemingly rather trivial tasks for publishers offers a lesser known perspective on the mastermind: the businessman. Like with Joseph Haydn, there exist a multitude of folk song arrangements by Beethoven from many different language areas, besides the here portrayed Scottish, Irish and Welsh songs also Spanish, Hungarian or Swedish ones. Scottish musicians Lorna Anderson, soprano and Jamie MacDougall, tenor and the Austrian TrioVanBeethoven (Verena Stourzh, Clemens Zeilinger, Franz Ortner) take on an exploration to the treasures of Celtic melodies. Beethoven's personal touch in these songs is not only perceivable in the pre- and postludes, but is present in all of the instrumentation - a fact that motivated the initiator George Thomson several times to request even more simple instrumental parts as accompaniment, which Beethoven rejected in his very own way: "Unfortunately, I am not able to fulfill your request. I am not accustomed to retouching my compositions."

Karl Goldmark was one of the most popular and frequently performed Central European Romantic composers until the Nazi Regime in the 1930's. The ostracism of his work continued after World War II, until finally at the end of the 20th century slowly a selective rediscovery of his oeuvre took place. With this release Thomas Albertus Imberger continues to ending this oblivion of Goldmark's manifold work.

This past year's Easter Concert of the Bach Consort Vienna, conducted by Ruben Dubrovsky in the Basilica of Klosterneuburg Monastery, featured works by Antonio Vivaldi, which he composed during his engagement with the orphanage Ospedale della Piet� in Venice. The young girls growing up there received early musical training, which led the choir and orchestra of the Ospedale to become internationally acclaimed. This concert recording by Bach Consort Vienna with soloists Andreas Scholl, alto, Hanna Herfurtner and Joowon Chung, soprano and the Salzburg Bach Choir combines instrumentals like the Sonata a quatro in E-flat major "Al Santo Sepolcro", RV 130 and the Concerto in G minor, RV 156 with the liturgical works Stabat Mater, RV 621 and Gloria, RV 589, written for Easter.

Anton Bruckner's Fifth Symphony is one of the most moving and magnificent of his symphonic works. Matthias Giesen, who has been working for more than 20 years as the organist and stablemaster of the Monastery of St. Florian, where Bruckner started his musical training as a choirboy, presents his transcription for organ of this monumental opus on this recording for Gramola. Matthias Giesen refined his rendition of Bruckner's Fifth on the Bruckner organ of St. Florian, which can be heard on this recording, but also on numerous other organs for many years in order to do justice to the work both in terms of technical and musical matters. In 2017, Giesen presented his adaptation of the "Fantastic", which Bruckner himself never heard in orchestral version during his lifetime, for the first time to an enthusiastic audience.

The project EntArteOpera is dedicated by means of concerts, scenic performances and publications to the perpetuation and revival of works by forgotten, ostracized composers who were persecuted, exiled or even murdered by the Nazi regime. Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger presents on this upcoming release the Concerto for Violin, Horn and Orchestra by Ethel Smyth, the Concertino for Violin, Clarinet and Orchestra Op. 21 by Vitezslava Kapralova, the Concerto funebre for Violin and Strings by Karl Amadeus Hartmann as well as the Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra H 342 by Bohuslav Martinu. Collaborating artists for these exceptional instrumentations include Milena Viotti, horn, Reinhard Wieser, clarinet, and Michael Korstick, piano, the Orchestra Wiener Concert-Verein under the baton of Doron Salomon as well as the Israel Chamber Orchestra and the Georgian Chamber Orchestra Ingolstadt under the baton of Martin Sieghart.

Classical Music

Humor in music is the theme of this album by the 25-year-old pianist Hanna Bachmann from Austria, who plans debuts in the Berlin Philharmonic and concerts in the UK and US next season, and whom the conductor Kirill Petrenko attested “great musicality, creativity, high technical ability, fine sound and a matured personality”. The spectrum of variety of this program spans from the childlike cheerfulness of Mozart (Variations on “A Woman is the Most Delightful Thing” K. 613) to the profound wit and deliberate irony of Beethoven (“Diabelli Variations” Op. 120) to the pungent laughter of Prokofiev (“Sarcasm” Op. 17).

Paul Badura-Skoda, piano, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, violin and Boris Pergamenschikow, violoncello are among the most important musicians of the second half of the 20th century. A testimony to their rare collaboration can be found in this hitherto unpublished recording, which presents the three exceptional artists with the piano trios by Franz Schubert. The Trio No. 1 in B-flat major, op. 99, D 898 is a studio recording from the Grand Hall of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation in Vienna from 1984, the second trio in E-flat major, op. 100, D 929 was made during the Salzburg Festival in 1981 as a concert recording. These recordings provide a stunning experiencing of the superb individual class as well as chamber musical abilities of three of the greatest musicians of musical history.

"One must defend the Hungarian Rhapsodies on two fronts: First against musicians of the 'serious' brand who look down on them as showpieces, and secondly, against the piano maniacs who abuse them as showpieces." By these words, great pianist Alfred Brendel characterizes the Hungarian Rhapsodies S 244 by Franz Liszt, which have now been recorded for Gramola by the young Bulgarian pianist Martin Ivanov. The thin line between overwhelming virtuosity on one hand and poetic finesse on the other seems to be tailor-made for Ivanov, who already showed great success with his recordings of Chopin, Schumann and lately with his recording of Liszt's Sonata in B minor.

Beethoven's first Sonatas for violin and piano Op. 12/1-3, composed during the years 1797 and 1798, contain unmistakable elements of his later composition style, which challenged his contemporaries’ critical taste accordingly. The violin sonatas No. 4 Op. 23 and No. 5 Op. 24 and their composition correlate, according to findings of musicologists, closely with Beethoven’s own relationships. The former one seems to portray the darker side of love, its unfulfillment, whereas the later so-called ‘spring sonata’ – as a sort of characterization of a loving heart’s feeling of spring – references the sweet, beautiful aspects of love. The three sonatas Op. 30/1-3, composed in 1802, the year when he also wrote the ‘Heiligenstädter Testament’, reflect Beethoven’s emotional state and are characterized by heavy mood swings. Maybe the most famous work is the ‘Kreutzer’ sonata No. 9 in A major Op. 47, once termed unplayable by its dedicatee, the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. By contrast, Beethoven’s final violin sonata No. 10 in G major Op. 96 seems more heartfelt in tone and was praised by critics as the ‘most poetic and musically most sensitively crafted’ of his sonatas. Thomas Albertus Irnberger and Michael Korstick furthermore present the variations ‘Se vuol ballare’ WoO 40 on a theme from the opera Le nozze di Figaro by W. A. Mozart. The Rondo in G major, WoO 41, and the Six German Dances, WoO 42, were written in 1794/96 and convey ease and almost juvenile cheerfulness – a trait also prevalent in the interpretation of Irnberger and Korstick.

Classical Music