The horn concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have always been part of the standard repertoire of every horn player. Tyrolean hornist Hansjörg Angerer presents the four horn concertos with the Ensemble Salzburger Hofmusik under the direction of Wolfgang Brunner on an original instrument by an unknown Bohemian master from around 1800. The natural horn originated from the hunting horn by combining the windings, whereby the natural tone series could be played in all common keys by placing different tuning bows on it and, in addition, the intermediate tones of the natural tone series could be obtained, and the sharp or flat tones could be regulated by inserting the right hand into the falls by “plugging” and “damping”. The complex playing techniques as well as the characteristic sound differ fundamentally from a modern valve instrument and allow a deep dive into the great variety of colors in the music of this era.

Joseph Mayseder took part in a performance of Joseph Haydn’s oratorio “The Seven Last Words” in 1803 when he was only 14 years old. In later years, he played in numerous Viennese orchestras, including under the direction of Beethoven and Schubert, and was concertmaster of the Vienna Court Orchestra from 1830. He composed numerous violin works and chamber music at a young age, primarily for his own performance. Mayseder’s compositions were performed in thousands of concerts worldwide in the 19th century, including by artists such as Henri Vieuxtemps, Joseph Hellmesberger, Franz Liszt and Giovanni Bottesini; however, they are still considered an forgotten gems today. Vienna-based violinist Thomas Christian, who has already released recordings of the violin concerto and virtuoso works with string quartet by Joseph Mayseder, presents a cross-section of Mayseder’s works for violin and piano on this double CD with the versatile pianist Sina Kloke. The works, all world premiere recordings, range from variations on opera arias to polonaises and fantasies to duos for violin and piano. The combination of virtuosity and unmistakable Viennese charm plays a central role in the interpretation of Mayseder’s oeuvre.

In contrast to their teacher, several of Anton Bruckner’s students devoted themselves with great passion to composing chamber music, as the three piano trios recorded here for the first time bear witness. Paul Caro, a native of Breslau, studied with Bruckner from 1880 to 1885, to whom he gave the printed edition of his Piano Trio in E major, Op. 8 in September 1886. Linz-born Mathilde Kralik von Meyrswalden, who was Bruckner’s private pupil from 1875 onwards, achieved one of her first great successes with her Piano Trio in F major, premiered in 1880. Franz Marschner, born in Leitmeritz in Bohemia and a student of Bruckner’s counterpoint from 1883 to 1885, created an ambitious and masterful work of almost symphonic dimensions with his Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 30, around 1902. The recordings, for which three young, already internationally sought-after musicians have joined forces to form the TONALi Trio, are complemented by Daniel Linton-France’s world premiere recordings of two fascinating piano works by Bruckner’s students Cyrill Hynais and Alfred Stross, who studied at the Vienna Conservatory from 1876 and presumably took private lessons from Bruckner at the same time.

The fact that an accomplished violinist can also play the piano with equal virtuosity and artistic perfection suggests an extraordinary musical talent. Tomoko Mayeda’s recording of Mozart’s late Viennese violin sonatas already revealed that this is true in her case. On this album, the Japanese artist now presents in a unique way the three violin sonatas by Johannes Brahms by first recording the entire piano part and then adding the violin part in a second recording session. Brahms described his violin sonatas as “Sonatas for Piano and Violin” – himself as an extremely virtuoso pianist being aware of the difficulty and prominent position of the piano part. With this release, Tomoko Mayeda once again demonstrates her extraordinary dual talent.

Baroque world music – Four musicians (a Sicilian, a Catalan, a South Tyrolean of Italian origin with Slovenian roots and a Viennese) meet in Vienna to make music together out of love for Baroque and traditional music from southern Italy. Coming from all points of the compass, like the ROSA DEI VENTI – the wind rose, the sounds of violin, cello and harpsichord mingle in an intimate embrace with the intense songs of southern Italian music. With the album “ROSA DEI VENTI”, the ensemble, founded by Marinka Brecelj in 2012, draws on the rich musical tradition of southern Italy, which has its roots in various cultures. The focus is on serenades and love songs in Griko, a language that combines ancient Greek, Byzantine-Greek and Italian elements and is spoken in the Magna Graecia region of southern Italy’s Apulia (Salento) and occasionally in Sicily. The songs are part of the traditional music of the Greek colony in Italy. The songs from Sicily are touching with their rough tenderness and are reminiscent of the most diverse Oriental and Arabic influences from the Mediterranean region. The album combines music from the southern Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods with folk songs, with various versions of the tarantella adding a dance-like note to the program.

Ingrid Marsoner dedicates her latest recording to Franz Schubert’s late piano works and contrasts the “Four Impromptus D 899” with the more intimate and much less frequently performed “Three Piano Pieces D 946”. The Impromptus D 899 were composed in 1827, around a year before Schubert’s death and close in time to the “Winterreise” D 911. The composer was in a particularly gloomy mood at the time and it was certainly no coincidence that he chose such distant keys as G-flat major for the third piece, in keeping with the eerily moving beauty of these works. The “Three Piano Pieces, D 946” were composed in 1828, the year of Franz Schubert’s death. They were not published during his lifetime and were only discovered and published by Johannes Brahms. At the end of his life, Franz Schubert studied counterpoint intensively and even attended a lesson with Simon Sechter, Vienna’s first music theory teacher. In the middle section of the first piano piece in particular, one can discover a surprising polyphony for the composer. The CD concludes with the Allegretto in C minor D 915, also composed shortly before his death at the age of 31.

The Salzburg violinist Benjamin Schmid’s preoccupation with the violin works of W.A. Mozart has now lasted for more than four decades, was initially influenced by the then Mozarteum professors Sándor Végh and Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and received numerous awards as his style of interpretation became increasingly personalised. His first CD recording in 1990 with Mozart’s Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg led by Hans Graf was also celebrated by reviewers as a discovery. 32 years and hundreds of performances later, Benjamin Schmid now completes his recordings of the violin concertos with the Sweden based Musica Vitae, of which he has been the musical director since last year, and describes his journey as follows: “As a violinist who grew up in Vienna and Salzburg, Mozart was ultimately always the most important composer for me; I defined this preference as early as elementary school age, and the interest grew with the discovery of the complete works of this probably at least most gifted of all composers. For me, the key to Mozart interpretation lies in the duality of singing and speaking; singing as immediate emotion and phrasing and articulation as form-giving grammar.”

The pianist Andreas Eggertsberger, who studied in Austria and the USA with Karl Heinz Kämmerling and Oleg Maisenberg, among others, deals with the late works of three composers on his new album “Spätlese” (Late Harvest): Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johannes Brahms and Frédéric Chopin. Whether a work is considered a late work has less to do with the composer’s age and more to do with where the breaking points and further developments are in a composer’s oeuvre. Some of the three selected masters were still young when they entered their late phase: Mozart was in his late twenties when he composed his Fantasia K. 475 and Sonata in C minor K. 457, Chopin was thirty-four when he composed his third and final Sonata in B minor, and Brahms was fifty-nine when he composed his Three Intermezzi Op. 117. Many a future is anticipated. Mozart, for example, builds a bridge to Beethoven with his Fantasy and Sonata in C minor. Chopin, on the other hand, takes a look at late Romanticism and beyond with his increasingly bold harmonies, and Brahms foreshadows musical developments that would only become influential in the 20th century.

On this recording, Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger interprets violin concertos by Joseph Haydn with the Munich Chamber Philharmonic dacapo under the direction of Franz Schottky. The authorship and exact background of many of Haydn’s instrumental concertos are according to musicological findings often still uncertain, since they primarily served the purpose of giving the individually outstanding members of the Esterházy court orchestra the opportunity to perform as soloists, and were therefore rather neglected by Haydn in his own catalog of works. In the case of the concertos for violin and orchestra in C major, Hob. VIIa:1 and G major, Hob. VIIa:4 recorded here, however, Haydn’s authorship is considered assured. The Concerto for violin, harpsichord and string orchestra in F major Hob. XVIII:6 is a rarity as a double concerto, and is performed here by featured pianist Barbara Moser on a historical fortepiano.

Anton Bruckner and Sankt Florian, an incomparable and authentic relationship: In the monastery of Sankt Florian, Bruckner’s home and resting place, not a single stone has changed since Bruckner’s time. Conductor in Residence Rémy Ballot and the Altomonte Orchestra of St. Florian have been using the annual gathering at the St. Florian Brucknertage festival for more than ten years now to devote themselves intensively to a selected Bruckner symphony and to present it to the audience in one or two celebrated concerts. From the live recordings this 10-part cycle was created and in 2023 completed with the recording of the “Nullified Symphony WAB 100” and is now being released as an exclusive complete edition. In the entire history of Bruckner’s reception, this is the only cycle to have been performed live in its entirety by a single conductor – Rémy Ballot – exclusively in Sankt Florian. The acoustics of the St. Florian Abbey Basilica are problematic due to their reverberation time of up to ten seconds, and are only suitable for a few works, as there is a danger of “harmonic mush” if the tempo is too fast and the harmonic changes too rapid as a result. Far from this trap, on the contrary, music is made in alliance with the acoustics in the present recordings. The architectural and acoustic conditions of the basilica require a consciously specific articulation and dynamic shaping. The Altomonte Orchestra, made up of local musicians reinforced by members of the most important Austrian orchestras, is traditionally deeply familiar with these, as well as is the Upper Austrian Youth Symphony Orchestra, which has been performing Symphonies VI and VIII for this edition.

Mister Montelli - Flutes, viola, clarinets: three instruments, three musicians, three voices – only one surviving piece for this combination from a composer who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Mr. Montelli´. Three women, who chose this pseudonym as their trio name, drawing inspiration and ideas from the multifaceted instrumentation, their musical versatility, and the narrative threads of music history.

Sophie Katharina Schollum (flutes, vocals, composition), Anna Magdalena Siakala (viola, vocals, arrangement) and Theresa Dinkhauser (clarinets, voice) recount their stories in original compositions, improvisations and arrangements: nights in tents on steep rocky coasts, experimental tones in smokey cellars in the early hours of the morning, colorful markets in searing heat, and elegant windows behind which pseudonymous women in corsets pour their dreams into sounds. They travel to snow-covered mountain peaks, enjoy the freedom of solitude, celebrate exuberant feasts in watery meadows under starry skies. They philosophise about structures and systems in harmonies, words and movement, tell tales of intoxication of time out, lost wishes, new dreams, and wide spaces which, playing and singing, they fill with their innermost voices.

A tightly woven carpet of collected experiences and cherished sounds, blended into fresh realities of connection, vibrancy and perspective.

The album “In einer Zauberstunde” (In a Magic Hour) by the Australian-born flutist Xavier Luck and his compatriot Daniel Linton-France focuses on works for flute and piano that have been inspired by Lied or opera. The center piece is the Introduction and Variations on “Trockne Blumen” from Die schöne Müllerin, D 802, by Franz Schubert. This is contrasted by the Introduction and Variations on a theme from Carl Maria von Weber’s “Euryanthe” for Flute and Piano, Op. 63 by Friedrich Kuhlau, which was composed in the same year.

A contemporary take on this subject are the Fantasy on a theme by Franz Schubert (“Du bist die Ruh’”) and the eponymous “In einer Zauberstunde” by Daniel Linton-France, which are presented as world premiere recordings. The latter work was prompted by Xavier Luck and is a virtuoso work which picks up various themes and motifs from W.A. Mozarts “Zauberflöte”, from which the titel is derived. As concluding piece we find another Lied by Schubert, “Des Baches Wiegenlied”, once again from his song cycle Die schöne Müllerin, in an arrangement for flute and piano by Anton Diabelli.

When Anton Bruckner composed his Symphony No. 1 in 1865/66, he was employed as cathedral organist at Linz Cathedral. However, the premiere in 1868 was to be the only time for almost a quarter of a century that this work could be heard. After he had already completed seven more symphonies, he dealt again with the First at the request of the conductor Hans Richter, who wanted to perform the early work again, and revised it fundamentally. Rémy Ballot and the Altomonte Orchestra St. Florian present on this CD from the Priory Basilica of St. Florian this second, “Vienna version” of the First Symphony, which – as a new version – was premiered in 1891. In the usual coherent interpretation adapted to the unique acoustics of the church interior, this recording represents the conclusion of Bruckner’s symphonic canon with Rémy Ballot live from the Brucknertage Festival St. Florian.

A similar magical world as the optical one, which is met when looking into and turning a kaleidoscope, is reflected acoustically in this program, in which the Mobilis Saxophone Quartet shows very different and yet equally overflowing facets of the classical saxophone. The arc places great names of music history next to one of the most important composers for the early history of the saxophone in the 20th century and one of the current works by a prominent Austrian of our time.

The instruments perform almost in the manner of an organ with J. S. Bach’s presumeably most popular organ work, the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, in a colorful orchestral style with the Fledermaus Ouverture by Johann Strauss, in the manner of a chamber music string quartet with the Saxophone Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 109 by Alexander Glasunov and in a spectral, quasi-electronic manner with the Saxophone Quartet by Georg Friedrich Haas. Soprano saxophonist and ensemble founder Michael Krenn: “With this colorful mix, we want to express our passion for all kinds of musical styles and reach listeners with diverse musical backgrounds. The title seems fitting to us because one should have a kaleidoscopic listening experience, surprised by the different sounds and fragments of music history.”

The Austrian clarinetist Pierre Pichler; who has also made a name for himself as a conductor of numerous orchestras; combines works for clarinet and piano from the “Golden Age” of the clarinet (which one might declare starting with Mozart’s works for this instrument) to the 20th century together with the pianist Albert Frantz on his album “SONUS”. Robert Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces; Op. 73 is probably one of the best-known clarinet works of the Romantic period; but Carl Maria von Weber also created numerous “classics” for the clarinet; including the Grand Duo concertant for Clarinet and Piano; Op. 48. The Austrian clarinetist Alfred Prinz (1930–2014); with whom Pierre Pichler was still in personal contact; was a member of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra for over half a century; and was also active as a composer of numerous works; like orchestral works; chamber music and songs. His Five Pieces; Op. 93; (world premiere recording) are partly dance-like; partly capricious; partly elegantly ingratiating; they depict small character images in an immediately understandable; tonal musical language; which reconcile the joy of playing with the joy of listening. This was not the primary goal of Alban Berg in his Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano op. 5 from 1913; which; although the conventional major-minor system has already been overridden here; can also be described as character pieces. The album finds its ending with the Sonata No. 2 for Piano and Clarinet; Op. 120/2 by Johannes Brahms; who only devoted himself to this instrument towards the end of his creative period.