The Altomonte Ensemble, consisting of Rémy Ballot, violin, the violinist Iris Schützenberger, the violists Stefanie Kropfreiter and Peter Aigner and the cellist Jörgen Fog, presents two chamber music works by Anton Bruckner: the string quartet, composed 1861/62 at the suggestion of Joseph Hellmesberger, and the string quintet, composed in 1878/79, which is considered the highlight of Bruckner's chamber music oeuvre. The latter work was premiered by Hellmesberger and his extended quartet only after prolonged hesitation, since he originally had considered it in part as unplayable. The quintet has quite symphonic dimensions in terms of length and complexity. After the mentioned performance in 1884, a music critic wrote about the 3rd movement of the work: "This Adagio has an effect as if were something that had only been now unearthed in the vestiges of Beethoven's papers... a deeply felt work, inspired by inspiration and stemming from the composer's final years."

The violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger, the cellist David Geringas and the pianist Barbara Moser play piano trios by female composers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Amy Marcy Beach artfully combines French modernity with late romantic and American folklore elements in her trio from 1938, Sonia Eckhardt-Gramatté's work “Ein wenig Musik” (A Piece of Music) impresses with originality, melodious ideas and diverse rhythmic components, Louise Farrenc's trio from 1857 shows that she was a contemporary of early Romanticism, but also dealt with Ancient music, Mélanie Hélène Bonis’ pieces for piano trio “Soir” and “Matin” were created in 1907 and reflect the different moods of a day, while Julia Frances Smith's Cornwall Trio from 1966 expresses the funny, playful energy of the gifted composer that she was.

On this release titled The Maltese Touch, guitarist Simon Schembri and Parisii Quartet present three works which, alongside virtuosity of execution, also display a wide range of emotions and contrasts. The guitar concerto op. 30 by Mauro Giuliani was arranged for guitar and string quartet by the composer himself. Luigi Boccherini who was for many years in the service of the Bourbon court and other nobility in Madrid dedicated his composing the specific native sound scapes, that his adopted country Spain offered. Thus he arranged a number of his earlier string quintets for guitar and string quartet like the Quintet in D major, G. 448 “Fandango”. The piece Nazca by the French guitarist and composer Erik Marchelie was written in 1988 and refers to the enigmatic drawings on the desert floor of the Peruvian desert.

Violeta Vicci is a multifaceted, contemporary artist and musician. Of Catalan - Swiss descent, based in London, she feels comfortable genre-crossing from Classical to Improvisation, Ethno Avantgarde, Ambient, Multilayered Electronics, her influences ranging from traditional to pop. The original idea for the album stems from the reflection of elements between Bach’s E Major Partita and Ysaÿe’s second Solo Sonata. A journey not only through time, but to the most unusual of spaces. The album opens with world premiere recording of Ragnar Söderlind’s natural and mystical Elegie for solo violin, balanced out by the serene expression of the Vocalise for solo voice, seeped in orientalism, by Jean-Louis Florentz. Violeta Vicci isn’t just an accomplished violinist and singer, but plays the viola, present in both the folklore inspired world premiere recording Suite by British composer Imogen Holst, and the closing piece of the album, the Sarabande in C Minor by Bach. Between the compositions, are improvisations, some solo, some two voices intertwined as “overdubs”, acting as transitions and woven into the very fabric of the album. Violeta Vicci’s “Mirror Images” is one of the most surprising and contemporary Solo-Albums of our time. A concept album beyond intellectual reasoning, an album of all encompassing, spellbinding dramatic art.

In its latest project, the Chorus sine nomine, one of Austria’s leading choirs, under its director Johannes Hiemetsberger, has turned to a very special work: the Miserere by Gregorio Allegri in an arrangement for saxophone and three choirs a cappella by Vladimir Ivanoff. + The setting of the 51st Psalm from the 1630s, which is uniquely captivating due to its simplicity, was a fixed component of the liturgy of Easter week in the Sixtine Chapel in Rome for over 250 years and soon achieved cult status because of the high penalties on its ‘pirate copy’.

This release is the debut album of Trio Aleksic, made up of Serbian siblings Aleksa, Nadezda, and Ana Aleksic. Since their inception in 2005, the ensemble has made appearances on a number of chamber music stages in Austria. The group holds interest in bringing little-known composers into the limelight. For this release, they have chosen string trios by Beethoven, Herzogenberg, and Dohnanyi.

Classical Music

Classical Music

On his new album Colombian-born pianist Pablo Rojas presents piano music from five Latin-American countries. These diverting pieces tell of the history of South America, Spanish and Portuguese reign and the incorporation of Indigenous and African culture. Adding to works by the popular Ginastera and Piazzolla, Rojas discloses a world of gems by lesser known composer like Luis Calvo, Ernesto Nazareth, Ernesto Lecuona, Ignacio Cervantes, Carlos Vieco, Horacio Salgan or Gerry Weil. They stand for a wonderful mixture of most diverse influences and styles and reflect folklore from the Andes and Argentinian tango as well as dances and waltzes from Cuba, Colombia and Brasil, while at the same time roaming the border to jazz. Pablo Andres Rojas De Los Rios, who was born in Pasto, Colombia completed his piano studies at the Universidad de Antioquia, where he graduated with distinction. Pablo came to Vienna in order to study piano pedagogy at the Universitat fur Musik und darstellende Kunst. Pablo has performed as a soloist with the Symphonic Orchestra of Colombia, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Bogota, the Symphonic Orchestra of Barranquilla, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Medellin, and the Symphonic Orchestra of Yucatan. As an orchestral musician Pablo has played with, among others, the Tonkunstler Orchester Niederosterreich. As well as classical music Pablo also devotes himself to folklore and the popular rhythms of his culture of origin for instance in the duo Barembuem-Rojas, which explores the essence of the Argentinea tango as folk music.

The trumpet has been playing a special role as a signaling instrument throughout the centuries and accompanies mankind through war and peace. Consequentially, one associated the brilliant sound of the trumpet with the power and pomp of clerical and secular authorities. The current program of the Schwanthaler Trumpet Consort contains a representative sample of 17th-18th c. trumpet court literature. Besides trumpets, also timpani, percussion, clarinets, trombones and post horns are involved; replicas of historic instruments are paired with historically informed performance practice.

Classical Music

Badura-Skoda has long been a symbol of the cultivation of Viennese classical music. The holder of the prestigious Paul Badura-Skoda is well-known around the world for his interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. With this release "The Other Badura" a light is shed on a elsser known part of this great Austrian pianist: At the beginning of his career, Badura-Skoda also enjoyed playing virtuoso "crowd pleasers", e.g. great piano works of the Romantic era, particularly of the Russian sphere. In the 1950's together with the renowned conductors Sir Adiran Boult, Artur Rodzinski and Hans Swarowsky he released very popular recordings of the piano concertos No. 1 in B minor, Op. 23 by Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky, the concerto in C sharp major, Op. 30 by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and the concerto No. 1 in E flat major by Franz Liszt. Badura-Skoda's teacher was Edwin Fischer; his discoverer, Wilhelm Furtwängler. His composer friend, Frank Martin, composed a piano concerto for him and he shared a long professional friendship with the great Russian violinist David Oistrach. Badura-Skoda has long been a symbol of the cultivation of Viennese classical music. The holder of the prestigious Bösendorfer-Ring, he is a celebrated guest at major international music festivals. Earlier in his life, Badura-Skoda collaborated wtih such renowned conductors as Hans Knappertsbusch, Herbert von Karajan, Georges Szell and Karl Böhm. He has also worked with Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Georg Solti and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, to name but a few.

A great concern for the Austrian Adamas String Quartet has always been the treatment of composers whose works were termed "degenerate" and banned during the Nazi regime or who themselves became victims of the barbaric extermination machinery. On their second album, the critically acclaimed ensemble devotes itself to the string quartet by the Dzech composer Hans Krasa, a work showing an astounding compositional maturity.

Three events were decisive for Paul Badura-Skonda’s beginnings: Furtwangler and Karajan hired the still unknown musician for their concerts in Vienna in 1949. By standing in for the sick Edwin Fischer at the Salzburg Festival in 1950 he became an international star. Major tours as a soloist followed. Further highlights in his career were his first tour of Japan, where he appeared in Tokyo alone 14 times, and the first, highly successful tour through the Soviet Union in 1964, which was followed by many other tours. In 1979, Paul Badura-Skoda was the first Western pianist to perform in China after the Cultural Revolution. In the Mozart jubilee year 1991, he played the cycle of all Mozart’s sonatas in Paris, Vienna Munich, Madrid, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc. Paul describes his performance of the B minor Sonata by Franz Liszt from March 29, 1965 in the Carnegie Hall in New York as “one of the most inspired achievements of my career as a pianist.” To confront a perficious and nasty critique two weeks before in the same venue, Badura-Skoda played as unleashed, with an enormous energy, fuelled in part by internal fury. This concert recording which is to an extent owed to that heat of the moment is being published now, featuring a second interpretation of the same Sonata, a studio recording made in the Mozartsaal of the Vienna Konzerthaus six years later. This version is more controlled and, in the calmer passages, more internalized and contemplative than the New York interpretation. Let it be up to the listener to decide which of the two versions is the preferred one.

When in March 2018 the first bars of Schubert's "Unfinished" reached the recording equipment, this was not the everyday life of musicians who fulfilled their daily tasks, but the birth of a new body of sound: the KlangKollektiv Wien. Under the baton of R�my Ballot, musicians from Vienna's leading orchestras gathered to celebrate the music of Viennese Classicism and collectively rediscover it. In order to take into account the unique sound culture of this young ensemble, the producers of this recording at Gramola insisted on using even the highest quality analog recording device. In each bar of the Symphony No. 1 D 82 and the "Unfinished", the consonant love of music is felt, with which the KlangKollektiv Vienna embarks on it's self-imposed mission.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The work of pianist Jörg Demus was one of the most important musical exports of Austria after the end of the Second World War. In addition to many other musical partners Demus also entertained a very fruitful collaboration with the established Salzburg violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger, which is documented on the occasion of his death with 90 years in April 2019 with this 3-album collection with mostly unpublished recordings. In addition to Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Sonatas No. 1 in D major Op. 12 No. 1, No. 5 in F major Op. 24 and No. 6 in A major Op. 30 No. 1, there are two Sonatas for violin and piano by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 1016/1017), the Three Romances Op. 94 by Robert Schumann and the famous Sonatina in G major Op. 100 by Antonin Dvorak. The fact that Jörg Demus, in addition to his extensive concert tours and engagements as lecturer, appeared also as a composer in the last decades of his life is only known to proven connoisseurs. On the second album one can hear his Sonatas for Violin and Piano Op. 7 "Gahberg Sonata", Op. 35 "Il tramonto" and Op. 48 "Sonata sylvestre / Forest Sonata".

Classical Music

Classical Music

Violinist Raimund Lissy, member of the Vienna Philharmonic, has long been dedicated to the work of uncovering the works of Austrian composer Joseph Mayseder and make them available to a wider audience. After publishing two recordings with chamber music by the violin virtuoso who was born in 1789 in Vienna, the third volume contains violin concertos by Mayseder. Joined by the newly formed "Joseph Mayseder Orchestra" under the baton of Helmut Zehetner, Lissy presents the concerts for violin and orchestra No. 1 in A minor, Op. 22 (1813) and No. 3 in D major, Op. 28 (1811) as well as the Concertino for violin and orchestra No. 2 in E major, Op. 53 (1835). Raimund Lissy on the typical Mayseder style: Skillfully composed virtuosic passages for the violin alternate with pleasing cantilena, and there is a wealth of successful musical ideas that make rediscovering this music very rewarding.

Austrian jazz pianist Rudi Wilfer is one of the great jazz minds of our time, who has had the privilege of playing with many of the greatest international jazz legends. With "Over the Rainbow", Wilfer now releases the logical sequel to his previous recording "Somewhere". Featuring new and very personal interpretations of standards like Basin Street Blues, The Shadow of Your Smile, Orbit, Baby Steps as a witty arrangement of John Coltrane's Giant Steps, or My Romance, Wilfer teaches his audience the meaning of silence and the space between the sounds. This album is a meditative, almost Buddhist statement from this extraordinary Austrian musician, and, focusing on his lyrical, romantic playing style, also a homage to Bill Evans, one of the most important and influential pianists of modern jazz, whom Wilfer got to know in the popular jazz club Village Vanguard in New York in 1979.

Canadian musician Laura Young became a dedicated classical guitaristat the age of nine, and has since dazzled audiences with her unique style and daring concert programs. Laura Young presents this album of works by Max Reger in honor of the 100th anniversary of the composer’s death. Young is a professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.

Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Richard Strauss’ Metamorphoses represent late, great works by two composers whose geniuses were once more expressed in unprecedented intensity. + The WWII era Metamorphoses for 23 strings is characterized by profound grief, but ultimately expressing hope for the future. + Commemorating the outbreak of WWI, young Austrian composer Flora Marlene Geisselbrecht (b. 1994) joins in on the appeal for peace with Die Waffen nieder! ("Lay Down Your Arms!"), giving credit to Bertha von Suttner by incorporating citations of the first female Nobel peace-prize winner.

Classical Music