The repertoire of KLANGKOLLEKTIV WIEN with its conductor Rémy Ballot is focused on a core of famous and lesser-known works of the First Viennese School. This live recording presents the two late String Quartets No. 14 in C-sharp minor Op. 131 and No. 16 in F major Op. 135 by Ludwig van Beethoven in a version for string orchestra. The working title of this concert “Music from a Place of Inner Silence” refers to the fact that Beethoven had presumably completely lost his hearing by the time of composition of these works – he appears to have been turning more and more to an inner, spiritual world. Thus, these two great quartets encompass in their musical substance all possible moods and states of the soul and our being and were not only considered avant-garde at the time, but in many ways pre-shadow the daring of the Second Viennese School and the innovations of the Béla Bartók string quartets. This effect is significantly augmented by the expansion of the ensemble from the original four to 16 musicians.

The Austrian bass Günther Groissböck enchants on the opera and concert stages around the world with the unique noble sound of his voice and virtually breathtaking verve of performance. Together with Malcolm Martineau, who is recognized worldwide as one of the leading piano accompanists of his generation, Groissböck presents on the album “Nicht Wiedersehen!” incomparable interpretations of late Romantic songs and ballads by Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and Hans Rott.

The duo pays homage to passion in Strauss songs such as “Zueignung”, “Allerseelen” or “Breit' über mein Haupt”, or leaves the audience rather thoughtful with “Der Einsame”, “Das Thal” or “Befreit”. Hans Rott, who died at a young age, can be heard in “Wandrer’s Nachtlied”, “Geistesgruß” and “Der Sänger”. Groissböck also brings the tragic characters in Mahler’s songs “Revelge”, “Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz’”, “Tamboursg’sell” or “Nicht wiedersehen!” to life in an incomparable way, before this great recording promises a transcendental end with “Urlicht”.

Works by Antonio Vivaldi by definition fall within the repertoire of an Ancient music ensemble such as Pandolfis Consort, which specializes in Renaissance and Baroque music. The fact that the orchestra, founded in 2004 by violist Elzbieta Sajka-Bachler, is now releasing a second album of motets and instrumental concertos by the Grand Master from Venice within just two years testifies on one hand to Vivaldi’s rich oeuvre, but on the other hand to how much Vivaldi’s compositional art is close to the hearts of the musicians. The result is once again an extremely varied program, in which the motets In furore iustissimae irae RV 626, O qui coeli terraeque serenitas RV 631, Ostro picta, armata spina RV 642 / Introduzzione al Gloria, RV 589 as well as the eponymous Nulla in mundo pax sincera RV 630 – each for soprano (Aleksandra Zamojska), strings and basso continuo are interwoven with the Concerto for Cello (Michal Stahel) in D minor, RV 405 as well as the Concertos for Strings and b. c. RV 157 and RV 119.

In prehistory, cave periods were triggered several times by climatic catastrophes that occurred unexpectedly and forced a strongly reduced population of Homo sapiens into retreat. How could mankind survive these drastic changes in lifestyle and longer phases of cave use? The answer is cave competence. On the basis of his scientific research university professor of communication studies Jürgen Grimm developed 52 exercises to increase cave competence, which can be experienced as a work of art with this album. Embedded in the timeless, genre crossing original music by the Norwegian pianist and composer Håvard Enstad and his ensemble with strings, piano and percussion, the exercises are recited by the well-known German actor and speaker Till Firit.

The mantra-like exercises, which are also influenced by the work of the German experimental artist Joseph Beuys and the experiences of the founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatius of Loyola, are intended to help promote crisis resilience which we carry within us as the spiritual heritage as a potential, and to help us to return to the cave age, which, if correctly understood, is also the future.

Nannette Streicher (1769–1833) was regarded throughout her life as a prominent piano maker, who was regarded in Vienna as the “third great Master” after Johann Schantz and Anton Walter already at the age of 27. Not averse to innovation, Nannette Streicher produced instruments at the highest technical level, while good relations with musicians such as Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven or Ignaz Schuppanzigh, but also with amateurs such as Karoline Fürstin von Lobkowitz or Georg Graf von Apponyi were helping to sell the grand pianos, with numbers produced rising up to 85 instruments per year. One of these instruments from 1813 was donated to the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna by the Bösendorfer company, where it was restored from 2013 on and even made playable again.

Ines Schüttengruber presents this fortepiano on this release with music from the time of its creation by Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Franz Schubert, Ignaz Moscheles, Jan Václav Hugo Voríšek and Anna Maria (Nannette) Streicher.

Tribal migration – or, in today’s world, globalization and the associated travel – have always brought about cultural exchanges, enrichment, and adaptation, contributing to, the sciences, or simply to attaining a broader horizon. In all that, a desire for discovering the unknown has generally outweighed the fear of things “other”. Much of this exchange has taken place subconsciously: foreign traits were adapted into one’s own culture, got to mingle, some were discarded again, and other elements remained permanently. With this album, Baroque Arabesque, the ensemble Fiori Musicali Austria invites a variety of thought-experiments along the following lines: Baroque music of the occident – specifically from central and southern Europe – meets oriental music from the Middle East and especially the Sephardic culture of the Iberian Peninsula.

Songs and instrumental pieces demonstrate both, the connections between them and what separates them. Creating this exchange of geographically shaped sounds, the ensemble raises the question: What might Haendel’s compositions have sounded like, had he not emigrated to England but Spain, instead? How might he have handled (no pun intended) the local instruments, the rhythms, and the local musical language in general? Or how might musicians from the orient have interpreted works of their Baroque composer counterparts, had they settled in a central European metropolis rather than being imported later, then invariably labeled “exotic”?

If the Arioso Quartett Wien, founded in 1994 and with a nearly unchanged lineup ever since, were to have a motto, it might be that. “Arioso” means “pertaining to the voice” but also “sonorous”. The name, as it were, says it all. But which sound is the desirable one? What’s the sound-ideal? The oft-quoted “Wiener Klang”, that particular way in which Viennese ensembles interpret orchestral and chamber music, is hard to define. What is it exactly – and is it really a thing? This ensemble is convinced: it does exist. But it doesn’t so much refer to externalities – where the bow hits the strings, for example, or how much pressure is used or whether and what specific vibrato is employed. Nor does it need fancy, expensive instruments (although they certainly don’t hurt). Hearsay has it, that members of American orchestras were often surprised that an orchestra can sound so good after they inspected the relatively “cheap” string instruments of their Viennese colleagues.

“Wiener Klang” really is more about an attitude - the way one approaches music. This includes taking into account the personal circumstances of the composer, their emotional and physical constitution at the time of writing the work in question, their mentality (to the extent that letters or eyewitness accounts have told us anything about that), and the surroundings in which the work at hand had been written.

Schubert dreams of distant, poetic moods believed to have been lost. His approach is shaped mostly by a melancholy that permeates a diffuse space of the greatest sensitivity. The recording presented here on the one hand shows us recognized facets of the composer, while also surprising us with creations by this master that are far less well-known and, finally, we also hear transcriptions that audibly and visibly demonstrate his enormous seductive strength.

Meira Farkas was born in Arad (Romania). When she was 15, she moved with her family to Israel. Her exceptional talent was recognized at an early age. The artist studied initially at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv with Ilona Vincze-Kraus (piano) and with Ödön Pártos (chamber music). Farkas was tied by bonds of music and personal friendship to many of the major artists of the 20th century. This great pianist appeared on stage with Itzhak Perlman, Rudolf Serkin and Pinchas Zukerman. Pablo Casals, who was much impressed by her deep understanding of music and her interpretations, gave the young pianist advice and support. She has influenced many younger pianists and through her work as a teacher has supported talented musicians of the younger generation.

“I love this country!” is the title of this album, which is released on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and Austria by GRAMOLA. The present release immortalizes the wonderful singing voice of Austria-based Chinese artist Xin Wang, who on this recording interprets works by the Austrian composers Franz Schubert, Hugo Wolf and Gustav Mahler, the German composer Richard Strauss, in addition to Chinese art songs that highlight the special unifying element. Xin Wang is accompanied by the Danish-American pianist Niels Muus, who is well-known to the Austrian audience as a professor at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna as well as before as casting director of the Vienna Volksoper, and who is well acquainted with the international audience as an opera conductor, on the piano “Julius Feurich 280” which was produced in Germany in 1928. The release of this is thus a happy occasion, one that bears witness to the artistic connection between these two countries by an exceptional artist who is as dedicated to the interpretation of music as she is to cultural exchange. To underscore her artistic and personal closeness to Austria, she tellingly chose the text to the art song by Zaiyi Lu (“I Love This Land”) as the title of this album!

Violinist by profession, the Japanese-born Viennese musician Tomoko Mayeda also learned to play the piano from the age of four. Her teacher and mentor Paul Badura-Skoda often took the time to teach her at the piano in addition to his support as a pianistic accompanist at countless concerts and a joint album recording. Mayeda had for a long time cherished the wish of being able to accompany herself at the piano, which she was finally able to realize during the pandemic through technical refinements: First, Mayeda recorded the piano part, to which the violin was then recorded in a second recording session. Since the otherwise usual and necessary agreements regarding musical features are omitted the result is Tomoko Mayeda “100%”, an uncompromising interpretation of W. A. Mozart’s late Viennese violin sonatas (B-flat major, K. 454; E-flat major, K. 481; A major, K. 526).

Piano music from Vienna – the composers who first come to mind will rarely be Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alban Berg, Christoph Ehrenfellner and Fritz Kreisler. The young Viennese pianist Maximilian Kromer, who can already be heard internationally on the biggest stages, deliberately leaves out Viennese Classicism with its somewhat well-trodden paths, and illuminates an even wider, refreshing spectrum of Viennese piano music with his debut album. While grand complexity and thorough chromatic explorations are imminent in the piano sonatas of Korngold’s and Berg’s, the New Viennese Dances by Ehrenfellner (composed in 2019) and the dances “Liebesleid” and “Liebesfreud” by Kreisler, transcribed by Rachmaninoff, combine the element of the Viennese waltz, which, like the so-called Second Viennese School, is part of the musical DNA of the performer’s hometown.

Thomas Albertus Irnberger, violin, and Pavel Kašpar, piano, lead us with their album Salon de Budapest into the bourgeois salon of the late 19th century – an oasis amid the ‘good old days’ which weren’t, of course, that good to begin with: mired turmoil, social inequalities, and wars as much and more than ever since. The invited audience were to listen to Hungarian dances by Brahms, Kodály or Rachmaninoff, Csárdás’ by Franz Lehár, Miska Hauser or Jeno Hubay, Romances, Fantasies and other melodies by Tchaikovsky, Leopold Auer, Carl Bohm or Joseph Joachim. Some songs from operettas by Lehár, Jeno Huszka, Emmerich Kálmán and Pongrác Kacsóh with the Hungarian soprano Brigitta Simon complete this musical visit to the Salon de Budapest.

When a pianist extraordinaire still has a lot to say far beyond retirement age, he goes on extensive tours in order to move people emotionally with his work and music. But when Paul Badura-Skoda undertakes the exertions of undergoing long recording sessions to record on three CDs sonatas and other piano works by W. A. Mozart on one of the fortepianos in his collection, then that is a completely different thing. For that means that the matter is close to his heart, and we can be curious to hear how ‘his’ Mozart has ‘matured’ with him over the years. This CD features the Sonata No. 15 in F, KV533.494, the famous “Alla Turca” from the Sonata No. 11 in A, KV331 and a small assortment of other Mozartean jewels, recorded in 2013, with an encore selection from 1976. Winning first prize in the Austrian Music Competition in 1947 meant the beginning of Paul Badura-Skoda’s career. Since 1949, he has performed with major conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan. Major tours as a soloist followed. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, he could be heard in all the parts of the world. The focus of his extensive repertoire (he has made more than 200 recordings) is on works by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.

Bénédicte Royer, viola, and Bettina Leitner, organ, venture into a program with rarely heard repertoire, introducing unforeseeable sound effects: With their present release, Royer and Leitner present works for the seemingly exotic combination of viola and organ from the 20th and 21st century. Starting with the Fantasi (1919) by the Swedish composer Karl Yngve Sköld, there are two pieces by the British York Bowen, the Fantasia for viola and organ and Poem, Op. 27 for harp, solo viola and organ. The Sonata da chiesa for viola and organ (2015) by the Austrian composer and organ player Ernst Ludwig Leitner refers to the Sonata da chiesa for viola d’amore and organ (1938) of the Swiss composer Frank Martin, which is dominated by his own style of incorporating dodecaphonic writing into a tonal environment. Bénédicte Royer began studying viola at age 9. She studied at the Paris Conservatory and then in Oslo and at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. She is a passionate chamber musician, playing on both modern and original instruments. Bettina Leitner studied at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. She is highly in demand as a chamber musician, and on several occasions she has performed as a soloist at the world premieres of works by distinguished contemporary composers.

The viola sonatas by Hans Gál (1941), Karl Weigl (1940) and Erich Zeisl (1950), performed by the duo of violist Julia Rebekka Adler and pianist Alex Gremmelspacher, give clear indication of the horrors of the Holocaust and the suffering of millions of people: predominant gloom, laments and the inclusion of elements of Jewish music testify to the processing of experience. In homage to composure and Viennese charm, this CD concludes with the evergreen ‘Schön Rosmarin’ by Fritz Kreisler, arranged for viola by J.R. Adler, allowing for a brief glimpse of ‘Old Vienna’.