"•Solitude – a program of works for Baroque cello solo, features the young Slovak cellist Michal Stahel playing a period instrument made in the 1720s by Antony Posch. • Besides solo sonatas, capriccios and toccatas by Galli, Gabrielli, and the Bach Cello Suite No. 5, Mr. Stahel also performs his own works written in the Baroque manner. • Michal Stahel cooperates with personalities of ancient music, such as Skip Sempé, Simon Standage and Amandine Bayer, and regularly performs with period ensembles."

Classical Music

Classical Music

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

"•Happiness is a Wee Birdie – it is between gaiety, melancholy and the fatalism so typical of the Viennese soul that the Viennese and wine tavern songs roam, sung by the well-known actor and cabaret artist Erwin Steinhauer with the Upper Austrian Concert-Schrammeln and released on this new CD. • Founded in 1996 and reformed in 2009, the Upper Austrian Concert-Schrammeln, perform original music by Johann and Josef Schrammel, Mikulas, Sioly, the Strauss family, Ziehrer, Strohmayer, etc."

Classical Music

The rise of the art song as genre toward the end of the 18th century was favored not only by developments in the world of music but also by the emergence of a bourgeois culture, and is until today one of continuous popularity. This new release by baritone Erwin Belakowitsch and pianist Christoph Berner offers an exciting selection of songs by Franz Schubert, from the Reisebuch aus den osterreichischen Alpen, Op. 62 by Ernst Krenek and Gustav Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. The dramatization of intertwined songs allows a direct comparison of the diverse handling of the composer's take on the subject, Longing to Escape, which conveys melancholy and pain as well as confidence and hope. Erwin Belakowitsch was a soloist with the Vienna Boys' Choir and studied singing at Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts. Alongside numerous other prizes, in 2006 he won the International Joseph Suder Lied Competition and in 2010 the International Johannes Brahms Competition. Song recitals and opera productions brought him to Japan, Korea, South America and Australia, where he also taught singing at Sydney University of Music. Christoph Berner has appeared with prestigious orchestras such as: the Orchestre National du Toulouse, the Moscow Tchaikovsky Orchestra, Bergen and Dresden Philharmonic and with such conductors as Neeme Jarvi, Michel Plasson and Vladimir Fedosejev.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

All of Ludwig van Beethoven’s works for violin and piano are gathered on this new album from Thomas Albertus Irnberger and Michael Korstick. Michael Korstick is a recognized internationally as a Beethoven specialist, and the duo have been hailed as “the current champions in the Beethoven Ring.” (W. Shaper, Radio Bremen. This four-disc collection includes detailed information on the compositional background, written by T. A. Irnberger.

The young Austrian pianist Ingrid Marsoner’s latest release, an all-Mozart program of sonatas, K475, K331, the Fantasia K457 and the Six Variations in G, K180 on the aria ‘Mio caro Adone’ from the opera La fiera di Venezia by Antonio Salieri, brings together works of tragedy, charm, technical brilliance and emotional reconciliation. Since debuting at the Vienna Konzerthaus in 1996, Ms. Marsoner has been invited to play solo recitals all over the world in famous concert halls and at major music festivals. The pianist has been the recipient of a number of First Prizes at int’l competitions.

This incredible recording of Anton Bruckner’s Symphonie IX also includes a bonus disc with the Version for Two Pianos. Featuring the Altomonte Orchester St. Florian under the direction of Remy Ballot, this album is a live recording of the original version. Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony is, in the composer’s own words, “The loveliest thing that I [Bruckner] ever composed.” The work is dedicated to the “dear Lord” and is the composer’s personal confrontation with his journey into the afterlife. The transcription for two pianos was arranged by Klaus Laczika and Matthias Giesen using a transcription by Dr. Karl Grunsky (1911) and more closely aligning it to Bruckner’s original scoring in the way of dynamics and instrumentation.

Michael Korstick ranks among the most important German pianists of our time. His playing is documented on numerous award-winning CDs which bear witness to the enormous breadth of his repertoire. The recording now being released by Gramola features Russian piano music from the 19th and 20th century. The piano cycle Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky can rightly be viewed as one of the most well-known works for piano, not least due to the immense number of later orchestrations (most notably by Maurice Ravel). Following up on the programmatic nature of musical pictures is the Doumka (Sc�ne rustique russe) in C minor, Op. 59 by Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky as well as the Caucasian Lesghinka by Sergej Lyapunow, who alike portray traditional Russian themes and musical motifs in many of their compositions. Less tangible in extra-musical content appears the Sonata for piano No. 8 in B flat major Op. 84 by Sergej Prokofiev, having been composed during the years of World War II from 1939-1944.