Classical Music

How come a piano trio calls themselves ‘van Beethoven’? Isn't that a little bold? Beethoven stands for independence of mind, for revolutionary ideas, for music that reaches far beyond his own time. Beethoven was a ‘lone wolf’, but at the same time the central point of departure for new traditions of composition. This fits in with the main mission of the TrioVanBeethoven: the care of the classical trio works, but also the commissioning of new compositions or crossover projects constitute the work of Verena Stourzh, violin, Clemens Zeilinger, piano, and Franz Ortner, cello. Their first grand opus which is presented now with Gramola is this timeless recording of Beethoven's complete works for piano trio in an extensive release, comprising countless hours of recording sessions, which made them ascend into the proverbial olymp of this genre.

On this new recording, two legendary Viennese pianists, Paul Badura-Skoda und J�rg Demus, devote themselves to works by Mozart for solo piano, four-handed piano and for two pianos, such as the well-known D major Sonata for Two Pianos KV 448. Besides the 'Larghetto and Allegro' for 2 Pianos, which was only discovered in 1963, and the Variations in G Major for Fourhanded Piano KV 501, the two pianists, who play on historical Walter fortepianos (and also wrote the texts in the booklet), share Mozart's three famous fantasias for solo piano - Demus playing the two Fantasias in C minor and D minor KV 396 and 397 and Badura-Skoda the great Fantasia in C minor KV 475.

The young Georgian-born flutist Temur Kharshiladze first studied in his hometown of Tbilisi before moving to the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Various international scholarships and prizes won as well as appearances in prestigious concert halls in Europe underline the artistic quality of the young musician, which is now also credited with a release of virtuoso flute works. The eponymous "Undine" Sonata for Flute and Piano Op. 167 by Carl Reinecke is one of the few works of the Hamburg composer still known today. Otar Taktakishvili, pianist, conductor and many years head of the Ministry of Culture in his country, is considered one of the most important composers of Georgia; With his flute sonata, the national composer of the former USSR became known to a wider international audience. The sonata for flute and piano Op. 94 by Sergei Prokofieff is prized for it's virtuoso character as one of the most popular works of the genre in the 20th century.

Kosovo native Flaka Goranci’s extensive international opera career features leading parts in operas by Mozart, Rossini and Weill. She is also accomplished in the genre of folk music, as can be heard on her new CD “Albanian Flowers”. Supported by colleagues of Balkan descent, Ms. Goranci presents songs from Albania and the Kosovo. Love’s bliss and love’s sorrow go side by side and the appropriate roundelay of symbols mostly includes spring and flowers. Further typical elements found in this music coming out of peoples’ daily lives include weddings, loyalty to one’s homeland and shepherd tunes.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Beth Levin's first CD for Aldil� Records is a 'composed program' presenting the mystically riveting world of Anders Eliasson's (1947-2013) 'Versione' as an otherworldly contrast between the two towering works by Schumann and Schubert: Kreisleriana and the late Sonata in C minor. The well-known and the unknown interact and reflect each other in a completely surprising and balanced way, performed by a musician of volcanic power, innermost poetic feeling, exciting freedom of expression, and irresistible structural stringency.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This 'Triple Completion' of Johann Sebastian Bach's 'Art of Fugue', performed by the Salzburg Chamber Soloists under Christoph Schl�ren for Aldil� Records, is a pioneering enterprise: For the first time the final fugue is presented both in it's unfinished original form and in three completions, each of which hypothetically completes the composer's architectonic plan. The first album presents the eleven consecutive main fugues and the unfinished final fugue with the concluding chorale. The second album of this double set opens with the two four-part mirror fugues, and continues with five later composers joining Bach: with the three 'completers' of the final fugues: Donald Francis Tovey (1931), Karl Hermann Pillney (1937) and Kalevi Aho (2011); and with two fugues on the B-A-C-H theme by Robert Schumann (1845) and Reinhard Schwarz-Schiling (1985) that are used as connective interludes. The range of music that emerged directly from Bach's late work thus extends in this project from Romanticism via Expressionism to the present time. In the interest of a cantabile performance of the fugue style as an instrumental continuation of the classical vocal polyphony of the Renaissance and the early Baroque, the execution is entrusted exclusively to the color of the string instruments, in tempos derived from the tradition of the Musica sacra, predominantly solemn, and performed as choral-like as possible, for Bach, as Marpurg wrote in his fugue treatise in 1753, wished to observe "a noble and melodious simplicity" and "a cantabile manner of playing" in his 'Art of Fugue'.