The Minetti Quartett marked it's fifteenth anniversary by devising and performing a cycle of concerts during the 2017-18 season at Vienna's newest venue, the MuTh Konzertsaal in the city's Augarten. The debut concert in Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, this newly recorded album, and concert tours to Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Sweden and America are further highlights of the ensemble's anniversary season. The name Minetti Quartett derives from a play by the dramatist Thomas Bernhard, who lived in Ohlsdorf in Austria's Salzkammergut region, where the two violinists of the quartet grew up. Since being nominated for the "Rising Stars" award by the European Concert Hall Organization in 2008/09, the Minetti Quartett, comprising Austrian musicians all living in Vienna, has performed many times in renowned venues in Vienna, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Stockholm, Brussels, London and other locations. Invitations to chamber music festivals have taken the quartet to North, Central and South America, Australia, Japan and China. For this release, they have chosen works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Franz Schubert, two composers that the Quartet has frequently performed.

Shirley Brill and Jonathan Aner have performed together as the Brillaner Duo since 1999, giving concerts in Europe (Berlin Philharmonie, Zurich Tonhalle), the United States (Carnegie Hall), Asia (Shanghai Oriental Art Center), Australia and Israel. They regularly appear as guests at the music festivals of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Rheingau, Heidelberg, the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier and the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival. On their new release, they have chosen sonatas by Johannes Brahms (1833-1887) and Leos Janacek (1854-1928).

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

• 11th installment in Gerhard Oppitz's recordings of Schubert's piano works • Includes the D 958 c minor sonata; first of the great trilogy of piano sonatas written in the final months of Schubert's life • Gerhard Oppitz is one of the greatest living exponents of the German Piano School, as taught to him Wilhelm Kempff

Arnold Mendelssohn's compositional oeuvre essentially encompasses all the major musical genres. He wrote three symphonies, a violin concerto, a cello concerto, numerous chamber pieces, three operas, a variety of sacred and secular cantatas and oratorios, around 170 songs and piano and organ music. This release features the world premier recording of the complete solo piano works of Arnold Mendelssohn. The pianist Elzbieta Sternlicht began her studies at the State Music Academy in Warsaw with Zbigniew Drzewiecki, and continued them in Paris with Vlado Perlemuter and Suzanne Roche. She has given concerts, master courses, workshops and radio broadcast performances throughout western and eastern Europe as well as in North and South America and Asia. She has released several critically-acclaimed albums, including world premiere recordings of the complete solo piano works of Josef Koffler.

Pavlos Hatzopoulos was born the son of Greek immigrants near Stuttgart, Germany in 1964 and started to learn the piano at three years of age. He made his first public appearance solo only several years later. He studied piano at the music colleges in Stuttgart and Würzburg from 1982 onwards. In 1984, a fracture in his right index finger appeared to have ended his prospects of a solo career. After two and a half years' recuperation, though, he resumed and successfully completed his studies, attaining the master class diploma for soloists. During his studies he took a close interest in the background story and interpretation of musical works. On this basis, he developed a form of lecture-concerts in which he takes his audience on a musical journey of discovery, giving them new insights into classical works and using the music to communicate ethical values ​​and other messages. The ideas he explains and the combination of accomplished elocution with expressive and virtuosic piano-playing distinguish him as one of the most extraordinary pianists of our time.

In the years since the acclaimed recordings made by the Hungarian pianist Zolt�n Kocsis back in the 1980s and 90s, no single pianist has attempted to record a complete edition of Bart�k's works for solo piano! For a quarter of a century, no new comprehensive perspective on this multifaceted oeuvre has been cast, an important and varied, yet internally cohesive body of work that displays so many different aspects of Bart�k's creativity. This is exactly what the German pianist Andreas Bach has set out to achieve - "... to find the young Bart�k in the late works as well as the late Bart�k in the early works. And (...) create a recording that presents a Bart�k different from those usually encountered and which are by contrast, 'middle-of-the-road'. Emphasizing "not only the rhythmic and folkloric content, but also providing an opportunity to discover Bart�k's harmonic thinking", an aspect of the composer's language that few fans had the opportunity to appreciate before. Volume1 of this new complete edition presents individual works that Bart�k composed in his mature, personal style, including the Sonata, the Sonatina, the Suite op. 14, and the 14 Bagatelles; folk music influences are present but only as distant references. The next 4 CDs will focus on the "Romantic Bart�k" and will include his early works, compositions written early in his career and still showing influences of 19th century Romantic idiom. CD 5 "Bart�k and Folk Music" is dedicated to his works, and arrangements most directly influenced by folk music. The remaining CDs (Vols. 6-8) are devoted to the major cycles "For Children" and "Mikrokosmos ".

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music