The Oratorio Stella Maris is homage to the cathedral of Chartres, and it is an attempt to respond to this overall work of art with current and modern means of art. The composer of this creation is Helge Burggrabe, who as a young musician, first came to Chartres in 1996. Since then he visits there several times a year to stay and work. On the occasion of the 1000 years anniversary celebrations in Chartres, Burggrabe was commissioned to compose a work for the cathedral. The music, as the act, lives off the polarity between old and new by combining Gregorian elements with a more modern musical language. The words sung by soloists and choir are carried on by instruments: the solo melody lines of the cello on one side and the sonority of the organ on the other side.

Vol. 2 of the portrait of the exceptional cellist who died far too young. Francoise Groben's fascinating dedication to music, her large number of international concerts and her encounters with the most prominent artists of her time - that is what this collection shows par excellence.

This release celebrates the 60th Anniversary of Academy of St. Martin in the Fields!

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields is one of the world’s finest chamber orchestras, renowned for fresh, brilliant interpretations of the world’s greatest orchestral music.

Formed by Sir Neville Marriner (1924 - 2016) in 1958 from a group of leading London musicians, the Academy gave its first performance in its namesake church in November 1959. Through unrivalled live performances and a vast recording output – highlights of which include the 1969 best-seller Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and the soundtrack to the Oscar-winning film Amadeus – the Academy quickly gained an enviable international reputation for its distinctive, polished and refined sound. With over 500 releases in a much-vaunted discography and a comprehensive international touring programme, the name and sound of the Academy is known and loved by classical audiences throughout the world.

Today the Academy is led by Music Director and virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell, retaining the collegiate spirit and flexibility of the original small, conductor-less ensemble which has become an Academy hallmark. Under Bell’s direction, and with the support of Leader/Director Tomo Keller and Principal Guest Conductor Murray Perahia, the Academy continues to push the boundaries of play-directed performance to new heights, presenting symphonic repertoire and chamber music on a grand scale at prestigious venues around the globe.

Classical Music

Florian Uhlig has often played the concerto under the direction of Penderecki as well as with other conductors throughout the world. Uhlig gives an exceptional interpretation of this successful contemporary work that is particularly close to his heart.

Classical Music

“From Beethoven’s extensive oeuvre of variations, I have selected four works ranging from the first to the last composition for solo piano for which Beethoven created variations on an original theme. Thus the wide-ranging Eroica Variations Op. 35 find their place alongside the compressed and downscaled Variations in C minor WoO 80 and the Variations in G major WoO 77 which were created as a piece of occasional music. The recording closes with Sonata Op. 111, whose second movement is one of the longest and most complex variation settings of the Viennese School and represents the homogeneous integration of the variation as a form within multi-movement works in Beethoven’s piano literature. Each of these four works possesses its own semantics and shows a Beethoven sparkling with creativity, wit, deep expressiveness and consummate mastery of forms, confronting the pianist with a multiplicity of technical, but also interpretative challenges.” (Florian Feilmair)

Classical Music

A highly fashionable instrument in the 18th c., C.P.E. Bach used the flute in his compositions throughout his life. His works for the instrument, including the complete sonatas for flute featured on this 2CD set, frequently betray the influence of Friedrich II (Frederick the Great), yet the distinctive traits – surprising twists, sensitivity, expressiveness and new compositional approaches – of a composer as great as C.P.E. Bach often surface. Dorothea Seel plays a copy of a late-Baroque Transverse flute; Keyboardist Christoph Hammer on period fortepiano provides the accompaniment.

Classical Music

Bach’s partitas BWV 825-830 are a set of six harpsichord suites that became well-known as “Clavier-Übung I”, published in 1731. They are the last set of suites that Bach composed, and the most demanding, compared with the French and the English Suites. Trevor Pinnock, born in 1946, is a famous British harpsichordist and conductor. He is one of the pioneers of the modern revival of early music performance, founding The English Concert in 1972 and the European Brandenburg Ensemble in 2006. He appears as a guest conductor with many of the world's leading symphony orchestras as well as giving solo harpsichord and chamber music recitals worldwide. Apart from his concert activities he is now focusing on teaching and giving masterclasses.

To many ears, combining the words "music" and "Hungary" often awakens some pretty jaded stereotypes: images of violin and cimbalom as typical instruments and the Gypsy violinist plying his trade by evoking wistfulness and passion among the audience. Today, the word "Gypsy" is frowned upon, since among a resident population it conjures up the picture of those mistrusted travelers who enjoy the freedom of the open road: the epitome of Gypsy romanticism. This is a touchy subject! The present album should therefore be judged for its "Hungarian influenced" piano music, the composers and their Hungarian affinities. One thing should be made clear at the outset: all of the pieces played here by Sofja Gülbadamova – be they original works or arrangements – are in the two-four time that is so characteristic of popular "Hungarian music" and "traditional Gypsy music". Since Austria and Hungary were closely linked both politically and culturally for centuries, one might well describe Hungarian two-four time as a sort of "counter spell" to the three-four time of the Viennese waltz.

”His lyric tenor voice had a youthful glow, yet he sang with plaintive beauty and piercing insight.” (The New York Times) Precise vocal control, clear diction, intelligent musicality and an ability to get to the heart of everything he sings ensures Christoph Prégardien’s place among the world’s foremost lyric tenors. Especially revered as a Lieder singer, he can be heard this season at the Phiharmonie de Paris, the Palace of Arts Budapest, and the Wigmore Hall in London, as well as in Zurich, Lucerne, Kyoto, Tokyo and Bogotá. He will also perform at the Oxford Lieder Festival, the Chopin Festival in Warsaw, the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg Hohenems, as well as part of the “Schubert!” concert series with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Christoph Prégardien appears regularly with renowned orchestras the world over. He has worked with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, as well as the Boston and San Francisco Symphonies, and with conductors such as Barenboim, Metzmacher and Thielemann.

Tzvi Avni is an established part of Israel’s culture. He provided important, even essential contributions during the process in which Israeli music was trying to find its identity. As a teacher he has shown many young composers ways to create their own work, and he was chairman of the Israel Composers’ League as well as artistic director of the World Music Days which took place in Israel in 1980. Since 1993 he has been chairman of the Israel Jeunesses Musicales and was editor of its monthly magazine for almost 20 years. Yet he has never lost sight of his role as an artist with social and cultural responsibility. “Whenever I am asked”, he once said, “how a composer differs from other contemporaries in other countries, then I say that socially, culturally and politically most composers in Israel are necessarily more involved in the society they live in”. A glance at his multifarious work reveals his basic roots in the European musical tradition, whose styles and forms of expression he has combined not only with the traditional Middle East/Mediterranean style but also with modern Western musical innovation. Many of his musical themes also show his deep attachment to biblical history, Jewish tradition and the destiny of the people of Israel.

Awarded to FRIEDER BERNIUS in 2009, the Bach Medal of the City of Leipzig acknowledges a life’s engagement with the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, his pupils and his family. That quest began in the family home, a pastor’s residence that gave him early access to Bach’s organ music, violin compositions and choral works. As a student at the Stuttgart College of Music, he initially responded to the city’s “Romantic” Bach tradition, but the ideas of Hans Grischkat and encounters with artists outside Germany soon committed him to an engagement with the historical approach to performance that he has maintained to this day. The formation of a Baroque orchestra of his own in 1985 and the establishment of the International Festival of Early Music (1987, “Stuttgart Barock” since 2004) prove him to be a pioneer of historical performance practice. He has since been the guest of many renowned European festivals and has performed some 80 of Bach’s cantatas and most notably his Motets, the B minor Mass and the St Matthew Passion (Salzburg, Vienna, Bruges, Madrid, Paris, Barcelona and Munich).