"Credo - a profession of faith. belief, confidence and trust in a time that is challenging for all of us. Faith in the power of music, in art and in the ability to rise up and persevere. These duet recordings were created with these thoughts in mind, making their way through Handel's opera and oratorio duets, right up to the final creative phase of his life."
Anna Korondi and Zvi Emanuel-Marial

With this CD, we present a composer who is almost completely unknown. An astonishing admission, because his work is well documented in Georg Forster's songbooks and his compositions have also been published in print. Georg Forster himself held vom Brandt in high esteem, so much so that he dedicated the third volume of his"Teutschen Liedlein" to him. This dedication emphasises Forster's high regard for vom Brandt, but he also made dedications to other composers. Forster dedicated Volume II to his former fellow student Eck, Volume IV to Stephan Zirler, and Volume V to Dietrich Schwarz von Haselbach, with whom he had been associated since his Heidelberg days. While on the one hand friendship was important to him, he did not lose sight of quality when he wrote that he had"picked out the loveliest and worst from all of them". Forster's collection is aimed at the"friend and lover of noble music", not at the professional musician. Hence, the focus on the fact that he had selected not only the"loveliest" but also the"worst" (in the sense of plain or simple). Forster underscores that Brandt"noch heut bey tags ein sonderlicher Liebhaber un(d) fürderer ist, unnd solchs auch selbs mit der that alß mit setzen oder Componiren… noch heut bey tag beweyset" (still today by day a special lover and fancier, and also proves this himself with the deed as with setting or composing…still today by day). It seemed remarkable that vom Brandt composed during the day, for composing was not his main occupation.

The ensemble of the Bachakademie, the Gaechinger Cantorey, plays under the direction of Hans-Christoph Rademann. For this purpose it comprises the instrumentalists and up to four vocalists per voice, including the soloists, all specialists in their field, as Bach himself wished it. This is a vision that only now can be fulfilled in its ideal form. To this day the music will inspire its audience to devotion, challenge them to reflect and make them glad. It addresses questions of faith and comes to terms with particular situations of human life.

With his song cycle, Die schöne Müllerin op. 25, published in Vienna in August 1824, Franz Schubert created one of the first song cycles in music history. It is a real cycle, not just a loose collection, because all the poems united in it hang firmly on a narrative thread: a narrated story, presented in 20 individual songs. It is clear that the most appropriate instrument for Die Schöne Müllerin is not the modern concert grand piano, but rather the fortepiano of Schubert's time, with its delicate, transparent sound and enormous richness of color. This makes for a completely different listening experience. But the arrangement that Tom Randle wrote for the ALINDE Quartet in 2022 can also open one's ears in a completely new way.

In June 1878 Johannes Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann: "The A minor Concerto by Viotti is my very special passion. It is a splendid piece with a remarkable freedom of invention: it sounds as if he were fantasizing, and everything has been designed and executed with such mastery …" Already during his lifetime Viotti was regarded as one of the most brilliant violin virtuosos, and his violin concertos also enjoyed special renown. As a composer Viotti brings in the schemes of the Italian School but also weaves in romantic motifs far ahaead of their times.

Joseph Suder´s great festival mass complements the series of great sacred works from Bach to Bruckner in which tonal expressive means exhibit what are in polyphonic and in part homophonic traits. Suder´s work offers, in keeping with his stylistic will, a synthesis of strict contrapuntal thought with what would have to be termed a Romantic tone coloration, a combination of clear construction with eminent expressive power in the form of an intelligible musical language. Joseph Suder (1892 – 1980), active in Munich from 1911 on, did not bequeath a very extensive symphonic oeuvre to posterity. He composed his first major work of this type, the Chamber Symphony in A major, in 1925, and it was this work that brougth him his first international successes. In it he also formulated an important as well as interesting principle of design that would play a decisive role in almost all his later major works: the synthesis.

Friedrich Schiller no doubt reckoned his Lied von der Glocke (The Song of the Bell) among his best poetic creations. He is supposed to have been inspired to write it by a 1788 visit to a bell foundry in Rudolstadt, Thuringia, and carried the idea for his bell founder´s song around with him for years. When Schill failed to finish it on time for the Musenalmanach in 1797, Goethe, the alamac´s editor, gave him the good advice and encouragement that „The bell will now have to sound all the better since the ore has been kept longer in the flux and has been rid of all slag“ (Goethe´s letter of 14 October 1797). The poem was published three years later in the Musenalmanach of 1800. Andreas Romberg set the whole long poem of 424 verses at one go - it was published by Simrock in 1809.

The composer Andreas Romberg, who certainly did not know Schiller´s wishes, made this idea a reality and set the whole long poem of 424 verses at one go. A bass part is assigned to the honest bell-founder master. His ten strophes all have the same design and the same simple melody, with the latter being varied or modulated now and again in what is a well-crafted composition. As the master directs the casting of the bell, so too the bass moves from station to station of the poem. The master´s big hour comes at the conclusion, when the bell is inaugurated. His solemn word of inauguration (Und dies sei fortan ihr Beruf) has him sing tones reminiscent of Sarastro.

Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 7 lasts no more than twelve minutes. The composer wrote it in March 1960 and dedicated it to his first wife Nina Vasilyevna Varzar - or rather, to her memory, for she had died five years earlier of an insidious form of cancer; suddenly, and without warning. It is a very personal work, one that is close to the composer's heart, for here Shostakovich breaks the strict sequence of keys he imposed on himself. Alban Berg's String Quartet No.1 has 2 movements, bears the opus number 3, and is nevertheless considered the composer's first autonomous work, even though the composer himself points out that he received it personally from Schönberg. An homage to Arnold Schönberg, then, who propelled his pupil into an independent career with this journeyman piece? Or is it really a declaration of love? While working on his Opus 3, Alban has already been hopelessly in love with Helene for a long while. Georg Alexander, alias György Sandor Ligeti, completed his first string quartet in 1954, when he was still living in Budapest at the age of thirty-one and recently divorced. For the second time! His first marriage, to his childhood sweetheart Brigitte, lasted only three years, and the second, to the psychology student Veronika Spitz, was entered into for purely political reasons. In 1952, Veronika, who came from a family of former factory owners, was in danger of being deported to a labour camp by the communist regime in Hungary as a representative of the bourgeoisie, and it was only by getting married to Ligeti that a semblance of protection could be afforded to her. As soon as the danger is averted following the death of Stalin, they divorce as agreed.

As a young man, the composer Hans Gál witnessed an artistic turning point, for it was during the First World War that late Romanticism met the modern musical era. Everything was in motion. He himself was however critical of many musical initiatives and admitted: “I had too little in common with my contemporaries”. Indeed, the orchestral surges of the Wagnerites were just as alien to him as the atonality of the Second Viennese School championed by Alban Berg and Anton Webern. The pared-down sounds of Neoclassicism and the “new objectivity” of the likes of Paul Hindemith were likewise of little use to Gál. Therefore, in his adherence to tonality and use of sophisticated formal progressions, he created a distinctive style of his own that he steadfastly embraced throughout his life.

The human factor determines the path. The Clarinet Trio op. 114 by Johannes Brahms more or less represents the DNA of the Quantum Clarinet Trio, and the piece was one of the driving forces behind the founding of this young chamber ensemble, whose members first met at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg in 2014. At that time, Italian clarinettist Elena Veronesi had been searching for fellow musicians to collaborate in a late work trio, and she found them in the German cellist Johannes Przygodda and Korean pianist Bokyung Kim. What started as a project has now evolved into a permanent ensemble. This great Brahms trio has continued to be a enterprise in which life converges with art.

Cellists, pianists and clarinettists usually come together when a work requires such a constellation, the line-up going their own separate ways once the project is completed. Compared to piano trios or string quartets, these particular instruments unfortunately rarely come together as a fixed ensemble. The Quantum Clarinet Trio is a welcome exception to the rule, making this encounter with one of Brahms' most important works much more than just a "fleeting liaison".

The piano concerto in D minor was composed between 1931–1935 and premiered on November 23, 1935, by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Toivo Haapanen, with Ernst Linko as the soloist. The concerto is preserved only as a piano reduction and instrument parts, but the original score is lost. The piano part contains several cuts and facilitations by the 1935 soloist, while the instrument parts show no omissions. The most probable result was that the orchestra played some passages without the soloist.

For this recording, Leiviskä’s original solo part was restored. Several reviews, mostly under pseudonyms, discussed the symphony after its first performance. The reviews were mostly favorable. It was both praised and criticized for its structure and the inclusion of the waltz motive, and comments of the themes and melodies were also ambiguous. After 1948, the symphony was performed three more times until 1951. After 70 years of silence, the symphony was resurrected in 2022.

Terhi Dostal studied piano at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where she received her Doctor of Music degree in 2010. In 2005 she completed another soloist diploma at the Piano Academy of Imola, Italy. Concerts and tours have taken her to many European countries and the USA. Numerous prizes and grants in Finland and abroad also prove her artistic path. Terhi Dostal is also known as a fine interpreter of Finnish music. She has recorded many romantic and modern masterpieces from her native country for various radio stations (YLE1, BR, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Kulturradio RBB, NDR) and has released CD recordings of works by Finnish composers.

The starting point for the recording of the album ROOTS was a concert in which Shirley Brill performed Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Sonata for the first time and was deeply moved by its overwhelming emotional power. Being Jewish herself, she resonated deeply with the rich Klezmer folkloric elements expressed so intensely in this Sonata. This experience ignited her passion to explore the integration of national sentiments into classical music, with a particular focus on the neighbouring countries of Germany and Poland.

In ROOTS, Shirley Brill has curated a collection of pieces that demonstrate a masterful integration of folkloric elements, exuding pride in original folk music and a healthy sense of national identity. Yet, this aspect also belongs to the folklore within the music that is heard here: over the course of the 100 years in which the recorded works were composed, an excessive embrace of radical ideologies has slipped into dangerous nationalism.

Weinberg's life and his Clarinet Sonata composed in 1945 serve as a poignant reminder of the catastrophic consequences of such extremism. The range of works presented on the album ROOTS sheds light on the delicate balance between the celebration of cultural heritage (as in the music of Schumann and Lutoslawski) and the intrusion of the destructive forces of nationalism (Weinberg). ROOTS testifies to the power of music to promote unity while simultaneously cautioning us to remain vigilant against the pitfalls of extremist doctrines.

In February 1835, the young César Franck gave his first public performance as a pianist in his home town of Liège. At that time, he was still a student at the Ècole royale de musique, which he had first entered in 1827. Following more successful performances in the same year, he completed his studies in Liège and went with his father to Paris to receive further training from Anton Reicha, Pierre Zimmerman and Hippolyte Colet. At the end of the year, father and son returned home to plan César's future career from there on. During this time, César composed the three-movement Piano Sonata (op. 10), which is still very much in the spirit of the classical period and clearly borrows from his role models, but this is to be expected from a 13-year-old boy.

César broke away from the formal stylistic idiom of the classical period after leaving the Paris Conservatoire in 1842. His father pushed him toward a career path as a virtuoso, and the son complied, composing his own pieces for this purpose, following in the tradition of piano works by Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin and Johann Nepomuk Hummel.

The vision for this project was to build a cohesive and comprehensive collaboration between artists, craftsmen, historians and curators, each with a singular degree of knowledge and lifelong immersion in their respective fields. In grappling with endless array of subtleties and complexities of this Guarneri instrument and authentic raw gut strings, I find myself closer to reconciling the secrets of the past with faithfulness to my inevitably modern identity. For me, Brahms is vulnerability and the utmost unified expression, and the Sonatas in particular are tapestries woven of heart and mind. The equipment of the era mirrors these qualities metaphorically and physically, and the culture was such that evenness, projection, broadness of sound were not the highest values. One’s first attempt to play an authentic D-string from the era (which is quite thick) makes the point clearly. The insights gained from this endeavor, personally speaking, travel with me as I continue to play this life-affirming music in various contexts.

- Daniel Kurganov

REVIEW: