Sagas, myths, vast realms. Snow-capped mountains, dark forests and an overarching stillness and peace. The cultures of Scandinavia have always exerted a huge fascination over people. Scandinavian music is often purported to possess a mystical and “typically Nordic” sound, and even if such a causal association cannot be applied in too much of a sweeping generalization, there are nevertheless frequently recurring characteristics: in particular, in the post-war generation there developed in Scandinavian choral music a strong orientation towards folk music and folk songs; choral singing became a significant medium of expression in middle-class music circles. The important relationship between human beings and Nature – as a result of the strong influence in Scandinavia of the changing seasons on people’s everyday lives – along with fundamental questions about life and death were ever-present topics in those countries’ choral music. Using modern-day musical resources, many works emerged in vernacular style and the boundaries between the art song and the folk song became blurred. Contemporary trends developed swiftly, the human voice was deployed in far more diverse ways than ever before: speaking, screaming, clucking, whistling and so on all took on equal weight within Scandinavian choral music together with improvisation and the use of empty syllables. Novel sounds and unusual scores were soon setting the tone and new standards on the Scandinavian choral scene began leading to a continual professionalisation that was to make waves across all of Europe.

Next to the 24 Caprices by Niccolo Paganini and the six Sonatas and Partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach, the Six Sonatas by Eugene Ysaye rank among the three large-scale cycles for violin solo. I always find cycles very exciting, as they reveal more to me about a composer than a single work ever could do. This is especially evident in Ysaye’s Sonatas, as every sonata is based on a story or a friendship. He dedicated each single sonata to a fellow violinist or student, processing joint experiences. For this album I have recorded the six sonatas, and I find that each of them has a connection with certain works by other composers. Ysaye heard the first solo sonata by Johann Sebastian Bach performed in concert by Joseph Szigeti and that experience inspired him to compose this cycle. Ysaye dedicated his first sonata, in the style of Bach’s G minor Sonata, to Szigeti. Ysaye quotes Bach’s Prelude in E major in his second sonata. It is dedicated to Jacques Thibaud, who practiced the Prelude each morning to warm up his fingers… Georges Enescu is the dedicatee of the third sonata. Ysaye’s sonata is called Ballade and is very rhapsodic in its language, wild and free, all terms which apply equally to Enescu as violinist and composer… The fourth sonata is Fritz Kreisler’s… Mathieu Crickboom was a student of Ysay¨e, as well as a violinist in Ysay¨e’s string quartet and also a passionate teacher. He wrote several books on playing the violin, with finger exercises and bowing instructions. Ysaye’s fifth sonata contains an incredible amount of open strings, and a theory exists that this is a reference to Crickboom’s instruction to his students to always control the intonation with the open strings of the violin…” (Julia Fischer)

On six albums, this new release features great musical moments for all admirers of Brahms and fans of choral singing at its very best! The program leads the listener through Brahms´ essential vocal works and a splendid set or artists grant highest quality of interpretation. The recordings included are taken from the Haenssler catalog and were recorded over the course of the last few decades. Featured artists include Donna Brown, Ingeborn Danz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Lioba Braun, Gilles Cachemaille, Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Kammerchor Stuttgart, and more.

SET CONTENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem), Op. 45 • Liebeslieder Waltzes (18), Op. 52 • Neue Liebeslieder Waltzes (15), Op. 65 • Vier Ernste Gesänge (4 Serious Songs), Op. 121 • Deutsche Volkslieder (49), WoO 33 (excerpts)

“One of the most important advantages that the Luxembourg citizen has when abroad is that linguistically and culturally we embrace both the German and the French cultures...This gives a Luxemburger, particularly one active in the arts or the cultural environment, a different outlook and approach,” suggested Luxembourg composer Alexander Müllenbach in an interview. Perhaps it is this different perspective, the quite individual, open approach, that Françoise Groben herself had, a quality that she brought to her performance of German and French compositions for the cello. And it is for that reason that Banque Générale de Luxembourg placed at her disposal an exquisite instrument built by Matteo Goffriller in 1695.

Françoise Groben was born in Luxembourg on December 4, 1965. She received her first lessons in the cello at the age of five at the city’s Conservatoire, studying there with Francine Weber-Deprelle, Jean Join und Georges Mallach. She eventually completed her studies with Boris Pergamenschikov at the Cologne Musikhochschule, graduating in her concert examination, while continuing to attend master classes given by such artists as Daniil Shafran in Moscow or William Pleeth in London, or by the Amadeus Quartet. From 1974 onwards she was a member of the ensemble Les Musiciens founded by her father, Joseph Groben, and was only 15 when she first played in the Youth Orchestra of the European Union, going on to perform under such conductors as Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Herbert von Karajan and Georg Solti. The recordings collected here illustrate the entire spectrum of Françoise Groben’s artistic interests, demonstrating that she was not only a leading soloist but also a gifted and coveted chamber musician who regularly included pieces by Luxembourg composers in her programs and was strongly committed to contemporary female composers.

This new release showcases the high quality of Johann Georg Weichenberger's fascinating compositions, which now – finally – get a well deserved recording. “Weichenberger certainly must have had a certain reputation. In the New Groves Wolfgang Bötticher writes that he was held in high esteem “although he was only an amateur”. The more recent perspective does not follow this disparagement, with good reason. Considering the beautiful works by these composers the idea of dilettantism is far from the truth. We find first class compositions. Weichenberger's compositions touched me especially because of their beauty and naturalness.” (Joachim Held)

The long overdue rediscovery of Emilie Mayer naturally earns her the near-universal label of “female Beethoven”, which she was called even by her contemporaries. On the one hand that is a great honor, for Mayer is indeed considered the most successful symphonist among the composing women of the Romantic era. She was thus not content with the “domestic” genres of Lieder, piano works and chamber music, which is all that her female colleagues were generally allowed,Conductor:on the contrary, she designed symphonies on the grand scale. On the other hand, that label shows that people are still thinking along gender-specific lines – even if they have happily escaped the 19th-century mindset that hampered Emilie Mayer’s own career. As late as 1878, the “Neue Berliner Musikzeitung” was describing her as a “rare phenomenon” and an “exception” to the rule that the “Production” of orchestral works was solely the “Domain of the creative male intellect”. By that date, Emilie Mayer had already presented eight symphonies. And in 1850, almost 30 years earlier, a critic had exclaimed in the same paper: “Hitherto woman’s fair hand has mastered the Lied at most (...). What female powers, powers of the second rank, can attain – that is what Emilie Mayer has achieved and reproduced.”

Recording the St. Matthew Passion with boys’ and young men’s voices is an exceptionally intensive experience. Singing from memory and seeing Jesus’ suffering from the trusting perspective of children leads you to a different conclusion than it would with adult singers. The voices of children and adolescents sound more linear with a lower vibrato amplitude; they are rich in overtones and usually use a shorter phrase length. But children breathe very quickly, and their voices can be applied with virtuosity. Chords sound calm and clean.

The choir and soloists of the Wilten Boys’ Choir and the Academia Jacobus Stainer Orchestra recorded the St. Matthew Passion in the middle of a lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic, and were therefore tested daily and stood at a distance from each other in the Saal Tirol of the Congress Center in Innsbruck. The choir and the second orchestra were both further away from the conductor, just as was probably the case with Bach in the former St. Thomas Church with its swallow’s nest organ on a gallery above the triumphal arch. In any case, the St. Matthew Passion was performed in 1736 “mit beyden orgeln” (with both organs) in St. Thomas Church. We studied every recitative, every aria and every chorale as written in Bach’s wonderful handwriting and were amazed, especially in the secco recitatives, by some changes that became apparent for us after reading the meticulously written autograph that was later revised by Bach.

Dr. Albert Schelb writes: “As a composer, Josef Schelb incorporated the most important styles that had developed around the turn of the century into his early compositions, although most of these were destroyed in an air raid on Karlsruhe in 1942. After war, Schelb turned to impressionism, expressionism, atonality and finally also to twelve-tone composition, but without ever committing himself exclusively to any one of these styles. Self-taught, he combined them to develop a style all of his own, and followed, so to speak, his own rules of development. Throughout his life, his speciality was the polyphonic treatment of motifs and themes, which he handled strictly or playfully, as main elements or in episodes. His polyphony is never dry and academic, but rather is always paired with a dash of warming Romantic sensuality in sound. This even applies to his late orchestral music and Movimenti of the 1960s and 1970s, in which the themes are always twelve-tone expressionistic, but the harmony is also distinctly impressionistic.”

Béla Bartók’s monumental Mikrokosmos, containing 153 mainly short “progressive” piano pieces composed between 1932 and 1939, is both a very special piano method and a collection of wonderfully original performance pieces (the series actually contains almost the complete piano music by Bartók from the 1930s). Finally, it is also a detailed introduction to different aspects of his compositional style. With Mikro-kosmos, Bartók, who was generally reluctant to teach composition, created a veritable method of composition. A series of short piano pieces for the 1913 Piano Method jointly authored by Bartók and Sándor Reschofsky and published by Rózsa- völgyi in Budapest is the most immediate precursor of Bartók’s magnum opus, the six-volume Mikrokosmos. In 1913, the composer’s basic endeavor was to help produce a true modern piano school, in which all performance pieces and some easy exercises made up Bartók’s contribution. The 48 little pieces by Bartók included five-finger exercises, easy contrapuntal pieces, occasional essays in different styles as well as a range of character pieces.

Beata Szalwinska and Alexander Anisimov write of their new release: “Romances Rachmaninoff is a combination of the beauty of vocal lyricism, rich piano parts full of virtuosity, and texts of great Russian poets. Love, happiness, longing, passion, suffering, sadness, everything that human life is filled with. The songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff are a synthesis of an equal dialogue between a voice and a piano, where each of the artists has a possibility of showing their sensitivity and artistic personality, inspiring one another. The beauty of this music is, and was, a source of inspiration, owing to which transcriptions of the songs for solo piano have been created. The record is a declaration of our admiration for Sergei Rachmaninoff's music, which gave us the possibility of expressing our deepest feelings and emotions.”

Why, in a booklet accompanying a recording of "Flute Music at the Court of Frederick the Great", is an attempt being made at this point to take a look into the soul of a damaged monarch? There is a guiding "thread of Ariadne" that leads through the labyrinthine trials and tribulations of Frederick's life and suffering – a singular passion that he discovered at a young age and never forgot throughout his life. It is the love of music, especially the love of playing the "flûte traversière".

Johannes Klumpp writes: “The chronological journey through Joseph Haydn’s surviving symphonies that we began in Volume 25 now continues with his Symphony no. 107. Do not be misled by the high number! Composed about 1760/61, this is a work from Haydn’s early days, before his time at Schloss Esterházy. It was undoubtedly commissioned by Graf Morzin, who was Haydn’s employer at the time. All the symphonies on this album are practically never played. Our desire, then, is to introduce them to a modern audience through our recordings. Our aim is to make Haydn audible – in all his vividness, liveliness, musicality and joie de vivre. Haydn was a radiantly sunny composer: he shines when you cast light upon him! On this release, therefore, we travel with Haydn from his time in the service of Graf Morzin to his days at Esterházy. Symphony no. 15 marks his arrival at this destination. A new era begins – we show you the steps by which it was reached!”

After Hans Heller’s death on December 9, 1969, and after the end of Ingrid Heller’s pianistic career, his name disappeared altogether from the music scene. To this day, his oeuvre has been largely ignored by musicological research. It is to be hoped that Hans Heller’s work will soon be finally accorded the recognition it deserves, both on the German and international music scene. His musical quality and originality, his humanistic message and its contemporary relevance are the best preconditions for that to come about. Heller had already decided in 1924 to concentrate entirely on composing music. For that reason he moved in August 1924 to Berlin, where from 1925 to 1929 he studied counterpoint, instrumentation and composition with Franz Schreker. Before long, Franz Schreker and his wife, the singer Maria Schreker (1892-1978), had formed a deep, lifelong friendship with Heller. “Schrekers and Hellers became friends in the 1920s,” Peter Heller later recalled. “They went out together in the evenings after work, they played cards together. Hindemith was also part of the circle, with his wife Trude. Musical life centred on this group of friends. My parents met Schoenberg, Berg, Krenek.” The rediscovery of the German Jewish composer Hans Heller is a prime example of how the historical reappraisal of the effects of totalitarian systems on the development of music in the 20th century can in no way be considered as completed.

Erwin Schulhoff went through many stages in his emergence as pianist and composer. Antonin Dvorák recommended the seven-year-old to the conservatory of his native city of Prague, then at 14 the boy moved to Leipzig to learn composition from Max Reger. While there, he gained valuable insights into the piano from Robert Teichmüller. In the last years of his course of study (from 1911) Schulhoff moved yet again, this time to the Cologne Conservatory, where his teachers were Fritz Steinbach for composition and Carl Friedberg for piano. Immediately upon graduating in 1913, Schulhoff succeeded in obtaining a few lessons from a normally student-shy Claude Debussy. Michael Rische´s commitment to the music of the twentieth century, however, quite clearly marks a contrast to his discoveries: the original or first premieres of piano concertos by George Antheil and Erwin Schulhoff, as well as recordings of other works in the “jazz influenced” style by Copland, Honegger, Gershwin and Ravel, have gained him an international reputation.

Sarah Maria Sun is known as one of the foremost vocal performers in the contemporary music scene. Her repertoire currently spans more than 1000 compositions from the 16th to the 21st century, including 350 world premieres. She regularly performs as a soloist in renowned concert halls and festivals worldwide. At leading opera houses and stages she created complex female figures in music theaters, operas and monodramas. For her role as Elsa in Sciarrino’s “Lohengrin“ (2017) as well as for her performance in Philip Venables’ “4.48 Psychoses“ (2019) she was nominated as singer of the year. From 2007-2014, she was the first soprano of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, a chamber ensemble of seven singers that has been one of the world’s leading pioneers of contemporary music for decades.