Classical Music

Haydn’s Symphonies Nos. 98 and 103 come from his set of 12 "London" symphonies, written at the height of his mastery and celebrity. With these pieces, Haydn accomplishes the rare feat of writing works that are both intellectually demanding and perfectly delightful. The recordings of Thomas Fey and his musicians are highly praised around the world for their personal expression, and precision of execution as well as their innate ability to detect the internal characterization of each movement.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

When Mozart died, he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave. Had he lived, he might well have regained the commercial success and public acclaim he enjoyed in the early 1780s, for no sooner had he passed, his fame rose like a meteor. In the 19th century, Mozart's popularity eclipsed that of nearly all other 18th-century composers. This recording is about the perception of Mozart after his death. The transcriptions and free fantasies that Petronel Malan has selected trace Mozart reincarnated - transfigured - through the ears, technique, and compositional gifts of seven composers. Chronologically, they range from Hummel, a Mozart pupil, to Friedman, a 20th-century keyboard virtuoso who survived World War II. Stylistically the range is equally wide.

Petronel Malan - South African pianist Petronel Malan now makes her home in the United States. Her debut recording with hänssler classic, "Transfigured Bach: The Complete Bach Transcriptions of Bartok, Lipatti and Friedman," was nominated for three Grammy® awards, including "Best Instrumental Solo Album 2004." This album is her second recording in a series with hänssler Classic. As a Blüthner Artist, Ms. Malan uses Blüthner pianos exclusively for her recordings.

Classical Music

Helene Schuetz writes of this new release: “The inspiration for this recording and the choice of works came from the Gigue that ends J.S. Bach’s Partita in B flat major. When I first heard it in concert I knew immediately that this composition would work wonderfully for the harp. With the Gigue as my starting point, I began to arrange the Partita for harp. Of course, the instrument does have other tonal qualities than the piano – and, like any instrument, it has its technical limits when it comes to performance practice. When it comes to chromaticism, the mechanics of the harp are more limited than those of the piano, and one only has eight rather than ten fingers to play with. But it was precisely that challenge that fascinated me in the process of arranging the works: you first need to have a clear idea of the work's intention and to have formed your own view of its interpretation. The task then is to find ways and means to develop one's ideas and perhaps to achieve an even clearer interpretation than would have been possible on the original instrument. In this way, arranging the work for another instrument intensifies the performance, because the use of a new instrument allows other, new facets in the compositions to be illustrated and new tonal nuances achieved…”

His love for the works of Schubert led Ammiel Bushakevitz to the Art Song. He received mentorship in this field from notable singers including the late Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Thomas Quasthoff, Elly Ameling, Thomas Hampson, Matthias Goerne, Teresa Berganza and Brigitte Fassbaender. Born in Jerusalem, Israel and raised in South Africa, Ammiel Bushakevitz developed a special affinity for the music of Franz Schubert from an early age. He is a laureate of the International Franz Schubert Competition Dortmund and is a recipient of the International Schubert Institute Award in Vienna. Ammiel Bushkavitz performs regularly at notable venues across Europe, North America, Africa and Asia. Festival appearances include the festivals of Salzburg, Lucerne and Bayreuth, the Festival d'automne a Paris, the Festival Pontino di Latina in Italy, the Jerusalem Schubertiade, the Vancouver Chamber Music Series and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.

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.

Fey’s interpretations of Haydn’s symphonies rank among the best in international critical acclaim. This 20th installment with the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra balances historical performance practice while using modern strings and historical brass instruments.

This fifth and final CD in her “transfigured” series finds the South African born, New York based pianist Petronel Malan dedicating herself to works of Johannes Brahms as transformed by such figures as Lowell Liebermann, Eduard Schütt and the immortal Ignaz Friedman. Ludwig Stark’s modification of Brahms’s Haydn variations Op 56a here receives its world-premiere recording. Lauded as an unmistakably creative force in the classical music industry, Ms. Malan is a thrice-nominated Grammy® artist, including “Best Instrumental Solo Album” for her debut disc Transfigured Bach.

This is the first CD for the Trio Atanassov, an award-winning and upcoming trio from France.

The flute solos from the Bach cantatas require great performers. Some 300 years after they were premiered, the Bach Collegium Stuttgart and Hänssler Classic are pleased to celebrate Peter-Lukas Graf, one of their most eminent soloists! Our selection presents them in what we hope is a pleasing, varied manner and concentrates on bringing out a wide color palette: in addition to the well-known trio sonata form (i.e. two instruments and continuo), the listener will also find pieces associating the flute with another instrument (or more) - such as a second flute, one or two oboi d’amore, a violin sometimes playing in unison - or works in which the flute is accompanied by the full string section, and four choruses from four different cantatas, each with a concertante flute part.

This compilation features compositions, studies and fragments in various arrangements and at various levels of development, pieces that not only represent Bruckner’s course of study but also anticipate his future impact as a symphonist and reformer of musical idiom. So, just as a few pencil strokes outlining the architectural design of a magnificent building may give a more vivid impression than the final realisation of the design, the compositions from the study book may seem more vivid to us than the great symphony. They are a world unto themselves. Bruckner’s piano works (the compositions and sketches from the study book and the published works) occupy, at best, a marginal position in the eyes of the concert world, performers, listeners and organisers. Their rich substance is yet to be duly acknowledged, for these small-scale works are the fascinating building-blocks of great music. The school with which the composer allied himself through his study with connoisseurs of revolutionary musical initiatives (notably Otto Kitzler) has here been embraced by the genius to full effect.

• Mostly premiere recordings of Baroque Recorder Sonatas from the collection of Viceroy of Naples • The greatest discovery of the collection is certainly the sonata by Adolf Hasse, then Europe's leading opera composer • These works are among the highlights of late Baroque music

Valentin Radutiu, born in Munich in 1986, received his first cello lessons from his father at the age of six. While still attending school, he studied at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg under Clemens Hagen from 2001 to 2005. After high school he became a student of Heinrich Schiff in Vienna. Since 2007 he has been a member of David Geringas' cello studio at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin.

Valentin Radutiu is the current winner of the competition "Sound and Explanation - Conveying Works in Music and Word« of the Cultural Committee of German Business." The Music Prize of German Business is one of the most important awards for young musicians in Germany. - Artist's website

Classical Music

Classical Music

This 26-CD set containing CPE Bach’s complete solo piano works represents a landmark of the highest importance and, more significantly, listening pleasure. Ana-Marija Markovina has made a specialty of playing these works. She previously recorded the Prussian and Württemburg sonatas (for Genuin), but it is difficult to overstate the richness and variety found on these discs, or Markovina’s consistent success in rendering it all with such freshness, excitement, intensity, and charm. CPE Bach’s keyboard output consists primarily of sonatas, dozens of them, ranging over the entire course of his career, roughly from the 1740s through the 1780s. Most are three-movement pieces in fast-slow-fast form, but there are also rondos, fantasias, variations, character pieces, teaching pieces, arrangements of concertos and other orchestral works, dances, and everything from the very simple to the exceptionally complex, both technically and expressively—an entire world. More astonishingly, the quality of this music is almost uniformly high. Bach was a true craftsman, and while everyone will have their favorite works–and it’s pointless to say that it’s all equally good–you can sample just about anything on any of these discs and you will find plenty to enjoy and captivate your attention.

Markovina plays this music on the modern piano, the instrument that comes closest to any available in Bach’s day to realizing his clearly notated intentions. For example, he almost always asks for a full range of dynamics, from pp to ff, and his writings make clear that he valued above all a beautifully sustained, singing tone. The clavichord offered him the most possibilities in this regard at the start of his career, while in his last years his clear preference was for the piano (even though he had expressed reservations about early versions of the instrument in his 1750s Essay on the True Art of Playing the Keyboard). Markovina exploits the piano’s full dynamic range, as well as its ability to vary articulation, sustain the melodic line, and add muscle to Bach’s emphatic and often syncopated rhythmic schemes. In this respect she is far bolder than, say, Danny Driver’s genteel, almost effeminate CPE Bach recordings on Hyperion.

However, the most telling comparison has to be made with Miklós Spányi’s ongoing series of the complete keyboard works for BIS. Spányi uses period instruments, which have some advantages (the clavichord’s vibrato, for example), but also all of their inadequacies, including a lack of sustaining power and often a great deal of mechanical noise. On the piano, Bach’s music sounds modern; on early instruments, it sounds old. This contrast is exacerbated by Spányi’s inability to play a true allegro at speed. Consider, for example, the marvelous Sonata in B minor Wq. 65/13, which dates from the 1740s. The finale is marked “Allegro molto”. Spányi takes about six minutes (on the clavichord), Markovina slightly more than three. The difference in both sonority and expressive intensity is shocking, with Markovina infinitely more powerful and exciting.

CPE Bach’s modern reputation rests largely on his music in the “empfindsamer Stil”, with its highly expressive, emotionally eruptive, and constantly surprising writing; but a little-known aspect of this style was also the attempt to imbue music with a genuine sense of humor. Haydn, for example, learned a great deal from Bach’s pregnant use of silence. So rather than offer the usual examples of minor-key pathos, I offer as a listening sample the start of “L’Aly Rupalich”, a character piece also provisionally entitled “La Bach”, and possibly intended as a self-portrait of the composer. CPE Bach scholar Paul Corneilson describes the work as “a disco piece”, and how right he is.

Corneilson is also the Managing Editor of the Packard Humanities Institute’s ongoing CPE Bach Complete Edition, and it is largely thanks to that organization that this set of recordings has been made possible. CPE Bach fans, then, should be delighted to know that Corneilson has assembled an absolutely splendid volume of scores under the title The Essential C.P.E. Bach, containing 25 “greatest hits” from the composer’s keyboard, chamber, orchestral, and vocal music. Retailing for only $50, this beautifully printed, 350-page volume also contains excellent introductions to the composer as well as all of the music contained therein, a bibliography, a select discography, and a concordance that helps to locate each work by Wotquenne and Helm numbers.

Highlights include not only “L’Aly Rupalich”, a selection of sonatas, and the wonderful Rondo in E minor subtitled “Farewell to My Silberman Clavichord”, but also the Sonata for Unaccompanied Flute, the programmatic Sonata in C minor for Two Violins and Bass, and the amazingly dark Fantasia in F-sharp minor for Violin and Keyboard “CPE Bach’s Emotions”. There are also two complete symphonies, two complete concertos, and among the vocal pieces a bit of the celebrated Magnificat and the extraordinary Heilig for double chorus and double orchestra, a masterwork that everyone who loves Bach (Sr.) and Handel really must hear (there’s a fabulous performance on Harmonia Mundi).

You can order the score directly here, and I can’t recommend this elegant and smartly assembled volume highly enough. The same holds true of Markovina’s big box of Bach. I know, 26 CDs is a lot, and you’re not going to be playing them every day, but the important thing to remember is that you could, and you’d never be bored.

David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Founded in 1998 with members from the world-famous Gachinger Kantorei, Stuttgart's celebrated men's choir "Die Meistersinger" have devoted themselves to rescuing the rich repository of 19th century works for male voices from obscurity. The "Mannerchor" has a distinguished history throughout the Germanic lands, often serving the community with multiple functions such as a social club, political forum or an ad hoc auxiliary to professional guilds. In keeping with the spirit of the season, "Die Meistersinger" return to offer their perfect blend of voices and rich, goldenhued sound in a program of Christmas favorites.