Quite by chance Georg Philipp Telemann became godfather for the title of this album. In the year of his 250th anniversary, the Pfeiffer Trumpet Consort concentrated on the oeuvre of one of the most prolific composers of music history. A variety of his compositions are still unpublished until today, an incentive for us to perform works which have never before been heard in this way. Telemann was an outspoken friend of the trumpet, who used this instrument in many of his pieces- whether it be his spiritual and secular oratorios, cantatas, orchestral works, chamber music, or solo concerts. Another special attraction for the ensemble was the adaption of music of the English renaissance originally written for keyboard instruments, which we consider suitable to present here with trumpets, organ, and timpani in an all new sound. Splendid arrangements emerged, giving the listener the chance to discover the richness of this centuries-old music in a new and entertaining way. The Pfeiffer Trumpet Consort presents with this album a varied program with many unknown treasures, making an important contribution to the Telemann Year.

Soprano Theresa Nelles and cathedral organist Winfried Bönig invite us to an atmospheric Christmas Eve in Cologne Cathedral and present a varied programme of Romantic works from various countries: music for the feast that goes straight to the heart. The great acoustics of Cologne Cathedral have been deliberately captured on this audiophile SACD. Born in Cologne, Theresa Nelles has had close ties with Cologne Cathedral since childhood, not only emotionally but also musically. During her 10 years of choir membership in the girls' choir at Cologne Cathedral, she already received her first solo tasks, was also the singer of a jazz band of the so called Cathedral-music for a long time and, after her High school graduation, studied singing at the Cologne Academy of Music with Prof. Mechthild Georg and in Rome at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia. Engagements take the singer to festivals at home and abroad, such as the Festival Internazionale di Musica e Arte Sacra in Italy, Switzerland, South Tyrol, Russia, the International Handel Festival in Göttingen, the Beethoven Festival Bonn, the Brühl Castle Concerts, to opera houses such as Krefeld/ Mönchengladbach, Koblenz, Gelsenkirchen, the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth, the Tonhalle Düsseldorf, the Cologne and Essen Philharmonics and, last but not least, regularly to large churches, always particularly fond of the local cathedral.

Dominik Wagner celebrates the warm and deep sound of the double bass in his new Album „Double Bass Rhapsody“. An Album featuring only the double bass. A concept that has never been done before.

It features new arrangements of masterworks of the classical music repertoire as well as two celebrated songs from the Pop-World. These pieces and songs can be heard in a completely new way through the warm and comforting sound of the bass.
Dominik Wagner, who has won countless prizes, is joined by three other world-class-bass-players.

The organ sonatas of Josef Rheinberger still feature large in the repertoire of church organists everywhere, thanks to their attractive melodies and fluent writing for the instrument. Rheinberger’s industry and his skill as a teacher have overshadowed his gifts as a composer in other genres, which this new release helps to redress with suites and tone-pictures for the combination of strings and organ.

While Rheinberger’s Abendlied Op.69 No.2 holds a Brahmsian appeal for choruses, his instrumental Abendlied Op.150 is much less familiar. Yet the combination of string- instrument and organ is intensely evocative of the warm mood of recollection intrinsic to the German genre of ‘Evening Songs’; Rheinberger balances the two instruments with great skill and sympathy so that the organ always supports the cello’s noble cantabile. The Abendlied features here in two recordings; arranged for cello, and in its original version for violin, as part of the complete set of six pieces. Cellist Marco Dalsass also contributes an arrangement of the Pastorale and Elegie from the same set, and it proves fascinating to compare the angelic song of the violin with the warmer baritonal register of the cello in the same music. Both violin and cello join the organ for the Suite Op.149: a substantial four-movement work lasting 40 minutes, opening in a passionate but Baroque-inflected C minor. A meditative set of variations on an original theme is followed by a solemn sarabande, beautifully conceived for all three instruments in the vein of a Romantic slow movement but essentially ecclesiastical in tone. Baroque forms – a free-flowing prelude, a tender Canzone and graceful Allemande – also soften the C minor tonality of the Suite Op.166 for violin and organ, before the Moto perpetuo finale brings the suite to a dazzling close with the most extrovert music in the collection.