WOLF-FERRARI: Sinfonia da Camera / STRAUSS-SCHOENBERG: Kaise

SUPPE: Overtures, Vol. 5

GERHARD: Piano Music (Complete)

Hill: String Quartets Nos. 5, 6 and 11

BANTER: Phadra / Marchenbilder / Prolog 2000

SUPPE: Marches / Waltzes / Polkas

ZIEHRER: Selected Dances and Marches, Vol. 1

LAZZARI: Symphony in E-Flat Major / Maritime Pictures

IBERT: Diane de Poitiers / La Licorne

The selections on this disc were recorded live at the Guerrero Foundation's 1994 Prizewinner's Concert.

The production of Siegfried Wagner's "Sonnenflammen" in Bayreuth was unanimously highly praised in the media, describing it as "a discovery, at least in musical terms. The two and a half hours of performance will not be long at any time. The music is pleasant, pleasing, very onomatopoeic, narrative, the composition is well done, the orchestration post-romantic revelling." (IOCO) About the effect of the music, Opera Lounge says: "There is wonderful music in Sonnenflammen. Perhaps more than anything else, the richness of colour and stylistic variety fascinates: even the secondary characters, the fortune teller announcing the end of the world, Fridolin's father cursing his son, each have their own idiom. When Fridolin remembers his homeland now forever lost, his singing is unusually simple and intimate. Some of it, like the mocking choir of the girls who shave the new court jester, is almost operatic." The artists involved are members of piano-pianissimo-musiktheater, which was founded in 1980 by Peter P. Pachl thanks to the encouragement of August Everding, director of the Munich Opera at that time. At the biannual Wagner-Spectacular in Upper Franconian Pegnitz, Richard Wagner's unknown works were staged for the first time, as were works by Franz Schreker and Alexander Zemlinsky, and works by writers such as Herbert Rosendorfer and Bernd Sch�nemann.

An allem ist Hutchen Schuld! is a fairy-tale opera set to the composer’s own libretto which is fashioned into a fantasia collage of more than 40 fairy tales, many taken from stories by the Brothers Grimm. This is the world premiere recording of the complete opera and joins several other Siegfrired Wagner operas in the Marco Polo catalogue, including Der Schmied von Marienburg and Der Bärenhäuter, Der Kobold, and Schwarzschwanenreich. The pianopianissimo-musiktheater was founded in 1980 by Peter P. Pachl due to the inspiration of August Everding, General-Intendant in Munich. Biennial celebrations in Pegnitz, Franconia, brought to life previously unperformed works by Richard Wagner. This opera ensemble has performed world premières of works by Franz Schreker, Siegfried Wagner and Alexander Zemlinsky and contemporary composers such as Judith Weir and writers such as Herbert Rosendorfer and Bernd Schünemann.

A music and dance film by Marikki Hakola.
Choreographer: Dou Dou
Dancers: Ding Yue Hong, Dou Dou
Region 1

One of the great ‘march kings’ of his time, Julius Fucik gained worldwide fame for his immortal Entry of the Gladiators, but after the composer’s death in 1916 many scores were lost. Painstaking editorial work has been carried out allowing us to hear the full range of Fucik’s works in these premiere recordings.

The National Museum – Czech Museum of Music has done its best to collect what remains of the composer's music, and about half of the contents of this album emanate from handwritten scores acquired by the museum but never performed, as there were no printed parts published as far as is known.

What makes this album so special is that it contains dance forms for which Fučík was little known. This recording therefore contains the first ever original orchestral performances in addition to seven pieces that have had to have performing sets created by a team of specialists who painstakingly prepared them from often poorly handwritten scores. But it is all genuine, original Fučík, and so puts this recording into a category of its own.

This third volume of music by Eduard Strauss I features many new discoveries including the Electric Lights waltz and the polka, Leaps of Pegasus, displaying Eduard’s gift for melody and orchestration. All but one of the tracks on this album are premiere recordings of the original full orchestrations. Volumes 1 and 2 can be heard on 8.225369 and 5371.