Christian Euler dares to do what not many dare to do: he performs an entire hour of music for viola solo, without accompaniment. Euler’s full, warm, and highly nuanced tone echoes through this demanding, yet entertaining program presenting some classics as well as several rarities. Alfred Pochon’s Passacaglia was composed as a competition piece. Bach’s great Chaconne for violin solo is recognizably its model, even in detail, and yet Pochon, who celebrated considerable successes as a chamber musician during the first decades of the twentieth century, finds a genuinely authentic tone for the viola. Euler’s intense and rich treatment of tone transforms this work, which Pochon must have composed merely on the side, into a very special, opulent sound experience. Reger too – how could it be otherwise? – followed Bach’s example and wrote a special recommendation for the viola with a total of three Solo Suites for this instrument. Christian Euler of course masters the immense technical demands with bravura. Moreover, even though the texture repeatedly is bold harmonically, his musical realization of it is very discerning, very much to the advantage of these underestimated gems. And of course Hindemith – the viola was his instrument of instruments! Ambitious in tonality, he nevertheless followed classical models until the mid-twentieth century. This release reaches a special high point with Stravinsky’s Elegy, which is strictly maintained in a two-part texture and yet stylistically is situated at a very far remove from Bach or Reger. Here Stravinsky ventures into an entirely new sound cosmos displaying its unique magic particularly in the three-dimensional sound world of this Super Audio recording transmitting the finest acoustic impressions.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

A total of four organs group themselves around the listener in three dimensions in St. Michael's Church in Hamburg, and all four instruments are spectacularly employed on this Super Audio album. Church music director Christoph Schoener has designed a very special program for the organs in his workplace: music by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy that has never been heard before in just this way. Schoener pulls all the stops on the central console and covers a spectrum ranging from the complete late-romantic forces of the entire organ system to the filigree murmuring of individual tone colors. A special treat: a solo for the echo organ installed high above in the ceiling sphere! The Six Preludes and Fugues op. 35 forming the focus here, though originally intended for the piano, create a phenomenal impression on the massive St. Michael's organ in this arrangement by Christoph Bossert. After all, it was Mendelssohn, who after the organ's Viennese classical "dry spell," supported the rehabilitation of this instrument. Accordingly, numerous piano pieces by him are ideally suited for transfers into the organ's much mightier sound dimension. Things get underway with the so very famous "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Even if many a bride and groom have entered many a church to this music, on this recording it is as if the listener could reach out and embrace the bride. Whether a "Song Without Words," a lovingly supplied fragment, or a "Theme with Variations," this Mendelssohn recording is a perfect complement to the Bach, Brahms, and Reger editions with which Christoph Schoener has brought delight to the organ world and beyond.

Classical Music

On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the composer’s birth, six internationally acclaimed soloists are now presenting chamber music by Francis Poulenc, and what these young musicians, all of them active in Switzerland, charm onto the stage, grips us from the very first measure.

The incomparable combination of breathtaking virtuosity and playful lightness as well as songlike melos and deep emotion long ago qualified this anti-Romantic rebel of the 1920s as a modern classic. Already the opening Sextet for Piano and Wind Quintet emancipates itself from the chains of convention. Not a one of the movements designed in classical form adheres to a fixed metrical pattern. Shifts of meter and tempo again and again relax the structure. The resultant extremely entertaining impression pervades the entire program, from the early Trio for Piano, Oboe, and Bassoon to the later Duo Sonatas. Poulenc’s preference for wind instruments may perhaps be explained by his French origins and his predilection for song – since it is not without reason that he ranks as one of the most important song composers of the twentieth century. Even without texts his chamber music is highly expressive and dynamic.

This brand-new Super Audio album offers high-resolution sound and three-dimensional imaging, transports audiences deep into the music, and makes us forget the highest degree of technical difficulty involved in the scores. A disc for mirthful entertainment on the very highest level!

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REVIEW:

The Ensemble Confoederatio players evidently have fun in the Sextet. Bassoonist Axel Benoit phrases nicely in the first-movement bridge which heralds the slow section. There isn’t quite the sense of Gallic humour summoned up by Rogé and friends, but it’s a close call. Portuguese flautist Rute Fernandes plays her sonata suavely, especially the jocular finale. Maria Sournatcheva captures the tragic introspection of the Oboe Sonata well. Sérgio Pires delivers a rollicking Clarinet Sonata, fuller and rounder in tone than Michel Portal's. Overall, individual performances stand up well and this disc should provide a lot of pleasurable listening.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

The present album is a rare find on three counts: it is a complete recording of August Gottfried Ritter’s four organ sonatas, they are performed by Ursula Philippi, the leading German-Romanian artist of our time, and she presents them on her home organ, the monumental romantic Sauer organ in Hermannstadt/Sibiu, Transylvania. During the middle years of the nineteenth century, public enthusiasn for Ritter’s brilliant organ sonatas equaled that with which Sarate’s or Liszt’s concertos were welcomed. These one-movement concert pieces required and still require the highest concentration and technical brilliance from the organist, according to the motto “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” Ursula Philippi is Transylvania’s top organist. A native of this region of Romania, she was one of the last of many rising young musicians who was able to study organ there. In 1990 she was appointed to an instructorship at the renowned Klausenburg/Cluj Conservatory. Her recording “Transylvanian Organ Landscape” received the German record Critics Prize.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Once the darling of opera audiences, Wolf-Ferrari's compelling chamber music has been lost to time: a great reason to resurrect these particularly sonorous jewels from the rich MDG archive, performed with immense musicality, perfect technique and immaculate balance by artists of the highest calibre. This new edition also gives behind-the-scenes insights with entertaining, sometimes very illuminating anecdotes by Werner Dabringhaus.