Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

A woman's place is in the home. So the saying goes, but Clara Schumann, one of the great pianists of the nineteenth century, had a better idea. The present album is dedicated to this unique woman musician who died one hundred years ago in 1896. The selections, most of them premiere recordings, offer us a close an illuminating look at her compositional art and the family musical context in which she lived and worked. The intimate correspondence she carried on with Johannes Brahms, her troubled relationship with her husband after his suicide attempt, her no-is-not-an-answer attitude: Clara Schumann was more than just Robert's better half and not at all a homebody. It is only in the last ten years, with the new interest in women's contributions to the arts, history, and the sciences that Clara Schumann has finally received recognition as a composer in her own right. This recording also promises to bring Woldemar Bargiel, Clara Schumann's half-brother, some of the recognition he rightly deserves as a composer. The introverted Bargiel made ends meet as a private music teacher in Berlin for years before receiving appointments as a piano and theory teacher at the Cologne Conservatory in 1859 and as the director of the Rotterdam Music Society in 1865. He was already a renowned composer when he returned to Berlin in 1874, this time as a member of the faculty of the Berlin Academy of Music.

Hanns�Eisler composed more than five hundred songs, and his very first extant compositions include songs with piano accompaniment. On the fourth and last volume of their selections from Eisler's songs, Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher focus on his early works and bring to light an absolutely astonishing discovery: the young�Hanns�was an autodidact who had an incredible feel for the song part, and his artistic aspirations are also evident in the piano part. Eisler transcends by far the mere imitation of models. Here we encounter free-tonal�compositions�as well as music of revue character, expressive passages as well as laconic ones. His choice of texts is likewise very broad. While Brecht became the focus in Eisler's later work, here he concentrates on poems by Eichendorff and Buchner and by�Trakl�and Morgenstern. The songs set to Far Eastern poetry, in translations by Hans Bethge and�Klabund, are very much in keeping with their times. Eisler even set newspaper advertisements to music! Eisler composed his very first songs while�as yet�reflecting on World War I, most of which he spent in military hospitals. The texts and the mood are correspondingly gloomy, for example, in "Tod" or "Der�mude�Soldat." By contrast, the Songs op. 2 borrow from the style of the Viennese school led by Arnold Schoenberg, with whom Eisler studied counterpoint beginning in 1919. Broad intervals and extreme registers require the singer to give his all- something very typical of vocal works from Schoenberg's immediate circle. Holger Folk masters such difficulties with bravura and finds just the right tone for this challenging music. Steffen Schleiermacher lends the difficult, sometimes harmonically unwieldy compositional texture a transparency that conveys the character of�each and every�song in the most advantageous light. The magnificent conclusion of an ambitious project!

Too bad it's only been around for a hundred years! This is what the Trio Roseau thought about it's ensemble form, the "trio d'anches" featuring the oboe, clarinet, and bassoon and first established in the 1920s. But what to do when the ensemble's own members include a recognized top arranger in the person of Ulf-Guido Sch�fer? This versatile clarinetist did his seeking in the music of the immortal Mozart, and what he found there and arranged for his trio has now been recorded on the big sound of this album- a revelation for specialists in the field of wind chamber music - and not only for them! La clemenza di Tito, Mozart's last opera, offered particularly rewarding finds- which is hardly surprising, given the fact that Mozart increasingly included important parts for wind instruments in his late works. And the combination of oboe, clarinet, and bassoon also repeatedly occurs in the original scores. Might this be the reason why Schafer's arrangements sound so authentic? Two duets and two arias, framed by the overture and the famous rondo "Non piu di fiori," yield an ensemble composition full of operatic drama and ravishing beauty. Mozart's predilection for the clarinet is legendary, and he was also so very fond of the basset horn, it's "big sister" with a low voice, that he composed a good two dozen trio pieces for three of these horns. From them Schafer has derived three enchanting divertimenti that in their instrumentation for trio d'anches create a mirthful serenade atmosphere.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music