From Impressionism to the present: Oskar Laznik and Tadej Horvat present a hundred years of music for saxophone and piano to their listening audience. “Légende” by their fellow Slovenian Lojze Lebic lends this debut album its title – and if the pieces are not yet legendary, then they will be – starting now, with this album. For what Laznik and Horvat have to offer makes us sit up and take listening notice. From folklore to the avant-garde, from Impressionism to the Neo-Baroque, an uncommonly colorful panorama spreads out and brings audible joy to the musicians- and not only to them! Things range far and wide in Hindemith’s Sonata (actually written for the alto horn), glisten and glow in Wijnand van Klavern’s delightful homage to Poulenc, and lament elegiacally in Yvan Markovich’s “Complaint”- it is only rarely that we have the opportunity to experience such great variety from the saxophone. Most of the works qualify as genuine discoveries. Fernande Decruck’s Sonata in the remarkable key of C sharp major very much has earned a special place of its own among saxophone enthusiasts, and this recording has what it takes to add significant numbers of listeners to the Decruck fan mile. Lojze Lebic, who is now 84 years old, supplies an avant-garde piece: “Legende” calls for unusual playing style as well as the surmounting of intricately difficult rhythms and extreme dynamics.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Ensemble Concertant regularly celebrates great successes with it's extraordinary instrumental forces. Since George Onslow alone dedicated dozens of works to the string quartet plus double bass, the ensemble has espoused the music of this Anglo- French composer with special interest. MDG is now presenting a special edition of two long sold-out albums at an attractive price with works including the Piano Sextet, a concerto en miniature that took the Parisian salons by storm. Onslow composed the Piano Quintet op. 79bis during the middle years of the nineteenth century- when he was at the height of his popularity- in the famous and just as rare "Trout Quintet" instrumentation with double bass. However, Onslow pursued a path different from that of Schubert; here the virtuosity of the piano with it's leaps, arpeggios, scales, octaves, and other daring technical deeds let's the other instruments know who is the boss. The Quintets for String Quartet and Double Bass- so to speak, Onslow's specialty- reveal a master situated between classicism and romanticism. Marvelously sumptuous melodies in classical form breathe the romantic spirit but refrain from virtuosity for mere show. Instead, the works go straight to the heart and make it beat to the big sound supplied by the double bass and it's profound foundation.

Classical Music

Among Goethe’s dramas, Egmont stands practically unrivaled in its vibrant portrayal of protagonists faced with emotional anxieties and conflicts. For the convincing presentation of these states of heart and mind on the stage, the Prince of German Poets prescribed music for the key scenes as early as the work’s premiere. Now the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn under its new principal conductor Dirk Kaftan has set itself the task of performing Beethoven’s incidental music. The magnificent Matthias Brandt collaborated with the dramaturge Tilman Böttcher on this new version of the drama and renders his part with moving intensity. The text and the music experience their most intimate union in the melodrama. In a heart-stirring performance, Matthias Brandt’s Egmont first longs for sleep and then sees Klarchen’s spirit while dreaming. This Bonn production recorded in three-dimensional sound and with the finest technology conveys the live effect of theater experience and represents audiophile listening in the truest sense of the term.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Klingler Quartet was regarded as the best string quartet of it's times and as the rightful heir to the legendary Joachim Quartet. Karl Klingler, the musician who gave his name to the quartet, had studied with the Brahms friend Joseph Joachim and had joined his teacher's quartet as a young violist. MDG's sleuths have now found two remarkable historical documents in the archives of the Bavarian Radio that show us Klingler as a composer and as an interpreter: his Violin Concerto with Ulf Hoelscher and the Berlin Philharmonic under Volker Schmidt-Gertenbach and the Viola Sonata performed by the composer himself along with Michael Raucheisen at the piano.