Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Max Bruch bequeathed three violin concertos to posterity - but only one of them continues to be present in today's concert halls. The composer himself regarded his op. 58 in D minor as much more finely composed than the popular G minor concerto. This benchmark recording by Andreas Krecher and the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra disappeared from the catalogue many years ago, but now the D minor concerto is being re-released in an attractive double box featuring orchestral works by Bruch. Along with it's rarities repertoire, the phenomenal acoustic dimensions of the historic Wuppertal Stadthalle and MDG's legendary natural sound make this double album a musical feast for the ears. "Schon Ellen," a heroic ballad to a text by Emanuel Geibel, was one of the most frequently sung choral works during the nineteenth century. Even though Bruch had no qualms about transferring the action from the Indian colony to the Scottish highlands, the dramatic appeal is absolutely irresistible. The 'Swedish Dances' are a genuine discovery. Bruch unfolds an overpowering widescreen spectacle with a Nordic atmosphere in the two suites; with highly imaginative instrumentations and musical magic he evokes magnificent soundscapes. Bruch's Symphony No. 2 rounds off this program of rarities. In it Schmalfuss presents the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra as an ensemble that produces a big sound and outstandingly captures the slightly melancholy tone of Bruch's music.

Classical Music

V2: COMPLETE KEYBOARD WORKS

Music for the theater - Erik Satie composed for the stage and the film medium on various occasions. His Parade, a ballet in cooperation with Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso, is legendary and caused a veritable scandal when it was premiered in 1917 along with Stravinsky's Petrushka. On Vol. 6 of Satie's piano works Steffen Schleiermacher turns to Parade and other works for the theater, including the lengthy music for Uspud, billed as a "Christian ballet" but actually parodying Flaubert's Temptation of St. Anthony in an absurd and absolutely blasphemous manner. The music for Parade turned out differently than originally planned, since Cocteau, who feared that he would not get enough attention when working with Picasso and Satie, insisted on the additional use of the click clack of typewriters, pistol shots, and sirens, with the result that the music was drowned out. Since Steffan Schleiermacher no longer needs to respect Cocteau's wishes, he succeeds in uncovering a work with entertaining sides winning listeners' hearts.

The futurists noisily proclaimed their message in Italy prior to the outbreak of World War I. Manifesto followed on manifesto, every form of violence, including war, was glorified, and anarchism, misogyny, and the destruction of everything representing tradition was preached. A few composers were also among their ranks, but Steffen Schleiermacher’s latest discovery demonstrates that their works sometimes contrasted greatly with the literary pamphlets issued by this group. Great music nevertheless – or perhaps for this very reason – was the result. Things get underway with Francesco Balilla Pratella, the declared favorite of the furturist “top gun” Marinetti and the author of a futurist manifesto of his own. “Battle” from the trilogy “Expectation-Battle-Victory” could also stand for the program of futurist music, but things did not turn out this way. Already Gian Francesco Malipiero’s “Preludi autunnali” contain an autumn melancholy that sounds more like Debussy and Ravel than war and destruction. Alfredo Casella’s “A note alta” is the most extensive work on this album. True to its title, this work evokes all sorts of associations with a hot and sultry Mediterranean night, including the erotic adventure that Casella claims to have set to music- but the listener will decide! Alberto Savinio, today at most known as a poet or a painter, offers in “Les Chants de la Mi-Mort” a richly allusive, entertaining collage. Three short pieces of caricatural pomposity by Silvio Mix conclude the tour of Italy’s avant-garde. The legendary Manfred Burki Steinway concert grand piano from 1901 and Schleiermacher’s unerring feeling for fine nuances guarantee that tonal refinement gets its fair share along with all these surprising finds.

The “Peches de vieillesse” composed by Gioacchino Rossini exclusively for private use during the final years of his life in Paris bring together thirteen volumes of vocal, choral, and chamber music as well as more than a hundred piano pieces that he termed “semi-comic” and dedicated to “fourth-class pianists.” The wit and humor of Rossini’s piano music make it unique in the history of music. Of great virtuosity, pervaded by the ideal of Italian song, playing with influences from the opera, the salon, and the cabaret, and taking boundless delight in brilliantly wild ideas and waggish parodies, it remains a very personal bequeathal full of profound seriousness and playful irony, movingly intimate, and merciless toward the composer’s own weaknesses.

Arp Schnitger is buried in the Hamburg-Neuenfelde Church, and it is in this uniquely preserved sacred structure from the High Baroque that we find the largest instrument from his workshop, an organ with a Rückpositiv and two manuals. Hilger Kespohl is now presenting this exquisite instrument for the first time after the magnificent restoration of this historical monument, and his program features the music of another famous Baroque Hamburg resident: Matthias Weckmann, who like no other composer between Schütz and Bach succeeded in drawing on the immense variety of European musical styles in order to develop his very own tonal idiom. In their time Heinrich Schutz and Johann Jacob Froberger, Weckmann’s teachers, had brought the canzone with them from Italy. Girolamo Frescobaldi was the undisputed master in this field, and what Weckmann was able to develop afresh in this tradition enthused the Prince Elector of Saxony as well as Froberger so much that even a hundred years later Johann Mattheson continued to rave about his dazzling performance in Dresden. Weckmann moved back and forth between Hamburg and Dresden several times and in between spent some time in Nykobing in Denmark. In Hamburg he met Heinrich Scheidemann, certainly the leading personality in the Hanseatic music world, and incorporated Scheidemann’s compositional style schooled on Sweelinck into his own personal style- “with seriousness and delightfulness,” as Mattheson approvingly wrote.

Classical Music

Heinrich Scheidemann was highly esteemed already during his lifetime and so famous that he could afford to have a copperplate engraving made of his portrait. During the transition between the Renaissance and the Early Baroque he founded his fame above all on the elegant writing style of his compositions, which even today appeals to a broad public. Hilger Kespohl has selected works from the comprehensive oeuvre of this Hamburg master for the present album, and on the incomparable Arp Schnitger organ in Hamburg-Neuenfelde this richly varied musical portrait shines in all it's glory. Scheidemann learned his trade from Sweelinck. Back in Hamburg, he combined his teacher's secular tradition- in Calvinist Amsterdam, Sweelinck mostly performed concerts outside the liturgy- with the requirements of the Lutheran religious service. And so it is not surprising that Scheidemann above all produced works with liturgical associations. These chorale variations number among the first great highpoints in the genre. However, Scheidemann also looked beyond the Hanseatic city's borders: "intabulations," transfers of motets by others to the organ, belonged to the duties of this church musician- just listen to the ravishing beauty of "Verbum caro factum est" after Hans Leo Hassler. His occupation with Dowland's "Pavana Lachrimae" also displays an inquisitiveness far beyond the call of duty.

Once again the Berolina Ensemble has a sensational surprise in store. The Clarinet Quintet and Sonata for Piano and Clarinet penned by Hans Weisse are heard on this release in what may be first-ever performances. In any case, this is what the manuscripts suggest: they were first rendered playable by the musical discovery team led by the clarinetist Friederike Roth, and their work paid off! Delightful late Romanticism meets ambitious tonality in this music displaying it's own unique appeal. Hardly anything is known about the composer. Born in Vienna to an actor, Hans Weisse was a pupil of Heinrich Schenker, whose radical approach to music theory won him many adherents particularly in the United States. In 1930 Weisse himself accepted an appointment in New York, where he died mysteriously in 1940 at the early age of 48. Weisse did most of his composing during his years in Vienna, before Wilhelm Furtwangler called him to Berlin for instruction in Schenker's compositional methods. The contrast between Weisse's perspicacity in music theory and the obscurity of his writing practice is striking. Even his meticulous mentor Schenker felt that many a piece of his was too intellectual. However, the performances by the Berolina Ensemble create just the opposite impression: the music shines and vibrates with intensity, the harmonies continuing within the bounds of tonality are taken to the bursting point, and on this release this rewarding new discovery also offers sumptuous listening pleasure.

Classical Music

Classical Music