To mark the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth, the renowned Leipzig String Quartet presents a world premiere recording of the 5th String Quartet from Joachim Raff's much under-appreciated chamber music. In addition, the four musicians present the quartet op. 192, no. 2 with the epithet "Schöne Müllerin" - and whoever immediately thinks of Schubert is not wrong, but still on the wrong track. For unlike Schubert's, there seems to be no tragic ending in Raff's wanderer's fate, but a better one. Here, too, the young man falls in love with the miller's daughter, here, too, there is - as the title of the 4th movement reveals - "unrest", but after an "explanation" the work ends in the snappy "Polterabend" (wedding-eve party). Why Raff did not then also compose a wedding remains his secret...

While the "Schöne Müllerin" is laid out like a suite, the 5th string quartet follows the classical form. Raff had already broken away from Liszt's influence, and so the work is characterized by the extremely skillful treatment of the often catchy motifs. The fast second movement is remarkable, its familiar variations breathing Mendelssohnian esprit. Again and again, the Viennese three-fourths blossoms. Is this a reverence to Joseph Hellmesberger, the primarius of many Raff premieres? In any case, the Leipzig String Quartet's joy in this life-affirming music is clearly audible!

For forty years Georg Hendrik Witte influenced the course of music history in the city of Essen. Important events occurred during this productive era, and the overpowering premiere of Gustav Mahler’s fateful Sixth Symphony was a special milestone. Witte’s undisputed accomplishments as a conductor and orchestra manager have completely obscured his compositional oeuvre. The Mozart Piano Quartet has teamed up with friends on this recording of the composer’s Piano Quartet and Horn Quintet, two chamber works from his early Leipzig period revealing to us a highly talented, evidently outstandingly educated artist determined to follow his own path in musical life. For the Horn Quintet the strings of the Mozart Piano Quartet were able to win the very best chamber partner to be found: Radovan Vlatkovic. Vlatkovic lends the frequently difficult pedal tones a movingly mellow quality repeatedly giving rise to shaping initiatives. Cornelia Gartemann is a perfect match for the ensemble, which offers an entirely new listening experience, especially when heard in the form of the three-dimensional production on this Super Audio release.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Charles-Marie Widor is remembered now only as a composer of music for the organ, though in his day he wrote for every combination of instruments, including the symphony orchestra. Coming from a family associated with the organ, it seemed natural that this instrument would be his first love. He became friendly with Astride Cavaillé-Coll, who took it on himself to further young Widor's career. Cavaillé-Coll was responsible for a new era in French organ building, working tirelessly to invent and implement improvements that would give the organ something of the range and capability of a symphony orchestra. With such modern instruments being designed and built, it seemed inevitable that the organ "symphony" would come into being.


Widor's first four outings in the format are actually more like suites. Except for the first two movements of Symphony No. 4, the themes of sections have little to do with each other. These days, the movements are liable to be played separately as concert pieces and work quite well that way, each standing independently on its own. Taken as a whole, the result seems overlong and too ruminative to hold a casual listener's interest, which explains why the complete works have become the exclusive purview of organists. The performances here are on a Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint-François-de-Sales in Lyon--an instrument that Widor played, so we can presume that the sound is authentic. Organist Ben van Oosten has made a lifelong study of this music and plays it with authority and imagination. The recording sounds a bit remote: Perhaps in an effort to capture the large instrument, the engineers backed off slightly, resulting in a clean and clear acoustic, but one that is devoid of immediate presence. Organists will rejoice at this series; casual listeners will find the greatest reward by taking them a movement at a time.
--Rad Bennett, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

WIDMANN String Quartets: No. 1; No. 2, “Choral Quartet”; No. 3, “Hunting Quartet”; No. 4; No. 5, “Attempt at the Fugue” 1 • Leipzig Str Qrt; Juliane Banse (sop) 1 • MDG 307 1531 (76:44)


Born in 1973, Jörg Widmann has two careers: as a clarinetist, he teaches at the Freiburg College of Music, performs regularly, and has recorded music by Beethoven, Brahms, Harald Genzmer, and Wolfgang Rihm; as a composer who studied under Rihm, Wilfried Hiller, and Hans Werner Henze, his works are piling up European prizes with remarkable frequency. In the latter role, Widmann exhibits an interesting postmodern (if that word still has any relevance) conceptualism. These five compact, one-movement string quartets, for example, though composed over a period of years (1997–2005), when combined suggest the macro-structure of a single quartet—that is, the individual quartets serve the function of an “introduction,” “largo,” “scherzo,” “andante/passacaglia,” and “finale: quasi-fugue,” respectively. Whether or not Widmann had this scheme in mind from the very beginning is hard to say, but there is internal evidence that unifies and enhances their relationship, thematically and dramatically.


One of the conceptual features of Widmann’s music is a fluid blending of historical sounds and styles. The Quartet No. 3, for instance, takes its nickname from the familiar “hunting” rhythm adapted, in this case, from one of Robert Schumann’s Papillons , which gradually unravels into a more contemporary fabric of melodic fragments and disrupted rhythms (Widmann calls it “splinterizing” and “skeletalizing” the form). Quartet No. 2 is a reflection on death influenced by Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ ; some of the sparse music is recognizable (mournful chords that could be direct quotes) and some indistinct (non-pitched timbral effects), but the effect, while engaging, is more scene painting than movement towards a musical or emotional resolution. The Quartet No. 4 offers a walking bass line and ascending and descending patterns along with chiaroscuro textures; the sounds grow more mysterious as they drift away from the passacaglia’s theme, being somewhat reminiscent of George Rochberg’s interplay of harmonic references in his string quartets. The Quartet No. 5, longest of the sequence and the only one with a vocal component à la Schoenberg’s Second Quartet, deconstructs fugal strategies into episodes of contrasting shapes and tempos, offering close echoes of (if not actual quotes from) the Grosse Fugue and Art of Fugue . As for No. 1, it rises from silence with small Webernesque gestures, turns vigorous and frisky, is interrupted by silences, but builds to a convincing conclusion.


Widmann’s quartets are attractive, thought provoking, and well conceived, and I believe they actually work better when heard together as a connected entity than standing alone, where the occasional missteps, such as the clichéd shouts in No. 3 and the familiarity of material in No. 5, would be isolated and magnified. The benefit of having them on a single disc is the ability to choose which way you’d like to experience them.


FANFARE: Art Lange

Includes work(s) by Anton von Webern. Ensemble: Leipzig String Quartet.

Rübezahl storms wildly through the Riesengebirge, and the elves in Oberon's retinue scurry like the wind. At the height of the romantic era Carl Maria von Weber composed musical pictures of suggestive power. He produced emotional suspense of the highest concentration not only in his opera overtures but also in the purely instrumental music of his clarinet concertos - as Martin Spangenberg impressively demonstrates to the ear in his debut with the Orchestra M 18. And this in the 3D sound of 2+2+2 recording technique - a virtuosic sound feast for the senses!

Liszt was the first, but pianists of later generations also journeyed through the gigantic cosmos of the Wagnerian music drama with paraphrases and transcriptions for the piano. Severin von Eckardstein has brought together the best of these on his latest SACD. The result is a fascinating look at the reception history of Wagner's music and a colossal, three-dimensional listening experience to remember.

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German pianist Severin von Eckardstein, playing a tonally atmospheric 1901 Steinway, evokes the world of Wagner in a rare way with this set of arrangements, conjuring candle-lit drawing rooms of the Romantic era. Highlights include Busoni’s rendition of the “Funeral March” from Götterdämmerung, pianist-conductor Zoltán Kocsis’s arrangement of the Prelude from Tristan und Isolde and, rather than Liszt’s more famous version, Moritz Moszkowski’s take on “Isolde’s Liebestod.” Best, though, are the arrangements from Parsifal, particularly the “Transformation Music” by August Stradal, an acolyte of Liszt. Also included is American composer Sidney Corbett’s ghostly treatment of Kundry motifs from Parsifal, fittingly dedicated to the late Hans Werner Henze.

– Bradley Bambarger, Listen

Whenever the Berolina Ensemble performs - expect the unexpected. The young Berlin musicians have been seeking out unknown chamber music in unusual scorings - and with the works of Waldemar von Baussnern, they have scored another bullseye. Baussnern's works blend the influences of the conservative and New German schools into a highly individual style; it is to his position as Academy secretary that we owe the appointments of Schoenberg, Schreker and Hindemith to the Berlin Academy of Sciences.

Classical Music

Expressive, sensitively played … sparkle and drive.

This is a reissue of a disc originally released in the 1990s, performed on period instruments. The difference in pitch with modern instrument recordings is notable and gives a darker feeling to the sound than the brightness one has become accustomed to with the modern flute. In this recording, Konrad Hünteler uses an instrument made by Jacob Denner, which was approximately ten years old when these works were composed. The recording is made using only the natural acoustics of the space with no added technological trickery, and as such, it serves to provide an interesting example of what this music may have sounded like at the time Vivaldi composed it.

These concertos have been recorded many times by a range of different performers, but my feeling is that Hünteler’s authentic performance approach provides a scholarly interpretation which offers much insight and thought. The sleeve-notes are informative and well written, and the disc as a whole provides a satisfying educational experience, as well as being highly entertaining.

The recording is well balanced and the darker sonority of the low pitch allows for a strong bass end to the ensemble. The performers achieve an enjoyable range of timbres and colours, and the faster movements (most notably the first movement of Il Gardellino) are allowed to sparkle. This is characterful playing, and I am amazed by the range within the music; I have heard these concertos hundreds of times, played by both students and professionals, and I can honestly say that I have never heard a performance on a modern instrument which shows such range of tone colour, mood and musical interest. I am not an early music afficianado and have no particularly strong feelings either way about whether period or modern instruments should be used. A well informed historically accurate performance is interesting as an academic exercise, and I am generally of the opinion that a modern instrument performance is equally valid in terms of giving the music a continued life. However, I do believe, most passionately, that performances should have something to say, and this particular performance has completely changed my opinion of these concertos, and allowed me to see the musical depth contained within them.

The playing is excellent throughout and highly convincing. The ensemble supports the soloist well and there is an overall sense of unity between the performers. The small forces used mean that the solo line is always allowed space to be clearly heard. The slow movements are expressive, sensitively played and well ornamented, while the allegro movements have sparkle and drive.

-- Carla Rees, MusicWeb International

This is music of brute force and elemental clout. The listener absolutely cannot resist the penetrating power of the three pieces brought together on this release by the Gewandhaus concertmaster Andreas Seidel and the perennial discoverer Steffen Schleiermacher. Galina Ustvolskaya's compositions surpass all analysis, pleasurable listening, and (to a certain extent even) interpretation. Despite this fact (or precisely because of it) they generate spellbinding fascination. Ustvolskaya's uncompromising musical language has occasionally earned her the title of a "heavy hitter." Her Piano Sonata No. 5, which Steffen Schleiermacher has placed between the Violin Sonata and the concluding Duet, shows why this is so. In Schleiermacher's hands the sixfold fortissimo, which along with the extraordinary note clusters, calls attention to itself even in the printed score, is conveyed to the listener with explosive force. And Andreas Seidel spares neither himself nor his instrument in order to hurl Ustvolskaya's totalitarian tones toward the audience. A musical experience that we will not so soon forget!