The composer of the chamber music presented here belongs to the large group of musical talents who left the Bohemian groves and meadows to find a place for themselves in the German-speaking world. Georg Druschetzky (1745-1819) chose a military career, became a well-known timpani virtuoso and soon came to the attention of the Hungarian nobility, who appreciated his virtuoso and administrative skills as much as his original creativity. Especially in the field of chamber music for wind instruments, this contemporary of Haydn and Mozart was an inexhaustible source of pleasure. Without rebelling against the great classical forms, Druschetzky knows how to constantly surprise his audience with a subtle refinement that is virtually written on the historical instruments of the Grundmann Quartet around oboist Eduard Wesly. As on the first album, the four of them are completely in their element.

Only few connoisseurs can say without hesitation who preceded Heinrich Schutz as Dresden's Court Conductor. The man's name was Rogier Michael who was born in Mons (Belgium) and was one of the last representatives of the Franco-Flemish school of vocal polyphony, that was sought after throughout Europe. In the meantime, Italy was setting the tone and older composers had to rethink their ways. Michaels succeeded in doing so. Among other things, his catalogue of works, which is not exactly huge, includes an innovative Weihnachtshistorie (1602), which was performed at the Dresden court for 50 (!) years - an all the more astonishing occurrence, as this music is by no means ostentatious. Combining the devotional purity with appropriate contemporary vocal and instrumental movements, a clear simplicity emerges. And so the Christmas Vespers of 1624, which the Ensemble Polyharmonique presents here, is still enchanting today.

In her own words, Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969) had been gifted by nature with a "small, invisible engine" that allowed her to do in ten minutes what others needed an hour for. This inner drive can be demonstrated in all areas of this Polish artist's life. She was an excellent violinist from an early age, had success as a writer and wrote her first compositions as a teenager - all at a dizzying pace and yet the quality of her works are not superficial in the least. This new release by cpo is the second in a series of her complete symphonic works. After presenting her Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4, works from the early 1950s, Lukasz Borowicz and the WDR Symphony Orchestra perform more examples of Bacewicz's wealth of expression. These include the neoclassical outbursts of the Overture (1943) and the Second Symphony (1951), the sophisticated, already strongly timbre-oriented Variations for Orchestra (1957) and the Tre movimenti, in which Grazyna Bacewicz had achieved her "late" style - the so-called "sonorism", in which the colour of sound plays an essential structural role. After these "three movements", the "small engine" ran for almost another four years - this phenomenal musician had completed everything faster than the others. Her invisible drive can still be heard here today.

In the late 1960s, the composer Michael Nyman coined the term "minimalism" to describe a new musical aesthetic characterized by a certain simplicity and economy of means. One of the composers associated with this movement, La Monte Young, embraced the term with enthusiasm, while others like Steve Reich and Philip Glass nuanced it with terms such as "music without intention" or "music with a repetitive structure". The term "hypnotic music" might also be appropriate for some works by Simeon ten Holt or Arvo Part, provided we are attuned to the monotonous hum of rain, have a fondness for grey-the languid greys of overcast days-or appreciate a certain suspension of the world. Considered to be the most gifted and promising pianist of his generation in Poland, Szymon Nehring is the only Pole to have won first prize at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Competition in Tel Aviv (2017). He was also a finalist at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw with only 19 years of age. Szymon Nehring performes with orchestras such as Sinfonia Varsovia, Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic, Israel Symphony Orchestra, Bamberger Symphoniker, Hamburger Symphoniker, Orchester philharmonique de Marseille and Orchestre Paseloup in France and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, collaborating with conductors such as John Axelrod, Lukas Borowicz, Sylvain Cambreling, Karina Canellakis, Pablo Heras-Casado, Marzena Diakun, Lawrence Foster, Giancarlo Guerrero, Jacek Kaspszyk, Grzegorz Nowak, Pawel Przytocki, George Tchitchinadze, David Zinman and Omer Meir Wellber. He also performed and recorded with the late Krzysztof Penderecki, among other works Mr. Penderecki�s piano concerto.

The music recorded on Arc I [FHR127] expresses foreboding from the brink of disaster. The music on Arc II [FHR128] was written by composers dealing with tragedy. At last, Arc III is a set of pieces born from the bright points of life. Peace, hope, love, ambition, optimism and the divine - the inspirations are myriad. These compositions spring from the million shades of happiness. Orion Weiss has performed internationally as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. This is his sixth album of solo piano music, his third for First Hand Records. Full biography available at orionweiss. Com

On Midsummer's Night, the real and fairy worlds collide. Four young lovers, faced with the prospect of unhappy marriage or worse, flee the court of Athens and stumble into an enchanted forest. Nearby, a group of amateur actors rehearse a play to celebrate an upcoming royal wedding. As these mere mortals cross paths with a warring fairy King and Queen, chaos reigns in the natural world. The lines between reality and illusion start to blur and no one but mischievous Puck knows what is true and what is magic. Let Shakespeare's captivating comedy transport you to the most magical of midsummer nights. Director Eleanor Rhode's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is both epic and intimate, and completely full of wonder

The second album of German harpist Maximilian Ehrhardt on Carpe Diem Records is a unique concept album of music for the rare Italian "Arpa Doppia", a chromatic harp from the 17th Century. As there are only a few original compositions known for this instrument, the intention of this project was to invent a new repertoire for the Italian chromatic harp and to utilise the instrument's special tonal and technical characteristics to build a bridge between the past and the present. Six compositions from the 17th century are being complemented by six contemporary works that pay reference to their original templates in very different and fascinating ways. This harp album is a totally new musical experience, both imaginative and daring, and will hopefully contribute to the recognition of a wonderful, almost forgotten instrument.

Percy Grainger (1882-1961) and Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015), both composer-pianists of the Golden Age of keyboard virtuosity, shared a passion for folksong, especially the modal Celtic melodies from the fringes of the British Isles. Though the two never met, they corresponded for many years, with Stevenson arranging many of Grainger's transcriptions in a deliberate act of homage to the older man, whose quirky originality brought Stevenson illumination on his own idiosyncratic path. This seventh instalment in Christopher Guild's Toccata Classics survey of Stevenson's piano music uncorks the exultant good humour that he and Grainger found on that common Celtic ground.

Mendelssohn conceived the Violin Concerto in E minor for his childhood friend, Ferdinand David, concertmaster of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, though it took the composer years to perfect it. The concerto remains one of the most significant works in the genre - serene, lyrical and luminous. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major is another of the 19th century's greatest concertos, written for his favourite student, Iosif Kotek, and a work of great beauty bristling with virtuoso challenges. On this album they are performed by the brilliant Guido Sant'Anna, the first South American violinist to win the prestigious Fritz Kreisler International Competition.

BERNARD HAITINK conducts: SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY No. 15 in A major op. 141. The Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra enjoyed a long and intensive artistic collaboration, which came to an abrupt end with Haitink's death in October 2021. BR-KLASSIK now presents outstanding and previously unreleased live recordings of their concerts from past years. This recording of Shostakovich's Fifteenth Symphony documents a concert given in February 2015 in Munich's Philharmonie i'm Gasteig. Haitink first conducted a Munich subscription concert in 1958, and from then on was a regular guest with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra - either in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz or in the Philharmonie i'm Gasteig. This congenial collaboration lasted for more than six decades. The orchestra musicians and singers enjoyed working with him just as much as the BR sound engineers. As an interpreter of the symphonic repertoire, and especially that of the German-Austrian Late Romantic period, Haitink was held in high esteem throughout the world. With him, the symphonies of Dmitri Shostakovich were always in the best of hands. Haitink's driving principle was to make the sound architecture of a musical composition, with it's complex interweaving, transparently audible; extreme sensitivity of sound was combined with a clearly structured interpretation of the score. As the last symphony in the oeuvre of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the Fifteenth is a kind of symphonic conclusion. Although the composer set out to write a "happy symphony" and this epithet has since become commonplace, everything cheerful in it has a dimension that is exaggerated into the bizarre and grotesque. The work also contains musical references, for example to Rossini's "William Tell" overture, Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" (the so-called "fate motif") and "Tristan and Isolde", and Alban Berg's "Wozzeck". Quotations from Shostakovich's own earlier works also appear. The symphony was composed in 1971 in Repino, a suburb of St Petersburg. The world premiere took place on January 8, 1972, under the baton of the composer's son Maxim.

There is never a shortage of surprises with Joseph Haydn. The Leipzig String Quartet's latest instalment, Opus 2, of their benchmark complete recording of all Haydn's string quartets offers unexpected, unusual and always entertaining moments, presented with virtuosity and mastery by a quartet that combines curiosity and experience to create a delightful whole.

Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake takes a special place in Ahronovitch's life. The conductor was just five years old when he visited a performance of the ballet at the Kirov Theater. He was so fascinated that he announced to his parents his decision to become a conductor himself. In the midst of the turmoil of war, he did indeed studied at the conservatory and graduated with honors in 1954. In the course of his career, he was chief conductor of the Gurzenich Orchestra (as successor of Gunther Wand) and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and also conducted numerous important orchestras around the world. On Swedish television, Ahronovitch once made the following statement that is so characteristic of him: "I was never the conductor of the orchestra, I was always a colleague, a friend and a partner." This humanistic approach combined with a laid-back unaffectedness and a self-evident demand for perfection characterized his conducting style. Tchaikovsky composed the Orchestral Suite No. 4, usually referred to as "Mozartiana", for the centenary of Don Giovanni: Four orchestrated movements based on original Mozart works, although none of them directly related to the well-known opera. Tchaikovsky ends with the variations KV 455, "Unser dummer Pobel meint", based on a theme by Christoph Willibald Gluck. In these 15 minutes, Yuri Ahronovitch shows how melancholy and cheerfulness, dark, earthy colors and shimmering, bright moments come together.

Composer Nils Vigeland releases Perfect Happiness, a compilation of solo piano works that chronicle his intimate relationship writing for and performing on the instrument over the last six decades. Vigeland's work centers on subtleties of resonance and register, two parameters that are uniquely facilitated by the specific characteristics of the piano, with it's expansive range and it's nuanced pedaling. Perfect Happiness features award winning pianist Jing Yang who has been a long time collaborator of Vigeland's and brings a sophisticated understanding to interpretations of his works.

Maciej Sledziecki and Marion Worle show just how exciting the world of the pipe organ is today as the ensemble gamut inc. The retro-futuristic duo uses self-programmed software to dock onto the MIDI consoles of church organs, control their stops in a manually impossible way and perform sound synthesis with surprising results. Their annual AGGREGATE festival in Berlin is a meeting place for the international "New Organ Movement" scene: electronic musicians, composers and organists from different backgrounds present various positions on the so-called hyper organ. With "AGGREGATE - New Works for Automated Pipe Organs", WERGO presents a selection from the 2021 and 2022 festival editions. The new works, fragments, improvisations, adaptations of existing pieces (such as the adaptations of Conlon Nancarrow's "Studies for Player Piano" for organ), interactions between organ and electronics as well as algorithmic playing instructions for performers thus show an intermediate state and at the same time provide a breathtaking outlook on new possibilities for the organ. The leading roles are played by the organs of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, the Auenkirche and the Chapel of Reconciliation.

Heliossea is an intermedia work for flutes and live electronics composed by Alessandro Grego in 2003 and premiered in Trieste on June 21 - the summer solstice - of the same year. It is a meditation on the rising of the sun, starting from the first ray of light at dawn breaking over the horizon. Astronomical data about the phenomenon, translated into sound using Grego's custom-designed software, plays a crucial role in shaping the music. In 2023, to mark the 20th anniversary of Heliossea's premiere, Alessandro Grego created a new version titled Heliossea XX. This updated rendition was performed for the first time on September 3, 2023, at the Miramare Castle Park in Trieste. The work is conceived as a tribute to Margherita Hack and her contributions to science and Italian culture. The new version of Heliossea, produced by the Prodigys Group, was realized in collaboration with inaf-oats, which oversaw the scientific aspects of the project, and the "Studio di Sonologia Computazionale" in Padua, under the direction of Alvise Vidolin, which managed the surround sound diffusion. Astronomical data provided by the National Institute for Astrophysics (thanks to it's director Fabrizio Fiore and Massimo Ramella) enhanced the work's precision and immersive quality.