J.S. Bach's six trio sonatas have been the touchstone of organ performance for 300 years. Collected in the late 1720's when Bach was molding his son W.F. Bach into one the greatest 8th c. organists, these pieces have challenged and elevated uninterrupted generations ever since. The prize-winning author of Bach's Feet, David Yearsley, plays the sonatas on Cornell University's recently completed reconstruction of a 1706 Berlin organ by Arp Schnitger, one of Bach's favorite builders. Framing the sonatas on this two CD set is an unsurpassed pair of the master's monumental preludes and fugues.

Schubert's unforgettable characterizations of women: Gretchen, Suleika, Mignon, Ellen and Delphine are the subject of this CD, devoted to exploring Schubert's homage to "das ewig-Weibliche", Goethe's expression for the eternally feminine. Soprano Martha Guth and fortepianist Penelope Crawford present these unique portraits with insight and sympathy, enhanced by the use of a magnificent original fortepiano by the great Viennese maker, Conrad Graf. The American singer, Ms. Guth here makes her CD debut in the good company of Ms. Crawford, one of America's leading fortepianists.

This new release is Musica Omnia’s debut of the Hugo Wolf Quartett from Vienna, Europe’s leading younger-generation string quartet, specialists in both classical and contemporary repertoire. For this debut, the quartet has chosen to pair Ralf yusuf Gawlick’s latest work, “Imagined Memories,” with one of the many quartets quoted in its introduction, Schubert’s A minor “Rosamunde” Quartet, D. 803. “Imagined Memories is Gawlick’s most intensely personal work: a musical offering to the biological mother he never knew. This new piece, which utilizes the entire range of possible string techniques, is a major essay of haunting and evocative beauty, representing the intersection of memories, both real and imagined, of three presonalities whose paths crossed only briefly. To bring this dreamscape to life required, literally, the best string quartet in the world, whose technique and musical knowledge are all encompassing: the Hugo Wolf Quartett of Vienna, in whom the composer has found the ideal partnership, and to whom the work is dedicated.

Pairs the greatest work for solo cello of the 20th century (Kodaly) with a major new contemporary cello piece, at the Turning Point of the World, op. 9, by Ralf Yusuf Gawlick Virtuoso performances by Rafael Popper-Keizer, one of the great cello virtuosos of our time Booklet includes an essay on Kodaly, and writing by the composer and performer of 'At the still point of the turning world'.

Johann Sebastian Bach trained his many sons to be the finest organists of their time, yet hardly any organ music survives from them. Through transcription, improvisation, and other acts of imaginative re-creation this recording reunites Bach and his boys for a program that recaptures the virtuosic panache, commanding counterpoint, impressive poise, and exuberant excess of this first family on the organ. Played by award-winning Bach scholar and organist David Yearsley on Cornell University's reconstruction of a Berlin organ from 1706, known to at least one of the Bach sons, this program explores new dimensions not only of Johann Sebastian's towering achievement but also of the kinds of now-lost contributions the next Bach generation might have made to their family instrument's long and glorious history.

Complete recording of all 24 of Haydn's German songs. World premiere recording. Performed by experts in 18th century performance practice, including the art of ornamenting Haydn's vocal music. Accompaniments are performed on replicas of Haydn's fortepiano from around 1790. Booklet essay by distinguished Haydn scholar, Professor James Webster from Cornell University. A note on performance by forte pianist Tom Beghin is also included, along with English translations of all the song texts.

The eminent German graphic artist Käthe Kollwitz, one of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th c., championed the vulnerable, poor and despairing; she was the artistic patron saint of mother and child, of the outcast and downtrodden and of the neglected, whose lives constantly hung in the balance. Her art was the art of social conscience. Ralf Gawlick’s Kollwitz-Konnex (…im Frieden seiner Hände), a song cycle for soprano and guitar, is based on passages selected from Kollwitz’ diary and letters, linked to nine of her self-portraits spanning her entire creative life. It is a large and multifaceted Konnex: an interaction between self-portraits, the past and present, the artist and society, and not least Kollwitz’ art and the composer, whose music is so profoundly influenced by her art. This composer-supervised recording features soprano Anne Harley and virtuoso guitarist, Eliot Fisk, the dedicatees of the work.

Ralf Yusuf Gawlick’s bold and original "Mass for the Human Race” Missa Gentis Humanæ blends the Latin Mass Ordinary with passages from Borges, Virgil, Brecht, Zbigniew Herbert, Dostoevsky, Plautus, Walter Scott and the Gospel According to St. John—in an 8-voice a cappella setting, recorded by select voices from the celebrated Choir of Trinity Wall Street, conducted by Julian Wachner. This work juxtaposes diverse multilingual texts, illustrating the global human element of faith, with roots in the past and its future illuminated through contemporary experience. Recorded in the famous acoustics of Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, MA, where many Musica Omnia releases have been made. Booklet includes a comprehensive “listener’s guide” of texts, transliteration and easy-to-follow English translation.

In her third Mozart recording for Musica Omnia, the distinguished fortepianist, Trudelies Leonhardt, presents a programme of three of the composer's finest solo sonatas from the early 1780s, as well as the haunting and mysterious Rondo in A minor, K. 511, composed in 1789. Trudelies Leonhardt is of Dutch-Austrian parentage and comes from a family of musicians, her brother being the well-known harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt. She studied in Amsterdam with Johannes R�ntgen and Nelly Wagenaar and was awarded the Soloist-diploma cum laude and the Elisabeth Everts-prijs. She also worked in Paris with Yves Nat and Marguerite Long. Numerous orchestras have engaged Trudelies Leonhardt as soloist, the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, The Tonhalle-Orchester of Zurich, The Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne and The London Mozart Players among them. She has long been especially interested in fortepianos of the late 18th and early 19th century and nowadays she devotes her musical activity entirely to these. She has recorded about thirty albums, the majority of which feature works of Schubert and Beethoven. This is the third release of works by Mozart for Musica Omnia.

The Lenten season of 1679 was a cold, rainy, and dreary affair. The new Pope, Innocent XI, was no supporter of the increasingly permissive nature of Roman aristocracy, and he took measures to enforce edicts prohibiting staged performances before a paying public, as well as a general ban on the appearance of women on the stage. Reluctantly granted, however, was permission for private performances, and this concession led to the fortuitous circumstances that made the premiere of Scarlatti’s first opera possible—the ingenuity of the Bernini brothers who produced the work; a liberal interpretation of “private performance”; the support and attendance of Queen Christina of Sweden; and, certainly not least, the fact that Pope Innocent had left the city during the carnival, leaving the enforcement of his conservatism to some of the very cardinals who most enjoyed and supported public theatre! Founded in 2008 and led by tenor Bud Roach, the vocal quartet Capella Intima presents unique programming of mainly seventeenth-century repertoire, serving as the ensemble in residence for the HAMMER BAROQUE concert series in Hamilton, Ontario. Programmes such as The Poor Man’s Vespers(a hypothetical collection of small-scale psalm settings for churches of modest means), The Paradise of Travellers (Italian repertoire interspersed with the recollections of English travelers on the Grand Tour), and concert performances of Marco Da Gagliano’s La Dafne, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and Scarlatti’s youthful masterpiece presented here, have established the ensemble as a driving force on the Canadian early music scene.

Sacred motets for 1-6 voices published in Venice before, during, and after the plague of 1630, featuring Capella Intima and the Gallery Players of Niagara.

Sacred motets for 1-6 voices published in Venice before, during, and after the plague of 1630, featuring Capella Intima and the Gallery Players of Niagara.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This selection is accompanied by a bonus CD, containing an elaborate discussion on the works presented here, titled "Beyond the Notes."