In summer 2013 Roman Brogli-Sacher ended his employment in L�beck as general music director and opera director. For more than 12 years he had shaped the musical life of L�beck and formed the L�beck orchestra into a widely respected ensemble. During his time as opera director, the major project "Wagner meets Mann", in which one of the best ring productions over the recent years took place in collaboration with the director Anthony Pilavachi. The video version of this production was released on Musicaphon and was awarded the annual German Record Critics' Award and the ECHO Classic 2012. Here, on this release, the L�beck orchestra under the direction of Brogli-Sacher once again shows the capability and the artistic demands of this ensemble very clearly with a colorful program.

SPECTRUM SAXOFONIS

On his debut album, Stefan Koim presents compositions from the Baroque to modern times, the connecting element of which is a creative adaptation of Spanish music traditions - an adaptation that could take on different forms in individual cases: while in Johann Sebastian Bach‘s Ciaccona from the 2nd violin partita Spanish reference points on a formal level are remarkable - the Ciaccona is originally a Spanish folk dance - folkloric elements for the Spanish composers Fernando Sor, Manuel de Falla and Joaquín Rodrigo represent an important aspect of their respective personal styles. And the French composer Tristan Murail finally realized his sound ideas on the guitar, using playing techniques from Spanish flamenco music in his work Tellur. It is remarkable that the reception of elements of Spanish music happened in all cases either via France or in direct engagement with the influences of French music or the music of French composers: Bach, for example, based his composition on a French form model of the Ciaccona, Sor was just spending the most productive years of his life in the center of French music life, in Paris. De Falla, in turn, dedicated his work to the French composer Claude Debussy and Rodrigo, as well as Mu-rail, developed their personal styles in dealing with current trends in French musical life. With this mixture of Spanish and French elements, the compositions on this album once again point to the close connection between the various musical styles in Europe, even across national borders.

Danzi, F.: Flute Chamber Music

Johann Schop and his Contemporaries

What moved a Russian composer with a deep-seated antipathy to England and the English to write music for the stage works of the most English of playwrights? It is difficult to say exactly what it was about Shakespeare that Tchaikovsky found so fascinating, but it would certainly be a rewarding subject for study from the viewpoint of depth psychology. Undoubtedly the subtle expressivity with which the poet endowed his figures, the portrayal of their psychologically motivated actions, and their compulsive weaving together of the dramatically intensified and often fundamentally contingent threads of the plot appealed to the rather introspective Tchaikovsky. The present release features the State Philharmonic Orchestra Minsk performing Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy Overtures according to Shakespeare.

The great era of melodrama, the combination of recitation and piano accompaniment, was over after 1900. But there are artists who still devote themselves to melodrama - a melodrama in a new way. It is not about emotion and tears, not about increasing the sentimentality as infinitely as possible, but about a musical emphasis and deepening of the text, about a non-textual mirror of what is said in the word and what is interpreted, interpreted in the sound. The duo pianoworte has been dealing with this kind of melodrama for many years - with such success that meanwhile quite a few composers, inspired by the fine art of reciting actor Helmut Thiele and pianist Bernd-Christian Schulze, have written new works in this genre. In these works a lot of humor flashes again and again, which is due to both the literary templates and the settings. This album contains four cycles: “Galgenlieder“ by Christian Morgenstern in the setting by Christoph J. Keller, excerpts from the style exercises “Autobus S“ by Raymond Queneau in the setting by Hans-Wilhelm Plate, the “Tiergebete“ by Frieder Meschwitz and six Poems from “Critique of the Heart“ by Wilhelm Busch, composed by Wolfgang Gabriel. This selection clearly shows that Schulze and Thiele have completely omitted the melodramatic of the ballad in this project, which sounds often involuntarily comical to today‘s ears. Instead, they have entered the field of little wisdom.

The audience who first heard the E minor symphony in Meiningen on October 25, 1885 was enthusiastic. It was to be another great success for the composer, who, since Wagner’s death in 1883, has been considered unchallenged - if not uncontested - as the first among living composers. Similar to the third symphony, Brahms’ fourth was written during summer: in 1884 and 1885 Brahms stayed in Mürzzuschlag - located in northeastern Styria between Vienna and Graz - and composed. “But there are a few entr’actes - what is commonly called a symphony,” Brahms told the conductor Hans von Bülow in an ironically understatement in early September 1885. It is extremely questionable whether one can draw conclusions about cross-sentence relationships from this remark; in fact - unlike his third symphony - there are no superficial motivic dependencies between the movements. - Bernd Alois Zimmermann left a comparatively manageable musical oeuvre and has nevertheless become a key figure in the generation of composers after the Second World War. Above all, the “Requiem for a young poet” from 1969 or the opera “The Soldiers” (premiered in 1965), which was sometimes considered unplayable, established the fame of the composer, who voluntarily retired in 1970. Many of the modern typesetting techniques and the sometimes experimental attempts to structure the sound material using new ordering principles may also be visible in his works: twelve-tone compositions, serial processes, the use of electronic music, but also historical typesetting techniques. Zimmermann also had a great bent towards jazz: in his trumpet concerto, which was commissioned by the Norddeutscher Rundfunk in 1954 and premiered one year later in Hamburg by the soloist Adolf Scherbaum, he combined jazz elements with the form of the soloist concerto for the first time.

PIANO CHAMBER MUSIC

Again and again, attempts were made to uncover aspects of a hidden topic in Brahms‘ suddenly successful 3rd Symphony. The Brahms biographer Max Kalbeck saw the composer‘s preoccupation with Faust material at work in the middle movements and took the view to see in the symphony a patriotic-romantic heroic birth of the artist, which culminated in a big celebration at the Niederwald monument (last movement). The Germania memorial was completed in 1883 and Brahms even visited it during his summer stay in Wiesbaden, but a programmatic connection to the symphony remains exclusively speculative. We know little of Brahms himself about the genesis, he was generally reluctant to comment on unfinished compositions and he seemed particularly silent about this work. - The “Sinfonia concertante” is an example of Mozart‘s way of dealing with experiences while traveling. There is no direct evidence of it‘s creation. While he was absent on April 5, 1778, Mozart mentioned in his letter to his father that he would “make a symphony concertante,“ but the casting mentioned refers to a different composition. A passage from the French Journal de Musique shows how popular this genre was: One appreciates the „special kind of concert, where all the instruments shine in their time, tease and answer each other, argue and reconcile“. Mozart was unable to have a composition of this kind put on the program of the Concerts spirituels. With great probability Mozart then composed the large “Sinfonia concertant” for violin and viola, which was and later very popular in Salzburg. Here he was able to publicize the new genre and at the same time commit himself to a Salzburg tradition in the choice of the two solo instruments.

BENNETT, R.R.: Impromptus / Guitar Sonata / WALTON, W.: 5 Ba

Tanguisimo (Argentinian Guitar Music)

Franz Xaver Mozart was born the sixth child of Constanze and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on September 21, 1791 in Vienna. His father died a few months later. Franz Xaver Mozart looked very much like his father, and Constanze called him Wolfgang. His works were published throughout his life under the name “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, son, fils or figlio“. Constanze recognized the musical talent of her youngest son early on. She had him trained with the most important teachers, among them Salieri and Albrechtsberger, who, interestingly enough, were also Beethoven‘s teachers. Franz Xaver studied piano playing with Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a former student of his father. The first composition published was the Quartet in G Minor, 1805, which was created two years earlier. However, his compositions did not attract as much attention as his piano playing. From 1819 to 1821 Franz Xaver undertook extensive concert tours through German-speaking Europe, Denmark, Russia and Italy. For the pianist Mozart, variations were an ideal form to demonstrate his virtuosity, and they could also be used excellently in teaching. An instrument from the Beurmann Collection in Hamburg was used for these recordings: The fortepiano by Johann Baptist Streicher (1863).

Bach, J.S.: Geschwinde, Ihr Wirbelnden Winde / Oboe D'Amore

GUITARMUSIC OF THE BAROQUE ERA