The sound of the unusual combination of clarinet, viol and piano fascinated many great composers. The merger of dark, noble and sensual tones with brilliant, virtuosic and melodic expression allows this ensemble to produce varied and diverse soundscapes and to abduct the listener into unusual lyrical spheres. Konstantin Selheim is among the most sought-after instrumentalists of his generation. After studying violin at Hannover University of Music and Theater, in 1996 he began viola studies with Volker Worliizsch and Hartmut Rohde. He has been strongly influenced by Tabea Zimmermann, Rainer Moog, and Yuri Bashmet. The pianist Katharina Sellheim shows a remarkable musical versatility. She gets engaged as a soloist, chamber musician, and accompanist regularly. She gives recitals in the important musical centers of Europe, such as Vienna Berlin, and Paris, as well as cities worldwide. Hungarian-born Lazlo Kuti grew up in a musical family and began playing in a brass ensemble as a child. He went on to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. He is a winner of the Concertino Praga International Music Competition, and performed as a young soloist in Prague, Vienna, Graz, and Japan.

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Lutz-Werner Hesse studied School Music and Composition with Günter Fork and Jürg Baur at the Cologne Academy of Music as well as Musicology, Latin Philology and Ancient History at the University of Cologne. Since 1984 he has been a full-time lecturer, now Professor and Managing Director at the Wuppertal campus of the HfMT Cologne. From 1997 to 2011 he was chairman of the “Bergische Gesellschaft für Neue Musik“, and since 2004 he has been chairman of the “Konzertgesellschaft Wuppertal“, the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra sponsorship association. The main focus of Hesse‘s compositional work is on chamber music and orchestral works. Hesse has received numerous commissions for various orchestras in Germany and has worked for important soloists (including Marie-Luise Neunecker, horn and Ulrike-Anima Mathé, violin). His most successful work to date is the composition “Vita di San Francesco – eleven stations from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi” for organ and thirteen gongs, which has now been performed well over eighty times. Hesse‘s works have been performed in many European countries, but also in the United States of America and Japan. The WDR, SR and SWR radio stations produced his works or recorded them at concerts. Albums with works by the composer have been released on the labels “col legno“, EMG classical, Musicaphon and Ars Produktion.

When a CD bears the title 'Fantasia' for Viol and Piano, it is perhaps surprising that no less than two of the four recorded works correspond to the clearly defined form of the sonata. However, fantasia is not the designation of a musical genre, but rather expresses a basic intellectual attitude, a program. This does not mean that it is 'program music' in the proper sense - none of the four works display clear content-related links to a given program. Yet while listening one can easily get the impression that stories are being told. Not stories with a heroine or hero, or victors and losers, but atmospheric and emotional stories. The dark, soft sound of the viol is a wonderful transport medium for this.

Haydn, J.: Symphony No. 45 / Mozart, W.A.: Serenade No. 9 /

Mozart: Complete Works For Two Pianos

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This new release showcases the stylistic similarities and differences between two powerhouse composers- Gustav Mahler, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 (Adagio) is paired with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. The National Philharmonic Minsk was founded in 1930 and is one of Russia’s most renowned orchestras. As one of only three orchestras the National Philharmonic Minsk beared the honorary title “Academic Orchestra” during the Soviet Government. The repertoire of the 120 musicians includes not only important works of the Classic and Romantic periods, but also compositions by contemporary Russian composers and, in collaboration with the Philharmonic Chorus, the great works of the chorale literature.

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.

Merk: 20 Etudes for cello solo, Op. 11 (ed. M. Rummel)

John Blow, who was to give service to five monarchs, was born into a humble family in Nottinghamshire, presumably at Newark, sometime within a month of the beheading of King Charles I. He was a music scholar at the Magnus Song School in Newark before becoming a chorister in the Chapel Royal. There, under the tutelage of Henry Cooke, his colleagues included Pelham Humfrey, Robert Smith, William Turner and Michael Wise - all of whom achieved significant distinction in their later careers. Blow showed considerable promise as a composer; several of his anthems were included in the chapel repertory. Blow became an organ pupil of Christopher Gibbons before his first appointment at Westminster Abbey at the age of nineteen and he was made Musician for the Virginals to the King a year later. From 1674 until his death, he was Master of the Children at the Chapel Royal. In 1679 he transferred his office at Westminster Abbey to his pupil Henry Purcell, with whom he shared a close professional relationship and lifelong friendship. He took over the post again after Purcell’s untimely death in 1695, and held several other important positions in London: as Master of the Choristers of St Paul’s Cathedral and appointments at court. He continued to serve as Abbey organist until his death. Blow stands out as the dominant figure among the group of London-based musicians whose work is associated with the royal court beginning around 1650, and which assimilated first Italian, and then later elements of French influence. Among the new school of composers were Blow’s pupils Jeremiah Clarke and William Croft, and, of course, the towering musician of the age - Henry Purcell.

Beethoven, L. Van: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 and 4

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From the four Books of Songs that appeared between 1597 and 1612, Hanna Thyssen and Susanne Peuker ('Fortune's Musicke') selected 15 of Dowland's most beautiful songs, weaving them together with several lute pieces into an atmospheric Dowland homage. It documents his great compositional mastery, and his instinct for unpretentious melodies and subtle text settings.

Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, who appeared as “W. A. Mozart Son” or “W. A. Mozart fils”, possibly was trained as a pianist from 1795 on, but at the latest from 1798. In addition, he received composition lessons from Haydn’s favorite student Sigismund Neukomm and from Johann Georg Vogler. In 1803 his mother wrote to the Offenbach publisher André: “He composes small sonatas and variations for my festive days.“ Following his public debut on April 8, 1805, Mozart‘s youngest son perfected his piano playing with Johann Nepomuk Hummel and learned about composition with Johann Georg Albrechtsberger and Antonio Salieri. He left Vienna, the city of his birth, in 1808 and went to Galicia, which at that time belonged to the Habsburg Empire (today the region is divided between the territories of Poland and Ukraine). After two jobs as a piano teacher for Polish aristocrats in the Galician province, he moved to the state capital Lviv (now Lviv) in 1813. Here he stayed - apart from a concert tour of several years and a few short trips in 1818 - until 1838, devoted himself to extensive teaching and conducted a choir between 1826 and 1829. Mozart spent his last years in Vienna, where he increasingly appeared as a pianist. Mozart’s work primarily includes piano solo music and piano-accompanied vocal music. The works gathered on this album and on the two previous albums in this series provide an overview of the former. It is interesting to see how in one of the main works in this recording, the Sonata op.10, which was composed in 1807, he did not deal with the sonata form that his father had further developed, but with the thematic and harmonious construction principles of the Mannheim School.

Mirjam Schröder has put together magical and dreamy stories for harp for this al-bum. She found what she was looking for primarily in the French region. In a fascinating variety, this selection shows how mystical, sometimes even quirky, romantic and modern harp music found its place in a wide variety of stylistic forms and continues to do so until today. And that’s actually not surprising, because “the harp has always had a magical aura. From Apollon‘s Lyra to the thousand wonderful sounds of the glissando of the modern harp, the magic of the instrument has prevailed in people of all nations and ages” (Marcel Tournier in “La Harpe - Histoire de la harpe à travers le monde”).

Hertel‘s father Johann Christian was a famous gambist and, until its dissolution in 1741, concertmaster of the Eisenacher Hofkapelle. On the recommendation of Franz Benda, he later got a job as concert master at the court of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. His son Johann Wilhelm received music lessons from the Eisenach Bach student Johann Heinrich Heil at a very early age and accompanied his father at the age of twelve as a harpsichord player on his concert tours. The years 1747 and 1748 served to perfect his education, this time in Berlin. There he had contact with the brothers Benda, Carl Heinrich Graun and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and continued to maintain these contacts with the Berlin school. In 1752 Hertel became court composer at the Fürstenhof in Schwerin. In 1767 the court chapel was moved to Ludwigslust, where Hertel taught the children of the princely family and supplied the court with compositions. With the selection of works presented at this album, a highly interesting composer is experiencing a revival and at the same time, thanks to extensive introductions in the booklet, the release offers an insight into the musical life of a typical court in the German province in the second half of the 18th Century.

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The Hamburg composer Hermann Behn (1859-1927) bore, like numerous other composers of that time, the hard fate of Wagner’s succession. After he had largely ended his compositional activities around 1883, he developed another great talent, i.e., the transference of compositional structures and the musical content of symphonic works by other composers to two pianists on two pianos. Here he broke new ground exactly at the time as the circus of excessive virtuoso opera rhapsodies of the super virtuosos collapsed. Through the use of two instruments and the development of a completely new tonal arrangement, Hermann Behn succeeded in overcoming the limits of the piano. If his arrangement of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony for two instruments turned out more or less traditional, in that the substance of the score was divided up, well-playable, between four hands, then an entirely new dimension of the rendition of symphonic music on the piano began, after Behn’s extensive studies of individual works, primarily overtures from various epochs, with the turn to Richard Wagner. The undoubtedly most extensive project ever realized in the area of transcriptions for piano, the “Fifty Symphonic Movements from Richard Wagner’s Master Dramas,” was commenced in 1914. Behn found his very personal symphonic sound already in the arrangement of the first fragments of the “Ring of the Nibelung”. To this end, he skillfully employed the doubling of chord progressions and nearly absurdly wide spans in the left hand, which could only be performed in “broken” style, i.e., by means of the rapid arpeggiation of the notes from bottom to top. In this way, an entirely intended inexactness in the congruence between the two players was inevitably produced, which – with ample use of the pedal – leads to an until then unheard-of tonal richness.

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