Classical Music

This new release from Musiques Suisses includes the three string quartets by composer Friedrich Theodor Froehlich. The Beethoven Quartet is premiering his works on this recording. Froehlich was a Swiss composer who wrote many orchestral works, chamber and piano music, as well as vocal works. The Beethoven Quartet was founded in 2006 in Beethoven's hometown of Bonn and are based in Basel today. Matyas Bartha and Laurentius Bonitz play violin, Vahagn Aristakesyan plays viola, and Carlos Conrad plays violoncello.

• First recording of the works of 17th century composer Carlo Donato Cossoni • Features the Kesselberg Ensemble with Ilze Grudule • Booklet with extensive English texts about composer and his works

The Grammont Selection for the year 2014

The four men on this ‘Swiss songs after 1900’ CD - Emil Frey (1889-1946), Walter Lang (1896-1966), Marcel Sulzberger (1876-1941) and Max Zehnder (1901-72) - can stand for a whole generation of Swiss composers who practiced varying forms of Modernism, but succumbed to long-term obscurity. Marcel Sulzberger must be regarded as the first-ever Swiss to compose atonal music. His works are occasionally reminiscent of the music of Arnold Schoenberg, but his main influence always remained Debussy. Edward Rushton is an internationally active composer, song accompanist and chamber musician.

Classical Music

Beat Furrer’s art of composition is like an exploration of fundamental principles, an exploration that is made accessible in the work and through the act of hearing it. Aggregate states in sound, musical processes, the nature of time itself and the contrast between the subject and the world are the topics of his works – though they are at the same time expressive snapshots of the moment. This portrait CD with works by Beat Furrer from 1991-2011 affords a twenty-year overview of his works. Aer, …cold and calm and moving, and Lied belong to a group of works that he wrote after completing his first opera Die Blinden (1989). Auf tönernen füssen (2001) after Friederike Mayröcker belongs to the time when he wrote his music theatre piece Begehren, while Studie, for piano (2011) was composed most recently, shortly after his music theatre work Wüstenbuch.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The Swiss musician See Siang Wong presents a compendium of new Swiss piano music in the form of works composed for him from 2001-04. Born in Holland in 1979, the Neue Z�rcher Zeitung described pianist See Siang Wong as a "subtle sound painter". He made his debut with the Dutch Radio Orchestra at age 12 and has since performed concerts in renowned houses throughout Europe, Asia, Central and South America and the Middle East. In addition to his interest in new music, he has also received high praise from the trade press for his solo CDs of works by Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, Schumann, and Beethoven.

Classical Music

This new release is a sampling of the 2015 Festival Alpentone. The 2014 Festival Alpentone had fifty concerts in three days, and was attended by an intrigued audience, and was praised by the highly educated attendees.

Music is rightly regarded as an especially immaterial art. + And yet there is something along the lines of a materiality of music. + Sounds can comprise various aggregate states, and we can differentiate them according to their sensual value. + This dimension, the haptic aspect of music and the composer’s conscious design decisions, plays a major role in contemporary music. + It is just these possibilities and connections that make the music of Swiss composer David Philip Hefti (b. 1975), here focused on his chamber works, unmistakable while at the same time a sensual experience for the listeners.

Classical Music