This album features violinist Friederike Starkloff, who won second place in the 7th International Leopold Mozart Competition in 2009 and includes the sonatas that earned her that prize. Previous awards include the Grand Prize at the international competition Violin in Dresden in 2008, first prize in the Ludwig Spohr International Violin Competition in 2006, first prize at Frederica Starkloff "International Young violinist Miroslaw Lawrynowicz Meeting" in 2005 and a special prize for the best youngest participant at the International Competition Marschner Hinterzarten, also in 2005, among others.

Classical Music

The new collaboration between OehmsClassics and Christoph Spering with the Chorus Musicus Cologne and Das Neue Orchester also resulted in a new encounter with a veteran artist of our label: Thomas E. Bauer. Label director Dieter Oehms stated, briefly and succinctly, that he had never before in his life heard the cantata Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen performed as urgently as in the interpretation of Bauer.

Maia Cabeza is the 2013 winner of the prestigious Leopold Mozart International Violin Compeititon in Ausburg. This competition is named after the father of famed composer WA Mozart. Leopold published his "Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing" in 1756. In the spirit of Mozart, Cabeza has included Mozart's Sonate fur Violine und Klavier in D-Dur, KV 306, as well as his Adagio E-Dur, KV 261 and Rondo C-Dur KV 373. Paired with the Mozart works are pieces by Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)

Albrecht Menzel (b. 1992) received his first violin instruction at age 4 and made his solo debut, age 13, at the Dresden Music Festival. Trained by renowned violin pedagogue Professor Boris Kuschnir, he now studies with Professor Julian Rachlin at the Vienna Conservatory University. He has meanwhile won numerous national and international music competition prizes and received a stipend from the J�rgen Ponto Foundation, amongst others. He has selected a Schumann/Ernst program for his first OehmsClassics CD release and chosen a partner far from unknown at Oehms: Amir Katz.

Classical Music

Cellist Charles-Antoine Duflot (b. 1986) has won numerous prizes since 1999, including first prizes at the U.F.A.M. Competition in Paris, the 2009 Int’l J&A Beare Solo Bach Competition in London, the 2010 Int’l Beethoven Competition in Hradec-nad-Moravici and the 2011 Possehl Music Prize in Lübeck. In May 2013 he won first prize at the violoncello competition “Ton und Erklärung – Werkvermittlung in Musik und Wort” (Tone and Explanation – Work Mediation in Music and Words) in Hanover. This CD, featuring works by Ortiz (d. 1570), Mundry (b. 1963), Bach and Poulenc, is the result of that prize.

OehmsClassics now releases the recording of this controversial production of Doktor Faust by Nicolas Brieger made in 2008 just in time for the Munich Opera Festival. The title role is sung by Wolfang Koch, who will sing Wotan this year at Bayreuth in the Jubilee Ring Cycle. The singer can be assured of an appropriate portion of attention, and the new CD could hardly appear at a more favorable time.

The 150th birthday of Richard Strauss will be celebrated next year. On this occasion OehmsClassics is initiating a series with the tone poems of Richard Strauss with the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra and General Music Director, Sebastian Weigle. The first of these is Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life) which was premiered in 1899 by this very same orchestra under the direction of the composer. The CD is supplemented by the less frequently performed MacBeth.

OehmsClassics presents the Jubilee Concert “250th Anniversary of the Birth of Simon Mayr”, made in June 2013 in Ingolstadt (Bavaria), Germany. + The performance was of Mayr’s opera Ginevra di Scozia, a Scotland saga that marked an important step in the transition towards romantic Italian opera. + The singers, together with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, perform under the musical direction of George Petrou. + This is the fifth Mayr opera recording to grace the OehmsClassics catalog.

This year's Christmas CD from OehmsClassics presents the baroque specialist par excellence: Michael Hofstetter. With the Neumeyer Consort and the Ensemble Barock Vokal of Mainz, he has recorded the great and famous choruses from Handel's Messiah. As always with Hofstetter, the result is phenomenal and each tiny sonic nuance is meticulously worked out in the greatest detail.

Maximilian Schmitt has already been compared to many great models; in this new recording from OehmsClassics, he proves once again how ideally suited his voice is and how magnificently Franz Schubert can sound. At the piano is the vocal accompanist of our age, Gerold Huber.

This Brahms lieder recital by the Dresden-born baritone Martin Hensel is highlighted by the finely wrought nine song “Lieder und Gesänge”, op. 32 and the somber Four Last Songs, op, 121, along with several assorted songs at the conclusion. Brahms set Georg Daumer’s words, one of two featured poets in the op. 32, to music more often than any other. The Swiss-born Pianist Hedayet Djeddikar is Mr. Hensel’s able and award-winning accompanist on this recording.

An all-Beethoven recital - three cornerstones of the repertoire. Alexej Gorlatch simultaneous won the audience prize and six more special prizes at the International ARD Music Competition in 2011. Remarkably, within just six years prior, he won first prizes at nine important international piano competitions. The present recording was made in July 2013 in Munich. 'Awe-inspiringly confident and assured... one of those players who can take you into area that others just can't reach'.

Even though Tchaikovsky believed that he had "written himself out" after his Fourth Symphony, he composed his Fifth within a few weeks. The world premiere took place in 1888 under the composer's direction in St. Petersburg. It was only moderately successful, but today the Fifth is one of Tchaikovsky's most popular works.