When people speak of Georg Kreisler (1922-2011), a modern-day Schubert in creativity terms, the conversation almost inevitably turns to his superbly well-crafted, exquisite texts. The content may be as strange, nasty, gaga or melancholic as can be imagined, but one can only listen raptly to the content clothed in this elegant, artistic and frequently surprising linguistic apparel. Shortly before his passing, The Singphoniker approached Mr. Kreisler about greenlighting an project to arrange a full album of his work, to which he acceded, with the result being this new CD of Kreisler songs.

"This is a convenient recital, presenting—unusually, it turns out, in a single program—the clarinet-and-piano works of Debussy and his contemporary Florent Schmitt, plus those of the demi-Six Honegger, Milhaud, and Poulenc (the other three were Auric, Durey, and Tailleferre), who were more or less a generation younger. Despite a name that sounds as German as, say, “John Barbirolli,” clarinetist Ralph Manno is a native German, making the program all the more atypical. This disc follows soon after Oehms’s release of a two-CD set featuring Manno and Alfredo Perl in music of Brahms; both that and the present disc, however, turn out to be reissues of 1995 recordings.

Manno’s performance of Debussy’s Rhapsodie (there never was a deuxième) is languorous at first, then fluid and dynamic as the music demands. His sound, appropriately international rather than characteristically German, is attractive and well focused, and his technique and control are impressive. The aptly named Petite pièce, written as a sight-reading exercise, is smooth and expressive.

The Lorraine-born Florent Schmitt (1870–1958) should be better known; he is remembered today mostly for the extravagant, almost expressionistic La Tragédie de Salomé. The present Andantino, by contrast, is brief, modest, and perhaps even a bit sentimental...

If the composers who made up Les Six had any musical trait in common (and Milhaud, for one, denied that they did), it is a quintessentially French irreverence, even impudence. (Two of the movements of Milhaud’s sonatine are marked Très rude.) The Honegger and Milhaud sonatines were both composed in the 1920s; the former is an aphoristic work in three movements lasting only six minutes all together; Manno plays with impressive command here... The late, folksy Duo Concertant is an attractive example of Milhaud’s Provençal style; the slight Caprice, running under two minutes, serves as a sort of encore...this disc can be recommended for its overview of the core French clarinet recital repertoire."

FANFARE: Richard A. Kaplan

This illustrious fifteen disc set packs together some of the most famous and best loved operettas to have ever graced a stage. These tracks were all recorded at the Morbisch Lake Festival between 1996 and 2015. Present day opera stars sing the leading roles, including Martina Serafin, Silvana Dussman, and Dagmar Schellenberger. Since 1957 the Morbisch Lake Festival has been drawing listeners to its operettas and musicals. Held at the Neusiedler See National Park, the music is draped against the natural background of Lake Neusiedl. Herbert Alsen began the festival, where 1200 audience members watched the premiere of “The Gypsy Baron.” The festival has grown over the last half century and now boasts 220,000 visitors.

The 13 Barcarolles of Fauré, composed over the course of almost four decades (1882-1921), are highly representative of his piano oeuvre and are considered his most characteristic works. They reflect his separation from the romantic idiom of Chopin and Mendelssohn, in particular, and his progress towards an independent musical language in which he achieved a successful harmonious reconciliation between tradition and the modernism that was emerging at the time. Michael Endres recorded these pieces for OehmsClassics at WDR in Cologne in May 2017. The German pianist performs worldwide as a soloist and chamber music partner. He gained a Master’s degree at the Juilliard School in New York under Jacob Lateiner and studied with Peter Feuchtwanger in London. He has won several prestigious prizes at festivals and competitions, and his discography consists of 29 albums which have also been awarded.

Elisabeth Brauss was born in 1995 in Honnover. She was admitted to the piano class of Dr. Elena Levit at the age of five and studied from 2007 to 2010 at the “Institut zur Fruhforderung musikalisch Hochbegabter” (Institute for the Early Furtherance of the Highly Gifted) of the Academy of Music, Theatre and Media in Hannover. She studied from 2008 to 2010 in Hannover in the piano classes of Dr. Elena Levit and Prof. Matti Raekallio; she has been studying at the HMTMH in the piano class of Professor Bernd Goetzke since 2010. Elisabeth makes regular guest appearances at the Laeisz-Halle in Hamburg, the Konzerthaus in Berlin, the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, and the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival. In January 2015 Elisabeth Brauss won first prize at the competition “Ton und Erklärung” in Frankfurt and performed with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in the finale. This prize is awarded annually by the Cultural Society of the German Economy in BDI; OehmsClassics also presents the prize winner album each year. The 2015 prize winner obviously has a great career before her.

-----

REVIEW:

The maturity and sophistication of her thoughtful interpretations would be the pride of any pianist twice her age. It is rare to encounter the degree of instrumental mastery wed to musical depth and sensitivity in one so young. Her exhilarating Beethoven is so thoroughly integrated that each movement is emotionally and spiritually amplified by what has gone before. Her original and unaffected Chopin-playing is fresh and a joy to listen to.

– Gramophone

COLORS OF THE FRENCH HORN • Szabolcs Zempléni (hn); Péter Nagy (pn) • OC 789 (64:46)

R. STRAUSS Andante. SCHUMANN 3 Romances. ROSSINI Prelude, Theme, and Variations. FRANCAIX Divertimento. POULENC Elegy. V. D. KIRCHNER 3 Poemi

"Thirty-year-old Hungarian-born Szabolcs Zempléni is a multi-prize winner, including at the prestigious ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 2005. It is not hard to understand why. He plays the instrument with seemingly the greatest of ease, he is a fine musician, and he imbues each work on his recital with stylish finesse. His program consists mostly of pieces well known to horn players. The exception is the Tre Poemi by Volker David Kirchner (b.1942): hauntingly beautiful, often delicate, sometimes disturbing explorations of horn tones—some played open, some muted—blown into the open grand piano, resulting in a fascinating array of echo effects and resonances."

FANFARE: Robert Markow

Hungarian hornist Szabolcs Zempleni, has performed with the Bamberger Symphoniker. He has won many European awards and brings forth a beautiful lyric tone, achieving dark velvety colors in the lower range and full, bright tones in the upper range, with a purity that avoids excessive vibrato. Accompanist Peter Nagy plays with sensitivity and the piano tone on this CD has clarity and roundness, blending beautifully with the horn.

- Greg La Traille, ArkivMusic.com

"Szabolcs Zempléni was standing on stage with such kind naivety, that we might think that blowing a horn is not such a big deal. But it is a big deal. Especially the way he does it. The sound of his horn is caressing our ears; watching and listening are both an experience."

- Momus Musikportal

Chicaquicha – this is the name of the indigenous peoples who used to live in the area where today’s city of Zipaquirá, Colombia is, and where Andres Villamil was born in 1976. He studied classical guitar with Gentil Montaña, Sonia Diaz and Roberto Aussel at the ALAC music academy and the Universidad Nacional conservatory, both in Bogotá, as well as at the Academy of Music and Dance in Cologne. In 1998 he won First Prize as soloist in the IDCT competition “Intérpretes del Próximo Milenio” in Bogotá. In 2004, a First Prize at the international “Voice and Guitar” competition with the Duo Ymaya in Germany followed. In addition to his classical training, Andres Villamil concentrates on the music of his home continent, South America. This program, his debut CD, pays homage to the music of his country. He selected original compositions for guitar as well as his own arrangements of Colombian songs and instrumental pieces. The program ends with four of his own works.

The premiere von L'Orontea took place in 1656 in Innsbruck at the court of Archduke Ferdinand Karl, grandson of Duke Ferdinand of Tuscany, who at that time was the patron of the first attempts of the art form of opera in Florence. Alongside Francesco Cavalli's opera "La Giasone", "L'Orontea" went down in history as the most successful opera of the late 17th century. On the occasion of the premiere in Frankfurt, the following could be read in Deutschlandradio Kultur: "It is a scenic production that will remain in one's memory - not because the production in Frankfurt is so shameless and trashy. Instead, it reminds us of why Antonio Cesti's opera "L'Orontea" once belonged to the most beloved of all stage works. And it is well worth taking a look into the orchestra pit at this performance."

Bach’s The Art of Fugue offers us profoundly sensual music, magnificent, poetic, colorful, thrilling, meditative, temperamental, intended for the ears of all times and deeply human.” That’s how the quartett itself characterizes Bach’s masterpiece and opposes Stefano Pierini’s Cantai un tempo (dopo una lettura di Monteverdi) to the magnum opus which was especially composed for the delian::quartett. The namesake of the delian::quartett is the Greek god Apollo who was worshipped as god of the fine arts, the muses and especially music, and also named Delian after his place of birth, the island of Delos. “What is outstanding about this Quartet”, stated the Hessian Broadcasting Company in October 2008, “is, firstly, the absolutely vibrant, personal coloring of their interpretations and the ability to also spontaneously react with interest to what the public shows, to absorb their vibrations and energies and transform them into music. This makes every concert a unique experience.”

The celebrated Bruckner cycle by the Hamburg Philharmonic under Simone Young saw its completion during the 2014–15 season. On 30 August 2014, this mature, practiced Brucknerian orchestra recorded Bruckner’s radiant Seventh Symphony in the Laeiszhalle, heard live on this CD. With the beauty of its themes and its moving homage to Bruckner‘s great, intimidating model, Wagner, this Symphony - ranking among the composer’s finest orchestral statements - offers a particularly impressive listening experience.

REVIEWS:

The most apposite word I can apply to Simone Young's approach to Bruckner is 'fluidity.' She allows the lyrical melodies of the first two movements to unfold naturally and with a good sense of structural cohesion.

-- BBC Music Magazine

I enjoyed this performance very much. I also liked the sound on this SACD which has presence and definition. There’s a good front-to-back perspective and all sections of the orchestra have been well served by the engineers. In particular the brass, so important in Bruckner’s sound-world, register very satisfyingly yet never excessively.

-- MusicWeb International

This is one of those performances where you feel from the opening phrases that everything is just right. The music soars, yet has all the heft and depth one could want. Orchestral balances are excellent… Above all, the spirit of Bruckner, often felt in the concert hall but so elusive in recordings, is present. This is a glorious Bruckner Seventh.

-- Fanfare

Classical Music

"I am more a friend of live performances and don’t believe that much in studio recordings,” commented Simone Young in an interview with Park Avenue magazine. “Our CDs are therefore recordings of live concerts. This was demonstrated with the Hamburg Philharmonic: that is an orchestra with which I can make a statement.”

The press reacted with enthusiastic reviews of the first CD out of Hamburg (Bruckner’s Second Symphony, Original Version of 1872): “More analytical than her role-model Daniel Barenboim, but more impulsive than the unforgettable Günter Wand, Simone Young awakes the works of Bruckner’s early years to orchestral life.” (KulturSPIEGEL)

Now, following the fulminate success of the first CD comes Volume 2 with the Third Symphony as a live recording, also in its original version (1873), with the unmistakable acoustics of the Hamburger Musikhalle.

REVIEWS:

There are at least four versions of Anton Bruckner's 2nd Symphony; the last one was written in 1892. Frequently, however – as on this recording – the original version is preferred; as usual with Bruckner, this version of 1872 is bolder and longer. Already very early on, the composer changed the order of movements in this work, which was felt by many to be a response to the dramaturgy of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The Scherzo, as the second movement, has changed places with the ensuing Adagio. In the later version, he also almost completely eliminated the most striking characteristic of this creation, probably due to the urging of his friends and supporters, especially Johann Herbeck: eight of the nine famous tutti rests in the first movement disappear completely. Another special characteristic of the original version is the solo horn passage in the Adagio, written in an extremely difficult register for the instruments of that time – but also of moving beauty.

Walter Braunfels regarded himself as a late-romantic, traditional composer in succession to Berlioz, Wagner and Bruckner. During the period of the Thrid Reich, he was dismissed from his positions as a "half Jew" and his works were banned from performance. After the Second World War, representatives of the musical avant-garde found Braunfel's style no longer contemporary, which is why he gradually became forgotten. His entire oeuvre has been enjoying a wonderful Renaissance since the 1990's, however, and is now being enthusiastically rediscovered by the international musical world.

After his 1920s opera The Birds, Walter Braunfels shot into stardom and enjoyed a highly successful career. Braunfels’ versatile catalog of compositions includes a great deal of choral works, orchestral works, operas, Lieder, chamber music, and piano works. He was frequently praised as a cosmopolitan representative of new music, and the most highly regarded conductors of the era frequently performed his music. Branfels himself regarded his compositional style as traditional late-Romanticism, and saw himself a successor to Wagner, Bruckner, and Berlioz. These beautiful orchestral songs are sung by some of the most respected voices of our time, including Valentina Farcas and Michael Volle.