Dario Salvi's acclaimed survey of overtures by Auber continues with Volume 7. The Janacek Philharmonic Ostrava who were the featured orchestra on Volume 5 (8.574335) return to the series in a volume that includes several world premiere recordings.

REVIEW:

Conductor Dario Salvi is the creative force behind these recordings. All his albums maintain a high standard of performance. And all benefit from innovative programming. The Janacek Philharmonic Ostrava is in fine form here. Under Salvi’s direction, they play with a lighthearted elegance fitting the fairy operas. And they can also deliver some dramatic thundering when necessary.

Including additional music from the operas has slowed Salvi’s traversal of the overtures. But these recordings are about the journey, not the destination. These ballets and incidental music show Auber’s genius. His orchestrations set the stage and tell the story — in music, not words. Another fine addition to this edition.

— WTJU-FM (Ralph Graves)

'Joseph Haydn not only liked surprising his audiences, he also enjoyed a laugh', writes Christian Moritz-Bauer in the introduction to this sixteenth volume of the Haydn2032 complete recording of the symphonies. Take, for instance, the false conclusion of Symphony No. 90, composed in 1788: the music seems to have reached the last chord but, after a pause, the movement resumes to end with a powerful coda. Another example of Haydn's mischievous wit is the famous Andante 'with the drumstroke' that forms the 'surprise' of Symphony No. 94, a fortissimo chord designed to wake up audiences who dozed off towards the end of his concerts... In this volume focused on humour, Giovanni Antonini pays tribute to a great admirer of Haydn, Gioachino Rossini, by recording the sparkling opening Sinfonia of La scala di seta (The silken ladder), a one-act opera written in 1812.

The series devoted to Vladimir Delman continues with this second album: in the first one Mahler's Symphony No. 9 in D Major; here, by the same composer and in the same key, the Symphony No. 1.

SOMM Recordings is proud to present an album devoted to works by David Matthews, hailed as one of the leading symphonists of our time. His diverse output is superbly represented here by a Symphonic Diptych from his opera, Anna; his Symphony No. 11; and his Flute Concerto. The release features Dutch conductor Jac van Steen and the Ulster Orchestra, of which he is Honorary Principal Guest Conductor. Both are frequent SOMM collaborators, most recently on Manuel de Falla: The Three-Cornered Hat, Nights in the Gardens of Spain & Seven Spanish Folk Songs, SOMMCD 0694, about which Gramophone magazine wrote, "when van Steen unleashes the full orchestra... The tone is big and generous." They are joined by flautist Emma Halnan, winner of the BBC Young Musician Competition in 2010 in the woodwind category. She was also elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in the Academy's 2024 Honours, recognizing alumni of the Academy who have distinguished themselves in the music profession. Emma enjoys commissioning new works, and composers who have written for her include Sir�Karl Jenkins, James Francis Brown, and, as here, David Matthews. David Matthews' first opera Anna had it's concert premiere at The Grange Hampshire in July 2023, conducted by Jac van Steen. Shortly afterwards, Jac suggested that David should make an orchestral reduction, as Strauss had done for his Intermezzo and Die Frau ohne Schatten. So, in this Symphonic Diptych, David has compressed the opera into two movements, one for each act-I. Anna in Love and II. Lament for Anna-which tell the story in purely orchestral terms about a brother (Peter) and sister (Anna) and their different reactions to the revolution that has just taken place in their country. In transferring all the vocal parts to instruments, David has slightly increased the opera's orchestra. In 2022, at the Presteigne Festival, David Matthews heard some striking trumpet playing at an orchestral concert. The next day, he wrote a few bars of quiet trumpet solo over a string chord. At first, he did not know what to do with this idea, until he thought it might be the beginning of a symphony, and so his single-movement Symphony No. 11 was conceived. He decided to preface it with an allegro D major/d minor theme, beginning on violas and moving to first violins, and these two ideas form the basis for a set of free variations. Considering the flute to be, essentially, a melodic instrument, David Matthews composed his Flute Concerto as alternating song and dance. The first movement combines a gentle allegretto with a fast waltz. The slow middle movement evokes a dance celebrating Pan, while the finale begins with a little tune that he wrote for his wife, Jenifer, at Christmas 2019, which has something of an Irish flavour. Siegfried Wagner was named for the young hero in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle and immortalized in the Siegfried Idyll, included on this release. He was born to Richard Wagner and his future wife, Cosima (nee�Liszt), on 6 June 1869. Although Siegfried considered following a profession outside music (and, as a youth, studied architecture in Berlin and in Karlsruhe), it was inevitable that he would follow a career in music given the lineage of both his parents and his grandfather, Franz Liszt. In addition to receiving instruction in music from Liszt, the thirteen-year-old Siegfried began his advanced musical studies in Frankfurt with Engelbert Humperdinck, a true disciple of Richard Wagner. Siegfried became an assistant at Bayreuth in 1892, immersing himself in his father's music under the strong influence of Cosima Wagner and the conductor Hans Richter. In 1895, he made his debut at Bayreuth conducting a complete Ring cycle. The debut was a considerable artistic success, and Siegfried's future as the true guardian of the Wagner inheritance was assured, as he took a greater share in the direction of the Bayreuth Festival. With Cosima's full endorsement, Siegfried assumed the general directorship from his mother in 1908. Siegfried's busy professional life was devoted in the main to Bayreuth in the 1920s, but it was also during this time that he began a recording career devoted almost exclusively to his father's and his own works. Apart from his evident qualities as a conductor of his father's music-heard here in the recorded legacy he left of his performances at Bayreuth and in Berlin and London-he was equally keen to establish himself as a composer. The first of his twelve completed operas, Der Barenhauter (Bearskin) inspired by the German fairytale, met with public and critical acclaim when it was produced in 1899. The acoustic recording of the overture is heard here. Among the Richard Wagner works conducted by Siegfried Wagner on this historic release are well-known selections from Das Rheingold and Die Walkure from the Ring Cycle. Also included are a suite from Parsifal and selections from Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and Tristan und Isolde.

The present release comprises two works by Russian composers of differing generations, in music which has long been central to the repertoire of composer and conductor Álvaro Cassuto who is heard conducting the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra. Even before the Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet had made it to the stage, selections were heard in concert on both sides of the Atlantic, and various sequences continue to feature prominently in the orchestral repertoire. Although these sometimes take the guise of one of the three orchestral suites, it has become more common to select freely from across these or even from the overall ballet. Establishing dramatic and musical continuity within this context is more difficult than might be supposed, to which end Cassuto had devised his own selection on this present recording. Rimsky-Korsakov’s mastery of orchestration is heard at its most impressive in the Russian Easter Festival Overture, (composed at much the same time as his symphonic suite Scheherazade). Cast in a loose sonata-form design, the piece falls into three main sections which the composer prefaced with quotations from Psalms, Gospel of Mark and his own description of the Easter celebration. Almost all its themes are derived from the Obikhod, the collection of liturgical chants with which every Russian would then have been familiar – not least the composer, even though he had long since become a non- believer and viewed this music strictly as a source to be utilized in his own compositions. These two live recordings were originally broadcast by Antena 2, Portuguese Radio and Television in the mid-1990s. This album is the recording’s first commercial release.

Mischa Levitzki (1898–1942) was born near Kiev to naturalized American parents who had returned to their homeland. He was a pupil of Michalowski, Stojowski, and Dohnányi and quickly established himself as a major rising star in the 1920s. Indeed, had it not been for his early death, he would surely have been seen as one of the major pianists of the century. He specialized in the virtuoso romantic repertoire, and his recordings include several of the warhorses of the period such as Rubinstein's 'Staccato' Etude and Moszkowski's 'La Jongleuse'. However, at the same time, there is a refinement to his playing which is heard to good effect in his Chopin and Schumann, making his Liszt noble rather than bombastic. The HMV recordings presented here form the most important part of his meager recorded legacy.

OLGA SAMAROFF (1880-1948) and FRANK LA FORGE (1879-1953) were amongst the earliest pianists to record for the US Victor label, both making most of their discs in the acoustic era before 1925. Though American, both went to Europe to study - Samaroff to the Paris Conservatoire and La Forge to Leschetizky in Vienna. Samaroff was the greater virtuoso, as can be heard in her famous recording of Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries', but after a fall, in 1926 she retired to an equally successful teaching career at the Juilliard School, her pupils including William Kapell, Raymond Lewenthal and Rosalyn Tureck amongst many others. La Forge gravitated towards accompanying and went on to record hundreds of discs for Victor in that capacity. His discs as soloist include some of the earliest attempts to record concerted works.

Italian instrumental music was at its zenith when the works of these ten composers were written and each of those selected was a significant figure in the expansion of music for the harpsichord. Frescobaldi, represented by two athletic Toccatas, was influential across Germany while Merula’s beautiful Capriccio and Zipoli’s gracefully austere Sonata in C major reveal the breadth and variety to be found in Italian keyboard music of the period. The Venetian-born Pescetti draws the music from the Baroque onward to the new galant style.

LOOSENING is a double album of five works by award winning composer GRAHAM FITKIN. Each one has the string quartet at it's core but every work includes it's own additional soloist. The string quartet is a really homogenous group, steeped in history and tradition, in which timbrally similar instruments create a well-honed sound through trusted communication and shared purpose. Each work has clearly defined roles for the two protagonists - quartet and solist. Each piece allows for two perspectives, two distinct approaches to the material and yet each protagonist is affected by the other. Approaches often evolve through the works, perhaps the quartet splits their honed homogeneity to focus more on individual constituents or conversely maybe they subsume the incomer into their group creating a larger group. An album of world premiere recordings: Four of the five works have never been recorded before, and the fifth is a new arrangement (also never recorded). DISTIL won the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Chamber Works in 2015.

Gottfried Grunewald was a successful opera singer in 18th-century Germany, based at the theatre in Hamburg for many years, but a familiar figure in German courts and theatres across Germany. When he died in 1739, the composer Christopher Graupner (his colleague in Darmstadt) destroyed most of Grunewald's music, according to an agreement they had apparently made. Only seven keyboard partitas are known to have survived to modern times, and they receive their first complete recording here in the spirited hands of Fernando de Luca, who has done so much to rescue forgotten names from obscurity with his albums for Brilliant Classics. The loss of Grunewald's output becomes especially regrettable once close attention is paid to these Parititas. They reveal a deep knowledge of the instrument's technique and a refined compositional taste. Stylistically close to German composers of the time such as Kuhnau and Fischer, they also bring to mind the suites composed in Germany by the young Handel (preceding the Eight Great Suites), and the music of the young Graupner. Grunewald shows some skill as a contrapuntalist within the restrictions of the suite genre. The preludes of these partitas are not uniform in form; for example, the Prelude in D minor incorporates broad arpeggiated chords, which begin and end a strict fugue but then dissolves into free motivic play. Another is purely figurative, a third mixes movement with short imitations. Grunewald's allemandes build up like intricate etudes, including one example constructed in an organistically contrapuntal manner. The courantes are interwoven with imitative passages, the sarabandes are melodically appealing, sometimes breathing in the spirit of Handel's nobility of gesture. The doubles and minuets almost give the impression of variations. Some pieces have strongly emphasised French rhythms, others avoid it completely. Potentially incomplete, but certainly striking, is the two-movement Fourth Suite, with it's spacious Allemande followed by an imposing Chaconne, presenting a complete contrast to the nine brief dances of the Fifth Suite, which find Grunewald at his most French-accented. Reviewing the recent set of the harpsichord music by Pierre-Thomas Dufour on Brilliant, Fanfare noted: 'De Luca does a fine job in his performance, with a good sense of phrasing and registration.' - Gottfried Grunewald (1673 -1739) was a German opera singer, harpsichordist and composer. Nothing is known about his youth and training. From 1703 he was a singer and composer at the Oper am Gansemarkt in Hamburg. From the beginning of 1709, he worked as Vice-Kapellmeister at the court of Johann Georg von Sachsen-Weissenfels, where he married Johann Philipp Krieger's daughter. From 1711, he worked as vice-chapelmaster at the court in Darmstadt as Christoph Graupner's deputy. Around 1717, several journeys as a pantaleon virtuoso are documented. He remained active at court until his death. - Of his works, only seven partitas for harpsichord have survived, written in the style customary for the time. The suites consist of the usual order of Prelude-Allemande-Courante-Sarabande-Gavotte-Menuet-Gigue. - "too many performers confine themselves to the standard repertoire. Fortunately, there are artists who look beyond the obvious; Fernando de Luca is one of them and we should be thankful for him. de Luca is a good interpreter; I very much enjoyed his performances, they are as differentiated as possible, also in his treatment of the tempi. He has the advantage of a fine instrument, a copy of a Blanchet of 1754. That is as 'authentic' as one could wish for." Thus wrote Musicweb International about de Luca's recording of harpsichord works by Foucquet.

Giuseppe Verdi wanted his seventh opera to be passionate, fiery and action-packed, and he wanted a real prima donna to take centre stage. He found the ideal subject in one of the most famous female figures in world history: Joan of Arc. Verdi was highly satisfied with Temistocle Solera's libretto. It was, he wrote in August 1844, 'almost of an unusual beauty'. In fact, the title role brings a special radiance to the opera, which is not necessarily one of the composer's most prominent roles on the repertoire today. However, it was celebrated by the premiere audience, and the day after the premiere Verdi wrote to his friend Francesco Maria Piave: 'Without exception and without doubt, it is the best of my operas'. A few successful performances followed, but then the work faded into the shadows of Verdi's later, even more famous operas. It is high time to bring it back to light!

Consistently applied over the last twenty-six years, this unique approach to performance has led to a stupendous degree of recognition and approval on the part of audiences and critics alike. On concert podiums from Tokyo or Seoul to Berlin, from London to New York, from Paris to Shanghai or Taipei as well as in a number of smaller towns - everywhere the Berliner Barock Solisten perform, they have left an indelible musical mark, ensuring that the ranks of their true fans are continually enlarged. Their programs are documented on numerous CD recordings whose exceptional quality has been widely acknowledged by music critics.

Having studied the cello as a child, I have always felt a special affinity with string music. My introduction at the age of 14 to the music of Britten was through his first string quartet, the opening of which still fills me with awe, and his works - especially those for strings - have remained a lifelong inspiration. I am delighted therefore that this recording of my String Quartets Nos. 2-4 has been released, made possible by the generous support of the Richard Thomas Foundation. I have been fortunate to work closely with the Piatti Quartet over a number of years. It was they who commissioned my String Quartet No.1 (2014), a piece they have performed extensively and recorded (Champs Hill Records 2018). Their enthusiasm encouraged me to continue exploring the genre, and - a decade later - it has been both a privilege and a huge pleasure to have another opportunity to write for them (String Quartet No.4). � Joseph Phibbsv

Of all the great composers of classical modernism, Bartok undoubtedly made the most significant contributions to violin chamber music. The Latvian-Armenian violinist Georg Sargsyan and the Australian pianist James Maddox present two major works from this repertoire. The piano sonata, the only contribution to the genre in the composer's otherwise extensive piano oeuvre, rounds off the program.

Swedes are proud of Elfrida Andree. She was the first woman that conquered the position of cathedral organist. Even reactionaries that were appalled at having a woman playing from the gallery capitulated at hearing her skill. Critics that reviewed her compositions found positive words for her - even for her first symphony, premiered in 1869, which the composer later disparaged as an "early work". The Fritiof Suite, on the other hand, was an unqualified success. In 1909, Elfrida Andree made a suite of five movements based on her (only) opera Fritiof Saga. Unlike the staged work of 1898, these 'scenes' were once very popular - a fantastic piece of incidental music for the Fritiof epic by the poet Esaias Tegner, which practically every child in Sweden knew.

An album combining works by Schubert, Piazzolla, and Lintinen, cellist Trey Lee is joined by the English Chamber Orchestra to perform compositions exploring the effects and impacts of climate change on both the environment and society. The album has two world premiere recordings of new arrangements for both cello and piano, and cello and orchestra by Trey Lee. “With the cello as a platform, I seek a sober yet trenchant means to tell the story of our seasons, and concurrently, create a musical narrative to account for how this crisis unfolds. This album is a journey across our world from the past to the present, and finally, to an increasingly plausible future through the prism of works by three composers from three eras.” – Trey Lee

Marc-Antoine Charpentier is unquestionably the greatest master of church music in 17th century France.
Two of his most important works are expanded in this recording with organ interludes from organ masses by François Couperin.

Lechner: Of Death and Resurrection

The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written literary text in Middle Eastern/Western cultural history, predates the Hebrew Bible. The epic relates the story of King Gilgamesh, partly divine, partly human, who may have existed historically circa 2800 BC. From immature youth and a belief in his mmortality, he eventually comes to accept the power and reality of Death. There are five movements/scenes: The first, Prologue, echoes the anxious state of the city of Uruk, which is suffering under the despotic rule of the young King Gilgamesh. The gods, in order to restore a sense of balance, create his counterpart, the wild man Enkidu, who is lured away and tamed by a temple prostitute. The pitch centres of this scene spell out the musical letters of Gilgamesh which also underly the entire work. The Journey to the Forest of Cedar depicts the effortful trek made by Enkidu and Gilgamesh in search of glory. They venture to the Forest of Cedar to cut down one of the largest trees to make a great door for the Temple of Enlil, the divine ruler of the Cosmos. They kill the forest guardian, Humbaba, who is protected by seven auras. From Dawn to Dusk, a fast movement, illustrates Gilgamesh's race against the sun. He arrives just before sunset and finds himself in a garden of jewels. Gilgamesh sings a Lament on the Death of Enkidu which leads into the final scene. Apotheosis. Gilgamesh visits Ut Napishti (precursor of Noah in Genesis) who has survived the Flood and been granted immortality by the gods. Gilgamesh fails the final task set by Ut-Napishti to test his suitability for eternal life, returning to Uruk to build his lasting monument, the city walls. The Resurrection of the Soldiers for string orchestra was commissioned by George Vass, to whom it is dedicated, and the English Symphony Orchestra, for the 2016 Presteigne Festival, with funds generously donated by the John S Cohen Foundation and the Arts Council of England. The title derives from the final panel of Stanley Spencer's Sandham Chapel visionary series of paintings which were the result of Spencer's experiences in the British army in World War One and depicts soldiers emerging from their graves on the last day. The piece is in three continuous parts: a slow, sustained introduction which is, in essence, a descent from the note E by means of a prolation canon, but which ascends to a rather intense climactic point before falling and giving way to a very active fugue which, after arriving at an anguished, sustained climax, is succeeded by a closing slow movement consisting of a rising melodic line which permeates the entire texture heterophonically, leading to the closing E major triad. The work thus traces a cyclical path as it progress towards a sense of resurrection, re-birth and hope. � Robert Saxton

In addition to sonatas, variations, and concertos for piano and orchestra, Mozart wrote numerous works for solo piano: fantasias, rondos, adagios, and other assorted pieces of short and moderate length. We don't know exactly why these works were written, but we know that Mozart had to come up with new material for his many public and private appearances as a composer and performer. In those days composers were usually performers as well. Any composition was also a potential source of income from publication and from patrons and friends to whom the works were dedicated. But no matter why these marvellous works were written, we are lucky to have them.

Giovanni Sollima is an internationally renowned cellist and one of the most frequently performed Italian composers in the world today. His original BaRock Cello project gave new readings to Rock pieces in the intimate setting of a solo performance, matching these to little-known 17th- and 18th-century Italian composers. These improbable contrasts and surprising connections are now extended further back to their musical roots in Folk & BaRock Cello. In this Sollima takes up the tonal colours and rhythmic grooves of archaic songs from a diversity of countries and blends the common features shared by all music, whether it is globally iconic, nationally popular, or long lost amidst the dusty manuscripts of time.

After it's Baroque heyday, the oboe did not have an easy time of it in the 19th century. The Romantic period favoured the warmer, fuller sound of the clarinet, and the former star among the wind instruments was rarely featured in solo works. Reason enough to remedy this situation, thought the famous master arranger Andreas N. Tarkmann and set to work. It was no coincidence that he chose Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, whom he considers to be the consummate composer of the early Romantic period. From seven selected 'Songs without Words' - typically Romantic short piano preciosi - Tarkmann creates a fascinatingly dense suite for oboe and string orchestra. A much larger work inspired him to create a homage to Mozart and his concerto for flute, harp and chamber orchestra. Tarkmann takes up this instrumentation and gives Mendelssohn's concerto, originally scored for violin, piano and chamber orchestra, a completely new tonal guise.

Vindla String Quartet is something quite unique, a string quartet composing it's own repertoire. In September 2024 they are releasing their second album "Med ljus och lykta" on NAXOS Sweden. The music has it's very own sound, a mixture of influences from classical compositions, jazz, folk and pop. Vindla has established a creative universe, open to new ideas on joint music making. It all started during the Pandemic when restrictions made public performances impossible. The quartet's members started sending bits and pieces of music back and forth to one another, building on each other's ideas. The end result is 9 songs created from the desire to make something together that could not have been done by one of them alone. ' Vindla String Quartet was founded in Malmo in 2008. The quartet is known for it's many collaborations with artists from various genres. Debuting with an album in their own name in 2018 they are recognized as one of Sweden's most interesting chamber music constellations. They aim to widen the idea of what a string quartet can be and do. By making compositions collectively they want to challenge the idea of the composer as a lonesome genius and musicians as interpreters and not creators.

SOMM Recordings is pleased to release Clarinet Concertos, four works for solo clarinet and wind orchestra, including two world-premiere recordings. The soloist is the English clarinettist, Peter Cigleris, who�enjoys a wide and varied career and is in great demand as a soloist and chamber musician. His burgeoning career as a clarinet soloist has taken him to Festivals in Spain, France, the Netherlands, and the U.S. Recently, he was invited to perform in Gyor, Hungary for the European Clarinet Festival, which led to a special invitation from the Gyor Symphonic Band to record four hugely enjoyable concertos for clarinet and wind orchestra. These are conducted by Laszlo Marosi, the world's foremost authority on Hungarian wind music, and Ferenc Szabo, the founder of the Gyor Symphonic Band. This release opens with the premiere recording of Concerto Semplice for clarinet and wind orchestra by the prolific Hungarian composer Frigyes Hidas (1928-2007). The concerto is written in a direct, almost classical, tonal language that portrays the composer's belief in traditional forms and syntax. Cigleris has given premiere performances of a number of new works for the clarinet, and he played the first performance of Sonatina in One Movement by the award-winning British composer Simon Milton. So, when composing his Concerto for Clarinet and Band, Milton knew that he "could push what I felt was playable and turn it into a challenge, whilst also maintaining a lyrical and sweet sound to the clarinet part." SOMM presents the premiere recording here. The Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Orchestra, written in 2014 by American composer David Maslanka (1943-2017), is an imposing composition in two large movements: "Lamentation" and "Dance." He described these as relating to "old forms such as the toccata and fugue - a free improvisatory movement followed by a rhythmically energized and formally strict second movement." This collection closes with a Clarinet Concerto from 2010 by one of the leading Japanese composers of music for wind instruments, Satoshi Yagisawa (b.1975). The work has achieved great popularity and is considered a major contribution to the composer's "Concerto Series." It is written in the traditional three-movement concerto form, played attacca with linking cadenzas for the clarinet solo. Peter Cigleris's previous collaborations with SOMM include Eclogue - British Chamber Music (SOMMCD 0653) and a full disc of first recordings, Dedication: The Clarinet Chamber Music of Ruth Gipps (SOMMCD 0641). This includes Gripps's Clarinet Sonata, one of the finest such works by any British composer, for which she won the Cobbett Prize of the Society of Women Musicians. The Gramophone review praised Cigleris and accompanist Duncan Honeybourne as "ideal executants in an account I cannot see being bettered any time soon." This recording features the Eusebius Quartet, formed in 2016 out of a passion for the extraordinary music written for this instrumentation, and praised as "excellent" by The Sunday Times. Their debut CD for SOMM of the Korngold Piano Quintet & Quartet (SOMMCD 0642) received critical acclaim: "Wit and clarity abound in the Quartet's Viennese-sounding performances," The Strad; "The musicians seem to feel the music just as it is, complex on the surface, but direct and straight from the heart," BBC Music Magazine. Elgar and Faure met once at the time of the London premiere of Elgar's First Symphony in 1908. Although Faure spoke no English and Elgar's French wasn't exactly conversational, it's fascinating to compare the musical language of their two quartets, both in the key of E minor, and written late in the composers' lives. Edward Elgar was a more than competent violinist, and he made several attempts throughout his career to write a string quartet. Finally, ill and depressed by war-time London in 1918, he completed his String Quartet, Op. 83. It is cast in three movements, the outer Allegro movements bookending one marked Piacevole (poco andante). This slow middle movement, which contains a�quotation�from Elgar's�Chanson de Matin, was a favourite of Lady Elgar, who described it as "captured sunshine." It was played at her funeral in 1920. Gabriel Faure composed his only String Quartet, Op. 121 in 1924, shortly before his death at the age of 79. By this time, he had been totally deaf for some years, and the quartet suggests a mind driven within itself in a way that hints at Beethoven's Late String Quartets. This final work of Faure presents an extraordinary duality, which masks the romantic ideas of his earlier music with what the English composer and writer Robert Matthew-Walker calls "a soft steely twilight that at times appears almost menacing." As with Elgar's quartet, the central Andante movement particularly captures the imagination with it's musical colouration suggesting a world of half-lights.

In terms of the quantity of his output, Ernst Eichner should be regarded as a minor composer. His legacy consists of several operas, chamber music and several collections of symphonic works of six pieces each; this amounts to about fifty works, revealing something quite different from the label "minor composer". The spirited, colourful and empathetic treatment of the orchestra often appeared to contemporaries as being an expression of a "tender heart" or of "meek grace and charming sweetness", whereas they were certainly not yet conscious of the fact that in Eichner's creations (as well) were the beginnings of the symphonic form, which not much later became the classical standard bearer of all great things. The Italian orchestra Theresia has chosen four representative pieces from his remarkable catalogue for these recordings. These reflect the stylistic development of this superb violinist and composer, who initially left his native Mannheim for Zweibrücken and finally, after an odyssey, arrived at the court of the Prussian king in Berlin, where he died in 1777 at the age of 37.