A collection of compositions by some of the great piano virtuosos of all time, Evgeni Bozhanov follows in the footsteps of Chopin, Schubert, Debussy, Scriabin and Liszt with this inspirational and personal performance Live in Warsaw. Truly internalizing the music, Bozhanov illustrates that internal conception becomes both more complex and clearer with time, emerging into a statement that is relevant to him.

When Thielemann became principal conductor of the Dresden Staatskapelle in 2012, he surprised many people for giving special attention to forgotten works from the periods of upheaval before and after WWI—works closely connected to Dresden, some having premiered with the Staatsakpelle and its predecessor, the Hofkapelle. This 2-CD set presents three of those rare works.

Cellist David Geringas plays Osvalda's Balakauskas. With pianist Jascha Nemtsov and others. Mr. Balakauskas (b. 1937)is a distinguished contemporary Lithuanian composer. His highly personal music, strongly flavored by jazz, involves use of serial techniques adapted to diatonic structures. Conductor, cellist and fellow Lithuanian David Geringas has introduced many Russian and Lithuanian avant-garde composers to a western audience.

Brahms' first mentioned the Requiem in a letter to Clara Schumann in which he wrote that he intended the piece to be a sort of German Requiem. Although the Requiem Mass in Roman Catholic liturgy begins with prayers for the dead, A German Requiem focuses on the living, beginning with the text "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."

The composer interprets himself, and don�t you do anything to help him! Swarowsky began his conducting career at the Stuttgart Opera in 1927, this after a short period as a r�p�titeur at the Vienna Volksoper. He then moved on to Hamburg and succeeded Erich Kleiber in Berlin. He was placed under a conducting ban in Germany in 1936 (his father's side of the family was of Jewish background) but was able to continue his career in Zurich for a few years. During World War II he had to limit his work to opera assignments for the Bavarian State Opera and the Salzburg Festival. He was the director of the Polish Philharmonic in Cracow for a short time in 1944 and became the principal conductor of the Vienna Symphony after the war. He also served as the director of the Graz Opera until 1950 and as the conductor of the Scottish National Orchestra from 1957 to 1959. Herbert von Karajan then appointed him to a permanent conducting post at the Vienna State Opera. Swarowsky had taught a conducting class at the Vienna Music Academy since 1946 and left a mark on a good many younger musicians, among them conducting stars such as Claudio Abbado and Zubin Mehta. During his lifetime Swarowsky was even more famous as a teacher than as a conductor, and there is something to the claim that he was the most coveted and most influential conducting teacher of the century. His unconventional conducting style was ahead of it's time and represented a radical questioning of the then dominant late-romantic performance practice. Swarowsky�s holistic understanding of art viewed music as part of a larger cultural whole and is reflected in his sayings and teachings.

Vladimir Ashkenazy was born in 1937 in Gorky, then in the Soviet Union (now Nizhny Novgorod, Russia). Three years later his family moved to Moscow. When, in 1955, he was the youngest of five Soviet pianists to be allowed to travel to Warsaw to take part in the International Chopin Piano Competition, Ashkenazy was by no means regarded as a child prodigy at the Moscow Conservatory where he was by then studying piano. Nonetheless, his performance secured him second place and subsequently the particular attention of Soviet cultural circles. That attention proved justified when, a year later, Ashkenazy won the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels, as a result of which he was able to gain his first experience of extended international tours. His reputation was finally cemented in 1962 when he won the world-renowned International Tchaikovsky Competition. In 1963 the Soviet authorities allowed him and his family to spend six months in London, at the end of which they settled permanently there. Vladimir Ashkenazy is regarded as the most exceptional pianist of his generation. Music critics attest to his outstanding virtuosity, which he combines with a well-rounded sound and a keen sense of formal and tonal balance" (Harden/Wilmes: Pianisten Profile, B�renreiter). The present release features some of his first recordings.

George Szell was both feared for his relentless, intense rehearsals and celebrated for their artistic results. He turned the Cleveland Orchestra, of which he was Music Director from 1946 to 1970, into one of the world's most technically brilliant orchestras. There are also impressive recordings which document his work with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera (1942 – 1946). His path to becoming one of the world's best conductors was meticulously prepared. Szell studied in Vienna, where he had given his debut concert at the age of 10, and in Leipzig, where his teachers included Max Reger. After conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker playing one of his own compositions aged 16, Richard Strauss hired Szell as piano accompanist at the Hofoper in Berlin, where he remained between 1914 and 1917. He then went on to succeed Otto Klemperer at the Strasbourg Opera House, from where he moved to the New German Theatre in Prague, then to Darmstadt and Düsseldorf, before finally becoming Principal Conductor of the Berlin State Opera (1924 – 1929), Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and teacher at the Berlin Academy of Music (1927 – 1930). He returned to Prague between 1930 and 1936, this time as General Music Director, during which time he also conducted the Scottish National Orchestra and the Residentie Orkest in The Hague (1937 – 1939). When World War II broke out just after he had finished a tour of Australia, George Szell was able to emigrate to New York, and it was there that Toscanini invited him to conduct the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Szell also conducted premieres of works by Barber, Blacher, von Einem and Walton. He teamed up with the young pianist Leon Fleischer for the big Beethoven and Brahms concertos, and the two produced recordings which still serve as a benchmark today.

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REVIEW:

Generally good sound graces much of this collection. Chosen selections include recordings with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, most memorably music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with a fabulous Scherzo) and Rosamunde, the LPO and Sir Clifford Curzon in a fine Emperor Concerto, and, inevitably, the Cleveland Orchestra. Interestingly, Profil opts for Szell’s first account of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 24 with Robert Casadesus, where the combination of pianistic poise and strongarm conducting makes a big impression. Dvorák’s Eighth Symphony is entrusted to the Concertgebouw Orchestra (Decca, mono); it’s good, but nowhere near as good as the Cleveland Symphony From the New World that follows it, where the Largo is both sculpted and expressive. And those string choirs: utter perfection! Schumann’s First and Second Symphonies are included, the former in stereo, the latter in mono, and there are crisply articulated concerto performances with Leon Fleisher.

– Gramophone

This album features a recording made during a performance at the Prinzregententheater in Munich on January 18, 1962. It was directed by Rudolf Hartmann and the performance was given, as was usual in those days, in German. The original analogue tapes have been stored at the Fritz Wunderlich Society in Kusel (in the Rhineland-Palatinate), and have been restored by TechneAudio in Baden-Württemberg. Some specialists suspect that the recordings were made by Fritz Wunderlich himself, a great fan of the latest technology. Despite costly and careful restoration of the tapes, some defects and intrusive artefacts on the mono tapes, some of which are damaged, are clearly audible. However, the historic significance of this recording certainly justifies its release. Not surprisingly, Fritz Wunderlich (1930-1966) in the role of Ernesto receives the greatest attention. Probably Germany’s greatest tenor knew just how to cultivate the love-sick bachelor, as he did with all his roles, and to breathe life into the character with his inimitable voice. In addition to lyric qualities, the role demands other skills such as the canto fiorito style of ornamented singing of the nineteenth century.

Clara Schumann n�e Wieck (1819-1896) has gone down in history as a pianist rather than as a composer. The reasons for that have nothing to do with the quality of her compositions but rest on her decision to stop composing after the death of her husband Robert Schumann. Prevailing attitudes to women were moreover not conducive, as the following entry in her diary shows: "A woman is not expected to have any desire to compose." Yet Clara Schumann did have a desire to compose and had the ability to do so, even if she resorted to performing on the piano instead. She composed an astonishing amount, considering that her performing career and bringing up eight children left her hardly any time for steady work. Limited to piano compositions, songs and a piano trio, her oeuvre tends to fall into two groups: virtuoso works - including a very promising early piano concerto - written for her own concert requirements, and works which confront the Romantic aesthetics, like her piano trio, songs and piano romances.

Anton Stepanovich Arensky was born in Novgorod on 12 July 1861 and spent his boyhood years in a comfortable family setting conductive to the early detection and encouragement of his extraordinary musical talent. His father, a physician, was an avid cellist, and his mother was an excellent pianist. Arensky was already composing songs and piano pieces at the age of nine and began his studies at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1879. Rimsky-Korsakov, a firm advocate of Russian School and the artistic rival of Tchaikovsky (who was ostracized as a Westernizer) was his composition teacher. Arensky passed the final conservatory examination with distinction three years later and immediately received a professorship at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his pupils were Rechmaninov and Scriabin, both much better known today than their teacher. In Moscow Arensky came under Tchaikovsky´s influence and emerged as a composer of Western stamp. His opera A Dream on the Volga, premiered with great success in Moscow in 1891, reflects this stylistic development: he began the opera as a student under Rimsky-Korsakov´s tutelage and completed it as an admirer of Tchaikovsky. While carrying out his teaching duties, Arensky also led Russian choral society and conducted symphony concerts. He succeeded Balakirev as director of the court chour St. Petersburg in 1894 and left this position in 1901 to work as a freelance composer, conductor, and pianist in Russia and abroad. Although Arensly met with artistic success, his passion for drink and gaming, already in evidence during his youth, gradually took control of his life and led to his ruination. Arensky succumbed to tuberculosis at the relatively young age of forty-five in 25 February 1906.

The early 1780s saw the passion for Haydn across Europe reach it's first peak. Ten years later, the composer was considered the most important of his day. In places noted for their music, his latest works sold like hot cakes. And even out in the country, far from fashionable towns and cities, there was an insatiable demand for whatever he had just written. The small North Swabian principality of Oettingen-Wallerstein was no exception. Prince Kraft Ernst, who extravagantly maintained a court ensemble then regarded as one of the best in the German nation, was unstinting in his admiration of the composer and compiled an extensive collection of his works. At the beginning of 1788, Kraft Ernst commissioned his agent in Vienna, von M�ller, to ascertain from Haydn himself his price for three new symphonies of which the Prince was to be the sole owner: "as Joseph Haydn is demonstrably the greatest of Symphonists and I am thoroughly well disposed towards his Music, I should like to obtain three new Symphonies from him, which however nobody save myself should possess. My Court Agent shall tender this my Request to Joseph Haydn and advise me concerning what he will charge and when I shall receive these Symphonies." The composer accepted the commission but explained that he could not deliver at once on account of other obligations. More than a year and a half were to pass before Haydn delivered the commissioned symphonies. The Bavarian Chamber Orchestra (BKO) based in the idyllic spa resort of Bad Br�ckenau has made a name for itself with innovative projects since it's foundation in 1979. The orchestra consists of first-rate professional musicians from the nations of central Europe, who regularly come together as chamber orchestras or in various chamber ensembles.

The First Violin Concerto was given as op. 99 on account of it's late appearance. This was not the wish of Shostakovich, who had composed it as op. 77. When asked: What is the history of your relationship with Shostakovich's music? Why did you decide to record these particular works? Ivan Pochekin answered: "Shostakovich's music very accurately conveys what was happening in the lives of people in my country until very recently. I feel it deeply and want to convey it to the audience, as if tracing the link between past and present, preserving authenticity. Together with Valentin Uryupin, we as individuals were formed in the very musical system where Dmitri Shostakovich worked several decades before. My father attended several premieres of Shostakovich's works, including the Violin Concerto No.2. There is a recorded telephone conversation between David Oistrakh and Dmitri Shostakovich in the public domain, where the composer points out the most important details of the interpretation and even hums the Concerto No.2 finale. For me, this is still live history."

DE FALLA: Complete Original Works for Piano

Stravinsky, I.: Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments / Zi

Mozart, W.A.: Serenades Nos. 6, 9 / Flute Concerto No. 1