The CD program Variations on Silbermann is a homage to this late-period gem of Silbermann's craft, consecrated in the chapel of eastern Thuringia Schloss Burgk in 1743, and to music of the 17th- and 18th-century composers who either hailed from Central Germany or were active there. A broader musical horizon is suggested by the inclusion of the Neapolitan Alessandro Scarlatti, whose groundbreaking contributions to keyboard music have all too often been eclipsed by the fame of his son Domenico Scarlatti. The program features variation works from the time of the Burgk Silbermann organ's construction while presenting the entire spectrum of Baroque structural and tonal possibilities on a single-manual instrument. Daniel Beilschmidt, today University Organist in Leipzig and Castle Organist in Altenburg, grew up not far away from Schloss Burgk and knows very well the instrument and it's sound possibilities.
When pianist Tatiana Kozlova began exploring Peter Tchaikovsky's composition 'Seasons' on the occasion of it's 150th anniversary, she initially thought of interpreting it as images of nature and scenes from everyday life. However, a thorough study of the musical texts and the circumstances surrounding the cycle's creation led her to completely different and fascinating conclusions. Her knowledge of the Russian poems presented to Tchaikovsky for each month, as well as her knowledge of Russian literature and culture of that period, form the background to her unusual recording.
Freiberg has always been an important cultural location. Already shortly after its foundation in the twelfth century; as the result of important discoveries of silver ore; culture and music were documented and integral parts of urban life. Freiberg was the second Saxon city to have a band of town waits from which various musical groups were later to evolve. The town’s prosperity also made possible the building of large hall churches of which the Cathedral St. Mary numbers even today among the region’s most important cultural monuments.
The late 19th century saw the expansion of the Neustadt; the German district of Strasbourg; recently listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Built during the same period; the three historic organs chosen for the complete recording of Johannes Brahms’ organ chorales are the precious witnesses to a time of exceptional artistic luxuriance. The three Fin de siècle composers whose works were additionally selected by Jean-Michel Douiller revive Brahms’s sonorous world as they breathe life into these three instruments: Ernest Chausson; Max Reger; and Gustav Busch. The works by Chausson and Busch are recorded for the very first time on the CD at hand.
Paraphrases de Tango - After the Melodies of Gardel / Pohlit
Querstand
CD
$20.99Sep 22, 2023
On the CD at hand; Hannes Pohlit plays the debut recording of the complete cycle. It contains lyrical and dramatical fantasies on tango standards like “El Día Que Me Quieras”; “Por Una Cabeza” and “Sus Ojos Se Cerraron” as well as complex showpieces which due to their virtuosity remind one of Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz” or opera fantasies. The album is a homage both to the emotional world of the sung classical tango as well as to the exalted romantic salon. It presents the Blüthner Aliquot grand piano as a symphonic instrument and Hannes Pohlit as a versatile stylistic composer as well as a technically superior pianist.
The release at hand presents musical portraits of two influential composers of the Baroque era through a selection from their oeuvre for violin and harpsichord: Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644 – 1709) and Georg Muffat (1653 – 1704). Their first meeting in Salzburg was unfortunately not documented. However, it is known that both talents arrived with differing previous musical experiences before spending years in the service of the Archdiocese of Salzburg. Thanks to economic growth and financial strength in this sovereign Catholic principality, all the arts, including music, enjoyed considerable support. Like in all other Baroque centers, music was an integral part of courtly representation, and in Salzburg, it also became an important channel of communication for the Counter-Reformation.
A fabulous violinist, Biber preferred his favorite instrument in his compositions and wrote two sonata collections that belong to the basic repertoire of Baroque solo literature: the “Rosenkranz” or “Mystery” sonatas (c. 1674) and the Violin Sonatas (1681). Two pieces from each of these collections can be heard on the album at hand, rounded off with a passacaglia from Georg Muffat’s collection “Apparatus Musico-Organisticus”, which holds as much significance for Baroque keyboard literature as Biber’s collections for the violin mentioned above, and last but not least a unique piece: Muffat’s only surviving violin sonata. The instruments that meet in this recording come from two worlds: Flóra Fábri performs on a harpsichord built in 2015 by Detmar Hungerberg according to Italian models; the violin played by Dóra Szilágyi was built in 1765 by Sebastian Klotz in Mittenwald.
Milhaud, Kaprálová et al: Schattenrisse / Gulbadamova, Mitteldeutsche Chamber Phil.
Querstand
CD
$25.99Feb 10, 2023
This 2-album set presents the Mitteldeutsche Kammerphilharmonie, led by Jan Michael Horstmann, performing works by previously ostracized composers. The Lichterfeld Foundation of Petra and Ralph-Robert Lichterfeld is committed to ensuring that works by composers who were ostracized find their place in current concert programming. Their project "EchoSpore" lists registers of these composers, yet today many people are unaware of them. To ensure that the rediscovery of these hidden musical gems is not left to a single concert experience, the Mitteldeutsche Kammerphilharmonie has added works by previously "ostracized" composers to each of its "Festliche cammerphilharmonische Concerte" (Festive Chamber Philharmonic Concerts).
This debut album of Austrian violinist Nina Pohn presents seven of the sonatas from Codex 726 of the Vienna Minorite Convent (Nos. 81 to 87), all of which are premiere recordings apart from Nos. 82 and 87. Johann Jakob Walther is the author of Sonata No. 83, and Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber of Sonata No. 84; the other sonatas are anonymous. In light of Biber's outstanding role in the history of scordatura on the violin, it is remarkable that no scordatura is included in Sonata No. 84. Here, scordatura is only required in the anonymous sonatas No. 81 in A major and No. 85 in A minor. These recordings took place in the church St. Anna in Steinbruch (Upper Austria). Its historical, single manual organ, built in 1726 by the Linz organ builder Josef Richter, is perfectly suited for this music. In the context of historical performance techniques, four of the seven sonatas were recorded with the violin resting below the collar bone. That said, all were performed using the early baroque bow grip.
The great Baroque organ of the Jakobikirche in Stralsund, whose original housing we can still see today, was built by Christian Gottlieb Richter of Stettin in 1741. From 1779 until 1783, Ernst Marx from Berlin built a new instrument reusing many components from the old organ, and this happened again when Friedrich Albert Daniel Mehmel from Stralsund built another new organ from 1870 until 1877. In 1945, the Jakobikirche was hit by a bomb on the southwestern corner of the side isle. As a result of the damage, the church sanctuary could be accessed. The organ was robbed of almost all of its metal pipes and was seriously damaged in all areas. Now the Dresden-based organ workshop of Kristian Wegscheider, also of Dresden, was commissioned to build a new, three-manual organ with 51 voices, consistently using the production methods and timbral aesthetics of the 18th century. It can be said that this organ is both a new and old instrument because its conception and artisanal production of today is based on models of the best organs of the 18th century. As part of the restoration of the organ, which began in 2017 and was completed in 2020, the case was completely restored and reconstructed in its old dimensions and structure with all of the old wood carvings as well. The idea for the program of this release – the first one recorded at the new organ – was to choose repertoire of the time of Johann Sebastian Bach and the generation of his teachers and pupils especially suited to the new instrument and to present it with as many compositional forms and registers of the organ as possible. The Chorale Variations by Daniel Magnus Gronau are recorded here for the very first time.
Johann Sebastian Bach was only known to have travelled north. His meetings with the organists and composers Georg Böhm (Lüneburg) and Johann Adam Reinken (Hamburg) must have left a lasting mark on him. When he stayed in Lübeck to study the organ art of Dietrich Buxtehude, he of course wanted to visit the organs in the town churches as well, and so we can take it for sure that he also got to know the instruments at St. Jakobi.What was it about Northern German music that fascinated Bach? In contrast to his Thuringian home, Hamburg, Lübeck and many other cities in the north of Germany developed a culture of organ music. In toccatas and preludes, a stylus phantasticus unfolded, and the organ builders Scherer, Stellwagen and Schnitger with their pedal works created the opportunity to lend the bass fundamental its own splendid sound. Also, in the genre of organ chorales, Franz Tunder and Dietrich Buxtehude from Lübeck had developed new expansive forms leading to long chorale fantasies – a special source of inspiration for Bach. The release at hand offers a collection of Bach’s organ works with influences from Northern Germany. Arvid Gast plays both historical organs at St. Jakobi Lübeck: the three-manual Stellwagen Organ built in 1637 and the four-manual Great Organ where in the current disposition many historical stops from the 16th and 17th centuries are included.
It is a well-known story: The hero Hercules (Greek: Herakles) is walking in the Cithaeron mountains when he suddenly encounters two female figures at a fork in the path, Voluptas (Pleasure) and Virtus (Virtue). Both attempt to win the young demigod for themselves. At the end of their courtship, Hercules joins with virtue and dedicates himself to her ideals. The virtue aspect of this story from ancient mythology also made it a popular subject in the Christian world. In this way, on 5 September 1733 in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach performed his Dramma per musica “Lasst uns sorgen, lasst uns wachen” BWV 213 for the eleventh birthday of the Saxon crown prince Friedrich Christian with his Collegium musicum. In summer 1750, 17 years after Bach and directly before his last trip to Germany, George Frideric Handel worked with the subject in London – the result being “The Choice of Hercules” HWV 69.Handel and Bach were born around four weeks apart and 150 km apart from one another in distance, but they never encountered one another in person. By linking both “Hercules” works to a pasticcio (pastiche), we have now created a virtual encounter between the two composers for today’s listeners. The pasticcio practice was a popular method in Bach and Handel’s time, particularly in opera, to bring together various pieces of music, preferably also from several composers, to create a new work. The fact that several languages were sung during a performance did not undermine its effect and popularity. In Clemens Flämig’s “Hercules” pasticcio too, there are English texts alongside German ones. The result can be heard on the double album at hand which was released within the series “haendeliana hallensis”.
The Wäldner organ of the Halle Cathedral is one of the most important sound monuments of Central German organ building from around 1850. Completed in 1851 in the Halle workshop of Friedrich Wilhelm Wäldner and his son August Ferdinand Wäldner, then leading organ builder in the region at that time, represents the instrument as Early Romanesque document, on the one hand, the classic tradition of organ building, as it has remained alive in Saxon and Thuringia since the era of Silbermann, Hildebrandt and Trosts well into the 19th century. On the other hand, the original sound concept of the instrument made it possible to hear those "new tones" at an early stage, which were built in the middle of the century in the famous monumental organs by masters such as Ladegast (in Merseburg Cathedral), Schulze (in Halberstadt Cathedral) and Reubke (in Magdeburg Cathedral) in completely different, namely cathedral-like dimensions. Although significantly smaller than the Merseburg cathedral organ (the only surviving one of the three mentioned), the Halle instrument - as the largest and most multifaceted organ of the Wäldner workshop - is nevertheless committed to a monumental sound idea and is therefore one of the most important witnesses to the art of organ building of this era. In the 20th century, the cathedral organ suffered several extremely disadvantageous sonic falsifications in the neo-baroque style. A restoration, which is committed to the goal of regaining the sound image of 1851, has therefore long been one of the most important concerns of organ monument preservation in Saxony-Anhalt and was placed in the hands of the Wegscheider organ workshop. The work took place from 2017 to 2018. The present album is the first recording after the restoration has been completed and impressively shows the possibilities of the instrument. It plays Michael Beauty, who as Merseburg cathedral organist has extensive experience with this type of organ.
Often universal organs have the problem that they are not particularly well suited to either baroque or symphonic music. However, Daniel Kern's organ at Frauenkirche Dresden is a shining example of a very successful bridge between the different organ traditions. When choosing an instrument for this recording of Antonín Dvorák's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" in Pascal Kaufmann's transcription for four-handed organ, the standard was to have good drawing abilities of the characteristic 8' and 4' basic stops. Thanks to the diversity of the pipe scales, on the one hand in the style of Gottfried and Andreas Silbermann, and on the other hand reminiscent of Cavaillé-Coll (France, 19th Century), there is a sufficiently large selection on the Kern organ. The very dynamic swell pedal with French reed stops and the setterboards with modern standards allow the players to keep the symphony lively with a total of over 400 different registrations. Two more works round off the release at hand: the Humoreske op. 101/7 by Antonín Dvorák in a transcription for (two-handed) organ by Edwin Lemare and "Der Heilige Franziskus von Paula auf den Wogen schreitend" S175 by Franz Liszt, also as four-handed transcription by Pascal Kaufmann - a work that once again illustrates the multifaceted nature of the Kern organ beautifully. The brothers Markus and Pascal Kaufmann come from Lichtenstein (Saxony). Their training pathways included studying together at the Dresden College of Music "Carl Maria von Weber" and the Hochschule für Kirchenmusik in Dresden. Pascal Kaufmann worked as assistant for Frauenkirche organist Samuel Kummer and is currently church musician in Augustusburg (Saxony) while Markus Kaufmann is working as Cathedral organist in Quedlinburg. The recordings for the album at hand were supported by Frauenkirche Foundation.
Johann Sebastian Bach's works, known today as cello suites, intonate a polyphony that arises from the virtuosity of an instrumentalist - a complex play of intimation and execution, of foreground and background, reverberation and reverberation, hatching and large arches. And instructions for musicians whose redemption is not uncommon for them. The circumstances surrounding the creation of BWV 1007 - 1012 are hardly known, which means that there is an uncertain source at the beginning. It makes an authentic interpretation of the musical text impossible from the outset, and the right to be true to text cannot be maintained either: there is no autograph handwriting of the suites, which opens up a spectrum of new works, which above all harbors chances and suggests that the Suites have not necessarily been written for a specific instrument. The attraction for instrumentalists lies in balancing intention and interpretation. The renowned flutist Paul Meisen has pointed out the surprisingly natural playability of the cello suites by the flute. His former master class student Sabine Kittel, now solo flutist at the Saxon State Orchestra in Dresden, shows this potential here in a comprehensive way. The double album recorded in the Emmauskirche Dresden-Kaditz and the Jakobuskirche Freital-Pesterwitz is supplemented by the Partita in A minor BWV 1013.
Günter Raphael was an extremely versatile and fruitful composer. He left behind numerous symphonic works, solo concerts, oratorios (requiem), solo songs, sacred and secular choral music, organ works and a particularly extensive chamber music oeuvre. His work is characterized by the constant creative engagement with tradition. In the course of time he found his style of distinctive idiosyncrasy, the lush sound and the polyphony equally committed. His music radiates a strong concentration, not least due to Raphael's eminent counterpoint and joy in memorable melody combined with rhythmic diversity and a clear sense of form. This seventh part of Günter Raphael Edition offers an insight into Günter Raphael's string quartet work, the composer created ten works in this genre, but only released four of them for publication. The idea for concert performances and recordings of the Raphael string quartets and the associated stay of the Australian Acacia Quartet in Berlin in spring 2017 came about due to the long-standing friendship between the first violinist Lisa Stewart and the founder of the Christine Raphael Foundation Fredrik Pachla, who are based in Cologne studied, and the quartet's long-standing interest in Günter Raphael's music. After intensive preparation in Australia, a stay of several weeks in Europe was realized. The first concerts in Sydney delighted audiences and musicians alike, and after further concerts in Berlin the present recording was made with three of Günter Raphael's string quartets: two early works and his last work of this genre, composed after the Second World War.
This album is Alon Sariel's personal homage to Rembrandt van Rijn - the world of arts is celebrating the 350th anniversary of the death of the great painter in 2019. As a lute player, the Dutch Golden Age has drawn Alon Sariel's attention for a while now. Perhaps because these musical pearls are hardly ever played and certainly are not regarded within what became standard repertoire for the instrument. A large part of this project was originally lute music, as the lute was without doubt the most popular instrument in the Dutch Golden Age. We see that in the paintings: Around twenty-five per cent of musical paintings show a lute. Sariel did however add a few instruments into this project, instruments which were as well very common in the Dutch Golden Age, like different viols and recorders. Through the arrangements to be found on this album, this lute music becomes even more colorful. There's also quite some amount of free improvisation in Sariel's arrangements, as improvisation was a very important element in the music of the time, and also today's musicians follow their own imagination driven by Rembrandt's paintings. While rehearsing and recording this music with Concerto Foscari, the musicians often spoke about colors, trying to get a darker or brighter sound etc., that's when they noticed that a lot of the musical terminology actually comes from the visual world, from paintings. The moment where painters try to visualize music could therefore be a very fascinating one. As if they try to "freeze" music into some-thing eternal, which has a longer life than simply a chord on the lute. What Alon Sariel aimed to do in this album is to "de-frost" those moments and, above all, to create the "soundtrack" of the Dutch Golden Age. Two of the pieces are receiving their first modern recording: Louys de Moy's "L'Italiana & Spagnolet" and the Allemande by Constantijn Huygens.
Friedrich Ladegast was one of the most important organ builders during the 2nd half of the 19th century. Especially with his first large organ at Merseburg Cathedral, he set the benchmark for organ building and at the same time influenced the further development of organ music: Franz Liszt and his "adlatus" Alexander Winterberger immediately recognized the new symphonic options of the organ sound and therefore with their new works established a basis for using the organ in a new symphonic manner. This development saw it's peak half a century later in Max Reger's monumental organ works and found a parallel development in France where the French symphonic organ concept was based on the organs by Aristide Cavaille-Coll. Friedrich Ladegast was born in 1818 in Hochhermsdorf, therefore the musical world has just celebrated his 200th birthday. This marks the occasion for the release of two albums on the Querstand label which contain the programs of the first concerts played at two of the greatest Ladegast Organs: the above-mentioned in Merseburg Cathedral and the organ at Schwerin Cathedral.
If, at the beginning of the 1600s, it was the English who were acknowledged to be experts and virtuosos of the viola da gamba, then it was the French who surpassed them by the middle of the century. They, in turn, had to share this status with the gambists working at German courts towards the end of the century, if not cede it to them. At that time, Johann Schenck, August Kuhnel and Conrad Hoffler were well known to the musical world as gamba virtuosos and masters of their trade. But up against the lasting public relation campaign of the Sun King, whose brilliance also made his musicians, in particular, the court gambists Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray, famous far beyond the borders of the countries and centuries, the gambists working at the comparatively small German courts back then were powerless. Although their surviving works are no less elegant, virtuosic and idiomatic than their French counterparts, the fame of the creators of these musical works of art has faded- making it high time to put an end to this imbalance and give three great gambists and their exceptional masterpieces the attention they deserve.
The Saalfeld Saur organ is one of the four most important romantic organs in Thuringia. Compared to Bad Salungen, Ilmenau and Muhlhausen it is a link between the purely mechanical and the purely pneumatic organs. The instrument was built in 1894 as Opus 624 by Wilhelm Sauer. The magnificent Baroque prospectus by court painter Ziegenspeck originally belonged to a three manual organ by Johann Georg Fincke. Sauer moved the prospectus two meters to the back so that there was enough space for the rich choir music. This acoustically excellent solution let's both choir and organ sound optimal in the room. Andreas Marquardt chose compositions for this album that show the varied timbres of the great Sauer organ and bring them to life. He is a church musician in Saalfeld and also manages the Thuringian Boys Choir.
Volume 6 of the Gunter Raphael Edition, released as a double album, includes Raphael's entire chamber music oeuvre featuring the flute. The ten pieces, of varying character, can be divided into three creative periods. Most of them belong to the "transitional period" and the key development of his style since the 1930s. In his early and late stylistic periods, the composer only rarely used the flute as a chamber music instrument. Three of the works are recorded here for the very first time, among them the highly original Triptychon Maria for alto, flute, violin, viola and cello written by Raphael in 1943 for the birth of his second daughter Maria Christine using medieval lyrics.
In 1596, the Wasungen-born Melchior Vulpius was called to Weimar as the cantor, music and Latin teacher at the municipal school and the St. Peter and Paul Parish Church (Stadtkirche). Thus he became the highest ranking Ernestine church musician and the expectations of him were equally high. Within some years, he created a considerable repertoire, which he published from 1602 onwards. He released a new collection almost every year until his early death in 1615 aged 45. Many of these collections found their way to the cantorial library in the little Saxon town of Waldheim where they were preserved until today. Since 2002, this musical heritage has been investigated and gradually made accessible to the public once more. Waldheim’s cantor Rene Michael Roder and Capella Daleminzia directed by him now release a series with the complete works by Vulpius. This release is the second volume in the series, and contains the motets for eight to thirteen parts of the Cantiones Sacrae I, thus completing the recording of Vulpius’ first published collection of works. The nine-part motet “Surrexit pastor bonus” for Easter Monday is the only one in this collection to be sung by four choirs and contains another special feature. While Choir 1 sings the Latin text, the Choirs 2, 3, and 4 contrast this with hymn in German language. Furthermore, the choirs should be placed in a quadrophonic manner if possible.
