Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The album at hand shows the well-known sonatas Opus 5 by Arcangelo Corelli in an experimental recording of high interest, based on sources from the 18th century regarding music theory and musical practice. Susanne Scholz and Michael Hell, both professors at Kunstuniversität Graz in Austria, share a common and fundamental interest in the strong statement of performance practice. It determines and reinforces their musical expressions and turns this recording into an experiment. The hypotheses that they establish here, which are based on different versions of Arcangelo Corelli’s well-known op. 5 sonatas, focus on instrumental technique, the selection of instruments and the realization of the harpsichord part. The differences, which can be heard in each version through the appropriate choice of these historically informed methods, create a kaleidoscope of musical expressions and soundscapes. This release thereby has no intention of depicting a homogeneous representation of Susanne Scholz’s violin sound and Michael Hell’s continuo playing, but rather of showing how different stylistic differentiations can sound using the most popular violin sonatas of the 18th century as a starting point. The different handed down ornamented versions of the sonatas by Corelli himself, or by Geminiani, or by Roman or an anonymous master reflect the stylistic changes during the first half of the 18th century as well as the different characteristics specific to each country. In this recording, we take these differences into account by switching between three harpsichords and three kinds of violin bows. Only one violin (baroque violin after Antonio Stradivari by Federico Lowenberger; Genova, 2012) was intentionally used to allocate better the sound differences of the postures and bows.

Classical Music

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.

Classical Music

The preparation for this album has taken soprano Marie Luise Werneburg on a journey of exploration and research between the 17th and 20th centuries- and even inspired her to commission two new songs from a leading British composer of the 21st century. The Dresden-born early music specialist was leaving through a friend's copy of lute songs by the English composer Francis Pilkington (1565-1638) when she made an unexpected discovery. "I turned the page and there I saw 'Diaphenia' and thought: I know that!" By chance she was already familiar with Dominick Argento's 1957 setting of the same poem (one of the American composer's Six Elizabethan Songs) and was immediately struck by the existence of a setting composed some 370 years earlier. This discovery gave birth to the idea to develop a programme which combines old and new settings of the same poems. And 'Diaphenia's' mood itself set the main criteria for what other songs should be included in the programme: they should only feature optimistic love, as yet unclouded by doubt. There was a lot of scouring facsimiles and songbooks to find suitable repertoire, and the programme grew to represent two golden ages of English song that exist in a kind of dialogue across the centuries. The 17th-century lute songs are interspersed with songs by those composers who were inspired by the rediscovery of renaissance music. There are two 17th-century poems that existed in early songs for which Werneburg was unable to find modern equivalents. So she commissioned 21st-century settings from London-born composer Joby Talbot which were written especially for this project and therefore are recorded here for the very first time.

Classical Music

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.

Classical Music

Classical Music

On March 14, 1926, a special concert was held in the Leipzig community synagogue at the corner of Gottsched and Zentralstrasse. Leipzig citizens and guests, regardless of their faith, were invited to gather their own impressions of the Jewish culture. They were to be given the opportunity to meet each other, discover commonalities, and experience differences as a source of mutual enrichment. The organizers sought primarily to appeal to those who had perhaps never before in their lives entered a Jewish place of worship and had reservations. Of course, the synagogue concerts were also intended to attract a wide audience, the doors were opened to all, not only community members. The big names like Bach, Handel, and Mendelssohn were combined with masterpieces of synagogue music. The Leipzig audience suddenly heard compositions by Salomone Rossi, Louis Lewandowski, and the cantor Samuel Lampel. This album performed by Leipziger Synagogalchor featuring many guests recreates the program of this concert and thus brings a piece of Leipzig's city history back to life- from a time when music of Jewish and Christian origin was brought together, then performed by a choir beyond confessional boundaries. The power of music thus unites, thereby rewarding participants and listeners for their openness and tolerance with wonderful discoveries. With the recording of this concert program, Ludwig Bohme and the Leipziger Synagogalchor would like to show the sonorous results of this uncomplicated and pragmatic cooperation between Jews and Gentiles- a "resounding tolerance" which is still able to inspire today.

Classical Music