Founded in 2010 by cellist Niklas Schmidt, "Fontenay Classics International" stands for fine chamber music, superior sound and exquisite design. FCI presents both young ensembles as well as recordings of Mr. Schmidt himself. Named after the Greek God of the East Wind, the Evrus Trio was founded in 2000 by three young musicians. The Evrus Trio’s ambitious tour schedule has earned them acclaim from audiences and critics alike. On their debut CD they present Tchaikovsky’s expansive Piano Trio in a, op. 50 and Shostakovich’s youthful, single movement Piano Trio in C, op. 8.

Pianist Christian Chamorel (b. 1979) is one of Switzerland’s most widely fêted pianists of his generation. +An invitee to festivals around the world, he is also founder of the annual, popular Swiss Mont Musical festival. +Mr. Chamorel’s new Fondamenta all-Mendelssohn release includes performances of the great composer’s two piano concerti, several of his Songs Without Words, and the Variations Sérieuses. +Laurent Gendre leads the Orchestre de Chambre Fribourgeois.

With their latest release of “Locale” from Foghorn Classics, the Alexander String Quartet presents brand new accounts of two of Antonín Dvorák’s most enduringly popular chamber works. The “American” String Quartet in F Major, Op. 96 from 1893 was written during the composer’s extended retreat from New York City to the rural “Czech” community of Spillville, on the Turkey River in northeastern Iowa. The ASQ plumbs the rich and reflective “outdoor” nuances of this exquisitely crafted master­piece. And the miraculous pianist Joyce Yang joins the Alexanders once again for this recording of the jubilant Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81 from 1887, composed at the composer’s country home amidst Bohemia’s woods and fields in Vysoka, just a little south of Prague. These two works are among the composer’s most expressively articulate chamber works. Both are profoundly influenced by their geographic “locale” and are, perhaps, exemplars of the sophisticated duality of the transatlantic experience of the late 19th century, embracing the nostalgia of the traditional bucolic ideal and the urbane sophistication of the imminent new age. Eric Bromberger’s accompanying notes and commentary provide illuminating musical and historical context, not least some of Dvorak’s own thoughts on the American-ness of his quartet. This is the third release on Foghorn Classics celebrating the inimitable collaboration between the Alexanders and Yang. Earlier releases in­­clude the Brahms and Schumann Quintets and, most recently, the Mozart Piano Quartets. Their combined concert repertoire, among several other standard and modern works, now includes a brilliant new and much-lauded quintet from the American composer Samuel Carl Adams, commissioned to help celebrate a decade of joyful collaborative music-making.

SCHUMANN Piano Quintet. BRAHMS Piano Quintet • Alexander Str Qrt; Joyce Yang (pn) • FOGHORN 2014 (70:24)



One would think that the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets would make natural partners on disc; yet, they’ve been paired together fewer times than I’d have thought. I found no more than half a dozen such couplings, and interestingly, of those, only one (not counting the present Alexander Quartet’s version) is anywhere near recent, and that is a 2007 recording with the Artemis Quartet and Leif Ove Andsnes on Virgin, which received a less than favorable review from me in 31:4. Three others fall into the historical category: a recording issued by Pearl with the Busch Quartet and Rudolf Serkin (Brahms, 1938; Schumann, 1942); a recording issued in a three-disc set by Testament with the Hollywood Quartet and Victor Aller (Brahms, 1954; Schumann, 1955); and a recording by Doremi with the Tel Aviv Quartet and Pnina Salzman (Brahms, 1974; Schumann, 1983). There’s also a pairing of the two works on a 2000 Globe CD, featuring the Rubio Quartet and Paul Komen.


This led me to wonder why these two piano quintets by two men who held each other in high esteem, and whose lives intersected in very personal ways, would not be joined together on disc more often. Then, listening to them, one after the other, as they’re programmed on the Alexander’s CD—the Schumann first, the Brahms second—some possible reasons presented themselves.


To begin with, the Brahms Piano Quintet dwarfs the Schumann, and not just in its duration, which is some 12 minutes longer, but in the thickness of its textures, the weightiness of its material, and especially the ponderousness of its piano part. Schumann, the keyboard virtuoso who wrote such magnificent music for his own instrument, also seemed to understand intuitively how to combine piano and strings in a way that was balanced and transparent and that allowed for the strings to be heard on an equal footing. He leveled the playing field. Steven Ritter, in a 34:1 review of the Quintet performed by the Leipzig Quartet and Christian Zacharias on MDG, wrote, “Schumann in this piece knew what he was writing for, and the balance among the strings with the piano is well-nigh perfect.” Exactly right.


Brahms, too, was reputedly a formidable pianist, but his writing for the instrument, at least in his earlier works, was of a different nature. It was muscular, bulky, and dense. For the string players in his Quintet, it’s a constant struggle to be heard.


Then there’s the music itself. Much of Schumann’s Quintet gives off a feeling of spontaneous inspiration. For the most part, it’s a buoyant, ebullient work. Brahms’s Quintet is not spontaneous sounding at all. Much of it, with its convoluted rhythmic contortions, sounds laboriously worked out. Add to that a score containing some of Brahms’s most violent music, and in the very dark key of F Minor—which, according to Christian Schubart’s Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (Ideas for an Aesthetic of Sound Art) (1806), expresses “deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery, and longing for the grave”—and you have a work that’s grim, desperate, and brutal in three of its four movements. Can there be any more sudden or crueler ending to a piece than the fateful three-note thud that decapitates the Finale dead in its tracks?


The piano quintets by Schumann and Brahms are indeed very different works, which, on emotional and psychological levels, probably wouldn’t make compatible marriage partners.


There’s also the age difference to take into account. Schumann composed his Quintet in 1842, more than 10 years before he and Clara met Brahms for the first time in Düsseldorf in 1853. By the time Brahms completed his Piano Quintet in 1864, Schumann had been dead for eight years.


But Brahms’s Quintet was one of those works that had a lengthy gestation and a difficult birth, struggling to find its final form. Originally, it took shape as a two-cello String Quintet. Had Brahms not destroyed that first version, it would have been his only string quintet scored for two cellos, following the example of Schubert’s great C-Major Quintet. As it turned out, Brahms’s only two extant string quintets, opp. 88 and 111, are scored for two violas, following the examples of Mozart.


Unhappy with the piece as a String Quintet, Brahms next revised it as a Sonata for Two Pianos. He was well enough satisfied with that version not to have destroyed it, but Clara Schumann and Hermann Levi, who performed the two-piano version together in concert, both felt that the piece needed a bigger, perhaps orchestral, treatment. Brahms wasn’t ready yet to write a symphony, but he took his friends’ advice to heart, and rearranged the score one last time as the Piano Quintet we know today. The two-piano version, however, was preserved and published as op. 34b. But filed under the category of “can’t leave well-enough alone,” the destroyed two-cello Quintet version was exhumed in a speculative reconstruction by Anssi Karttunen and recorded at least once that I know of, on a Toccata Classics CD (TOCC0066).


The Alexander’s Schumann is indeed breathtaking, as much for its sweeping lyricism and emotional responsiveness to the music’s impassioned Romantic gestures, as for its technical precision, ensemble balance, and tonal bloom. It stands head and shoulders, by far, above any of the recent recordings of the work to come my way. I already mentioned the disappointing Artemis effort; and even more recently, I found the Fine Arts Quartet’s entry with pianist Xiayin Wang on Naxos “workmanlike and professional, but not emotionally moving or inspiring.” Yet another letdown was a live recording from the Heimbach Festival with Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt, and friends, a performance I found wanting for a bit more rehearsal time.


Quite honestly, until the arrival of this new version of the Schumann from the Alexander Quartet and Joyce Yang, my favorites have been a performance by the Schubert Ensemble on ASV, reviewed in 30:3, and the classic 1966 recording by the Guarneri Quartet with Arthur Rubinstein, a review of which (assuming it was reviewed) most likely predates the Fanfare Archive. The Alexander’s Schumann is simply wonderful, taking pride of place among all others with which I’m familiar.


The Brahms Quintet, too, is special. The hair-on-fire Scherzo, in particular, is a guided tour through Brahms’s rhythmic arsenal. If the players thoroughly appreciate the pulse-quickening, heart-pounding effect this movement is intended to have, and they deliver it accordingly, it should make you want to jump out of your skin. No one, of course, has literally ever done such a thing; it’s just an expression, like being beside oneself, which, according to quantum theory, at least, is a possibility. But I have to say that the Alexander’s performance is super-charged and electrifyingly exciting. Needless to say, the ensemble’s terrific reading of Brahms’s Piano Quintet is not limited to just the Scherzo. This new recording of the Schumann and Brahms piano quintets will be a serious contender for my year-end Want List.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

BRAHMS String Sextets Nos. 1 1 and 2 1. String Quintets Nos. 1 2 and 2 2 • Alexander Str Qrt; 1,2 Toby Appel (va); 1 David Requiro (vc) • FOGHORN 2012 (2 CDs: 130:33)


Completed in 1860, the first of Brahms’s two sextets is an effusive outpouring of youthful ardor that belies the age and life-experience of the 27-year-old composer who wrote it. By 1860, Brahms had already lived through the harrowing events of Schumann’s attempted suicide, commitment to a mental institution, and premature death, not to mention the effects of those events on Clara and her children. But Brahms was also in love with Clara, or at least with some idealized love surrogate for Clara, and this B?-Major Sextet seems to sing a song of blissful, sun-filled days, until the arrival of the second movement, that is—a set of variations in D Minor on a theme strongly redolent of the Gypsy melos Brahms picked up during his tour with Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi and which would infuse much of his music for the rest of his life.


Perhaps the most amazing aspect of this Sextet is the clarity of the textures and lines Brahms maintains throughout the work, in spite of the addition of two more instruments to the ensemble and the thickness of the scoring. It’s a transparency that can be heard with penetrating purity in this performance by the Alexander Quartet in which Tony Appel takes the first viola part, and David Requiro takes the second cello part.


Four years later, Brahms turned his attention to a second sextet, this time in G Major, completing it in 1865. Throughout its composition, Brahms was involved in the most serious romantic dalliance of his life, one that very nearly led to the marriage altar. The woman was Agathe von Siebold, to whom Brahms had proposed. Then, suddenly, Brahms got cold feet and broke off the engagement. What this has to do with the Sextet is that it contains one of the composer’s rare (perhaps only) use of a musical cryptogram in which bars 162–168 of the first movement contain the notes A-G-A-D-H (B)-E, a reference to Agathe.


The G-Major Sextet is also richly melodic, but tinged perhaps with just a bit of wistful nostalgia and regret; at 32, Brahms is becoming the sorrowful, lonely traveler we know from many of his later works. The minor-key Scherzo, which now comes in second place, and the Poco Adagio which follows it, have a certain portentous gravitas about them, as if Brahms now knows the journey going forward will not be a particularly happy one for him.


Toby Appel and David Requiro switch roles for the G-Major Sextet, with Appel playing second viola and Requiro playing first cello. The effect on the ensemble is a darkening one, which suits the music perfectly. Go-to, long-time favorites in this piece have been the Nash Ensemble on Onyx and the Raphael Ensemble on Hyperion, but once again, the Alexander Quartet, joined by Appel and Requiro, makes a most persuasive case for the score with a tonal refulgence, textural translucence, and expressivity of phrasing that are hard to resist.


Much later in Brahms’s output come the two string quintets. The F-Major was written in 1882 at Bad Ischl, the composer’s favorite summer retreat. The normally highly self-critical Brahms was so pleased with the work that he wrote to his publisher, “You have never had such a beautiful work from me,” and in a letter to Clara Schumann, he called it “one of my finest works.” History has not necessarily concurred, if one judges by the number of recordings the piece has received; at around 30, it would seem to be Brahms’s least popular chamber work. Hearing it, one has to wonder why, for it contains some of the composer’s most haimish music, warm, sun-drenched, and filled with the optimism and promise borne by a spring day. Unusual for Brahms’s larger chamber works as well is the fact that the Quintet is in three movements instead of four, with the second movement combining elements of a slow movement and a Scherzo into one.


I first learned the quintets from the 1970s LP recordings by the Guarneri Quartet with Michael Tree, which I reviewed in their digitized transfers in 32:6. The players bring a great deal of warmth and bigheartedness to their readings, but they’re perhaps not quite as technically polished as are the Boston Symphony Chamber Players on a Nonesuch CD, which I’ve long enjoyed. I haven’t heard the Uppsala Chamber Soloists’ recent entry on Daphne, which Lynn Bayley praised highly in 37:1, but of those I am familiar with—and in addition to the above-cited Guarneri and Boston versions, they include the Juilliard Quartet with Walter Trampler and the Hagen Quartet with Gérard Caussé—I’d have to say that the Alexander Quartet with Tony Appel outshines them all. The readings are closest to the classic Guarneri accounts in their warmth and beauteous sound, but more technically polished, better balanced, and offering more detailed recorded sound.


The same may be said of the G-Major Quintet, op. 111, the work Brahms intended to be his last, but as we know, Fate had other plans for him. The Quintet was composed in 1890, again at Bad Ischl, as the previous Quintet had been. Surprisingly, there’s no sense of leave-taking, nothing autumnal in the character of this music. It’s in fact quite joyful. In certain ways, however, it does sum up the totality of Brahms’s art. It has been called the composer’s most cosmopolitan work, suggesting a diversity of Italian, Viennese, Hungarian, and Slavic influences. The score has an almost serenade-like personality to it, reflecting back on Brahms’s early orchestral serenades.


These are performances to fall in love with and to live with happily ever after.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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BRUCKNER Symphony No. 1 (1866 vers) • Philipp von Steinaecker, cond; Musica Saeculorum • FRA BERNARDO 1310322 (47:57) Live: Musik Meran


The program notes to this recording state that the 60-person Musica Saeculorum opted to record Bruckner’s Symphony No. 1 in its original 1866 edition on period instruments in an effort “to identify any possible connection to Schubert and the early Romantics.” Harmonically, of course, Bruckner is worlds removed from Schubert and his contemporaries. But the use of period instruments does offer Bruckner a slightly more subdued timbral palette than most listeners are accustomed to in his music. The strings are somewhat darker, the brass a bit more veiled. Whether because of instrumentation, recording engineering, or conducting choices, though, I find that the strings have a tendency to overbalance the other instruments in tutti sections, occasionally making melodic material difficult to discern. This is my primary criticism of this disc. Bruckner at his most forceful can and should be overwhelming, but the counterpoint should always be clear; his tuttis mark the apotheoses of thematic material. In this recording, these passages tend to be rather murky and undifferentiated.


This criticism aside, Philipp von Steinaecker demonstrates a keen understanding of Bruckner’s aesthetic. The dotted rhythms of the first movement’s main theme are crisp and energetic, as are the horn’s responses. Von Steinaecker lingers appropriately on Bruckner’s extended passages of dominant harmony, building harmonic tension through strategic ritards in preparation for majestic statements in the brass. Even within string passages, though, figuration occasionally overshadows melody, as in the contrapuntal development of the first theme in the violins against sextuplet scales in the lower strings or the recapitulation of the second theme in the basses against eighth-note figuration in the upper strings. The modulatory passages that follow, however, are forceful and stern, and the rush to the final bars is quite exciting, though I would have liked the thematic material in the winds to be clearer.


Von Steinaecker’s is one of the more expansive readings of the symphony’s second movement, over a minute longer than Jochum’s. I find the expansiveness effective; the chromatic introduction becomes nebulous enough to make the eventual arrival of stable tonality a genuine relief. In the soaring passages that follow, though, minimal differentiation is made between melody and accompaniment. Von Steinaecker is sensitive to the ebb and flow of harmonic tension, but the melodic contours are lost throughout much of the movement.


The third movement is perhaps the most successful, with strong, almost violent accents and sharp contrasts in dynamics. At nearly a minute shorter than Jochum’s performance and 90 seconds briefer than Barenboim’s, it is among the more energetic recordings of this movement. I only wish that the brass dissonances toward the end received more weight. And the trio has the same problems with balance as the previous two movements: the motivic fourths in the horn are quite difficult to hear.


The fourth movement has almost no balance issues, although Bruckner’s orchestration is not particularly different in this movement than in the others. The opening pages are powerful and imposing, though I would have liked von Steinaecker to take an even greater ritard over the extended dominant harmonies that precede the second statement of the first theme. The second theme, stated in the violins with offbeat accents in the basses, is appropriately rustic. Likewise, von Steinaecker builds tension admirably before Bruckner’s characteristic pauses. The development maintains a consistent sense of direction. Von Steinaecker is particularly effective in his treatment of Bruckner’s obsessively-repeated scale fragments in the strings, which he leads gradually from background to foreground against the melodic material in the horns. The ending is triumphant and grand, though a broader ritard before the final cadence would have made it more so.


Because of the balance issues mentioned above, I cannot give this recording a wholehearted recommendation, but von Steinaecker’s conception of the piece is intelligent and appealing. The sound is generally crisp and live, with very slight tape hiss apparent at the beginnings and ends of tracks.


FANFARE: Myron Silberstein

Dreams, illusions, nightmares, tender and formidable images: all this can be heard on the new, third GENUIN CD by the Japanese flutist Atsuko Koga. From the first lost melodies by her fellow countryman Akira Miyoshi and the yearning musical arcs of Carl Maria von Weber to the playful, even euphoric figurations of Bohuslav Martinu, Koga and her partners succeed in taking us into ever-new musical and spiritual landscapes.

"• Russian-German pianist Anna Scheps debut CD • Concert program with works of a fairytale and dance-like character • Continuing her career comeback following the birth of her three children • Committed to many social projects"

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One can experience with admiration how one of the most important works in chamber music literature lives and breathes when it is awakened to sonorous life. Laureates of the German Music Competition play Schubert's great Octet of 1827 and these young musicians perform at the highest level.

The Edition Primavera already consists of numerous commendable CDs, produced by GENUIN in collaboration with the German Music Competition! The latest offering in this series is the debut CD of pianist Frank Dupree (b. 1991), the 2014 prizewinner. His clever program spans an extremely wide range of music: bracketed by Beethoven's first and last piano sonatas, works of the 20thand 21st c. – a world-premiere recording of Peter Eötvös, as well as Berio's Encores and Alban Berg's first sonata, are performed, all-in-all an intellectual as well as a sensual musical pleasure.

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Green is the third of the highly praised color series by the award-winning Amaryllis Quartet. White received the ECHO Klassik in 2012.

The Great Gate of Kiev is in itself huge. But with the eight horns of German horn sound plus percussion amplification it becomes gigantic! After their successful Verdi-Wagner Portrait "Siegfried and Violetta" the world-class horn players appear again in 8.1 wide-screen format on their second GENUIN-CD. However, before the listener is blasted away by the sound of the Great Gate, he travels through a veritable musical Jurassic Park: spooked by the Gnome, a witches' Sabbath on the Bald Mountain, and morbid waltzes and emotional suffering with Romeo and Juliet. On the program: Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev - here dances the Russian bear!

Lieder and Pictures, featuring 12 Schubert-Liszt transcriptions and Mussorgsky's greatest piano cycle, is the young pianist Mikhail Mordvinov’s GENUIN debut CD. + Mr. Mordvinov was first propelled onto the international stage when he won the 12th Robert Schumann Competition (Zwickau ‘96) and the 6th Schubert Competition (Dortmund ‘97). + His busy touring schedule includes performances at the world’s major concert venues. + Reviews have noted his virtuosity, clarity, lyricism and confidence.

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The two musicians Lenka Matej�kov� (violin) and Dariya Hrynkiv (piano) possess Slavic sound in their blood. You can hear this in the glowing recordings of their debut release, which is dedicated exclusively to Czech composers. The two prizewinners of numerous competitions follow the stylistically diverse paths of works by Anton�n Dvor�k, Leo� Jan�cek, Josef Suk and Bohuslav Martinu down to the smallest detail. With enthusiasm and deep insight, they allow us to experience how each of the four composers uniquely unite national heritage with European culture. A musical treat!

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MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in f, op. 80. 4 Pieces for String Quartet, op. 81. MENDELSSOHN-HENSEL String Quartet in E? • Merel Qt • GENUIN GEN 11204 (69:26)


The pairing of the two chief works on this disc is most apt: the only string quartet by Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel and the last string quartet by brother Felix, the latter penned in 1847 to express his terrible grief over her tragically early death, with his own following shortly thereafter. They are supplemented by the four pieces of the op. 81, of which the first two ( Andante and Scherzo ) also date from 1847, the third ( Capriccio ) from 1843, and the last ( Fuga ) from 1827; they were published together posthumously. Mendelssohn’s op. 80 surely needs no introduction from me; suffice it to say that it is to my mind his greatest masterwork among his chamber pieces, and its heartfelt searing drama completely refutes the absurd canard that its creator was content with producing works of faultless formal elegance but lacking in expressive depth. The Mendelssohn-Hensel work, timing out at about 20 minutes, is finely wrought and delicate. It opens with a genteel and placid Allegro ma non troppo, moves on to a graceful but stately Allegretto and slightly pensive (and slightly overlong) Romanze, and closes with a spirited and energetic Allegro molto vivace. As always, the compositional style is markedly similar to that of her brother, somewhat less imaginative melodically and harmonically but nonetheless of considerable quality and having distinct touches of individuality. One can only wonder about and regret what she might have produced but did not due to her untimely demise and the social restrictions of her era.


The Merel Quartet of Zurich, performing on modern instruments but with interpretive touches clearly informed by period-instrument practices (leaner tone and use of reduced vibrato), presents top-notch performances all around. The Mendelssohn-Hensel quartet is given a warmly sympathetic reading; the rendition of the Mendelssohn op. 80 has a knife-edge tension and keenness that unashamedly bears comparison to the best recorded competition, and the members of the op. 81 foursome are treated as substantial works in their own right rather than as mere afterthoughts. The recorded sound has a bright, crisp immediacy without harshness.


I presume that most collectors already have at least one recording of the op. 80 and are more likely to consider acquiring this disc for the Mendelssohn-Hensel quartet, for which alternatives are scarce. I would avoid the Asasello Quartet on Avi, the Lafayette Quartet on CBC Musica Viva (currently out of print, but available as an MP3 download), and the Fanny Mendelssohn Quartet on Troubadisc (diffidently reviewed by David Johnson in Fanfare 18:1, though he recommended the accompanying performance of her trio), all of which are slack or overly cautious and lackluster. That leaves only the Erato Quartet on cpo, a performance strongly recommended by John W. Lambert in 23:5. That is a fine interpretation, but very different from this one; it takes an overtly big-boned romantic approach, and is set in an extremely resonant recording acoustic, with the result sounding more like a small string ensemble than a quartet. That disc is filled out by the quartets of two now quite obscure women composers, Maddalena Laura Lombardini-Sirmen and Emilie Mayer. One’s choice between the cpo disc and the present one will therefore be determined by preferences in pairings, interpretive approach, and sonic ambience. For anyone desiring alternative recommendations for the op. 80 and 81 of Felix, I would turn to the complete quartet cycles by either the Leipzig or Emerson quartets; see the excellent summary of their respective strengths by Burton Rothleder in his review of the Leipzig cycle (my own preference) in 32:6.


FANFARE: James A. Altena

Ram+�n Ortega Quero studied with Miguel Quir+�s early on at the conservatory in his native Granada. He became a member of the Andalusian Youth Orchestra at the age of 12. In 2003, conductor Daniel Barenboim accepted Ram+�n as a member of the East-West Divan Orchestra. Gregor Witt, Principal Oboe of Barenboim's Berliner Staatskapelle, took the gifted young man under his wing and acted as his mentor. Ram+�n won first prize at the ARD Music Competition in 2007. Since 2008, he is the principal oboe of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under conductor Mariss Jansons. In 2011 he was named the ECHO KLASSIK "Young Artist of the Year".

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With this Genuin release, we're carried away on a musical journey to other spheres in a live concert recording by rising young South Korean pianist Yekwon Sunwoo. The late Beethoven Sonata, Op. 109, Chopin's 24 Preludes, and piano works by Liszt an dTchaikovsky form a substantial and multi-faceted selection that does full justic to the 2015 International German Piano Award winner's dynamic playing style. The transparent sound of his Bechstein grand allows even the subtlest nuances of color to shine through. The phrases and structures are brought out with such clarity and lucidity that we're more than happy to simply follow along as the pianistic guide shows us the way.

The works included on this album demonstrate the heart of German Romanticism, with works by Horn, Schumann, Homilius, Goldmark, Hummel, Schubert, and Steinhaur. World-renowned vocal ensemble Amarcord performs these works, alongside instrumental group German Hornsound. The timeless songs featured on this release speak to the listener of love, despair, and eternity. Brass and vocal fans alike will enjoy this album!

Played with intensively close listening and feeling the inner essence of the music: this is how Japanese pianist Nami Ejiri approaches the late works of Schubert on her GENUIN debut CD. + Alongside the great Sonata in B-flat major, she plays the Four Impromptus, D. 899 and the more rarely played Allegretto in C minor, D. 915. + Winner of the prestigious Vianna da Motta Int’l Piano Competition, Lisbon, amongst other competition successes, Ms. Ejiri has been teaching piano at the Hochschule for Music in Frankfurt, Germany since 2006.

The pianist Hans H. Suh presents both large and small works on his GENUIN album with piano music ranging from Beethoven to Debussy. The winner of numerous international competitions, including the 2018 International German Piano Award, is a master of the moment as well as of sweeping lines: Schumann's, Beethoven's and Debussy's "little things," i.e., preludes, bagatelles, and other snapshots, shine with tremendous and enduring radiance. Suh brings Liszt's gigantic B minor Sonata into the present and lends it the magic of the moment. This combination of successful repertoire selection and exquisite interpretation invites more than just piano lovers on a virtuoso journey through time.

These wonderful musical leaves, compiled for us by the pianist Tobias Koch for the fourth CD of his Schumann series on GENUIN, waft towards us as if from distant times. Alongside works of Schumann, we find delicate treasures by Johannes Brahms, Theodor Kirchner und Voldemar Bargiel – all works that these composers would have written in Schumann's poetry album, so to speak. Some of them appear on CD for the first time here. And alongside this allurement of rarity, Koch's floating, breathing piano sound fascinates us once again, conjuring up the period of these pieces with their impetuous feelings, salons and yearning for distant places - fragile and moving miniatures...