Classical Music

When viewed with the distance of time, the album confirms its importance in the repertoire of the two great artists. The famed tone of Josef Suk’s violin is completely in the composer’s service, the instrument talks and sings, while Panenka’s take on Beethoven still astonishes with its wealth of articulation, purity of style and crystal-clear tone.

The Czech harp player, Katerina Englichova presents a collection of 20th century compositions written for both solo and chamber harp works. Opening with the rarely performed Benjamin Britten's Suite for Harp, the remainder of the release are world premiere recordings providing an opportunity to discover a less familiar world of contemporary Czech composers.

Classical Music

"• Jana Vonášková, a member of the Smetana Trio for many years, partners here with the eminent Latvian pianist Irina Kondratenko for this nearly all-Brahms recital. • Brahms' violin sonatas are touchstones of the chamber music literature • Rarely recorded or performed, the F.A.E. Sonata is here heard in its entirety. • New recordings – 2013."

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Within a mere few years, Petr Popelka has established himself as one of the world's most exciting young conductors. Serving as principal conductor of the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Wiener Symphoniker, he has also appeared as a guest with prominent European and American orchestras, as well as at opera houses worldwide. Popelka does not view Bedrich Smetana's legacy as an obligatory Czech national classic, but rather as an object of love and vital artistic quest. "His ultimate masterpiece, My Country, should be approached a bit like an opera, as a great story... As a cycle of tone poems based on the theme of the homeland, it is absolutely unique in the history of music. Most significantly, there is not a work written with greater love." Popelka's recording is not just yet another addition to the immense number of recordings of My Country. Bringing to bear his great musicality and acute sense of detail, the conductor and the orchestra have modelled a truly exceptional form. Popelka's album features other germs too. String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, "From My Life", hailing from Smetana's mature period, when the composer was completely deaf, in George Szell's brilliant orchestration. In contrast, Smetana's early music is represented by the Triumphal Symphony, dedicated to the wedding of the 24-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph I to Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria, and three "Swedish" Liszt-inspired symphonic poems, based on dramas as immense as Shakespeare's Richard III and Schiller's Wallenstein. The extraordinary album marks the 200th anniversary of Smetana's birth. Lovers of spatial sound will certainly relish streaming My Country in the Dolby Atmos format. Petr Popelka conducts Smetana - with love, deep feeling and sense for detail

Today, Katerina Knezikova is a well-known name in the world of opera (Glyndebourne) and on concert stages (BBC SO, Bamberger Symphoniker, Czech Philharmonic, LPO, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, RLPO etc.). After her album Phidyle, which attracted considerable critical attention (Gramophone Editor's Choice, BBC Music Magazine Award), she let herself be carried away by the world of Richard Strauss's songs, full of micro-dramas, transparent emotions, and deep intimacy. Her partner and guide on this journey is Jakub Hrusa with the Bamberger Symphoniker in an enchanting live performance of the Four Last Songs, and- surprisingly for many-also in the supremely intimate world of songs with piano. The sensitive Lieder selection covers Strauss's entire career spanning nearly 70 years. The composer's songs bear the impressions of major events of his whole life and the atmosphere of his times, leading to the themes of parting and death heard in his Four Last Songs. Each of the songs is a perfectly polished gem, the beauty of which is enhanced by the extraordinarily harmonious interplay of the two artists. The Songs of Richard Strauss - perfectly polished gems

... Storace gave a quartet party to his friends. The players were tolerable, not one of them excelled on the instrument he played; but there was a little science among them, which I dare say will be acknowledged when I name them: First violin Haydn, second violin Baron Dittersdorf, violoncello Vanhal, viola Mozart... The tenor Michael Kelly's recollection of that musical evening in 1784 in Vienna has been the source of much speculation by musicologists, and it is also one of the things that inspired this recording. The four composers, all highly acclaimed in their day, met in multiethnic Vienna, and they shared the bond of friendship. While Mozart behaved towards Haydn with respect like that of a pupil towards a master and dedicated a series of six string quartets to him (including the "Dissonant Quartet" in C major), Haydn told Mozart's father that his son was "the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name." Dittersdorf was likewise unsparing with superlatives in his autobiography: "He is undoubtedly one of the greatest original geniuses, and I have never before known any composer with such an amazing wealth of ideas." The names of Dittersdorf and Vanhal are familiar to some, but few have encountered their music. This recording offers an opportunity to discover those nearly forgotten masters' works superbly interpreted by the Bennewitz Quartet. The enthusiastic acclaim of international critics for their previous Haydn album is affirmation of their extraordinary quality in this repertoire. More remarkable discoveries from the hand of the Bennewitz Quartet