For many decades the orchestras of the German broadcasting service SWR have worked together with many famous musicians from all over the world, including the outstanding pianists selected for this collection, among them Clara Haskil, Jörg Demus, Paul Badura-Skoda, Alicia de Larrocha, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Géza Anda. Furthermore, Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (1903–1991) is regarded as one of the supreme keyboard masters of the 20th century and must feature in any comparative survey of performances of the central repertoire from Beethoven to Brahms. Annie Fischer (1914–1995), a pupil of Ernst von Dohnányi later went on to make some legendary recordings with Otto Klemperer. Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) polarized the music scene by embracing the parallel worlds of classical music and jazz in equal measure. He was not only one of the most brilliant pianists of the 20th century with regard to tone and technique, but also one of the wittiest and most musically competent. For decades Wilhelm Kempff (1895–1991) was seen as the leading interpreter of German music from Beethoven and Schubert through Schumann and Liszt to Brahms.

Note: This set is a collection of previously released recordings.

It was apparently Rimsky-Korsakov, himself a member of the “Mighty Handful” of Russian nationalist composers, who encouraged his students at the St. Petersburg Conservatory to go out and collect Jewish folk music and music sung in the synagogues, getting thus the ball rolling for a specific Jewish classical music. The movement led in 1908 to the founding of the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music and, in 1923, of the Society for Jewish Music in Moscow. The success of the latter and its members was however, short-lived. The antisemitic, anti-cosmopolitan forces that started to brew under the new soviet regime led many potential members of the society to emigrate. The ones that remained were forced to focus on proletarian themes and, even when complying to the requirements, still found themselves often repressed or incarcerated outright.

The last notable concert with the society’s music in the Soviet Union took place in Moscow, in April of 1929. Most of this music had then lain dormant for decades until the pianist Jascha Nemtsov (himself the son of a Gulag survivor) and his musical collaborators unearthed it in the last few years of the 20th century. The present collection contains on five discs the recordings – many of them world premieres – realized between 1999 and 2004.

REVIEWS:

One of the real strengths of this program is the number of pieces that received their world premiere recordings here and it’s probably the case that many of them can still only be heard in these performances. I make it around 42 pieces in total – which includes the individual movements of suites and cycles – made their disc premieres here, a tribute to the industry, application and ardent appreciation shown principally by Nemtsov.

Fortunately, these discs make an appeal on recital-by-recital basis. Yes, there are generic settings and yes, nothing is developed extensively so that the pleasures here are of a localised, focused and specialised nature. Nemtsov may be disheartened by the relative obscurity of much of this music still, feeling it, perhaps, funnelled to the outlying ethnic borderland where folk, cabaret and lighter classical meet and mingle. He, however, in particular, and his disc confreres, have made a real contribution to the vivacious and continuing life of this music on disc and are deserving of high praise.

-- MusicWeb International

This is a fascinating five-disc collection that shines light on a short-lived movement in early 20th-century Russia to bring about a Jewish classical music idiom. Fine performances, too, from the likes of Tabea Zimmermann, Jascha Nemtsov, and Wolfgang Meyer.

-- BBC Music Magazine

SWR’s imaginative five-disc chamber collection From Jewish Life (recorded 1999-2004) should be of interest to listeners whether or not you’re religious or indeed of the Jewish faith. The excellent line-up of performers consists of Jascha Nemtsov (piano), Wolfgang Meyer (clarinet), Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Ingolf Turban (violin), David Geringas (cello) and Helene Schneiderman (mezzo-soprano). The chosen repertoire includes Bloch’s masterly Suite for viola and piano, Joseph Achron’s Stempenyu and other works, music by Julian and Alexander Krein, Alexander Weprik, Joachim Stutschewsky and Solomon Rosowsky and much more. This is, musically speaking, a most nourishing collection, and the digital sound is excellent. 

-- Gramophone

In their long history the SWR symphony orchestras (one covering the Southern part, the other the South-Western part of the federal state Baden-Würrtemberg) have changed their names several times. In 2016 they merged and are known today as the SWR Symphonieorchester. Over the years these orchestras have performed with many legendary conductors who either were in charge as chief conductor or occasionally invited as guest conductor. On this 10 album boxed set the listener will find 12 of the greatest conductors of the 20th century. Some, such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Leopold Stokowski, Hans Knappertsbusch, Karl Böhm, Kirill Kondrashin, Carlos Kleiber and Kurt Sanderling, appeared only sporadically on the podium of the two leading Baden-Württemberg orchestras. But all, including Carl Schuricht or the chief conductors represented here, Hans Rosbaud and Michael Gielen (Baden-Baden), George Prêtre and Roger Norrington (Stuttgart), have left a lasting legacy with the respective orchestras.

Les Ballets Russes was founded by director Sergei Diaghilev in 1909. The company never actually performed in Russia – it made its debut in Paris, and the world was to be its home during its 20 years of existence. With his concepts and commissions, Diaghilev fostered collaborations between the most exciting artists of the time, working with composers such as Stravinsky, Ravel, Prokofiev, Debussy and Satie, artists like Picasso, Kandinsky and Matisse, choreographers including Fokine, Nijinsky and Balanchine, and costume designers such as Coco Chanel. He set in motion a groundbreaking artistic revolution, the echoes of which still reverberate even today. The company’s productions were hugely successful, and Diaghilev most certainly elevated the careers of the artists he commissioned, in the process introducing an international audience to myths and legends and music and design motifs that would otherwise have remained unknown. The significance of music within all this cannot be overestimated – Diaghilev, in fact, came to ballet through his love of music.

SWR CLASSIC has released many of the ballets commissioned or produced by Diaghilev, featuring music by composers from Stravinsky through to Richard Strauss. These are now being re-released as a 10 album boxed set.

Stéphane Denève, triple winner of the Diapason d’Or of the Year, produced many outstanding recordings as chief conductor of the SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart from 2011 until 2016 when the orchestra merged with its sister orchestra from Baden-Baden and Freiburg to form the SWR Symphony Orchestra. They are now reissued as a five album boxed set including the ballet Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel's longest work, written for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and the operas L'Heure espagnole and L'Enfant et les sortileges. Although the two operas cannot be strictly considered orchestral works, they are essential to understanding the œuvre of a composer who had a great predilection for fantasy worlds and the exotic. As a student Ravel composed the Ouverture de Shéhérazade and, several years leter, three poems for voice and orchestra on the same topic – both works form part of this set. Throughout his entire career, from Une barque sur l'ocean to Ma mère L'Oye Ravel created magical soundscapes in a highly original manner and with great stylistic freedom. A big inspiration for him was American operetta but also jazz and fairy tales. The formal structure of his works has the clarity of crystal and the elegance of mathematics. The SWR Radio Symphony Orchestra, Stuttgart and the cast of young singers selected by Denève give thrilling interpretations.

REVIEWS:

Denève was the final Chief Conductor of this orchestra, from 2011-2016, after which they merged with the South West German Radio Orchestra for budgetary reasons. Their timbre is mellow and warm, akin to that of the Boston Symphony, but their ensemble playing and attack are tight.

The set is a highly worthwhile investment if you want a single collection of Ravel’s orchestral music. The sound is warm, clear, and spacious. Highly recommended.

-- Limelight (Australia)

Denève is very consistent in his meticulously prepared if slightly detached style. The playing and engineering is consistently very good indeed. The price of this box set is attractive. The song cycle and the two operas engaged me the most.

-- MusicWeb International

Since his breakthrough at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2004 with 'Can't Wait Until Tonight', Max Mutzke has been regarded as one of the most versatile voices on the German music scene. Whether it's soul, funk, pop or jazz, Mutzke moves effortlessly between genres while always remaining his distinctive self. With his latest album Soul Viel Mehr, he elevates his artistry to a new level. Together with the award-winning SWR Big Band, he presents a work full of energy, emotion and musical sophistication. Opulent arrangements lend fresh brilliance to Mutzke's own songs, such as 'Welt hinter Glas' and 'Marie', while giving classics a radiant new shine. Following it's initial release as a CD (SWR19169CD) in November 2025 - which sold out within just a few weeks and after several reprints - a curated selection of tracks is now being reissued as an exclusive heavyweight LP.

When Anton Bruckner premiered his Te Deum at the Vienna Musikverein in 1886, he later referred to it as the "pride of my life." This rare display of self-assurance is striking, given that Bruckner was otherwise known for his artistic self-doubt and frequently revised his compositions. But in this case, he was certain-and the critics agreed: the Te Deum became one of his greatest successes, surpassing even many of his symphonies in public acclaim. The story of the Mass in F minor unfolded rather differently. Commissioned by the Imperial Court Chapel in Vienna (Wiener Hofmusikkappelle), it was composed nearly two decades before the Te Deum. Bruckner subjected the work to multiple revisions up until 1893-a creative process typical of him. He conducted the premiere himself and even covered the considerable costs, after the Hofkappelle had initially dismissed the Mass as "unsingable." Only gradually did the work establish itself in the repertoire. The recordings on this album were made in 2024 and 2025, bringing together an outstanding cast of internationally acclaimed singers under the direction of a conductor of international standing.

When 23-year-old Hector Berlioz saw Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" on stage for the first time in 1827, he was deeply moved by the experience, probably not least because of the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who played Juliet. She became Berlioz's wife in 1833, and another six years later he completed his chorus-symphony "Romeo et Juliette", Op. 17. "Romeo et Juliette" is by no means intended as an attempt to transpose Shakespeare's drama as faithfully as possible; not a single verse of Shakespeare's text was included in the libretto, which was written by the poet emile Deschamps based on Berlioz's drafts. When the Prologue refers to Shakespeare as the only person who knew the highest secret of poetry, it is clear that the listener is deliberately placed in Berlioz's perspective, whose imagination is ignited by Shakespeare's genius. As in the case of the "Harold" symphony based on Byron, Berlioz adapts the original very freely. In both cases, he develops entire movements from episodes that are of only minor importance in the poem and adds scenes that do not appear there at all. The present live recording from 1982 showcases Gary Bertini at the peak of his career, conducting the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra of the SWR. An exquisite cast of singers - Alfreda Hodgson, Philip Langridge and John Shirley-Quirk - as well as internationally renowned choirs like the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the SWR Vokalensemble (known until 1998 as Sudfunk-Chor) accompany him in the performance of one of the most complex symphonic works of the Romantic era.

What distinguishes Faur�'s Requiem from numerous other settings of the requiem text is it's rather intimate, restrained, almost chamber-music nature, a "lullaby of death", as it has also been called, initially more as a criticism of a work that for most of the time avoids depicting the dread of death and the Last Judgement. Faur�'s reply "But this is how I feel about death: as a happy liberation, as a striving for happiness in the hereafter rather than as a painful transition", not only perfectly describes essential characteristics of his Requiem, but also reveals it to be a very personal expression of the composer's very own artistic nature. Two generations after Faur� (and Faur�'s grand-disciple through his teacher Koechlin), Francis Poulenc's (1899-1963) displayed a significantly different approach to religion. Poulenc, who like Faur� was from the southern part of France, had been shaped by his homeland in the sense of a 'rural', intense but joyous Catholicism. He regarded his Gloria as a more joyful counterpart to some of his other sacred works, and it is in this spirit that the first movement, begins in a festive mood with a striking, fanfare-like motif in the full orchestra. If Poulenc cited Gozzoli frescoes with monks sticking out their tongues and Benedictine monks playing football as the source of inspiration for his Gloria, then nowhere is this more immediately comprehensible than in the second movement, with it's rhythmically pointed Laudamus te, of the choir. In both the opera house, and concert hall, Pr�tre's interpretations were notable for their full-blooded and highly romantic character; in style, they were often different from those of French conductors of the previous generation. He was an effective conductor not only of the French repertoire, but also of the music of Italy, and Germany, a fact reflected by the admiration in which he was held in both countries. A highly experienced and polished recording artist, Pr�tre had many years' experience of working in the studio. His discography was large. Especially important were his recordings of the music of Poulenc.

Founded in 1951 by Erwin Lehn, The SWR Big Band has been nominated for a Grammy several times and received the German Jazz Award (Gold) in 2015. Over the course of the years, it collaborated with artists like Quincy Jones, Pat Metheny, George Benson, Gary Burton, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Curtis Stigers, Jacob Collier, Patti Austin, Roy Hargrove, Sammy Nestico, Ivan Lins, Paula Morelenbaum, Joo Kraus, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Bob Florence, Rob McConnell, Slide Hampton, Maria Schneider, Frank Foster, Bill Holman and Bob Mintzer. The album SWR Big Band live at the Elbphilharmonie from 2018 is one of the longest running bestsellers of the label. The collaboration between Sammy Nestico and The SWR Big Band began 2004, when the composer was already 80 years old. Soon it developed into a real friendship. No less than five albums have been released in the years until his death, all of them bestsellers of the SWRmusic catalogue. They additionaly made a key contribution to raising international awareness of Nestico's late creative phase. The music he wrote for The SWR Big Band sports both funky sounds and elements of fusion, combining swing, a pinch of soul and an emotional orchestral expression. The music moves artfully between reduced combo sounds and opulent textures. This sense of mutual understanding was created during the decade-plus period of collaboration between the composer and the orchestra, a collaboration built not only on notes, but also on intuition.

'The Fifth is a cursed piece. Nobody understands it,' said Gustav Mahler in March 1905 after a performance of his Fifth Symphony in Hamburg. He had been working on his new symphony for almost three years before it premiered on 18 October 1904: in Cologne, with the Gurzenich Orchestra and Gustav Mahler at the podium. To many of his contemporaries, the work seemed too bold, too radical - perhaps also insufficiently explained, given that programmatic explanations had been added to the so-called 'Wunderhorn' Symphonies Nos. 2 to 4. Not only the number and the order of the movements seemed new, but stylistically Mahler also broke new ground with his Fifth. But now, all at once, his musical language changed, a transformation that evidently gave him some unease later. Shortly before his death, he made corrections to the instrumentation. Today the work is considered the beginning of his new creative phase, which culminated in his Ninth Symphony and it's one of his most popular symphonies. Gary Bertini was born in Bessarabia (now Moldova) in 1927. After the Second World War, he studied at the Milan Conservatory, then at the Tel Aviv Academy of Music (where he graduated in 1951), and finally at the Paris Conservatory and the ecole Normale de Musique. He founded and directed first the Rinat Choir - later named the Israel Chamber Choir - and then the Israel Chamber Ensemble with which Bertini made numerous appearances in Europe and the USA. Over the years, he has been principal conductor of the Frankfurt Opera and the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, artistic director of the New Israel Opera, and music director of the Rome Opera and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. Bertini's breadth of repertoire was very impressive, reaching from the 16th century to contemporary composers.

In 1955, the conductor Gary Bertini founded the Rinat Choir and thus established professional choral music in Israel. The founding of the Rinat had a significant influence on the development of the Israeli choral scene; the choir was finally named the national choir in 1972. Psalms, verses and hymns were set to music for the Rinat Choir by the country's leading composers and transformed into extensive Hebrew motets and oratorios. The founding generation of Israeli music consisted of outstanding professional musicians who were born in Europe around the turn of the century. Although these composers came predominantly from Germany, Eastern Europe and Russia, their sources of inspiration can by no means be reduced to the music of their respective countries of origin. On the contrary: what united many of these composers was their fascination with the traditional music of the Jews, especially of Sephardic, Persian and Yemenite origin, and with the music of the Arabs they encountered in Palestine. The next generation of Israeli composers were not necessarily born in Israel either, but were strongly influenced musically by this country from the very beginning. In the 1960s and 70s, this generation disseminated their inspirational sources and borrowed from contemporary styles that they had become familiar with during their studies in Europe and the USA. While some representatives of this generation carried on the tradition of the founding generation, other composers introduced current developments in the musical world into the Israeli art music of their time. The pool of influences was also expanded to include American composers such as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, John Cage and Lukas Foss.

The present collection showcases studio and live recordings pianist Nelson Freire made for the SWR between 1968 and 1999. Though Freire was by his own account never really interested in a career and he even reduced considerably the number of live performances at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, he belongs to the most important pianists worldwide. A natural prodigy, Freire's style is characterised by elegance, charme and finnesse as well as deliberate avoidance of boasting.

The Ninth Symphony, which Antonin Dvorak himself titled 'From the New World', was a huge success when it premiered on 16 December 1893 at Carnegie Hall in New York: 'The newspapers say that never before has a composer enjoyed such a triumph.' However, it was by no means uncontroversial - Dvorak had been invited to the USA and given the task of creating an American national music. He therefore studied the music of the indigenous population, the descendants of slaves and various other inhabitants, and created the symphony with all these sources in mind. Though many critics did not consider that the goal of an authentic American national music had been achieved, the work itself belongs until today to the most popular symphonies ever written. Much earlier, Dvorak had composed the Serenade for Wind Instruments, Violoncello and Double Bass in D minor. He was probably inspired by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 'Gran Partita', and the unusual instrumentation of Op. 44 - with two oboes, clarinets and bassoons, a contrabassoon, three horns, two cellos and double basses - is a strong indication of this. Finnish conductor Pietari lnkinen has been principal conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie since 2017. He will step down from this position in the summer of 2025 to focus more on his international commitments. He has received numerous awards, including the Franco Abbiati Prize. In October 2023, the film portrait 'A Baton and a Passport - Pietari lnkinen Conductor' was released.

Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake takes a special place in Ahronovitch's life. The conductor was just five years old when he visited a performance of the ballet at the Kirov Theater. He was so fascinated that he announced to his parents his decision to become a conductor himself. In the midst of the turmoil of war, he did indeed studied at the conservatory and graduated with honors in 1954. In the course of his career, he was chief conductor of the Gurzenich Orchestra (as successor of Gunther Wand) and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and also conducted numerous important orchestras around the world. On Swedish television, Ahronovitch once made the following statement that is so characteristic of him: "I was never the conductor of the orchestra, I was always a colleague, a friend and a partner." This humanistic approach combined with a laid-back unaffectedness and a self-evident demand for perfection characterized his conducting style. Tchaikovsky composed the Orchestral Suite No. 4, usually referred to as "Mozartiana", for the centenary of Don Giovanni: Four orchestrated movements based on original Mozart works, although none of them directly related to the well-known opera. Tchaikovsky ends with the variations KV 455, "Unser dummer Pobel meint", based on a theme by Christoph Willibald Gluck. In these 15 minutes, Yuri Ahronovitch shows how melancholy and cheerfulness, dark, earthy colors and shimmering, bright moments come together.

SWR Kultur New Talent is a promotion and support programme of the broadcasting corporation SWR aiming to help exceptional young talents launch their career through concerts, studio productions and media presence over a period of three years. The cellist Lionel Martin has been the 'New Talent' since 2021. In 2017 Anne-Sophie Mutter included him in her foundation of young, outstanding musicians. Since then they have performed together on numerous occasions and he toured with her and her scholarship holders throughout Europe, North and South America - where he performed not only in famous concert halls, but also for social projects in smaller locations. Following his CD debut in 2023 with repertoire by the British composer Tavener, Lionel Martin devotes the present album to Russian repertoire from the 19th and 20th centuries. All three composers on this album come from the same region, and all three struggled with their fate. Kabalevsky and Shostakovich were neighbors, they even lived in the same house for a while. Both dealt differently with the political regime - and the regime with them. Shostakovich was a thorn in the side of the Soviet power apparatus, and his music repeatedly and clearly criticizes those in power. Kabalevsky came to terms with the regime and even worked for it at times. Tchaikovsky also suffered from the conventions of his time and ultimately broke under the strain.

William Walton and Edwin York Bowen are among the composers who were hardly able to achieve a lasting international breakthrough. The viola also has a similar role to play. It's qualities were simply ignored by many composers, and the solo and concert repertoire for this instrument is correspondingly small. It is thanks to the English violist Lionel Tertis who was famous at the time that Bowen and Walton wrote the concertos featured on this album. The result is an important addition not only to the viola repertoire, but also for all lovers of classical music. The violist Diyang Mei, first principal violist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, has been steadily advancing his international career since his brilliant success at the coveted ARD International Music Competition in 2018. He has already performed as a soloist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the SWR Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Munich Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie as well as at the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, the Schwetzingen SWR Festival, the Black Forest Music Festival and the Mozart Festival in Wurzburg. His conductor is none other than Brett Dean, who enjoys an international reputation as a violist, composer and conductor.

Stefania Neonato is involved in both historical performance practice on historical instruments as well as the modern piano playing tradition. Christine Busch can be heard as a soloist and chamber musician with both the modern and baroque violin in concerts worldwide. The fortepiano used for the present recordings come from the Viennese workshop of Nannette Streicher and has the serial number 1060. Ludwig van Beethoven himself was good friends with the couple and played their instruments. The three selected sonatas on this album span a period of fourteen years, from 1798 (Op. 12/1 and 3) to 1812, the year of the composition of Op. 96 - two years before the piano used here was completed. Nannette Streicher opened her piano workshop together with her husband and her brother in Vienna at the end of the 18th century. They built well over a thousand instruments, of which only around forty fortepianos have survived to this day.

On the occasion of conductor Georges Prêtre's 100th birthday in August, the label SWRmusic will release an 8CD box-set containing a wonderful collection of representative orchestral works by eleven composers, thus showing the fruitful collaboration between the French conductor and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSO). Most of the recordings are being released for the first time, with the exception of the works by Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss, which have previously been released by this label.

The Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1945 and has developed into one of Germany’s most important musical ambassadors over the following seven decades. World-renowned conductors, as well as some of the world’s greatest soloists, have been guests of the Stuttgart RSO, including Carlos Kleiber, Ferenc Fricsay, Karl Böhm, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Hans Knappertsbusch, Sir Georg Solti, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Kurt Sanderling, Gary Bertini, and Herbert Blomstedt, as well as Maria Callas, Mstislaw Rostropowitsch, Maurizio Pollini, Yehudi Menuhin, Alfred Brendel, Hélène Grimaud, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Elina Garanca, Rolando Villazon, Hilary Hahn, Sol Gabetta, and Lang Lang, to name just a few.

Performances of less recorded orchestral works by Igor Stravinsky, which show the versatility of the Russian composer, who was never a supporter of any kind of expression aesthetics. On the contrary, he saw composing as an intellectual game, an attempt to solve self-invented musical problems. His constructivism could be kindled by Italian Baroque music, but just as well by the polyphonous structures of the Renaissance, by jazz, or by Anton Webern's serial tone complexes.

Anton Bruckner - Symphony No. 7 Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, Eliahu Inbal.

As winner of the international conducting competition "Guido Cantelli", Eliahu Inbal was already in demand as a guest conductor with the world's leading orchestras at the age of 26. Over the years, he has been principal conductor of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra del Teatro la Fenice, the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI Turino, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. The present album contains recordings from 1971 and 2012.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Cultural Revolution did everything in their power to destroy the influence of religion in the Russian Empire. Sacred music was publicly forgotten in the process. Although Schnittke, whose German-born father emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926, was atheistically influenced by the state education system, he believed spiritually in "something greater". In 1982, he was baptized a Catholic, and shortly before his death he was accepted into the Orthodox Church. The search for a religious identity can also be traced in his works. Vedel and Berezovsky are among the most important composers of Ukrainian classical music of the 18th century. Little is known about Vedel's life. The works attributed to him, including 31 choral concertos, are all set to liturgical texts or Bible verses. In these works, the traditions of the Orthodox church music of his homeland, Ukrainian baroque tradition and folk songs merge with a new Western European operatic and instrumental style. Bortniansky is highly credited with bringing the genre of the sacred concerto to fruition. Consisting of psalm verses set to music, which were sung during the Eucharist in church services, it's purpose at the time was far-reaching: as a universal genre, it was the highlight of the Orthodox liturgy, an adornment of the state ceremony and also intended for a kind of domestic music-making. In the Western repertoire, it comes closest to the instrumental concerto grosso, with the difference that no instruments are permitted in the Orthodox service.

In 1910, the Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio wrote a play about the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. He enlisted Claude Debussy as the composer and the "Mystère en cinq mansions composé en rhythme français" already premiered in 1911. The text combines and overlaps Christian and pagan traditions, playing with both the flair of antiquity and the fascination of the exotic. The Catholic Church took offense concerning the portrayal of Sebastian, who was played by a female Russian Jew, the dancer Ida Rubinstein, and the audience also reacted hesitantly, so that neither D'Annunzio's play nor Debussy's music to it remained in the repertoire of the concert halls. Debussy himself was very fond of his work and soon put together an orchestral suite, the "Fragments symphoniques", which adapts some of the central numbers of the incidental music for orchestra. Additionally, Désiré-Emile Inghelbrecht created a kind of concert version that radically shortened the text and reduced it to around 15 minutes of recitation in addition to Debussy's music. The same applies to the present recording, which juxtaposes Debussy's original music with texts by the writer Martin Mosebach. These texts do not necessarily reflect the course of D'Annunzio's piece, but rather summarize central aspects of the Sebastian legend, sometimes more directly, sometimes more abstractly.

The present version, a studio recording from 2005, is enriched with (German) text additions by the writer Martin Mosebach, making it thus unique among other recordings of Le Martyre.

SWR Big Band and Fola Dada have been successful collaborators for many years and with their new studio album As We Speak they broaden their swing repertoire to include the 1960s. In addition, there are swing classics like You Go to my Head. This way the multi-Grammy-nominated SWR Big Band is able to confirm their reputation as a fantastically swinging formation that manages to underline new aspects of traditional pieces again and again. The long, fruitful colaboration between the SWR Big Band and the jazz singer Fola Dada has already resulted in three, very successful albums: Kings of S wing (1 & 2) and SWR Big Band live at the Elbphilharmonie. Fola Dada was awared in 2022 the German Jazz Award for the best German jazz singer.