Classical Music

The important thing in a trio is the interaction, said Greek pianist and composer Nikolas Anadolis. "Not only how well you are in contact with your own feelings, but also how much you're in agreement with the others musically. How the three of us can be one." This synergy of opposing impulses first makes a community of musicians into an organism that helps the sound experience, in itself abstract, produce a specific and ideally emotional effect. The small scale form of the trio has been from the beginning one of Anadolis's preferred options. Even as a composer, he follows the idea of a breathing music that is based on the harmony of it's elements. There are many moments of tonal subtlety which, in the fragility of the motifs, give the pelvic range of the percussion the opportunity to develop it's own colors. There are also challenging passages where the piano, with it's fascinatingly articulated runs and sound salvos, rises to become the dominant instrument, but without blurring it's fullness in pathos. In this live recording of his trio performed in Heidelberg, Nikolas Anadolis makes an impressive statement.

Albert and Emil Mangelsdorff are two brothers who had an important impact on the development of German jazz. Emil studied clarinet at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, but he is more widely known for his saxophone playing. After he was a member of the illegal ensemble Hot Club, (jazz was banned in Germany at the time) he was imprisoned by the Gestapo and forced into the Hitler Army. After the war he performed in the Frankfurt All Stars and the Jazz-Ensemble des Hessischen Rundfunks before forming his own quartet in the 1960s. Albert is most known for his technique of playing multiphonics. A trombone player, he led a hard bop quintet in the late 50s, and performed frequently with his brother. This release is a compilation of concerts and studio sessions, recorded in the height of the brothers’ career, between 1956 and 1963.

Insomnia is the story of a nocturnal journey, reassuring and disturbing at the same time, both mystical and unpredictable. An escape from ourselves into the soft focus the night, but then leading us back again at the end, taking us even deeper inside ourselves. Insomnia is the aimless wanderings of the Sleepless One, through inner and outer worlds which remains hidden during the harsh light of day. Insomnia is five Hymns to the Night, composed by five American composers over a period of nearly 100 years. While at first glance, they may seem stylistically very different, when taken together; these five works are the perfect soundtrack for a journey through the long hours after the sun has set. At the center of this journey stands A Little Midnight Music, George Crumb's adaptation of the Thelonious Monk Jazz Standard 'Round Midnight. He leads his listeners and performers past the neon signs of the New York jazz clubs of the 1940s into the oppressive darkness of the avant-garde pianist. Sleepless Night and Urban Nocturnes by Bruce Stark not only reference jazz, and are the outgrowth of the composer's long-standing interest in improvisation. In George Gershwin short Prelude we can almost imagine the clinking of glasses at last call. John Cage's Dream and Brian Belet's Summer Phantoms - Nocturne function as the album's centerpieces and provide a pair of contrasting soundtracks for nightly inner escapism. To describe Kai Schumacher as a "punk pianist" would be excessive. His deeply thoughtful style of playing blurs the boundaries of the classical avant-garde and pop culture without getting stuck in all-toofamiliar crossover paths. One focus of Kai Schumacher's solo repertoire has been on American piano music of the late 20th and the 21st centuries. His debut album of Frederic Rzewski's monumental variation cycle The people united will never be defeated! (2010) was celebrated by FonoForum magazine as "a pianistic sensation". With his second album Transcriptions (2013), he ventured into the musical heroes of his youth - Rage against the machine, Nirvana, Slayer, etc., transforming the concert grand in his piano remixes into a tone generator of monstrous proportions, sound effects board or a set of tuned percussion instruments.

Thematically, this collection of great Polish choral works turns between religion, war and Polish folk culture. The wide range and compositional depth of the pieces are simply spectacular. Considering Poland's turbulent political history, it is surprising that the country has produced so many outstanding composers, particularly those of the 20th century such as Karol Szymanowski, Krzystof Penderecki and Witold Lutoslawski.

One has no problem naming famous String Quartet ensembles; however, String Trios simply cannot make the same boast! Even on the repertoire of the side, composers have produced many more significant quartets than they have string trios. Thus, it was something of a minor miracle when three musicians such as violinist Arthur Grumiaux, Georges Janzer (V�gh Quartet violist) and Janzer's wife, the cellist Eve Czako, finally met to perform works of Mozart and Beethoven. The resulting June 8, 1966 Schwetzingen Castle recital is a most memorable concert that will welcome repeated listening.

Only a few, famous jazz bassists have ever gone beyond the limitations of their instruments and sought new opportunities on the cello. The cellist Valentin Radutiu turns the tables to show how well the cello suits jazz - at times taking the role of the traditional string bass, at others a resonant tenor guitar while at others giving it's voice wings. The repertoire on Remembering The Rain: A Jazz View, comes mainly from the "Great American Songbook", supplementing that glorious heritage with standards by John Lewis (MJQ) and Bill Evans, both of whom had their own anchors in classical music as well.

This is the first installment of the series dedicated to Sergei Prokofiev's Symphonies performed by the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie under the baton of it's chief conductor Pietari Inkinen, and features the composer's Third and Sixth Symphonies. The Deutsche Radio Philharmonie (DRP) was formed in 2007 through the merger of two orchestras, each with it's own great tradition: the Saarbr�cken Radio Symphony Orchestra (SR) and the Kaiserslautern Radio Orchestra (SWR). Since 2017, the Finn Pietari Inkinen has been the chief conductor at the head of the DRP. Like his predecessors - the founding chief conductor Christoph Poppen, the Briton Karel Mark Chichon and honorary conductor Stanislaw Skrowaczewski who passed away in 2017 - Pietari Inkinen utilizes a diverse repertoire: from classical romantic key works from the history of music, through new discoveries and rediscoveries up to contemporary music. He has also introduced his own distinct programmatic themes into the repertoire of the DRP. The aim of the DRP is to reach all generations.

This is the fifth installment in the series dedicated to Dvor�k's complete recordings of symphonies, combined with concert and opera overtures. The DRP performs greatly and Pietari Inkinen, the shooting star of the international conductor scene and worldwide on the move, is very convincing. Dvor�k's Sixth Symphony in D Major, composed in the late summer and autumn of 1880, was later often referred to as Dvor�k's "first" because it was not only the first one published by Simrock but is considered to be the first of his brilliant masterpieces regarding this genre. Already his contemporaries agreed: Dvor�k had not only mastered the large-scale form of four-movement symphonies but had also developed his individual, distinctive style. "This symphony reflects the cheerfulness, humour and passion of the Czech people", said the early Dvor�k biographer Otakar �ourek. This work is on album combined with the Hussite overture and the overtures to Selma sedl�k and Vanda.

The SWR NEWJazz Meeting project aims to help artists develop exciting projects that are difficult to realize under existing conditions. It was founded in 1966 and served in the course of it's more than fifty-year history as a driving force for new trends in jazz. The young Lukas Kranzelbinder, curator of the 2018 edition has already established himself as one of the most active and versatile bassists of the young Austrian music scene. For this project he brought together six artists including the novelist Fiston Mwanza Mujila in a band called "On boit lumumba - We drink lumumba!". The name of the band points to Patrice Lumumba (first Congolese Prime Minister and African freedom fighter at the beginning of the 1960s) and to the popular cocoa, milk and rum drink with the same name. There is of course an absurdity in this connection, which in turn relates to the topics Fiston deals with in his writings.

This is a live recording of a piano recital the great virtuoso Jorge Bolet gave 1988, in Schwetzingen (Germany), two years before his death. The performed works are by composers Jorge Bolet favoured most. This is a re-release of a SWR bestseller. When the first Schwetzingen Festival was held in 1952, even the optimists among the founders could not imagine that this was the beginning of a success story that would make it one of the major German festivals of the post war era. The "Schwetzingen script" of the fifties, "Comission new things, rediscover the old, give up and coming youngsters a chance," still holds today and is as modern as it was back then. Because it was founded by the Suddeutscher Rundfunk public broadcasting company and kept going after it's merger into Sudwestrundfunk, this festival has been documented as no other. From the very first day on, every musical event was recorded and broadcast. Thus the Schwetzingen Festival became in time the biggest classical radio festival in the world, with nearly 550 broadcasts on all continents. The list of performers and ensembles reads like an artists' "Who's Who" of recent decades. For the "Schwetzingen Festival Edition," we are opening up the archives and allowing you to enjoy some of the greatest moments in music.

In this collection the early studio recordings of the great violinist Edith Peinemann are released for the first time on modern recording technology. The release contains chamber music as well as well as standard-setting interpretations of the violin concertos by Dvorak, Bart�k, Pfitzner and Sibelius, which Edith Peinemann performed many times around the world. The recording of the violin concerto by Pfitzner, conducted by Hans Rosbaud, was realized on December 21st 1962, just a few days after the live performance in Baden-Baden with the S�dwestfunk Symphony Orchestra. It was the last performance (and last recording) of Hans Rosbaud, who died several days afterwards. Internationally recognized German violinist and professor, Edith Peinemann rose to fame after winning the ARD International Music Competition in Munich at the age of 19. Her recordings throughout her career made her a "cult figure among violinists."

This is a new installment in the SWR Vokalensemble's country series. It contains excellent performances of rarely performed and recorded choral works. The SWR Vokalensemble is among the best choirs in the world. The accompanying booklet contains the Japanese texts of the works. In it's more than 2000-year history Japan has developed it's own, independent music, whose principal means of expression are single tones and tonal color, which is used in quite a broad spectrum, including sounds. References to nature and it's sounds is another aspect of great significance. This album presents a selection of choral works which were composed after 1950, at a time when a lot of Japanese composers began to free themselves from European and American music as their model and started to develop individual styles. In doing so, they also used elements of Japan's musical tradition and integrated them into their own musical language in various ways.

This is the 8th installment in the SWR CLASSIC series dedicated to Fritz Wunderlich. It contains never before released recordings as well as rarely performed repertoire worth discovering, brilliantly sung by one of the most talented tenors of all times. The esteemed German tenor, Fritz Wunderlich was no doubt enveloped in music at an early age. Urged to pursue classical voice training by theater people who heard him singing as they passed the bakery where he worked, the young Wunderlich was granted a scholarship to the Freiburg Music Academy in Breisgau by the town fathers. He studied there from 1950 to 1955, also studying the classical horn, which explains his almost supernatural breath control. After playing Tamino in a 1955 student production of W.A. Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Fritz Wunderlich was engaged by the Wurttemberg State Opera in Stuttgart. His first professional role was as Ulrich Eislinger in Die Meistersinger. When he was called to play Tamino for an ailing Josef Traxel, Stuttgart had a new star and Fritz Wunderlich's short but amazing career had begun. During the remaining decade of his life Fritz Wunderlich gained the highest respect as a W.A. Mozart singer, lending lyrical brilliance to J.S. Bach, Schubert and Gustav Mahler and melodic tenderness to Bel Canto and light opera roles. Following such greats as Tauber and Schmidt, Wunderlich also devoted a good part of his time to the beautiful songs of such composers as Strauss, Lehár, Kálmán and Fall.

This is the first album of Pietari Inkinen as chief conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie. Inkinen, as well as Lise Lindstrom and Stefan Vinke who are already known as highly experienced Wagner performers. Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen took up his position as Principal Conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie in September 2017. He is also the principal conductor of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Prague Symphony Orchestra, and the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele. As guest conductor he has been on the podium with many well-known orchestras, including the Berlin Staatskapelle, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and others. Inkinen is not only a successful conductor, but also a successful violinist. He studied under Zakhar Bron at Cologne Music College before continuing his education as a conductor at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.