This is the fifth installment of the SWR CLASSIC series dedicated to Hans Rosbaud. It contains on nine albums works by W. A. Mozart - a representative selection of the solo concertos, symphonies, serenades and fortunately also the rarely recorded concert arias. Rosbaud is an expert at presenting Mozart's charming and instantaneously fascinating melodics without trivialization and exaggerated sentiment. Hans Rosbaud was an undemonstrative conductor. Bernard Haitink has recalled that ‘…as he approached the podium you thought, surely that can’t be the conductor’, yet he achieved excellent results. As the Chicago-based critic Robert C. Marsh commented in a review of Rosbaud’s first concert with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in January 1959, ‘This modest, self-effacing conductor has authority, an ear for color and a sense of style. He is a musician to hear rather than watch... He seems to have the most naive idea of showmanship, but his musicianship cannot be questioned.’ The esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries was illustrated by the composer Francis Poulenc’s comment, quoted in Paris-Match in November 1954, that ‘The taste of music buffs little resembles that of professional musicians. Music buffs believe that the greatest living conductor is Toscanini; musicians know that it is Hans Rosbaud.’ And another major French composer, Pierre Boulez, regards Rosbaud as a model of what a conductor should be.

Stories about Wunderlich's meteoric rise to success, his incredibly heavy workload or his seemingly effortless acquisition of new repertoire have been told again and again – sometimes painting an idealized and sometimes a distorted picture of the artist. The nine installments of the SWR retrospective that have been released by SWR CLASSIC to this day feature Fritz Wunderlich as a singer of songs, (an unequalled) Mozart tenor, a brilliant interpreter of the greatest tenor hits, a fascinating singer of operettas and as a tasteful interpreter of light music, to name but a few of the genres that made up his repertoire. Though Fritz Wunderlich remains until today a widely appreciated and admired singer, there are some facets to his artistic side that are still relatively unknown. The tenth and last installment presents Fritz Wunderlich as an interpreter of the big works of sacred music, an aspect that has to be considered as an essential part of his artistic profile.

Karel Mark Chichon leads the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie through a passionate, colorful and meticulously prepared interpretation of Dvorak's Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4. This release is the third installment of SWR Klassik's Dvorak Symphony Cycle.

This new release is an eclectic collection of 22 folk songs from all over the world. Cathy Berberian performs these works exceptionally well, performing in 17 different languages. Pianist Harold Lester accompanies Berberian on this recording.

Gulda, a brilliant master of rhythm, uncompromising Bach interpreter and jazz musician, is in the best keeping with Chopin. Works by Chopin appear in Gulda’s concert programmes from quite early on. His secret in playing Chopin with so much vitality? It is the inimitable mix of rhythmic strictness, most cantabile tenderness and controlled outbursts of emotion. Although he would become one of 20th-century music’s most capricious rebels — as in love with the free spirits of jazz as with the living monuments of classical — pianist Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) was born and bred in that most traditional of musical cities, Vienna. He studied theory with the late-Romanticist Joseph Marx at the Vienna Academy of Music, and he won the Geneva International Pianists' Competition at age sixteen, eventually earning a reputation for the rare blend of cogency and freedom within his interpretations of music from Bach, Mozart and Beethoven to Ravel and Debussy. His most notable recordings included both books of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and the complete sonatas and concertos of Beethoven.

A 2019 New York Times Gift Guide Selection

This is the second release ever of Henzes famous Oratorio, after the release of the general rehearsal for the world's first premiere from 1968 by Deutsche Grammophon. Excellent sound technique, first class singers and orchestra (conducted by none other than Peter Eötvös) as well as a booklet containing detailed liner notes and the libretto contribute in making this album a very important testimony about the music of the 20th century. Henze wrote the Oratorio as a Requiem for Che Guevara and set it to a text by Ernst Schnabel. It tells the story of the French frigate Meduse, which ran aground off the west coast of Africa in 1816, immortalized in the painting of the same name by Theodore Gericault. The work employs a large orchestra, a speaker, a soprano, a baritone, and choruses. In the course of a performance, the chorus members move from left side of the stage, “the Side of the Living,” to the right side, “the Side of the Dead.”

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REVIEWS:

Looking for that special something for that special someone this holiday?

Flowers? Those die.

Jewelry? Too bougie.

A day at the spa? Namaste!

An hour-long modernist requiem on the death of Che Guevara featuring a head of snakes, sung/spoken/sprechtimme’d IN GERMAN? Dear, you are so generous. I cannot possibly repay the kindness.

– New York Times 2019 Gift Guide

Anyone who wants to know Henze or know him better would be well-served and enlivened by this one. And it would be a valuable addition to the confirmed Henze fan's library. Recommended.

– Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

This re-release of an SWRmusic bestseller contains Elgar’s first symphony, which marks the first real breakthrough of English symphonic music. The first performance was given by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Hans Richter in Manchester, England, on 3 December 1908. It was widely known that Elgar had been planning a symphony for more than ten years, and the announcement that he had finally completed it aroused enormous interest. The critical reception was enthusiastic, and the public response unprecedented. The symphony achieved what The Musical Times described as "immediate and phenomenal success", with a hundred performances in Britain, continental Europe and America within just over a year of its première. Reviewers lauded it as the most noble work ever penned by an English composer. The present recording, under the baton of Sir Roger Norrington exemplifies his style which got to be known as "Stuttgart Sound".

In Great Britain Christmas carols are an integral part of Christmas just like plum pudding and turkey, paper crowns and mistletoe. They are sung in all big cathedrals and churches at Christmas, first and foremost in the time-honored chapel of King’s College. The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols- a Christmas mass featuring King’s College Choir, nine short readings and, of course, carols- has been broadcast live on the radio every year since 1928 on Christmas Eve. The a cappella choir SWR Vokalensemble belongs worldwide to the best choirs, renowned mostly for its exquisite performances of modern music. This album however contains traditional, centuries old Christmas Carols, arranged by British composers like Benjamin Britten, Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams and William Byrd, to name just a few.



REVIEW:

An entire program of English music recorded by a German choir doesn’t happen all that often, and a disc of “very English” Christmas repertoire may be rarest of all. However, the top-tier Stuttgart-based SWR Vokalensemble is one group for whom this sort of thing is not so unusual. In fact they’ve not only recorded several discs that feature works by British composers such as Britten, MacMillan, and Vaughan Williams (including his rarely recorded Mass in G minor); they’ve gone where even American choirs fear to tread, recording the complete choral works of Elliott Carter(!), ten of Ives’ Psalm settings, and a disc of American works that includes pieces by Cage, Reich, and Feldman.

 

The program itself, chosen with obvious care by one who knows his way around the repertoire, is marked by first-rate performances that stand solidly alongside similar offerings by this ensemble’s “native” British counterparts. As good as the program and performances are, potential listeners may find the disc’s curious, cursory title misleading: “Christmas Carols” does not accurately describe the program at hand. While the music is almost exclusively Christmas-themed, only perhaps three of the 19 selections (to be generous) could be labeled as “carols” in the traditional sense. Although the liner notes do include a very brief but informed history of the true carol, our attention is quickly directed to the “carol” as it’s come to be identified via inclusion in the popular annual carol service at King’s College, Cambridge: that is, virtually any choral piece—original or arrangement—with a sacred, Christmas-centered text. The programming here all makes sense when you know that conductor Marcus Creed is not only British, but was a student and former singer at King’s College.

 

Just looking at the list of composers, most of whom are as English as they come—Boris Ord, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Herbert Howells, David Willcocks—and the works at hand, each one ingrained in the very soul of every English-speaking, Christmas-music-loving listener—sets you up for what you hope will be an hour of pure pleasure, born of the special traditions of a season that is uniquely associated with its music. And, be it from Germany or Lower Slobovia, it doesn’t matter: this program does not disappoint.

 

Whether you choose this for the iconic repertoire—Ord’s Adam Lay Ybounden; Britten’s A Hymn to the Virgin; Howells’ A Spotless Rose; Thomas Ravenscroft’s Remember O Thou Man; David Willcocks’ Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day; Elisabeth Poston’s Jesus Christ the Apple Tree; Holst’s In the Bleak Midwinter—or just for the world-class singing (hopefully both!), you can be assured of a listening experience that will endure many hearings throughout the entire season—and the next. This choir knows the music well and obviously enjoys singing it, demonstrating a mastery of both language and style.

The program’s one non-English-language work is Robert Parsons’ Latin-texted Ave Maria—a most welcome inclusion of one of the 16th century’s greatest masterpieces, and a highlight of the disc. Another plus: the all-too-rare inclusion of a list of publishers of each work (choral directors, take note). Highly recommended.

– ClassicsToday.com (David Vernier)

Fritz Wunderlich's early recording of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, from a performance in the Stuttgart Markuskirche in 1955, presents the singer of the century at the beginning of his career. The other performances in this collection took place between 1955 and 1959 - they are studio recordings, all of them rarities from Wunderlich's repertoire, which exist only in this early series of Stuttgart radio productions.

Beauty is a question of view. For some it consists in perfection, symmetry; others perceive it only when ruptures, cracks, relativizations add to the impression. Herbert Joos has called his orchestra suite, which he premiered on the occasion of being awarded the 2017 Baden-Wurttemberg Jazz Prize for Lifetime Achievement, "Change of Beauty." This fits a process of musical creation that the star chef and bass trumpeter Vincent Klink laconically commented upon his encomium at the award ceremony at the Stuttgart Theaterhaus as follows: "I assert at this point that perfection curtails freedom and completely runs counter to a humanism of the Joosian kind." Ergo, beauty can endure only in a state of flux. An insight that coincides with Herbert Joos's experience in the course of a dazzling career as a musician. The trumpeter, flugelhorn player and composer appeared on the jazz scene at a time when certainties were crumbling. Born in 1940 and influenced by musical individualists like Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and Billie Holiday, Joos first learned the craft of imitation in ensembles such as the Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe, but at the same time experienced the beginnings of the aesthetic resistance. In no time at all he sent jazz tradition packing into the museum.

This is a re-release of an SWRmusic-Bestseller, once again available. It contains Czerny's Symphony No.2 as well as the only available recording of the Symphony No.6. Both symphonies are charming, elegant works full of wit and grace, showing clearly that Czerny was not only a gifted composer of piano etudes. These works are performed here by the SWR Rundfunk- Orchester Kaiserslautern conducted by esteemed conductor Grzegorz Nowak. Grzegorz Nowak started his international career in 1984 as winner of the Ernest Ansermet Conducting Competition in Geneva. Since then he has been a guest conductor of famous orchestras in all parts of the world, and held positions with the German Chamber Orchestra, the National Opera in Warsaw, and more. Currently, he is the Music Director of the Metamorphosis Concert Foundation in Edmonton and the Sinfonia Helvetica.

Dies Bildnis is bezaubernd schon, Tamino’s famous aria from Mozart’s Zauberflote, has become the signature piece of Fritz Wunderlich’s 13-year career. It was his first stage role as a student on July 21 1954, and it was the last piece he sang on September 5, 1966 during a guest performance at the Stuttgart State Opera in Edinburg. Wunderlich continuously worked on this aria to perfect it. The recording on this album is from April 17, 1959. Most interesting are the excerpts from Schubert operas, including previously unreleased arias from Fierrabras, and excerpts from the generally unknown opera Die Wunderinsel. Music journalist Kurt Honolka combined pieces by Schubert, mostly from Alfonso und Estrella, with parts of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The resulting pastiche was first performed in January 1958 at the Stuttgart Opera and recorded later that year.

REVIEW:

The German radio archives seem almost inexhaustible when it comes to recordings with Fritz Wunderlich. This compilation opens with the Tamino's aria Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön from Magic Flute. The recording was made in Stuttgart on 17 April 1959 by a 28-year-old singer, and he was even then a fully-fledged lyrical tenor with all the characteristics we expect: the beautiful youthful tone, the perfect legato, the exemplary enunciation, the natural phrasing. Much of the rest of the contents on CD 1 is fairly rare repertoire, with Wudnerlich continuing to shine throughout.

CD 2 opens with the Prisoners’ Chorus from Beethoven’s Fidelio, where Wunderlich in 1957 was one of the two prisoners who had a solo. Well sung of course, and Hans Günter Nöcker’s mighty bass is also heard to good effect. The rest of the disc contains fifteen excerpts from Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten—all the recitatives, arias and ensembles where Wunderlich takes part. I can’t find that this is a very good way of enjoying this masterly music, but it is well sung—the other soloists are soprano Agnes Giebel, whose silvery voice is an asset, and bass Kieth Engen in rather monumental form.

The original tapes have been carefully remastered by Gabriele Starke and Boris Kellenbenz and the end product is utterly attractive. There are informative liner notes by Lothar Brandt and several of the tracks have never before been issued.

– MusicWeb International

This album contains a successful set of Cole Porter Evergreens in orchestral sound garment, featuring Juliane Banse - an international renown and esteemed soprano and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie conducted by Dorian Wilson. A cross over recording with wonderfully popular songs between Classic and jazz. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, Porter defied his grandfather's wishes and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn to musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike many successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote the lyrics as well as the music for his songs. After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Porter was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and '30s, but in 1948 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me, Kate. It won the first Tony Award for Best Musical.

Steffen Schorn is a saxophonist, composer and sound researcher, interested in the extreme high and low registers as well as in the textures of his instrument. The SWR-recordings from 2000 are for him striking landmarks of his own development. One has the opportunity to hear on this recording a B flat-tubax (subcontrabass saxophone) prototype without keys. Steffen Schorn stands as one of the outstanding original musical voices of the German jazz and actual music scene. He has been awarded numerous prizes, most recently the WDR Jazz Award 2009 for composition, the highest honor awarded for improvised music in Germany. He performed in over 70 countries worldwide and established, as a specialist for the low end of the woodwind family, instruments like the bass sax, contralto- and contrabass clarinet, Bb- and Eb-tubax as solo instruments.

The Amadeus Quartet was founded in 1947 in London, by three musicians and an Austrian, who had studied together in Vienna, and were later joined by the English cellist, Martin Lovett. Soon after their formation the ensemble won an international reputation and throughout the 70's became one of the most important chamber ensembles in the world. Today the Amadeus Quartet is still remembered for its sensitive and sonically beautiful interpretations of the classical and romantic repertoire. In addition to other works, one of the quartet's most frequently performed pieces was Schubert's famous "Death and the Maiden" - a composition that they delivered with an overwhelming impression. Even if contemporary music did not have a major place in the repertoire of the Amadeus quartet, they did perform and record the Second and Third String Quartets of Benjamin Britten.

REVIEW:

Though a little extreme around the edges, it is hard to resist this recording of the Amadeus Quartet's 1977 recital at the Schwetzinger Festspiele. The principal reason is Britten's Third String Quartet. Written in November 1975, with the Amadeus Quartet in mind, the Third Quartet was Britten's last work in the form, as well as his next-to-last work, and a spirit of leave-taking suffuses the score. The Amadeus prepared the work under the composer's guidance but gave the premiere in December 1976 in his absence; Britten had died two weeks earlier. This recording comes from five months later, and one can still feel the love and loss in the Amadeus' performances. With a ripe but bright tone and tight but supple ensemble, the Austrian-English quartet is a perfect fit for the work, and its interpretation is so deeply felt that it almost, but not quite, exceeds the boundaries of good taste. Like the hard-driven account of Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet, the ensemble's performance is not always entirely together, with some occasional intonation problems and a certain roughness of tone wholly unlike the group's smooth tone in its DG recordings. But so impassioned is the reading that it is all but irresistible. Hänssler Classics' live recording is likewise a bit extreme, but also vivid, immediate, and very, very present.

-- AllMusic.com (Jim Leonard)