Joseph Haas' Christmas Liederspiel, Christnacht, combines Bavarian and Tyrol folk tunes into an oratorio. His Marian Hymns based primarily on texts from the 13th to the 18th centuries. The composers of the other various carols on this release are either pupils or contemporaries of Haas.

What do the three composers on this album, who come from such different eras, have in common? They all broke new ground, both in terms of piano-playing technique and musically. All three developed their works directly, almost improvisationally, on the instrument. And for all three of them, light-heartedness and the joy of playing the instrument are at the forefront of their works. And it is this joy of playing and light-heartedness that also characterize the essence of this recording, whose basic idea was to “capture” the “intuitively musical“ in a recording, i.e. to bring the improvisational spirit of these pieces to life. Thus, this album is a snapshot, as it were, that captures something that is alive like a picture captures movement.

Two giant works: the lesser played 1913 version of Op. 36, Piano Sonata No. 2, an epic piece in the truest sense of the word and Op. 23, 10 Preludes, an intimate cycle, both challenge the physical and psychological limits of the player and the listener. With the help of the Bösendorfer Concert Grand 280VC – Vienna Concert this recording dives deep into the rich, orchestral sound world, as well as the dark nature of these works, loaded with fine details, technical and emotional extremities, candid moments and explosivity. Emre Yavuz was born in 1990 in Izmir, Turkey. His talent for learning at a rapid pace was evident at an early age, eventually leading to a musical education. He started his education in music in 1998 under the “Educational Act for Prodigy Children”, studying with Kamuran Gündemir in Ankara. He continued his studies with Fazil Say and Sanem Berkalp at the Bilkent University, where he also studied composition. Later studying with Roland Batik in Vienna, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling in Hannover, and with Arie Vardi in Hannover and Tel Aviv. Starting at an early age Yavuz played with major orchestras performing concertos of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. With his interpretations of Chopin he won prizes in Sicily in 2007, and in Vienna in 2010. He became the first piano student of the Vienna Conservatory to graduate with full grades upon his final recital, performing works by Beethoven, Saygun and Rachmaninoff. In 2013 he performed Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 under the conduction of Zubin Mehta. Emre has competed in a number of competitions, winning prizes internationally.

Karajan gets into the cab. The cab driver asks, "Where are you going, Mr. Director?" Karajan impatiently: "Drive!!! Anywhere! I conduct everywhere!" Is this a joke? No. The name Karajan turns the joke into an anecdote. The mocker who invented the anecdote wanted to say: Karajan is vain, Karajan is insatiable, Karajan is megalomaniac. Probably also: Karajan has a sense of humor. So does the narrator of the anecdote. After it has been told once or a hundred times, someone has written it down. And made sure that it would not be forgotten again. Karajan himself also made sure of that. From day to day, as he became more famous. From conductor to conductor, from magazine portrait to magazine portrait, the market value of the anecdote increased - and the probability that it would disappear from the memory of the cultural world decreased. The quoted anecdote is also attributed, slightly modified, to the politicians Horst Ehmke and Hans-Dietrich Genscher. Bad? No. The anecdote does not belong to anyone entirely. Because it makes fun of character traits and behaviors that many people share. And the anecdote doesn't take truth too seriously. Bad? No. Those who want to tell us truths should not be trusted anyway. The director Joseph Berlinger has dug through the collected treasures of musicians' anecdotes, selected his favorite ones, rewritten them, retold them and staged them. Of course, instead of musician anecdotes, he could have taken chimney sweep anecdotes to task. But Berlinger liked the musician anecdotes best. Because music is the most beautiful of all arts. And whoever composes, interprets, reviews and receives it, whoever plays it, whoever sings it, whoever enjoys it, whoever is disturbed by it, exposes himself to all kinds of ridicule.

A match made by their teachers, Ron Selka and Aviram Reichert have been collaborating for over 30 years. Starting in high school with a successful audition performance for the IDF Outstanding Musician program, they have performed numerous programs in duo recitals in Israel, the United States and South Korea, as well as chamber music concerts with many prominent musicians. This release is a milestone in a long musical journey traversed together. With this glorious complementary pair of clarinet sonatas, Brahms pays tribute to Mühlfeld’s variegated tone palette, the first sonata sombre and rapturous, the second mellow and lyrical, together covering every possible nuance of color and mood, lyrical, rich in texture and melodic invention. Richard Mühlfeld was principal clarinetist of the Meiningen Orchestra (Germany), whose playing instantly captivated Brahms when he first heard him play in early 1891. Although Beethoven’s shadow may have loomed large over Brahms’s instrumental music, Brahms was considerably more relaxed in composing for the voice. From his earliest youth to his final composition, “Vier Ernste Gesänge” (Four Serious Songs), song-writing stood at the very heart of his work, free from the uncompromising self-critical scrutiny to which he subjected his instrumental works.

Steffen Wolf's (*1971) recitation music is in the tradition of the Romantic melodrama and does not deny it, despite having its own contemporary tonal language. Rather, it plays with that tradition, allowing forms from the time of the poet Christoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813) to appear and resound anew. Clarity, audibility, and strong reference to the course of the plot distinguish it. Kizuna Quartet plays as this grand-scale plot unfolds.

For the recitation of the Wieland text, none other than the literary scholar Jan Philip Reemtsa, who studies Wieland, could be up to the task.

The organ in St. Oswald‘s church in Regensburg (Bavaria / South Germany) was inaugurated in 1750. This recording on the occasion of its 270th birthday documents its excellent sound. To this day, the instrument by Frantz Jacob Späth has been largely preserved in its original state and is an important testimony to the art of South German organ building. Frantz Jacob Späth was born in Regensburg in 1714 and died there on 23 July 1786. In Regensburg he built the organs of St. Oswald in 1750 and of the Church of the Holy Trinity in 1758. Of the latter, only the casing and some few pipes have been preserved. What made Späth famous, however, were his pianos, above all because of his invention of the tangent piano. The instrument, somewhere between a harpsichord and a fortepiano, was the reason for his company’s international fame. To date, about 20 pianos of this type have been preserved in the most important instrument collections. Like other piano makers of his time, he, too, experimented: in 1770, he advertised his Clavecin d’Amour, a combination instrument with strings and an organ stop on two manuals. Roman Emilius plays organ music of the 17th and 18th centuries, by Heinrich Scheidemann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Böhm, Johann Jacob De Neufville, Bernardo Pasquini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The “Tango Sentimentale” ensemble – Maximilian Spenger , Susanne Gargerle (First Violin), Isolde Lehrmann (Second Violin), David Ott , Silvia Cempiny (Violoncello), Thomas Jauch , Manuel Lopez , Hermann Weindorf (Piano & Percussion) – succeeds in fusing classical and modern music in one project. Tango … play between passion and melancholy dance of seduction, devotion and distance lure of fascination and eroticism Moments in the style of traditional tangos by Astor Piazzolla and Sebastian Piana meet modern compositions of the present. In such encounters of a very special kind, familiar elements of a bygone era combine with the forever enduring wishes, dreams and desires in the here and now. Played with abandon with accordion and string quintet, “Tango Sentimentale” takes us into a world of sound full of emotions and fantasy.

“Nicht Bach, sondern Meer sollte er heißen!” (Ludwig van Beethoven) The “Musical Offering” collection of pieces, dedicated to the Prussian King, Frederick II, is a contrapuntal masterpiece, in which Johann Sebastian Bach seems to draw every conceivable facet from a single theme (Thema Regium – royal theme). It is a musical testament of the old master, full of freshness, creativity and original quality – like an endless sea. With this recording, Ensemble Barockin’ presents a musically careful and genuinely new interpretation. Ensemble Barockin’ is an international ensemble with musicians from Russia, France, Germany and Japan who are committed to performing early music in the original sound. The album artwork was created by artist, photographer and graphic designer Marc Köschinger. The cover shows a long time-exposure of the ocean. The picture was exposed at night over a longer period of time, so that it defines neither space nor time, something the musicians of Ensemble Barockin’ particularly liked for this very special recording of this work by Bach. Music without space and time like a reverberation of the universe – for this, it was added a Morse code to the text on the cover that makes the composer’s name sound through space like an echo: JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

On this new album the Duo Hervé Joulain (Horn) and Ariane Jacob (Piano) present 17 very interesting Original Horn Themes — with works by Sinigaglia, Glière, Strauss, Büsser, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, Chabrier, Skrjabin, Freiherr von Krufft, Glasunow, Cherubini, d’Indy, Damase, Bernstein and Couson. Hervé Joulain (Horn) has appeared as soloist with 120 orchestras, performing Telemann, Mozart, Haydn, Schumann, Weber, Saint-Saëns, Strauss, and Britten, in France, Canada, the United States, Russia, Romania, Finland, Sweden, Japan, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Georgia, Germany, Ukraine, and Spain. Ariane Jacob (Piano) has been performing in large French and internationals concert halls for more than twenty years. She plays with such musicians as Philippe Bernold, Hervé Joulain, Barbara Hendricks, Laurent Korcia or the actor Didier Sandre.

Sabrina Fey and Bernhard Parz write of this new release: “Music for a cozy evening by candlelight, light-hearted yet sensitive, unique and interspersed with a lot of humor and clever composition – this is how we see the music of Hans Gál, a very versatile composer. The idea to record the music of the Viennese composer for a production came to us out of a curious, friendly reason: Pianist Bernhard Parz and recorder player Sabrina Frey already philosophized about various musical topics while studying music at the University of Music and Performing Arts together. Years later, playing together still seemed rather difficult: Sabrina Frey lived in the world of baroque music, while Bernhard Parz had specialized in the Viennese world of piano literature. However, we are both passionate musicians, so it was only a matter of time before we started looking for original literature for our specific instrument combination. Soon we came across the wonderful music of Hans Gál. We immediately felt drawn to it and then spent a lot of time immersing ourselves in the musical world of this extraordinary composer and working out the essence of this delicate music. After some initial “rehearsal concerts” in front of an enthusiastic audience and contact with Hans Gál‘s descendants who live in England, it did not take long to come to the decision: this just has to be made available for other music lovers.”

Josefa Schmidt presents the very interesting piano programme Dream Images, a musical combination with the composers Debussy, Scriabin, Crumb, Ravel and Schmidt. Josefa Schmidt (*1998 in Stuttgart, Germany) is prize winner of several competitions such as the International Euregio Piano Award, the Lions Club Competition, the international SIMW Award, the International Chamber Music Campus Weikersheim, the Carl Bechstein Competition Berlin and was a finalist of the International Piano Competition Concours Merci, Maestro in Brussels. In 2019 Josefa received the TONALi Prize of Creativity at TONALi Piano Competition. She is a scholarship holder of the foundations Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, Yamaha Foundation, Foundation Yehudi Menuhin Live Music Now Hannover, Harald Genzmer Foundation and the Jeunesses Musicales. She performed at reknowed festivals such as the Rheingau Musikfestival, the Klangbruckenfestival and the Festival Momentum Stolberg as well as in France (Paris), Austria, Italy and numerous cities in Germany. Concerts were broadcast on the radio.

One can only do justice to Joseph Haas’ oeuvre by judging it by what he himself said about the purpose of music: ”Music is to delight, not offend; it is to shake up, not shatter; it is to refine, not trivialize.” Together with Paul Hindemith and Heinrich Burkard, Joseph Haas co-founded the “Donaueschinger internationale Kammermusikfeste für Neue Musik” (Donaueschingen International Chamber Music Festival for New Music) in 1921. The works show the mastery of variation and the peculiarities of the compositional style of Joseph Haas. Joseph Renner studied organ and composition with Joseph Rheinberger in Munich and worked mainly in Regensburg/Bavaria. He was particularly appreciated by his contemporaries as a composer of spiritual and organ works. “Der geigende Eremit” (The Hermit Fiddler) from Max Reger’s “Böcklin Suite” as program music can be heard on this album, as one of his best-known works, and from the point of view of its content it is almost suitable for a version for violin and organ. These works for Violin and Organ, and Organ solo, by Joseph Haas (1879—1960), Max Reger (1873—1916) and Josef Renner, jun. (1868—1934) are very interesting musical oeuvres, interpreted by internationally well-known artists Sreten Krstic, Violin, Norbert Düchtel and Ludwig Schmitt, Organ.

ln this album we can find various realities transformed in sound and different kinds of writing belonging to the same area, the so­ called Sur, kaleidoscopic and impossible to restrict to a single form of poetics. The works performed here are the musical representation of the fusion between the academic style and the richness of the popular element typical of that area. Born in Piacenza in 1980, Antonio Amodeo graduated with honors from the “Conservatorio G. Nicolini.” He perfected his skill at the Hochschule fur Musick Mainz with the master Stefan Hladek. He has taken part in many different chamber music ensembles, including the Orchestra a plettro, Diversus Guitar Ensemble, and Quartetto Chitarristico. He gives masterclasses for young guitarists and teaches in many music schools and academies, both in Northern Italy and in Germany.

This new release is an enchanting treasury of familiar old children’s and folk songs. Soprano Jeanette Roeck and her brother, the jazz pianist Jan Roeck, take up the musical legacy of their childhood and make some lively music together. The result is a collection of songs suitable for dancing, playing and singing. It’s music you can listen and hum to, and even join in. This album is sure to become an indispensable companion for all adults and children who’d like to sing and get acquainted with a lasting cultural tradition. Soprano Jeanette Roeck studied voice in South Tyrol and in Italy, where she took degrees in solo singing as well as in lied and oratorio. Since her debut in 2005, she has participated in concerts and lied recitals throughout Europe. Pianist Jan Roeck resides in Munich. He is music director and repetiteur at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe as well as at the Altes Schauspielhaus and Komodie im Marquardt in Stuttgart, where he has been heard in productions that include Heesters, Edith Piaf and Meisterklasse.