Classical Music

Fiery Spanish temperament, deep emotions and Mediterranean atmosphere are presented on this recording by the "Duo Arcadie" for voice and guitar. Franziska Markowitsch and Ulrike Merk display a wide spectrum of Spanish music. Two premiere recordings complete this kaleidoscope of works from the past and present.

This recording, played by Gerhard Weinberger, is the first to have been made with the restored Johann Patroclus Möller Organ which was built in 1736-38. Two of Johann Sebastian Bach's important free works form a framework for this CD: the Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 538, and the well known Passacaglia in C minor BWV 582.

To understand the concept of this release solely from a geographical standpoint would be a grave misstep. The concept delves much deeper - from the divergent emotional worlds contained in each country to the polaric social and political structures that developed - and grows as informed by Rattinger's rich and highly nuanced playing.

With characteristic energy and sensitive virtuosity, pianist Carmen Piazzini brings a new dimension of musicality to the works of Schumann, Brahms, and Schubert. This CD is a fascinating encounter with Piazzini as an artist, and furthermore an artist who has for years been called the greatest Argentinean pianist by Argentinean critics.

It was "the great meanings of the ancients" that drove Goethe to Italy and Mendelssohn to Scotland. Literati and musicians are united by a preoccupation with the past, searching for themselves in the foreign and distant. This is more than mere intellectual curiosity; to receive fresh stimuli for one's own work from the ancients is like an act of self-assurance through questioning those masters who form the canon of knowledge and to whom new voices must be gallantly added. By showing personal reverence through artistic references, artists have always created new forms of expression in the footsteps of the past. Bringing such interactions to light is the goal of this album. The collected works show examples of how pioneering this attitude is. It was Mendelssohn who was the impetus for the Bach renaissance in the mid-nineteenth century. It directly affected Clara and Robert Schumann as well as Franz Liszt, whose piano transcriptions of Bach's organ works open the recording. Like many composers, Liszt was drawn to Italy, whose cultural heritage, including Renaissance paintings and poems by Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch, captivated him. Petrarch in particular appealed to Liszt and Schumann. The latter read his poems and translated them; Liszt set them to music. Dante's "Divine Comedy" was also omnipresent. Liszt's resounding Dante reading concludes the series of selected works that push us back, as it were, into the future.

Trio Zero has a grand tradition of improvisation - or music out of the blue, as they call it. Corinna Chapelle (violin), Alexander Suleiman (cello) and Franz Hummel (piano) avoid discussion before beginning each piece, resulting in adventurous collaborative musicianship and collective composition across the group.

Composer Guido Rennert has finally succeeded in setting the popular German children's book Max & Moritz as an opera. This is a work to thrill children and adults alike, cast in miniature: The performing forces are a saxophone quartet and one baritone voice. Each vignette is blackly playful, evocative of the boyish pranks first penned by Wilhelm Busch.

This new recording is about polyphonic references between the great counterpoint artists Byrd, Gibbons, Bach and the contemporary composers John Tavener, Oliver Knussen, John Adams, Markus Horn and Xiaoyong Chen. The two Bach Ricercari from the Musical Offering form the bracket. The exciting connection of the individual, different works to each other is created by the polyphonic structures, the modal church keys or by religious, spiritual references. 429 years lie between the work of Byrd and the work of Xiaoyong Chen composed for the release. With Bach, Byrd, Gibbons and Contemporary Music, the listener can expect a recording that is wonderfully audible, in a positive sense unexhausting. You have to get involved with the depth, the space and sometimes the silence, but it is worth it, because the music changes your own self and focuses attention on you. “I’m interested in the connections between different epochs and their polyphonic structures. So obviously there was no way that I could ignore Johann Sebastian Bach. However, I considered what to combine with his Ricercares a 3 and a 6 from The Musical Offering. First I thought of William Byrd, as I knew that polyphony and contrapuntal style were important to him, despite the fact that he was almost 150 years older than Bach. I began with vocal polyphony and arrived at Orlando Gibbons and virginal music, which I wanted to combine with contemporary music. And then the search began …” (Alexandra Sostmann)

Kateryna Kasper writes of her new album: “This album is a journey to bygone and dreamt of lands. A journey back to childhood, to the land of elves and nymphs, to the Romantic era. A journey back? – The modern way of evaluating, optimizing and automatizing everything provokes, I believe, in many people a quiet “Romantic” longing for the secrets hiding behind everyday things, for the irrational, the timeless, for what makes us human. Childhood is such a precious time in which rules of imagination and play reign supreme. These same rules govern the musings of fairy tales and also of music. Romanticism is more than an era: it is also an attitude towards life and, as such, is timeless. Perhaps it is more topical today than ever.”

Franz Hummel is widely acclaimed as one of Europe's most original composers. He began his career as a virtuoso pianist, performing in concert throughout Europe and the USA. Two new compositions - Hatikva and Fukushima - are here performed by Elena Denisova, Giora Feidman and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra.

To make it's performance easier, Norbert Duechtel has adapted the Christmas Liederspiel "Christnacht" by Joseph Haas (1879-1960) for organ. The cantica nova holzkirchen choir under the direction of Katrin Wende-Ehmer - with inserted texts read by Alex Dorow - delivers a recording that is true to the original intentions of the composer Joseph Haas: "The incredible power of the text's words, though clumsy and awkward, their unique richness of imagery, the outward hardness and coarseness and the inward tenderness and vibrancy of the language appealed to me just as much as the indescribable melodic beauty of the tunes and the diversity of their shaping. This is authentic art of South German farmer baroque!"

Schoenberg, Adorno and Stravinsky - three great composers of the 20th century meet on this project of violin works. In the hands of Liana Issakadze these works take on the quality of a wild circus act and shine with splendor and technical authority. Issakadze plays like the violinist with six fingers that Schoenberg prophesied.

This renowned work - a classic among the glut of singing texts - is now available as an audiobook. Developed from the practice of a singer and pedagogue for the practice of singing and teaching, it not only provides the interested music lover valuable tips and useful ideas but also lays the foundation for self-guided vocal study.

An internationally awarded ensemble, the violinists Almuth Siegel and �gnes Pusker (Duo ASAP) create a diverse program around the motto "dialogues". With "passion, temperament and witty playfulness" (Newspaper "S�ddeutsche Zeitung") they present works from four centuries including world premiere recordings. The joy of playing music is felt throughout-inviting the listener to indulge in diverse musical t�te- �-t�tes. Buchenberg's "Saitent�nze" are a tribute to the Duo's love of nature. The musical depictions of dancing elves, fairies, and "wild women" have thrilled the audiences during many a "forest concert" of the Duo ASAP. A dialogue between music and language arises with Hiller's work "Metamorphoses" (incl. Hans-Christian Andersen, Rainer Maria Rilke, Michael Kr�ger etc.), when the actor Stefan Hunstein recites the integrated poems with sensitivity and gripping suggestiveness within the context of violin music.