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Jensen: Piano Music, Vol. 1

Toccata

$20.99 May 12, 2015

Now almost entirely forgotten, Adolf Jensen (1837-79), one of the major figures of German Romanticism, composed a large corpus of songs and piano music in a language fusing the heritage of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt into an individual style distinguished by it's melodic and lyrical appeal. This first in an important, new series of recordings of Jensen's music features Erling R. Eriksen, Prof. Of piano in the Dept. Of Music and Dance at the Univ. Of Stavanger (Norway). The extensive booklet notes are by one of the experts on 19th c. piano music, Rohan Stewart-McDonald.

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Jensen: Piano Music, Vol. 1
Toccata May 2015
CD
$20.99

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde / Stemme, Seiffert, Welser-Möst, Vienna State Opera Orchestra

Orfeo

$37.99 May 06, 2022

Although the premiere in 1865 was not to be at Vienna State Opera but at Munich’s court theatre (June 10th), Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde was performed more than 400 times at the House on the Ring since its premier in 1883. This live recording from June 2013 under the baton of Franz Welser-Möst presents Nina Stemme as Isolde – her debut in that role at Vienna State Opera –, Peter Seiffert as Tristan (who was honoured Kammersänger of the Vienna State Opera the same month the recording was made), Jochen Schmeckenbecher as Kurwenal, Stephen Milling as König Marke and Janina Baechle as Brangäne. The 3 album set was first released in 2019 in the sold out 150 Years Wiener Staastoper – The Anniversary Edition (C980120).

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Wagner: Tristan und Isolde / Stemme, Seiffert, Welser-Möst, Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Orfeo May 2022
CD
$37.99

Carter: Variations for Orchestra, Double Concerto, Piano Concerto / Jacobs, Rosen, Lateiner

Sony Masterworks

$17.99 May 06, 2013

Prophets of the New is a series from Sony focusing on classic recordings of the 20th century's most revolutionary works. Elliott Carter's Variations for Orchestra was described by the Boston Globe as "an astounding imaginative feat of virtuoso orchestral writing," and his Double Concerto was hailed by Stravinsky as "a masterpiece."

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Carter: Variations for Orchestra, Double Concerto, Piano Concerto / Jacobs, Rosen, Lateiner
Sony Masterworks May 2013
CD
$17.99

Arias
DUX Sep 2013
CD
$21.99

ORCHESTRAL WORKS

First Hand Records

$21.99 Jul 30, 2012

This historical release from First Hand features two major English orchestras and two acclaimed conductors in stereo recordings from the late 1950s, offered here for the first time on CD and for the first time ever in stereo. The recordings were transferred using original analogue session and master tapes from the EMI archive. The program includes American conductor Thomas Schippers leading the Philharmonia Orchestra in Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4, and English conductor Sir Eugene Goossens leading the orchestra in Scriabin's Reverie in the first recording of a Scriabin work ever made by a British orchestra. To conclude the disc, Goossens leads the Pro Arte Orchestra in Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1.

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ORCHESTRAL WORKS
First Hand Records Jul 2012
CD
$21.99

R. Schumann, Liszt, Janáček & Brahms / Haochen Zhang

BIS

SACD

$21.99 Feb 10, 2017

In 2009, at the age of 19, Haochen Zhang became one of the youngest musicians ever to win the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Since then he has had a busy concert schedule, primarily in his native China and in the U.S.A. but also in Europe where he made his début at the BBC Proms in 2014. Recording has been less of a priority for Zhang, and it is only now that he releases his first studio album, recorded at the Reitstadel, the well-known audiophile venue in Neumarkt in Germany. For this recital, Haochen Zhang has devised a programme made up of works that he feels particularly close to. As he writes in his own liner notes, they ’not only speak to me in a very intimate way, but also connect with one another at a corresponding level of intimacy: as a whole they form a unique musical narrative.’ The pieces all share a reflective and introspective quality, albeit reflective in different ways.

Opening the disc, Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen were described by the composer as ‘reflections of an adult for adults’ and in the closing Op. 117 Intermezzi, Brahms also seems to be looking backwards – but with resignation rather than intimate tenderness. Framed by these two, the works by Liszt and Janáček contain overtly dramatic episodes, but contemplative interludes form a recurrent feature of the Ballade, and in Presentiment, the first movement of Janáček’s Sonata, the dark forebodings seem to rise up from the composer’s own soul.

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R. Schumann, Liszt, Janáček & Brahms / Haochen Zhang
BIS Feb 2017
SACD
$21.99

Furtwängler conducts Furtwängler & Beethoven: Historical Recordings 1954

SWR

$13.49 ~~$26.99~~ Save 50% Sep 27, 2011

REVIEW:

Furtwängler famously considered himself a composer who conducted, rather than vice versa, and his most familiar surviving work is without question his Second Symphony. It’s a lovable outpouring composed in the last year of the Second World War but that has both its head and its heart buried among the dying embers of late Romanticism. Bruckner, Strauss, Brahms and Reger are all there in attendance and, although the work is well worth sampling, one laments the fact that, while we have at least four recordings of Furtwängler conducting it, we have none of him conducting the Missa solemnis or Parsifal. The 1954 Stuttgart RSO recording of Furtwänger’s Second, reissued here by Hänssler Classic, comes paired with a typically marmoreal account of Beethoven’s First. Both performances are characteristic...it’s nice to have seven minutes’ worth of Furtwängler in (German) conversation with the conductor Hans Müller-Kray, a privilege included only on the Hänssler Classic set.

-- Gramophone

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Furtwängler conducts Furtwängler & Beethoven: Historical Recordings 1954
SWR Sep 2011
CD
~~$26.99~~ $13.49

The Early Recordings, Vol. 1 / Bruggen

IDIS

$16.99 May 11, 2018

Dutch flautist Frans Bruggen (1934-2014) was one of the main discoverers and champions of the recorder during the twentieth century, and is considered to be one of the artists that made this instrument popular and accessible to young people. His virtuosity and technique were unique, and made his performances of music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries unforgettable, showing his audiences that the recorder could be an expressive and evocative instrument. This IDIS release collects a series of very rare recordings of this great artist taken from his archives- none of these recordings have ever been released on modern mediums. This album features the first recording of the Giuseppe Sammartini Concert in F major- a masterpiece of the recorder literature- that was recorded by Bruggen with the Amsterdam Chamber Orchestra when he was only twenty-eight years old.

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The Early Recordings, Vol. 1 / Bruggen
IDIS May 2018
CD
$16.99

VORSPIELE
Orfeo Mar 1988
Vinyl
$21.99

Mahler: Symphony No. 1. - Webern: Im Sommerwind

SWR

$20.99 Mar 27, 2012

Introducing François-Xavier Roth - the charismatic new Principal Conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg in his debut recording as part of the SWRmusic/haenssler CLASSIC collaboration that has produced so many critically acclaimed recordings. This beautiful program features two Late Romantic paeans to nature: Mahler's popular First Symphony and Anton Webern's early, lushly scored tone poem, "Im Sommerwind".

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Mahler: Symphony No. 1. - Webern: Im Sommerwind
SWR Mar 2012
CD
$20.99

Schauensee: Eine Engelberger Talhochzeit

Relief

$33.99 Oct 20, 2023

As of 2023, most of the multitude of manuscripts documenting the extensive oeuvre of the Lucerne-born composer Franz Joseph Leonti Meyer von Schauensee are missing, if not lost forever. For this reason, there is no official catalogue of his works. His opera Die Engelbergische Talhochzeit (the Engelberg valley wedding) was reconstructed and edited by Hans Vogt and Hans Visscher van Gaasbeck in 1935. Acts one and two were performed as an incomplete work under the baton of Hans Vogt during the Swiss National Exhibition in Zurich in 1939. Sometime later, the third act was discovered in the music library of the Benedictine Abbey of St Andrew in Sarnen, following which Hans Vogt arranged the complete opera for a radio broadcast.

This arrangement was recorded under his direction on December 10, 1958, and broadcast for the first time by Radio Basel on April 5, 1959. The opera went on to be performed in various concert halls throughout German-speaking Switzerland. In 1974, Armin Brunner directed the opera at a studio in Zurich for a DRS television broadcast, though significant cuts were made in the recording. In 1982, Talhochzeit was performed by the Zurich Opera at Stadthof 11 (now Theater 11) in Zurich and subsequently on a tour of various Swiss venues.

Performances at the tradition-steeped Kantonsschule Obwalden grammar school in Sarnen in April 2015 (celebrating the 400-year history of the local abbey) and at the Kursaal hall of the Kempinski Palace hotel in Engelberg (marking the 200th anniversary of the accession of Engelberg to the canton of Obwalden) were the first since 1781 to feature the full composition with all its roles and complete text. The sole complete recording of the work is featured on this CD and so is released here for the first time. The bonus tracks on the second CD are likewise without precedent on disc.

Meyer von Schauensee composed a number of small-scale vocal works. The one presented here is titled Modetorheiten – eine Fastnachtsoperette (roughly: fashion fads – a Shrovetide operetta). This work lasts 30 minutes and seems to have been written for some occasion during the locally celebrated Shrovetide carnival of "Fastnacht”.

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Schauensee: Eine Engelberger Talhochzeit
Relief Oct 2023
CD
$33.99

Vision.Bach, Vol. 1 - The First Cantata Year / Gaechinger Cantorey

Haenssler Classic

$32.99 Dec 01, 2023

The ensemble of the Bachakademie, the Gaechinger Cantorey, plays under the direction of Hans-Christoph Rademann. For this purpose it comprises the instrumentalists and up to four vocalists per voice, including the soloists, all specialists in their field, as Bach himself wished it. This is a vision that only now can be fulfilled in its ideal form. To this day the music will inspire its audience to devotion, challenge them to reflect and make them glad. It addresses questions of faith and comes to terms with particular situations of human life.

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Vision.Bach, Vol. 1 - The First Cantata Year / Gaechinger Cantorey
Haenssler Classic Dec 2023
CD
$32.99

Egk: Irische Legende (Live)
Orfeo Jun 2001
CD
$26.99

REINECKE: Symphony No. 1 / King Manfred

Naxos

$19.99 Sep 01, 2001

Reinecke wrote his Grand Romantic Opera in Five Acts, King Manfred, between April and December 1866 in Leipzig, using a libretto by Friedrich Roeber. The work received it's first performance on 26th July, 1867, at the Royal Court Theatre in Wiesbaden under the direction of Wilhelm Jahn and was published in 1868 by Breitkopf and Härtel. The opera deals with the fate of the war-like King Manfred of Sicily (1232-1266), an illegitimate son of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II, who had half Europe against him and fell in battle against Charles of Anjou. Reinecke chose this unfortunately Wagnerian subject in accordance with the taste of the time. Although critics of the day recognized the value of the work, it was to disappear from the repertoire within a few years. Only the splendid Overture and the Preludes were to retain a place until the turn of the century. The Overture is one of the most important works of Reinecke, constituting a character-sketch of Manfred, in the manner of Beethoven's Leonora, Schumann's Genoveva and Manfred and Wagner's Faust, rather than relying on the musical content of the opera. Here are all the ingredients of Romantic stage music, lyrical melodies for horn or cello, the sounds of the minstrel's harp, agitated running notes for the strings and massive chords for the brass, all handled with an assurance that makes it difficult to understand the present neglect of the piece. The Prelude to Act V deserves special mention. A short introduction presages the coming disaster, the death of Manfred, before a melodic line of lyrical intensity, a cogent demonstration of the creative power of the composer. It is with this music in mind that we may read Reinecke's assessment of his own achievement, in a letter to Ferdinand Hiller on his choral work Belsazar: "... you know that no brilliant, original inventiveness is at my disposal... , but I believe, nevertheless, that I have provided a thoroughly respectable piece of work, evidence of worthy endeavor, a passable command of form and good taste, perhaps also of good judgment".

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REINECKE: Symphony No. 1 / King Manfred
Naxos Sep 2001
CD
$19.99

Mozart: Mass in C Minor, KV 427 / Arman, Bavarian Radio Choir, Berlin Akademie fur Alte Musik

BR Klassik

$29.99 Nov 02, 2018

Written in 1782, Mozart's Mass in C minor - although incomplete – ranks as one of the outstanding Mass settings in European music history. The very recent reconstruction/completion of the Mass by Clemens Kemme in the spring of 2018 confines itself to the original sources, avoiding any arbitrary additions. The work was recorded in this critically acclaimed version for the Bayerischer Rundfunk during the summer of 2018, and conducted by Howard Arman. This album is thus the first recording of the definitive version of this new and intelligently edited reconstruction of Mozart's Mass in C minor. An introduction to the work is also included, enabling this masterpiece to be approached from new perspectives. In Vienna in the summer of 1782, Mozart started writing a new Mass despite having apparently received no commission to do so. On August 4, 1782 he married Constanze Mozart, and from his correspondence it appears that he had made himself a promise to “have a newly-composed mass performed in Salzburg if he brought her there as his wife.” The work may have been performed on October 26, 1783 in St. Peter's Church in Salzburg, with Constanze as the soprano soloist; concrete evidence of such a performance is however lacking. Nevertheless, the Mass can probably be seen as a kind of votive offering for Constanze. The fact that the work was not completed may be due to the church music reforms implemented by the Emperor Joseph II, who preferred sacred music to be performed on a smaller scale. In 1785, Mozart eventually reworked the “Kyrie" and "Gloria" from the mass for his cantata Davide penitente.

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Mozart: Mass in C Minor, KV 427 / Arman, Bavarian Radio Choir, Berlin Akademie fur Alte Musik
BR Klassik Nov 2018
CD
$29.99

V4: LIEDER

MDG

$23.99 Jan 03, 2020

Hanns Eisler composed more than five hundred songs, and his very first extant compositions include songs with piano accompaniment. On the fourth and last volume of their selections from Eisler's songs, Holger Falk and Steffen Schleiermacher focus on his early works and bring to light an absolutely astonishing discovery: the young Hanns was an autodidact who had an incredible feel for the song part, and his artistic aspirations are also evident in the piano part. Eisler transcends by far the mere imitation of models. Here we encounter free-tonal compositions as well as music of revue character, expressive passages as well as laconic ones. His choice of texts is likewise very broad. While Brecht became the focus in Eisler's later work, here he concentrates on poems by Eichendorff and Buchner and by Trakl and Morgenstern. The songs set to Far Eastern poetry, in translations by Hans Bethge and Klabund, are very much in keeping with their times. Eisler even set newspaper advertisements to music! Eisler composed his very first songs while as yet reflecting on World War I, most of which he spent in military hospitals. The texts and the mood are correspondingly gloomy, for example, in "Tod" or "Der mude Soldat." By contrast, the Songs op. 2 borrow from the style of the Viennese school led by Arnold Schoenberg, with whom Eisler studied counterpoint beginning in 1919. Broad intervals and extreme registers require the singer to give his all- something very typical of vocal works from Schoenberg's immediate circle. Holger Folk masters such difficulties with bravura and finds just the right tone for this challenging music. Steffen Schleiermacher lends the difficult, sometimes harmonically unwieldy compositional texture a transparency that conveys the character of each and every song in the most advantageous light. The magnificent conclusion of an ambitious project!

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V4: LIEDER
MDG Jan 2020
CD
$23.99

Rossi: Il Domino Nero / Aprea, Marchigiana Philharmonic Orchestra

Bongiovanni

$18.99 Jun 15, 2018

Lauro Rossi was a prominent composer and teacher in the period from 1830 to 1880. A brilliant, lively personality from both a humanistic and artistic point of view emerges from the documents. Modern critics have included him in the indistinct group of ‘lesser’ names from the period of Bellini and Donizetti, acknowledging his ability and primary role in the buffo genre, considering with equally close attention his later writing in the serious genre. Rossi’s Il domino nero was staged for the first time at Milan’s Teatro alla Canobbiana on September 1, 1849. The subject was used for the first time in the libretto Eugene Scribe wrote for Le domino noir, an opera comique in three acts by Daniel Auber, successfully staged at the Salle de la Bourse in Paris on December 2, 1837 and performed by Laure Cinti Damoreau and Joseph-Antoine-Charles Couderc. Rubino kept the period and the setting in Spain and used some of the ideas, but in substance moved away from Scribe’s plot. As well as the adaptability and technical ability in belcanto style, the singers must have first-rate acting talent. Rossi had the gift of simplicity and a ‘modern’ sensitivity, which goes beyond Rossini and Donizetti’s great teaching. By choice, his writing is easily followed, whereas his solid training in composition can be noted above all in the skill with which he treats the chorus, which has a key role, from the point of view of both music and stage presence.

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Rossi: Il Domino Nero / Aprea, Marchigiana Philharmonic Orchestra
Bongiovanni Jun 2018
CD
$18.99

Rossini: Petite Messe solennelle
MDG Mar 2024
CD
$32.99

Telemann: Moralische Cantaten / Eckert, Schachtner, Hamburger Ratsmusik

CPO

$18.99 Jan 04, 2019

The Hamburger Ratsmusik – an ensemble looking back on a five-hundred-year history – teams up with the young countertenor Benno Schachtner on this recording of Georg Philipp Telemann’s Six Moral Cantatas. During the decades between 1720 and 1750 the middle class of the early Enlightenment sought moral education and ethical improvement deriving from human nature and reason as part of its never-ending quest for earthly happiness. It was with wit and charm that in his Moral Cantatas of 1735 Telemann set to music a poetic document conveying the spirit of this Enlightenment period. His only recently rediscovered Fantasies for Solo Viola da Gamba, published at the same time, are presented here in alternation with his Moral Cantatas, the title with which they were announced in a catalogue dating from August 1735. These two collections first performed together during a concert of the Hamburger Ratsmusik at the last Telemann Festival are now being presented here for the first time. These two works by Telemann were intended for professional and amateur musicians alike, and they seem to have met with special resonance among those interested parties who wanted to perform at home in smaller ensembles.

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Telemann: Moralische Cantaten / Eckert, Schachtner, Hamburger Ratsmusik
CPO Jan 2019
CD
$18.99

WHIPPIN THE KEYS

DELMARK

$15.70 Apr 22, 2008

Pianist Wally Rose was the original piano player in Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz Band, the band that started the Traditional Jazz revival of the 1940s and '50s. He also played with Bob Scobey in 1950-51, Turk Murphy in 1952-54 and spent many years as soloist in San Francisco. In 1953 Rose recorded two influential solo LPs: Ragtime Classics and Ragtime Piano Masterpieces. Rose remained active throughout the '70s and '80s. Whippin' the Keys was recorded at two sessions in 1968 and 1971. The twenty solo ragtime selections were originally issued on two Blackbird LPs (Rose on Piano, Blackbird 12007 and Whippin' the Keys, Blackbird 12010). They are reissued here for the first time.

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WHIPPIN THE KEYS
DELMARK Apr 2008
CD
$15.70

SYMPHONY NO.1

Berlin Classics

$16.99 Feb 24, 2017

Apart from his high-profile concert activities, Franz Konwitschny was inseparably associated with the foundation and development of the new Eterna label. Between 1959 and 1961 Eterna issued all Beethoven’s and Schumann’s symphonies in the then innovative stereo format. Like all of Konwitschny’s late recordings, these gramophone records are now sought-after collector’s items that offer interpretations of lasting significance. One such notable document of the great maestro is the present recording of Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony, made in June 1962 only weeks before Konwitschny’s death. The producer of this recording, Dieter-Gerhardt Worm, praises “the coherence and euphony of the interpretation. Konwitschny does nothing subjectively, he interprets the work. When I played Konwitschny the recording in hospital before his last concert tour, tears of joy rolled down his face.” Worm, who worked on most of Konwitschny’s recordings as a young production manager for the Eterna label, remembers the focused studio work and the immense artistic importance of the conductor: “As a conductor, he was always one of the greatest for me. What he did as a Bruckner conductor, for instance, was incredible. Konwitschny was more than a musician to whom one could say anything; he was someone who knew instinctively how to apply what he had learnt and integrate it into his conducting gestures.”

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SYMPHONY NO.1
Berlin Classics Feb 2017
CD
$16.99

Brahms, Mozart, Berg et al: a la memoire d’un ange - Christian Ferras In Memoriam

Rhine Classics

$64.99 May 19, 2023

All recordings are first published here, including two most important ones: Ferras's first concert in the USA (playing Brahms' violin concerto with Charles Munch in Boston) and Ferras playing Mozart's violin concerto No. 3 for Pope John XXIII in 1963, one of the most powerful experiences of Ferras' life.

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Brahms, Mozart, Berg et al: a la memoire d’un ange - Christian Ferras In Memoriam
Rhine Classics May 2023
CD
$64.99

Grieg, E.: From Holberg's Time / Piano Sonata, Op. 7 / Peer
Ars Produktion Jan 2009
SACD
$21.99

Leonard Rose Live

Doremi

$40.99 Nov 18, 2016

Leonard Rose is without a doubt one of the most prominent cellists and pedagogues of the twentieth century. After completing his schooling at Philadelphia’s Curtis Insitute of Music, he joined the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini and almost immediately became associate principal. At 21 he became principal of the Cleveland Orchestra, and just five years later principal of the New York Philharmonic. All of the tracks on this release are recordings from live performances or live broadcasts, dating from the peak of his career between the years 1961 and 1973. He performs alongside other well-known names such as Nadia Reisenberg and Eugene Istomin.

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Leonard Rose Live
Doremi Nov 2016
CD
$40.99

Weigl: Symphony No. 3; Symphonic Prelude / Bruns, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz

Capriccio

$21.99 Jan 03, 2025

The two works recorded on this disc both come from a creative period at the beginning of the 1930s. In terms of style, with his works linked to basic tonalities, Weigl drew on the sound realm of late Romanticism, from whose aesthetics he never departed in favour of more progressive contemporary trends. Weigl’s knack for orchestration shows both in the hymnic climaxes as well as the chamber music-like passages. Weigl never lived to hear any performances of either his Third Symphony or the Symphonic Prelude. Like so many of his larger works, these scores were not (re-)discovered until interest in Weigl’s music resurged decades later. This release allows audiences to hear both works for the first time on record.

REVIEW:

Stylistically, the pieces clearly show Weigl’s own voice, even as they remain close to the late-Romantic symphonic style.

The symphony's rich palette of development and treatment leads from intimate moments of chamber music to grand climaxes. The large orchestration of the Symphonic Prelude indicates that it was intended for the concert hall rather than as incidental music. Overall, the works remain rooted in traditional sounds.

Weigl was unable to experience performances of these works. The new interest in his music is also reflected in these premiere recordings. The Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and conductor Jürgen Bruns illuminate these works with successful commitment.

— Pizzicato (Uwe Krusch)

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Weigl: Symphony No. 3; Symphonic Prelude / Bruns, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz
Capriccio Jan 2025
CD
$21.99