releases

2023 Releases

#bruckner24 Symphony #5

(Complete Versions Edition)
ORF VIENNA RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA · MARKUS POSCHNER

C8090 PC: 21 UPC: 845221080901

Among Bruckner’s Symphonies, the Fifth is his contrapuntal masterpiece; the grandest until the Eighth. The tour-de-force of a finale gives us an idea of what the finale of the Ninth might have been like. Its magnificent dark and halting opening with the descending bass line – so effectively recalled in the finale – is inimitable. Although long available only in a disfigured version by Franz Schalk, it is also distinct for never having been the subject to revision or, perhaps, even doubt on the part of Bruckner – who never heard it performed with an orchestra. And yet, when Bruckner wrote this masterpiece, he was still far from establishing himself as a composer in Vienna and his spirits were as low as ever, writing a friend that “my life has lost all joy and delight – in vain and for nothing.” A radiant pinnacle from amid darkness.

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GIJA KANCHELI

A Little Daneliade · Valse Boston · 18 Miniatures · Largo and Allegro
Elisaveta Blumina · Hartmut Schill · Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie

C5488 PC: 21 UPC: 845221054889

It was never even an unofficial club of composers like the Russian “Mighty Handful” or the French “Les Six”. And yet, there are striking commonalities among a group of Soviet composers all born in the 1930s. They were hailed from ethnic minorities in the Russia-dominated Soviet Union and they defied the cultural-political directives which eventually led them to find a post-ideological musical language – guided by a personal faith – that enchants listeners to this day with its unique beauty. Giya Kancheli, born in Tbilisi in 1935, is one of them. A fellow composer called him “an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist – a restrained Vesuvius.” The works on this disc – for and with the piano – display exactly that side of his: To be able to make time seemingly stand still… while continuing to dance.

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NIKOLAI · ALEXANDER · IVAN TCHEREPNIN

Sting Quartets · Piano Quintet
Siobhan Stagg · Giuseppe Mentuccia · MICHELANGELO QUARTETT

2CD · C5503 PC: 02 UPC: 845221055039

For more than a century, the members of the Tcherepnin family shaped European music history. All started with Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945) followed by his son Alexander (1899-1971) and finally Ivan (1943-1998) who continued the family tradition of composing already in the third generation. Influenced of their time but still in a traditional and innovative  way, these recordings show us the different characteristic styles from late romantic to modernity. 

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MAX REGER

Requiem · Der Einsiedler · An die Hoffnung · MAHLER: Orchestral Songs
Anke Vondung · Tobias Berndt · Chorus Musicus Köln · Das Neue Orchester · Christoph Spering

C5512 PC: 21 UPC: 845221055121

In celebration of the 150th Anniversary this Album focus on still less-known but exceptional sensitive and impressive Choral Symphonic and Orchestra songs by Max Reger. With these works, Reger entirely adhered to the trend of the time; the large-scale idea, which would have had no place in the operas of the period, is transferred to the concert hall, so to speak, and is as far removed from the "simple" orchestral song as some of Mahler's Rückert-Lieder. The Hebbel Requiem, Op. 144b includes audible parallels with Johannes Brahms‘s German Requiem and was Reger’s memorial for the German soldiers killed in the war.

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#bruckner24 Symphony #2 (1877)

(Complete Versions Edition)
BRUCKNER ORCHESTER LINZ · Markus Poschner

C8089 PC: 21 UPC: 845221080895

This Complete Versions Edition includes all versions published or to be published under the auspices of the Austrian National Library and the International Bruckner Society in the Neue Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabe (The New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition)
"What nonsense”, grumbled Otto Dessoff after a read-through (to determine its repertoire-worthiness for the Vienna Philharmonic) of Bruckner’s Second Symphony. This doomed the work to a life of revision. The first version was written in 1871 when the Second was still the Third Symphony because the Zeroëth, then still the Second, hadn’t been annulled yet. Despite Bruckner managing a well-enough regarded premiere of this version, he set about to rework it during his period of revision in 1877 where he and his eager helpers set about to radically trim any perceived fat. The result, which we know as the second version, changed most in the Finale, where a full 193 bars were pruned. This version follows Bruckner’s cuts unflinchingly which cannot, however, alter the Symphony’s expansive proto-Brucknerian structure first heard here. And then that marvelous Adagio in this lyrical sister of the First Symphony!

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Henze - Das Floß der Medusa

Sarah Wegener · Dietrich Henschel · Sven-Eric Bechtolf · Arnold Schoenberg Chor · Wiener Sängerknaben
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra · Cornelius Meister

C5482 PC: 21 UPC: 845221054827

Théodore Géricault’s larger-than-life painting The Raft of the Medusa has stimulated a great many artists ever since its creation in 1819. Also Hans Werner Henze and his Librettist Ernst Schnabel were inspired by Géricault and wrote a political oratorio on the painting’s tragic historical subject in 1967. Notable for its harsh and bright sounds, tender depiction of suffering, scathing irony, and gripping dramaturgy, the agitation at the failed premiere lifted the work into the canon of great classical scandals.

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Z. NOSKOWSKI

Symphony No. 2 'Elegiac' (1875) · Symphony No. 1 (1874)
DEUTSCHE STAATSPHILHARMONIE RHEINLAND-PFALZ · ANTONI WIT

C5509 PC: 21 UPC: 845221055091

Although he had famous students (i.e. Szymanowski) and teachers (Moniuszko), few listeners know much, if anything, about Zygmunt Noskowski (1846–1909). And yet, for most of the 19th century, he was the primary exponent of modern symphonic music in Poland. As a conductor and concert organizer, he had himself championed the causes of forgotten Polish composers. Now it is Antoni Wit, Noskowski’s successor at the helm of the Warsaw Philharmonic at a distance of 94, who helps out his late-romantic colleague – just as he has already done with the music Zygmunt Stojowski on a previous Capriccio recording (C5464).

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KURT WEILL: PROPHETEN · WALT WHITMAN SONGS

A Biblical Cantata from The Eternal Road (1935)
Dohmen · Azesberger · Hampson (Songs) · Wiener Jeunesse-Chor · ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra · Dennis Russell Davies

C5500 PC: 21 UPC: 845221055008

PROPHETS
A Biblical Cantata from The Eternal Road (1935)
Text by Franz Werfel (1890-1945) and from scriptures / Devised by David Drew
JEREMIAS, DIE STIMME SALOMOS / The Voice of Salomon, Albert Dohmen · RABBI, Kurt Azesberger · JESAJAH, ERSTER WEISSER ENGEL / First White Angel, ENGEL DER ENDZEIT / Angel of the End of Time, Michael Papst · WIDERSPRECHER / The Adversary, Gottfried Hornik · CHANANJAH, Bernd Fröhlich · RAHEL, EINE FRAU / A women, Ursula Fiedler · ERZÄHLER / Narrator, Anselm Lipgens
Wiener Jeunesse-Chor · Wiener Motettenchor

FOUR WALT WHITMAN SONGS
für Stimme und Orchester / for voice and orchestra
Thomas Hampson, Bariton / baritone
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra
Dennis Russell Davies Dirigent / conductor

The score of The Prophets, intended as the last act of The Eternal Road, was the last that Kurt Weill composed in Europe and his last extensive setting in German, before he personally and professionally adopted the language of his new home, America. Musically, he drew on all his previous great works, from Mahagonny and the Seven Deadly Sinsto his Second Symphony. At the same time, he foreshadowed some of his soon-to-be-written works for Broadway. In 1998 David Drew devised the concert adaptation of this act, of which this is the premiere’s recording. The Four Walt Whitman Songs, meanwhile, were a product of the war years and reveal Weill at his most touchingly American, fusing American theater song with the German Lied, Berlin with Brooklyn.


 

 

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PANCHO VLADIGEROV: STAGE MUSIC

Scandinavian Suite · Caesar and Cleopatra · The Chalk Circle
BULGARIAN NATIONAL RADIO CHOIR · BULGARIAN NATIONAL RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA · ALEXANDER VLADIGEROV

2CD-Set · C8067 PC: 02 UPC: 845221080673

The more of Pancho Vladigerov’s work becomes widely accessible, the clearer it becomes that he is the most important Bulgarian composer – well beyond the 20th century. Revered in his lifetime, he was in a position to continue his work largely unaffected by the ideological demands of the Communist regime, although his musical diction, tonal and grounded in late Romantic tradition, wouldn’t likely have provoked any reprisals. In these works for the stage, meanwhile, Vladigerov shows a cosmopolitan side, easily slipping into the world of Strindberg for his Scandinavian Suite, chinoiserie for Klabund’s Chalk Circle, and exoticism for Shaw’s Cesar and Cleopatra.

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#bruckner24 Symphony #4 (1888) 'Romantic'

Symphony No. 4 in E flat major (1888) 'Romantic'
ORF VIENNA RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA · MARKUS POSCHNER

C8085 PC: 21 UPC: 845221080857

This Complete Versions Edition includes all versions published or to be published under the auspices of the Austrian National Library and the International Bruckner Society in the Neue Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabe (The New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition)
Bruckner’s frantic revisions of his symphonies Nos. 3, 4, and 8 were borne out of his disappointment with Hermann Levi rejecting the original version of the 8th symphony. Helping in this large-scale revamping effort were former Bruckner-students Franz and Joseph Schalk, Ferdinand Löwe, Max von Oberleithner, and Cyrill Hynai, which resulted in these versions’ reputation – and especially that of the last version of the 4th – being varnished as something not quite Echt-Bruckner. It wasn’t until the discovery of photographs of the 1888 version’s manuscript score and the subsequent publication of Benjamin Korstvedt’s edition thereof that it became clear: This late edition really did reflect Bruckner’s intentions. To ears familiar with the still better-known 1881 version, the result might sound mystifying, even troubling, but it also surprises with many particularly exquisite passages!

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PENDERECKI

String Quartets Clarinet Quartet · String Trio
Jan Jakub Bokun MECCORE STRING QUARTET

C5493 PC: 21 UPC: 845221054933

Krzysztof Penderecki’s works for (string) quartet neatly encapsulate the stylistic breadth and trace the development of Poland’s most important modern composer throughout his six-decade-long career. From the avantgarde rhythmical study that is Quartet No.1, via an ode to Webern, to the neo-romantic elder Penderecki’s Schubertian Clarinet Quartet, this collection covers all his chamber music for three and four strings, even the early neo-baroque outlier of his Three Pieces .adapted from his film music for the steamy 1964 movie, The Saragossa Manuscript.

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Georg Goltermann

Cello Concerto No. 1 · Symphony in A minor · Romance · Ballade
Jamal Aliyev,cello · ORF VIENNA RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA · HOWARD GRIFFITHS

C5469 PC: 21 UPC: 845221054698

If you know the cellist-professor-composer Georg Goltermann (1824-1898) and his eight (!) cello concertos, you’re either a cellist or married to one. In his lifetime and for a while thereafter, the instrumental virtuoso-cum-composer was popular and well-liked enough to have the Cantilena of his Cello Concerto recorded by Pablo Casals – but not much since. That’s a shame because that lyrical-melancholic, never gratuitously virtuosic op.10 is a picture-perfect, delightful romantic cello concert. The symphony, then well received and Goltermann’s pride, too, goes down nicely in a post-Brahms vain rather à la Bruch or Gernsheim, especially the exquisite, lively hunting Scherzo with its sweeping Trio.

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Strauss: Complete Music for Wind Instruments

Sonatinas Nos. 1 & 2 · Serenade in E-flat · Suite in B-flat · 'Till Eulenspiegels merry pranks' (Arrangement)
Members of Staatskapelle Berlin · Gregor Witt

2CD-Set · C5497 PC: 02 UPC: 845221054971

As the Staatskapelle Berlin begins to look for its next music director (only the fourth since 1955!), this release finds the band’s own winds turning to Richard Strauss, who held the job some 110+ years ago. Together, they recorded their old chief conductors’ complete music for winds, including rarities like the Sonatinas “From an Invalid’s Workshop” and “The Happy Workshop” which Strauss dedicated to Mozart. Covering Strauss’ very early and very late creative output, the four pieces (plus the Eulenspiegel arrangement), give a fascinating insight into the development of Strauss, a horn player’s son.

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Nino Rota: Il cappello di paglia di Firenze

The Florentine Straw Hat (Opera Complete Recording)
Buszewski · Miyus · Brull · Chor der Oper Graz · Grazer Philharmoniker · Daniele Squeo

2CD-Set C5466 PC: 22 UPC: 845221054667

“Look, when they tell me that in my music I am mainly concerned about bringing a bit of nostalgia and lots of good humor and optimism, well, I think that’s exactly how I’d like to be remembered: With a bit of nostalgia, lots of optimism, and good humor.” If only we listen to enough of his music (and not just his film music), Nino Rota’s wish should well come true. Not the least, if we lend our ears to his third (of ten) and most popular opera, the snappy Florentine Straw Hat (Il cappello di paglia di Firenze), which Rota wrote in Bari, after the War ended, and orchestrated a decade later for its premiere in Palermo.

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NINO ROTA

War and Peace · Castel del Monte · Concerto per Archi · Concerto per Arpa · Prova d'orchestra
Peristerakis · Sobol · WDR Funkhausorchester Köln · FELIX BENDER, MICHAEL SEAL, conductor

C5494 PC: 21 UPC: 845221054940

When Toscanini encouraged Nino Rota to study at the Curtis Institute, where instructions by Fritz Reiner and a friendship with Aaron Copland awaited the precocious composer, it was already clear he would have a massive career. Only the direction wasn’t certain yet. It turned out to be classical music and film music, the former informing the latter. Notable when you listen to the delicious waltz Rota from War & Peace or the darkly humorous snippets from the very apropos Orchestra Rehearsal. And while the de-facto horn concertino Castel del Monte, inspired by King Frederick II’s famous medieval castle in southern Italy, isn’t technically film music, it very much sounds like music to a fantasy film of Rota’s imagining.

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Lortzing: Der Waffenschmied

Groissböck · Kutrowatz · Mars · Connor
Arnold Schoenberg Chor · ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra · Leo Hussain

2CD-Set C5490 PC: 22 UPC: 845221054902

Lortzing’s Der Waffenschmied is a lighthearted and superbly crafted opera that bridges Mozart’s Singspiele and early Wagner. Despite its relative popularity, there are surprisingly few complete recordings of it around. How lovely to change that with this new recording from the very place for which the opera was written and where it was premiered in 1846: Vienna’s Theater an der Wien – and a wonderful cast that includes the stalwart Günther Groissböck and the supremely promising Miriam Kutrowatz to boot! 

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JOSEF LABOR: Clarinet Quintet

Clarinet Trios · Quintet for horn, winds and piano
Johanns · Vallentin · Karmon · Triendl

2CD-Set · C5473 PC: 21 UPC: 845221054735

The loss of one sense, it is said, makes the other keener. What the concert pianist, organist, and composer Josef Labor lost in eyesight when smallpox left him blind at age three, must have been added to his ears. Although roughly a Brahmsian (and a friend of the composer), Labor wrote in an original style, informed by his knowledge of and love for early music. As a piano teacher, he taught Arnold Schoenberg, Alma Schindler, and Paul Wittgenstein. The connection to the Wittgenstein family explains his many works for piano left hand, including the two Clarinet Trios on this set (the clarinet was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s instrument) which are coupled with his Clarinet- and his Wind Quintets.

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Kapustin: Piano Concerto No. 5

Concerto, Op. 104 · Sinfonietta, Op. 49
Frank Dupree · Adrian Brendle · Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin · Dominik Beykirch

C5495 PC: 21 UPC: 845221054957

When the music of Nikolai Kapustin was discovered by a wider audience in the West, it was positively shocking: Who was this Soviet (!) composer, whose music sounded more like an Oscar Peterson improvisation than anything else – but who wrote detailed scores, black with notes?! As we discover more and more of his music (and there’s so much more yet to discover!), a very distinct, always wholly charming voice emerges, whether in a freewheeling outright-jazzy work like his Concerto for 2 Pianos and Percussion, the more symphonic Fifth Piano Concerto, or the frisky Sinfonietta which transports us into a smoky 1940s bar in Manhattan. 

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#bruckner24 Symphony #8 (1887)

(Complete Versions Edition)
BRUCKNER ORCHESTER LINZ · MARKUS POSCHNER

C8087 PC: 21 UPC: 845221080871

This Complete Versions Edition includes all versions published or to be published under the auspices of the Austrian National Library and the International Bruckner Society in the Neue Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabe (The New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition).
Was it a sign of conductors’ general satisfaction with Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony or editorial foot-dragging, that the work’s original 1887 version wasn’t published and performed until 1972? It certainly was Hermann Levi’s dissatisfaction or at least discombobulation with it, so shortly after his very successful Munich performance of the Seventh, that made Bruckner revise the work in the first place. It is this elaborate, raw earlier version that Markus Poschner performs here, in the latest edition by Paul Hawkshaw for the New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition. More ornate, brassier, and with more economically employed woodwinds, this version doesn’t smoothen edges and doesn’t round corners: An interesting insight into emboldened Bruckner at his unadulterated self.

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