cd

ANNE SCHWANEWILMS - SCHÖNE WELT -

Schubert · Schreker · Korngold
Anne Schwanewilms, soprano · Charles Spencer, piano

C5233 PC: 21 UPC: 845221052335

With his personality characterized by emotional extremes, Franz Schubert was in no position to evoke a perfectly wonderful world in his songs. On the contrary, in his compositions he challenged any fine illusion with a subtle and sensual touch. Unlike Franz Schubert, for a long time Franz Schreker managed to create an idyllic, wonderful and successful world with his compositions. Sometimes, he was even more successful as a composer than Richard Strauss, to the latter’s great chagrin. But then the Nazis came. Wonderful world, where are you?
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, he, too, a Jew, fled to the ‘brave new world’, to America.
Korngold achieved great fame with his film scores, but on the screen, everything is only a (fine) illusion.
Anne Schwanewilms

Weitere Bilder

CANCIONES VASCAS · BASQUE SONGS

JOSÉ GONZALO ZULAIKA (Aita Donostia) (1886-1956) · FRANCISCO DE MADINA IGARZABAL (Aita Madina) (1907-1972)
ARANTZA EZENARRO, soprano · JUAN CARLOS RODRIGUEZ, piano

C5209 PC: 21 UPC: 845221052090

The pairing on this album is unquestionably apt, bringing together as it does works by perhaps the two most famous “aitas” – priests – in Basque music: Father José Antonio de Donostia and Father Francisco de Madina. Whatever the similarities and differences between the two men, the former born twenty-one years earlier than the latter, both composers succeeded in incorporating, with exquisite elegance, a profound sense of local folk traditions into their music, creating works that have since earned classic status in Basque culture. The soprano Arantza Ezenarro was born in San Sebastián in the Basque Area of Spain. With this Album she presents most sensitiv songs of her homeland.

Weitere Bilder

ROUND MIDNIGHT

PURCELL · JOHNSON · BÖHME · SAINT-SAENS · FAURÉ
BLECHBLÄSERQUINTETT des Deutschen Symphonie-Orchesters Berlin

C5202 PC: 21 UPC: 845221052021

HENRY PURCELL: The Fairy Queen (Overture) · ROBERT JOHNSON: The Satyr’s Dance · OSKARHME: Night Music Op. 44 · CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS: Danse macabre op. 40  · ROBERT BEASER: Brass Quintet · J. MARK SCEARSE: Enchanted Forest Suite · THELONIUS MONK & COOTIE WILLIAMS: Round Midnight · BURTON LANE: Old Devil Moon · GABRIEL FAURÉ: Requiem op. 48 (Pie Jesu)
BLECHBLÄSERQUINTETT
des Deutschen Symphonie-Orchesters Berlin
FALK MAERTENS & RAPHAEL MENTZEN, Trompete / trumpet
PAOLO MENDES, Horn / horn · ANDREAS KLEIN, Posaune / Trombone · JOHANNES LIPP, Tuba
When Round Midnight was published, Thelonius Monk was an outsider due to the extravagant harmony and the complexity of his music; he cultivated this image. With this elaborate polyphony, Monk ingeniously managed to translate the Romantic ‘midnight piece’ into the sphere of expression of jazz. Does the music of the night not really sound tender, seeming to come from afar or surfacing from the depths of dreams? Do brass instruments present a suitable medium for such subtle adjustments of the hearing sensitivity? On their instruments, today’s virtuosos even in an ensemble, attain an ease and agility that sweeps away any prejudices about the massive nature of their appearance. They show themselves to be versatile as virtuosos of mimicry, no less appropriate for fairy-like magic than for gloomy abysses and the cutting acrimony of the macabre and horrific.

 

  

Weitere Bilder

MAX REGER: Concerto for violin and orchestra in A major, Op. 101

arranged for chamber ensemble by Rudolf Kolisch (1896-1978)
WINFRIED RADEMACHER · LINOS ENSEMBLE

C5137 PC: 21 UPC: 845221051376

In my view, Reger must be played often; 1. Because he wrote a lot; 

2. Because he is dead and we still do not have any clarity about him.
(I consider him a genius)’ Arnold Schönberg,1922
 As little as it was perceived by the general public during its short existence, in accordance with its genesis, all the more remarkable were the effects and the aftereffects of the Society for Musical Private Performances, founded by Arnold Schoenberg in Mödling near Vienna in November 1918, especially as it was associated with the intention ‘to give Arnold Schoenberg the opportunity personally to carry out his intention of providing artists and art lovers with a veritable and precise knowledge of Modern Music’ (Alban Berg 1919). Special emphasis was placed on performing works by Mahler and Max Reger. The arrangement for the Association for Private Musical Performances was written by the violinist Rudolf Kolisch (1896–1978), a pupil of Schreker and a private student of Schoenberg after 1919, later also the latter’s brother-in-law.

Weitere Bilder

CHARLES IVES

Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass.,1840–60 (1911-1915)
Tzimon Barto, piano

C5268 PC: 21 UPC: 845221052687

From weird and idiosyncratic, slightly crazy up to absolute genius – the assessment of the composer Charles Ives is today at least just as diversified as that of his main work for piano, the Concord Sonata. The four movements are based on four American writers of the 19th century who were all closely connected to the little town of Concord in Massachusetts, forming a centre of so-called Transcendentalism there. In the music, Ives does not draw musical portraits of the writers, who would hardly have inspired him to this extent in terms of their biographies. He rather allows himself to be guided by the moods that came to his mind roughly 50 years later in associations with their texts and the philosophy they advocated. Beside the difficult technical terms (complete dispensal with bar lines for long passages, also the use of clusters etc.) Tzimon Barto’s interpretation is full of his well known sensitivity and shows us a new impressive access to this bombastic work of 20th century  piano literature. 

Weitere Bilder

Older Newer