Description

CHOROS / ΧΟΡΟΣ: dialogues and alternating chants with music for the Oidípous Týrannos by Sophocles and for chorus poetry by Archilochos, Alkman and Sappho.

The music for CHOROS / ΧΟΡΟΣ made for texts from the 7th to 5th centuries BC came about through an intensive approach to the ancient world of sound: the instruments reconstructed by Paul J. Reichlin formed the basis of the music. These are the result of over 20 years of intensive collaboration between an instrument maker and a music archeologist. Instrument parts in various museums, countless vase paintings and reliefs from the period 700 to 500 BC served as sources, as well as literary documents. Another important source of knowledge as to how ancient Greek music might have sounded are the peculiarities of the ancient Greek language, which allow conclusions to be drawn about the music.

This extraordinary CD for the revival of dramatic choirs of Greek classical music follows earlier projects by the Ensemble Melpomen such as Olympionikais (Pindar’s Olympian Odes) for the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in Athens or Sappho and Melpomen, music for an Athens symposium, which have already been released on CD.

You can download a list of the instruments used here

Description

“PICCOLO ENCOUNTERS” is the culmination of a career-long desire to capture the essence of the wealth of experience we have been able to accumulate as musical partners and friends. These encounters and experiences that we were able to make in the world of music had a decisive influence on the life of Pamela Stahel and led to the creation of this CD. It is not only the special perspective of a piccolo player that is important, but above all the special repertoire that makes up the character of this collaboration. Both the selection of the pieces and the performers are decisive. Pamela Stahel plays a Burkart Piccolo Elite XXV. Nicola Mazzanti plays a Keefe Piccolo.

Description

For many years Denis Severin has been mulling over the idea of recording a Romantic programme for cello and string orchestra. After all a large numbers of concertos for cello and strings were written in the Baroque era. Many such compositions were written in the Classical era as well. Here are just a few names: Haydn, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Boccherini. The age of Romanticism gave birth to a lot of charming examples of concertos for cello and large symphony orchestra, including the works of Dvořák, Saint-Saëns, Lalo, Elgar and others. For reasons that we can no longer ascertain, the composers of the Romantic era, with a few rare exceptions, wrote little or no material for cello and string orchestra. This genre, which flourished so abundantly in the 17th and 18th centuries, all but disappeared just a hundred years later. The choice of works for this CD is quite deliberate. It occurred, that the compositional style of Robert Schumann, the Romantic composer par excellence, tends in his chamber music towards almost orchestral fullness and complexity of timbre, be it in his piano trios, duo sonatas or Lieder. The Five Pieces in Folk Style op. 102 by Robert Schumann, his sole original work for cello and piano, is, in his view, well suited to be performed with a chamber orchestra and I commissioned an arrangement. This first successful venture inspired Denis Severin to do further research, which confirmed my intentions. 

Description

Albena Petrovic, the Luxembourgish composer of Bulgarian origin, has meanwhile made a name for herself far beyond the borders of the duchy – with more than 600 compositions in a wide variety of genres and instrumentations, including operas, concerts, chamber music, vocal and solo piano works, which have been published, recorded on CD’s and performed worldwide. Now her new album Bridges of Love, which combines highlights of her piano work with new compositions, will be available worldwide in March 2020. The interpretation is in the hands of her congenial compatriot Plamena Mangova. The Bulgarian pianist first attracted international attention when she won second prize at the renowned Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels in 2007. Since then she has performed with renowned orchestras such as the Staatskapelle Berlin, the BBC Philharmonic and the symphony orchestras of Rotterdam, Radio France, Luxembourg and Tokyo, and has played alongside artists such as Sir Colin Davis, Lawrence Foster, Renaud Capuçon and Maria João Pires. Her recordings have been honoured many times with awards such as the ‘Diapason d’Or de l’Année’.

Description

In the almost three years since his move from Weiden to the music centre in Munich, Reger had acquired the reputation of an “enfant terrible of German music” with harmonically bold and tonally uncompromisingly becoming song collections, organ and chamber music works. Opus 77, consisting of a Serenade in D major for flute, violin and viola as well as the String Trio in A minor op. 77b, which grew up in April and June 1904 respectively, should, according to the composer’s will, be a work of a change of style. When Reger composed a further work in this instrumentation eleven years later with the String Trio in D minor op. 141b, the often performed first contribution already served as a reference work of a revived genre.