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Münchner Symphoniker & Kevin John Edusei – Schubert

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Münchner Symphoniker, Solo Musica.

Artists: Münchner Symphoniker & Kevin John Edusei

Title: Franz Schubert – Symphonie Nr. 3 & 7

Catalogue No.: SM 339

Release: 03.07.2020

Description

The motto of this CD release of Schubert’s Symphonies Nos. 3 & 7 in E-major might be “On to new horizons!” In general, this phrase has positive connotations, and it offers an apt description for the sparkling innovative force driving forward Symphony No. 3 in D-major. Here, Schubert is still in a state of experimentation characterized by youthful energy, having overcome the teething troubles which plagued the previous Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2. Does the phrase, however, also apply to the completion of the score fragment of Symphony No. 7 in E-major? One has to admit that the answer is: yes and no. On the one hand, the slow introduction of the Seventh in E-major sounds like something perfectly new (and something newly perfect), on the other, there may have been reasons why Schubert, who impatiently began composing straight into the sketched-out score, left the symphony a mere skeleton. Even in a version completed by another hand, this work is worth exploring, as it builds a bridge from the carefree Symphony No. 6 to Schubert’s late works, the Unfinished Symphony and the Great Symphony in C-major. Two departures for new horizons – and they are two different horizons – are what we seek to document with this recording.

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Höhenrieder & Berger – Beethoven: Complete works for piano and cello

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Berger, Hoehenrieder, Solo Musica.

Artists: Margarita Höhenrieder & Julius Berger

Title: Beethoven: Complete works for piano and cello (2 CDs)

Catalogue No.: SM 338

Release: 19.06.2020

Description

“Who would I need to be to be able to talk about a man who is still growing…”   Adam Zagajewski: “The late Beethoven”

Margarita Höhenrieder and I have known it all our lives: the elucidations of Carl Czerny or Rudolf Kolisch, the latest Urtext editions that will lead us to “faithfulness to the text”, the disquisitions from Romain Rolland to Eleonore Büning – we read, we discuss, it all seems helpful and necessary. At the end of the day it is the mature individual, the serious exponent, who makes the decision led by the promptings of conscience, and who simultaneously senses this “growing” of which Zagajewski speaks. We climb a steep path, in order to approach Beethoven more closely. The summit of this path is visible, but not attainable. That is why we keep returning to this path, endless as it is. Beethoven lives in us, as he changes, as we change. Life aspires to art, art is a way forward, life is our way forward. Beethoven changes us through his “growth”. We grow with him!

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Peter Horton & Slava Kantcheff – Moving Spirit

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Horton, Kantcheff, Solo Musica.

Artists: Peter Horton & Slava Kantcheff

Title: Moving Spirit (digital album)

Catalogue No.: SM 346

Release: 08.05.2020

Description

Rhythm is a basic fabric into which chords and melodies of life are woven. It is an elixir of joy and symbolizes a condensation of the mind in sensually
experiencable forms – as life and matter are.
The music is determined by large melodic arcs, which are harmoniously embedded in an orchestral landscape. The fascination of crystals is at work – their rhythm of geometry, light and density. Are they data storage of billions of years of mineral evolution, mysterious switching points of intelligent solar power? Or just witnesses of the beauty from the warm belly of the earth?

In any case, contemplation and silence in the middle of a changing world…

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Pamela Stahel – Piccolo Encounters

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Solo Musica.

Artist: Pamela Stahel

Title: Piccolo Encounters

Catalogue No.: SM 329

Release: 08.05.2020

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.

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Denis Severin & Camerata Franconia: Schumann / Cassadó / Fauré / Rachmaninov

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Solo Musica.

Artist: Denis Severin &

Camerata Franconia

Title: Schumann / Cassadó / Fauré / Rachmaninov

Catalogue No.: SM 318

Release: 30.04.2020

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. 

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Sergey Malov – Bach, 6 Suites for Violoncello solo

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Malov, Solo Musica.

Artist: Sergey Malov

Title: Bach, 6 Suites for Violoncello solo

Catalogue No.: SM 343

Release: 10.04.2020

Description

The personal story of the cello played braced against the shoulder (violoncello da spalla) began, when Sergey Malov first listened to a vinyl recording of Bach’s cello suites played by the legendary Pablo Casals from his father’s collection. Later on, when he listening to the recordings he could not get rid of the feeling that this light and dancing music does not after all fit that well with such a heavy big instrument as a cello. Although perhaps he just wanted to play these amazing pieces himself. Malov was dreaming about playing them authentically. He had no idea though what that authentic way was like and how he could place such a huge bass instrument on my shoulder. One cold winter day in 2009 he accidentally found a video recording of Allemanda from the 2nd Bach Cello Suite played by Dmitry Badiarov – a violin maker, co-author of the violoncello da spalla revival project and an inspiring violinist himself. 

Suddenly his boldest dreams and phantasies came true in a most detailed way. Moreover, he remembered that back in the day, probably still in Leningrad, his mother once took him to a man with curly black hair and blue eyes, a violin maker who had to check his little violin – that man was Dmitry Badiarov. Malov used this fragile bridge from the past to get in touch with him. Soon, when he realized that I could quickly learn to play the violoncello da spalla, he asked Dmitry to make one for me.…

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Albena Petrovic & Plamena Mangova – Bridges of Love

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Solo Musica.

Artists: Albena Petrovic & Plamena Mangova

Title: Bridges of Love

Catalogue No.: SM 337

Release: 27.03.2020

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’.

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Il Furibondo – String Trios by Max Reger

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Solo Musica.

Artist: Il Furibondo

Title: String Trios by Max Reger

Catalogue No.: SM 323

Release: 28.02.2020

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.

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Various & Larynx Vokalensemble – Martha von Castelberg. Lieder und Motetten

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Solo Musica.

Artists: Poscio / Humm / Haberfeld / Burnens / Polgar & Larynx Vokalensemble

Title: Martha von Castelberg – Lieder und Motetten

Catalogue No.: SM 334

Release: 14.02.2020

Description

Martha von Castelberg (1892-1971) was highly talented musically. As the daughter of the Zurich private banker Paul Carl Eduard von Orelli (1849-1927) and Beatrice née von Reding (1865-1929), she received early private lessons from the violinist Joseph Ebner, who taught at the Zurich Conservatory. The present recording of songs and motets by Martha von Castelberg gives a representative insight into her compositional Creating, which accompanied her all her life.

In addition to the Basel-based “larynx Vokalensemble” founded in 2005 under the direction of Jakob Pilgram, consisting of young, professionally trained singers, this CD also features many renowned Swiss soloists. Accompanied by Judit Polgar on piano, we hear the Swiss soprano Estelle Poscio, the mezzo-soprano Susannah Haberfeld, the Bernese tenor Remy Burnens and the young Swiss baritone Äneas Humm.

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Voyager Quartet – Schubert Winterreise

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2020, Solo Musica.

Artist: Voyager Quartet

Title: Schubert – Winterreise for String Quartet

Catalogue No.: SM 335

Release: 17.01.2020

Description

In his groundbreaking Lieder cycle Winterreise, Franz Schubert brought to the fore the dark side of the yearning for happiness that channels into obsessions, fears, a sense of danger, feelings of forlornness, bleakness and exposure in hitherto unknown dimensions and with a sense of urgency. His songs for instruments can be viewed as the dissolution of Classical genre boundaries. Something that initially one can barely imagine soon develops into an addictive nature: we begin to understand this aural picture even without the singing – a true work of art. A kind of intellectual sorrow pervades the richly varied treatment. The Voyager Quartet was founded in 2014. Its members can all look back on successful careers in famous string quartets such as the Cherubini Quartet and Modern String Quartet, and in world-class orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Bavarian Radio. The members of the Voyager Quartet thus combine a wealth of experience in numerous concerts worldwide at renowned music festivals and in famous concert venues, which they have successfully fed into all manner of high-quality concert programmes over recent years.

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