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Albena Petrovic Vratchanska is a Luxembourgish composer of Bulgarian origin and a Knight of The Order of Merit of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg – L’Ordre de Mérite du Grand-Duchéde Luxembourg ( 2013). She is honored also with the Médaille de Mérite en Argent de l’Union Grand Duc Adolphe (2017), Médaille en Argent de l’Union Saint Pie X (2018) and the «Cultural Award 2007» from the municipality of Hesperange. Many of her compositions are performed also outside Luxembourg – in Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, Greece, USA, Singapore, Russia, Spain, Andorra, Brazil, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Kosovo, Switzerland, Denmark, Serbia, Austria, Australia, Portugal, Croatia. Albena Petrovic is President/Founder of the International Composition Competition “Artistes en Herbe” (“Budding Artists”) under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of Luxembourg.

Véronique Nosbaum is a very special personality in Luxembourg vocal scenery. She is one of those naturally involved in many kinds of art creation – contemporary art, theatre, literature, music. Romain Nosbaum is an individualist among the pianists of his generation. Without airs and graces, but with modesty and passionate devotion, he is solely focused on music. Both the grand gesture and sheer brilliancy are not his main focus – instead, his playing stands out through intelligence, subtle individuality and technical perfection.

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Brahms’s complete sonatas for piano and violin (Op. 78, 100, 108 and Scherzo from the F.A.E Sonata) are the monumental works that inspire and intrigue chamber musicians as well as classical music audiophiles. With a fresh view of these important pieces, this recording puts the composer first, allowing the protagonist to meet the composer’s requirements for the scores. With differentiated phrasing and tempi, Darvarova & Chen rediscover Brahms’ violin sonatas in a completely different and new way.

GRAMMY®-nominated, award-winning (Gold Medal at the Global Music Awards in 2017 and 2018) and a concert violinist since the age of four, Elmira Darvarova caused a sensation, becoming the first ever (and so far only) woman-concertmaster in the history of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. As MET concertmaster, she has performed with the greatest conductors of our time, including the legendary Carlos Kleiber. Hailed as “brilliant” by Fanfare Magazine, multi-award winning pianist-composer Zhen Chen has performed as a soloist and chamber music artist at prominent music venues in USA and China, such as Stern Auditorium, Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, David Geffen Hall of Lincoln Center, and China National Centre for Performing Arts.

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For some years now, Hamburg has been reinventing itself as a city of music. The recently opened Elbphilharmonie – the spectacular concert house on the river Elbe – is one of the factors in this development. As is the KomponistenQuartier (composersʼ quarter) in the Neustadt district between Rödingsmarkt and St. Pauli, with no fewer than half a dozen small museums dedicated to composers such as Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. All of these composers feature on this present Hamburg album, as well as a number of composers, male and female, who all wrote noteworthy miniatures for voice and piano.

Mariana Popova was responsible for bringing together these 28 compositions and merging them into a dramatic entity – compositions that together result in a very personal, stylistically multi-facetted Hamburg album (including many worldwide first performances). This is a Hamburg album by two women who have chosen Hamburg as their home: Chinese-born Lini Gong and Bulgarian-born Mariana Popova both feel a close bond with the musical life and musical history of Hamburg. As the duo explain: “We consciously bring together musical languages from three centuries and play about with contrasts and with tone colours, in fact with the entire rich spectrum of the art song genre – a genre that we love very much.”

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Trumpet and organ has us immediately thinking of trumpet tunes and trumpet voluntaries, of majestic, bombastic music by Henry Purcell and George Frideric Handel, of mixtures and reed stops that resound so strongly as to make church walls tremble. The music on this CD does not adhere to those stereotypes: it is very delicate, light, transparent, elegant. If one was to pigeon-hole it, the choice of genre would be difficult. From a musical point of view, it is located between the Baroque and the Classical eras, a period whose various art forms are given numerous labels: early Classical, sensitive style, Rococo, Sturm und Drang. In addition to numerous performances as a soloist and chamber musician, Immanuel Richter is also principal trumpet player of the Sinfonieorchester Basel. Together with Hans Jürg Bättig on the organ, the trumpeter has slowly approached the works of this CD, often playing them in concerts in order to become completely familiar with the music. There is no instrument in his eyes that fits the trumpet better than the organ. The timbres merge into each other and complement each other wonderfully.

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The six quartets of Opus 50 by Joseph Haydn are among the most important works in the string quartet genre – that chamber music formation so highly valued since the era of the First Viennese School, allowing only masters of the composer’s art to express themselves. Haydn’s so-called “Prussian Quartets” (Hob. III:44-49) of 1787 were dedicated to the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II, an enthusiastic amateur cellist. Here, he developed the classical style of music-making, which he had shaped so decisively himself, even further. Starting with a rather simple theme, the motifs are artfully wrought – especially in the opening movement of the quartets – and it is notable that all four instrument are treated as near-equals. The six masterworks of the Austrian composer were captured by the Amati Quartet in studio recordings made in 1995 and 1997, winning the French record award “Choc du monde de la musique” at the time – now they have been assembled and released together by DIVOX on a double CD. The interpretation by the renowned Amati Quartet is undoubtedly a reference recording of these sophisticated and mellifluous, yet humorous and by no means academic string quartets.

www.nicolascorti.ch/amati-quartett/

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For as long as I can remember music of all genres was always reverberating off the walls of my house in the sleepy town of Brownsville, Texas. After moving to Austin in 1995 my younger brother Mark and I formed Del Castillo in 2000. Our band was a fiery blend of old world Gipsy Flamenco meets Rock n Roll. It was here where we met film director Robert Rodriguez. We soon formed a movie band called Chingon, blending Del Castillo’s raw energy with Rodriguez’s explosive films; a match made in heaven. Throughout all this I kept my early British musical influences tucked in my back pocket, primarily The Beatles, Queen, ELO, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and David Bowie (Hunky Dory period). The Beatles however set the bar for the rest listed. Their melodies were second to none. I’ve been writing British style songs for some time but it was only later that I decided to make a video for my song “Paul McCartney” and make it a personal goal to have him hear it and possibly even meet the man. This song is a very personal homage to my musical hero.

Rick del Castillo

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Rebekka Hartmann is the winner of several national and international awards. Her international concert activities brought her together with conductors such as Christoph Eschenbach, Justus Frantz, Salvador Mas Conde, Esa Pekka Salonen, Jukka Pekka Saraste and Enoch zu Guttenberg. Her repertoire comprises the complete spectrum of violin literature from early Baroque to contemporary music and new compositions, of which she has also performed some first recordings and world premieres like works for solo violin by Håkan Larsson and Anders Eliasson. In 2012 Rebekka Hartmann was awarded the ECHO Classic-Prize in the category „Best solo recording of the year” for her CD „Birth of the Violin“(2011, Solo Musica). Rebekka Hartmann performs on an Antonio Stradivarius violin from 1675.

The Salzburg Chamber Soloists have completed four extensive tours of South America to date. For the 250th Mozart Anniversary in 2006, the The Salzburg Chamber Soloists were invited by the city of Salzburg to perform a Best of Mozart concert series. They then continued these celebrations on two extensive tours of the USA and Mexico, visiting cities including Washington, Boston, San Francisco, Indianapolis and Mexico City.