Description

José Bragato and Jürg Eichenberger became close friends when Eichenbergers chamber music ensemble Chamber Soloists Lucerne went on a tour of South America in the summer of 2004. Bragato’s tango Graciela y Buenos Aires is a musical testimony to this love story. As a gesture of gratitude for the invitation, José Bragato then gave him some of his own compositions and exclusive arrangements, including some for cello and piano. danza de la vida is the first compilation of some of these pieces on CD.

The pianist Eriko Kagawa and Jürg Eichenberger have been working together for decades and spent a long time planning a recording of Bragato’s tango Graciela y Buenos Aires and his arrangements of Piazzolla. A conversation with Eriko’s husband, Daniel Fueter, led to the idea of juxtaposing these pieces in all their brilliance with a different, yet fitting kind of music. The name Erik Satie soon sprang to his mind. Daniel Fueter wrote E.S. — eine Hommage (E.S. — an homage) for us. He arranged Satie’s piano pieces for cello and piano and titled the collection “kleine Festschrift zum 150. Geburtstag Erik Saties in 4 Kapiteln” (a little anniversary volume marking Erik Satie’s 150th birthday in four chapters). Erik Satie was born in 1866; Fueter’s arrangements were written in the summer of 2016.

danza de la vida is intended as a tribute to José Bragato, who knew of their plans. He died at a ripe old age shortly before Eichenberger and Kagawa recorded his music. We fondly remembered this great musician and friend during the course of the project.

Description

Horn sounds from Beethoven to the present

The horn player Mischa Greull is a versatile chamber musician, soloist and teacher. In addition to his worldwide concert activities, Mischa Greull is a professor at the Zurich University of the Arts. He connects with Brahms deeply. During his childhood, the Brahmshaus in Rüschlikon on Lake Zurich was the residence of his grandparents. Beethoven stands for sound transparency, while Schumann’s Opus 70 is dedicated to sound fusion. Jörg Widmann is, in comparision to the three old masters, Greull’s latest discovery.

Seung-Yeun Huh, born in Seoul, Korea, is one of the leading pianists of her country, a trained cultural manager and vice-rector at the Conservatory of Music in Zurich. Numerous concerts as a soloist with renowned conductors and orchestras have led her into numerous international concert halls.

Andreas Janke, the first concertmaster of the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, began an active international concert activity early on. Since 2013 he has also been Professor of Violin at the Zurich University of the Arts. Andreas Janke plays a violin by Carlo Bergonzi “Hozier, Andrews” 1733-39.

Description

A letter from Mozart to his father in July 1782, four days after the successful first performance of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, attests to Mozart’s serious attempts to share in the lucrative yet highly-competitive market for Harmoniemusik arrangements. A furore was caused in 1977 by the discovery of a corresponding Harmoniemusik in the collections of the Schwarzenberg Chapel in Bohemia’s Český Krumlov, which in fact turned out to be the work of Johann Went, a former Schwarzenberg court musician, at that time second oboist of the Kaiserlichen Harmonie. In all probability, Went was that rival so feared by Mozart. However, the most exciting – and in some respects still puzzling – discovery in this connection so far fell ultimately to the conductor and researcher of Harmoniemusik, Bastiaan Blomhert. In 1984 he came across an unusually interesting and superior arrangement in the Princely Fürstenberg Archive in Donaueschingen. An inventory dated 1827 attributes the surviving set of handwritten parts of the Harmoniemusik to the Donaueschingen oboist and arranger Franz Joseph Rosinack. However, doubts that this version of the Entführungcould really have been penned by a musician of somewhat parochial proficiency were soon justified. Two further versions of Mozart operas ascribed to Rosinack – The Marriage of Figaroand The Magic Flute– written by the same copyists on paper unusual for Donaueschingen, proved in the case of Figaroto be the work of Johann Went, and in the case of TheMagic Flutethat of the no less well-known arranger, Joseph Heydenreich. Blomhert’s exhaustive comparison with the working methods of other important arrangers of the time did not reveal any compelling correlations, and his hunch – that the Donaueschingen Harmoniemusik of the Entführungaus dem Serailwas probably a transcript of the lost Mozart arrangement – has since achieved broad consensus amongst researchers.
The wind ensemble “La Scintilla dei Fiati” is composed of members of the “Orchestra La Scintilla” at the Zurich Opera.

Description

<Pétrouchka> is the last CD of the Stravinsky trilogy of the Sinfonieorchester Basel under its principal conductor Dennis Russell Davies. Thus, the orchestra has recorded all three major ballets by Igor Stravinsky – each in a version for orchestra and for piano duet.

Originally planned as a Piano Concerto, Stravinsky rewrote the music about the Russian carnival figure Petrushka into a ballet, following an idea of ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev. When the oevre was performed on 13 June 1911 at the Théâtre du Châtelet, it was almost unanimously hailed as a fascinating synthesis of the art of music, dance and painting, and a milestone in the development of a genuinely modern ballet. Parallel to the orchestra score Stravinsky created a piano version; primarily used for studies and rehearsals. Recently, however, also the four-hand piano version gained increasing popularity in the concert hall.

Dennis Russell Davies is since 2009 chief conductor of the Sinfonieorchester Basel. In addition to numerous other recordings the Stravinsky trilogy originated under his conductorship. Dennis Russell Davies recorded all three Stravinsky piano versions  with his partner Maki Namekawa.

Description

Why a recording of Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias in altered order?

The 1723 fair copy of both the Inventions and the Sinfonias has the keys ordered according to the ascending scale (C major / C minor; D major / D minor etc.). There is however no compelling reason to perform them that way; there are musically more meaningful and attractive sequences.
Thomas Ragossnig presents one of them on this CD for the first time. He mixes the Inventions and Sinfonias in the same key and performs them in groups of two or four.

The result is a musically exciting sequence of Inventions and Sinfonias that gives the listener the opportunity to linger longer in each key, as in a Baroque suite.

Thomas Ragossnig zestfully interprets the various musical affections in these miniatures, so that these complex works function as a musically meaningful and stimulating cycle and not only as “contrapuntal references”.

Description

The new double CD album by the Sinfonieorchester Basel features the 2^nd of Igor Stravinsky’s great ballets. After Le Sacre du printemps, the orchestra recorded L’Oiseau de feu.

All of the three ballets will be presented in the version for orchestra as well as in the version for piano four hands. Unlike for Sacre and Pétrouchka, for L’Oiseau de feu there is no piano arrangement for four hands by Stravinsky himself. Dennis Russell Davies, Principal Conductor of the Sinfonieorchester Basel and pianist has therefore arranged a version for piano four hands – exclusively for this production. The new arrangement is based on the original piano arrangement for two hands by Stravinsky, which is kept in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. Dennis Russell Davies has recorded the arrangement together with his wife Maki Namekawa.

The piano version opens up new perspectives on the orchestra version of L’Oiseau de feu and underlines the compositional value of Stravinsky’s creation.