Skip to main content

Estelle Revaz – Journey to Geneva

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in 2021, Revaz, Solo Musica.

Künstlerin: Estelle Revaz & François Killian

Titel: Journey to Geneva

Katalog Nr.: SM 345

Veröffentlichung: 15.01.2021

Produktbeschreibung

Das Genfer Kammerorchester (Orchestre de Chambre de Genève – OCG) zeichnet sein leidenschaftlicher Einsatz für renommierte Genfer Komponisten wie Ernest Bloch, Frank Martin, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Xavier Dayer oder auch Michael Jarrell aus. Die Cellistin Estelle Revaz ist seit der Saison 2017-2018 Wahl-Genferin und Artist in Residence beim Genfer Kammerorchester. Für ihre CD BACH & FRIENDS (Solo Musica), die Johann Sebastian Bachs berühmte Suiten für Violoncello solo in den Dialog mit Werken bedeutender Komponisten des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts setzte, betraute sie den Genfer Komponisten Xavier Dayer mit einer neuen Komposition Cantus II für ihr Instrument.

Die Idee lag natürlich nahe, Frank Martins Werke für Cello und Orchester im Rahmen von Estelle Revaz‘ Residenz beim Kammerorchester aufzunehmen, insbesondere, da Arie van Beek, Generalmusikdirektor des Orchesters, die Verbindung zwischen den Schweizer Ursprüngen des Komponisten und seiner Heimat Holland herzustellen vermochte. Ebenso lag es nahe, eine Komposition von Xavier Dayer mit diesem Programm in Verbindung zu bringen. In der Tat war die Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem Komponisten und der Solistin um das Stück Cantus II für Solocello sehr fruchtbar, die internationale Strahlkraft von Xavier Dayer weitere Legitimation für diese einzigartige Kombination.

Backcover & Playlist

Katona Twins – Hollywood and Swing

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

Artists: Katona Twins

Title: Hollywood and Swing

Catalogue No.: SM 333

Release: 20.11.2020

Description

A couple of years ago we were invited to play a Hollywood themed programme in Grafenegg/Austria. We quickly arranged a handful of well-known film music pieces and performed them along with some original compositions for two guitars by M. C. Tedesco, a prolific film music composer in the forties and fifties.

We couldn’t omit the king of gypsy jazz: Django Reinhardt, whose compositions often enliven Hollywood films. The concert was a huge success and we received an unusually high number of requests for a film music themed record.

From this, our Hollywood and Swing CD was borne. Some of our choices of repertoire might seem over ambitious, especially when reducing the whole orchestral sound to two guitars. We hope nevertheless, that our interpretation of these iconic Hollywood film scores like “The Deer Hunter” or the beautiful tunes from the „West Side Story“ will provide the listener with as much pleasure as we had playing them.

Zoltan & Peter Katona

Backcover & Playlist

Marlis Petersen – Dimensionen Mensch & Lied (4 CD Box)

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

Artist: Marlis Petersen

Title: Dimensionen Mensch & Lied (4 CD-Box)

Catalogue No.: SM 350

Release: 16.10.2020

Description

We humans live and move in dimensions. In the Here and Now as well as in the Inside, sometimes „beyond“ in other worlds and with a common vision hopefully also for a new world!

Four CDs invite you to wander through these spheres like a protagonist through different chapters of being. 

Carl Loewe, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, Franz Liszt, but also Hans Sommer, Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Stenhammer, Reynaldo Hahn and many more are our musical companions for the journey into these dimensions and back to yourself. Be HUMAN again through the LIED

The Box with an extensive booklet contains 4 CDs:

Backcover & Playlist

Marlis Petersen – Neue Welt (Bonus CD)

Written by Solo Musica on . Posted in Petersen, Petersen Box, Solo Musica.

Artist: Marlis Petersen

Title: Neue Welt (Bonus CD)

Catalogue No.: SM 351

Release: 16.10.2020

Description

We are the New World!

A humanity without automatisms and depleted habits. Our society needs a strong togetherness, a reflection of the own self in the other and a common vision for peace and freedom for humans, animals and nature. It is time for a change in thinking and for a life in common ethics. Joy, love, equality and freedom are the central concepts and values that we are allowed to plant in ourselves in order to create such a world together; cohesion, attentiveness, common vision and love are our companions! Each of us counts, because as Nelson Mandela said: “To keep yourself small does not serve the world”.

Let’s listen a little to those who use such wisdom in prose and music and can thus reach us on direct paths to the heart!

You hear Songs by by Mozart, Strauss, Mahler, Wolf, Sommer, Eisler and others as well as texts recited by Marlis Petersen. The worldwide celebrated soprano and Opus Klassik winner 2020 is accompanied as always by the renowned pianist Matthias Lademann.

The CD ist available only as part of the 4-CD-Box Dimensionen Mensch & Sein.

Backcover & Playlist

Fazil Say & casalQuartett – Ballads & Quintets

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

Artists: Fazil Say & casalQuartett

Title: Ballads & Quintets

Catalogue No.: SM 340

Release: 02.10.2020

Description

With his extraordinary pianistic talents, Fazıl Say has been touching audiences and critics alike for more than twenty-five years, in a way that has become rare in the increasingly materialistic and elaborately organised classical music world. Concerts with this artist are something different. They are more direct, more open, more exciting; in short, they go straight to the heart.

On the CD now being released by Solo Musica together with the casalQuartett “Ballads & Quintets” there are two works by Fazil Say in addition to the Piano Quintet in E flat major op. 44 by Schumann. The casalQuartett, which has won numerous awards, has developed itself a unique sound and style that sheds new light on the heyday of the string quartet.

The 3 Ballads op. 12 for Piano Quintet were originally solo piano ballads, which were rearranged especially for this publication for piano quintet. The piano quintet “The Moving Mansion” breathes new life into stories of the past. The background is a spectacular tale about the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Backcover & Playlist & Video

casalQuartett – Beethoven’s World 1799 – 1851 (5 CD-Box)

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

Artist: casalQuartett

Title: Beethovens Welt 1799 – 1851 (5 CD-Box)

Catalogue No.: SM 283

Release: 25.09.2020

Description

Throughout history, the cultural legacy of some geniuses has been of such universal magnitude that its aftermath has spread far beyond the narrow confines of the actual field of their activity. In a study of the University of Cambridge, which is dedicated to the ranking of the 100 most important, most influential personalities in history, Ludwig van Beethoven is ranked 27th.

Beethoven‘s place in the history of music over the following decades and centuries is not comparable to that of his immediate contemporaries. While the pianist Beethoven caused a furore and was admired at a young age, his works caused astonishment and confusion from the very beginning, and often met with frowning criticism. Of course, there were also other, more positive voices. While Beethoven was at the height of his career in the middle phase of his life until about 1815, in recent years, the resentments against his misunderstood late style and the supposedly increasing oddness of its author grew. Nonetheless, the respect shown to him by the international music community increased until the end of his life, culminating in a funeral that the city had never seen before.

The casalQuartett‘s five-part Concert & CD project explores the phenomenon of Beethoven‘s impact on his time, or, conversely, how other musicians influenced him. For however peculiar and original Beethoven was: Without his era, as it was, he too would have become someone else.

Backcover & Playlist & Videos

4 Videos zur Beethoven-Box:

Ensemble Melpomen: CHOROS/ΧΟΡΟΣ

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

Artists: Ensemble Melpomen / Conrad Steinmann

Title: CHOROS/ΧΟΡΟΣ – Chorische Musik zur Tragödie Oidipous von Sophokles

Catalogue No.: SM 317

Release: 17.07.2020

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

Backcover & Playlist

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.

Backcover & Playlist

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!

Backcover & Playlist & Video

Peter Horton & Slava Kantcheff – Moving Spirit

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

Playlist