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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.

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With piano concerto no. 1 in d minor op. 15 by Johannes Brahms and piano concerto no. 2 in b major op. 18 by Hermann Goetz, pianist Andrea Kauten juxtaposes the works of two masters, who strike the musical-historical situation in the vacuum of the Beethoven succession illuminate in the second half of the 19th century. Both composers see themselves as traditionalists who want to create something new in proven forms. There is, on the one hand, the genre of a young composer who, early on, too soon as a harbinger of hope, mercilessly fails the work. And second, the work of a regionally recognized talent, which can attract the attention of the great German music world before his untimely death.

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The album Hymne à la beauté brings together seldom heard gems of chamber music in the delightful formation of voice, violin and piano — passionately performed by the aspiring and outstanding Swiss artists Sonja Leutwyler (mezzo soprano), Astrid Leutwyler (violin) and Benjamin Engeli (piano), who are among the most versatile musicians of their generation and have long-established reputations within Switzerland and abroad.
This programme of discoveries features captivating works by Louis Spohr, Johannes Brahms, Charles Ives, Camille Saint-Saëns, Felix Petyrek, Czesław Marek and Ottorino Respighi. On a special commission for this CD, the Swiss composer Martin Wettstein has composed the piece Hymne à la beauté (hymn to beauty) for mezzo soprano, violin and piano after a poem by Charles Baudelaire. The music is inspired by the incredible power of beauty, which is part and parcel of this world, giving us meaning and lust for life. At the same time, though, beauty can seduce and ruin people. Lying somewhere between kitsch and madness, beauty waits to be discovered by us.

The CD was awarded the Pizzicato Supersonic Award.

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