Haydn’s remarkable Opus 20 quartets are rightfully regarded as landmarks in the history of the string quartet. Throughout the six contrasting quartets the composer employs compositional techniques that were to shape and define the genre. We witness a deviation in style from the lightness and wit of his previous quartets to a mood of emotional intensity and darker musical imagery. The six Opus 20 works are all individually exquisite masterpieces and demonstrate a composer at the height of creative maturity. They display an astonishing consistency of excellence and a huge variety of form and style, contrasting dynamics and relentless energy. Increasingly polyphonic textures are infused with a sense of drama, and the cello is often freed from its basso continuo roots to a position of prominence.The London Haydn Quartet is the ideal advocate for these works and gives elegant, radiant and exhilaratingly assured performances.

• Wykonawca The London Haydn Quartet
• Data premiery 2011-08-01
• Nośnik CD

  Bach’s direct source of inspiration for the cello suites was most probably the virtuoso cello playing of Christian Ferdinand Abel, also in the service of Prince Leopold of Köthen and a superb violinist and viola da gamba player as well. This must, however, remain guesswork, as the original manuscripts of the cello suites have been lost. It is primarily thanks to Anna Magdalena Bach, Bach’s second wife and a singer in service to Prince Leopold with the title of Cammer-Musicantin, that we owe the survival of these works. It was she who prepared many first copies of Bach’s works, including the earliest known copy of the cello suites. Quirine Viersen uses the most recent edition from Bärenreiter as the basis for her first recording of the Bach cello suites; this edition is an amalgamation of four manuscript copies, including the original copy by Anna Magdalena Bach. After in-depth study of the Bärenreiter edition and of the historical musicological works by Mattheson, Leopold Mozart and Quantz, the greatest musical theorists of the Baroque era and the forefathers of today’s historically informed performance movement, Quirine Viersen allowed herself to be guided by instinct rather than by intellect and finally decided to follow her own intuition. Having said this, she did study the Suites with her teacher Heinrich Schiff, played them in a masterclass with Yo-Yo Ma and took lessons with no one less than Nikolaus Harnoncourt. But most of all she took to heart the lessons she received from her own father Yke Viersen: principal Cellist with the Concertgebouw Orchestra for the last 30 years. Quirine Viersen about the Suites: “Even though the suites were not composed for ecclesiastical use, they do seem to deal with higher matters. This has nothing to do with ‘Amen’ or ‘Allah hu akbar’. I feel that we are people who attempt to come as close as possible to the heart of our existence. In many ways we have possibly become a little unworthy; we have torn ourselves loose and have completely forgotten that things can often have a deeper meaning, that these things can exist in a broader context. This was self-evident to Bach, for his life and his works were permeated with awe for higher things, for God. This was an integral part of the time in which he lived. Bach was not simply a man whose musical genius would never be equalled but was also an enthusiastic and inspired craftsman who set himself the highest demands.” “The German language draws a felicitous distinction between two different types of people: Kopfmensch and Bauchmensch. The first relies on his head, his intellect, whilst the second relies on his belly, his gut feelings. I am clearly a Bauchmensch. When I am on stage I am principally concerned with what I feel, with trying to express what I believe lies inside Bach’s music. What was Bach’s intention in composing his suites for cello? For me they are a landscape in which everything exists to be discovered afresh. Many musical narratives are possible and each landscape has its own perfumes and colours; each movement represents a particular state of mind. To traverse Bach’s music is to traverse infinity.”  

• Wykonawca Viersen Quirine
• Data premiery 2011-09-01
• Nośnik SACD

Thomas Linley was born in Bath into a highly musical family. Had he not died tragically young in a boating accident it seems likely that he would have won for himself a far greater name. He travelled widely, was a friend of Mozart (who commented that 'had he lived, he would have been one of the greatest ornaments of the musical world'), and was widely mourned. The Song of Moses was one of his last works. A grand oratorio in Handelian style, it contains a varied range of arias alongside choruses which are at once expertly written and intensely dramatic (something here developed to the full by the Holst Singers). The story is taken from Exodus (Chapter 15) and concentrates on the Israelites' rejoicing after the Red Sea was closed over the pursuing Egyptian forces—much the same as Handel's Israel in Egypt. This recording is the work's first performance since 1778. Let God arise is an earlier work, one of his first surviving compositions of any size, and is a large-scale anthem after the style of Handel or Boyce. Again the choruses have real strength and contrapuntal power, and the arias show a skill rare in one so young. GRAMOPHONE CRITICS' CHOICE 'Another indispensable release in the English Orpheus series. The adventurous will find their curiosity amply rewarded' (Classic CD) 'One of the best finds yet in Hyperion's English Orpheus series' (Gramophone) 'Linley might well have been an English answer to Mozart, as this fine short oratorio shows' (Daily Mail)

• Wykonawca The Parley of Instruments
• Data premiery 2008-07-07
• Nośnik CD

As the name already betrays, the Cappella Sagittariana devotes itself entirely to the heritage of Heinrich Schütz (Latin: Henricus Sagittarius). The great church musician was granted a long study trip to Venice by his then Hessian patron, allowing Schütz to become acquainted with the aurally splendid polychoral style direct from Giovanni Gabrieli. A short time later, Schütz entered the service of the Saxon prince-elector and, with his Venetian experience, created a new Protestant church music: the works inspired by the Italian style, such as the Psalms of David and the Small Sacred Concertos, were written for the Dresden castle chapel, which for over a century was the focal point of musical and liturgical life at the electoral Saxon residence. Norbert Schuster and his Cappella Sagittariana dedicate their new series Music from Dresden’s Castle Chapel to this once so magnificent sacred building, laying the foundation stone with this aurally splendid selection of Schütz’s works.

• Wykonawca Cappella Sagittariana Dresden
• Data premiery 2011-01-10
• Nośnik CD

On the occasion of Gustav Klimt’s 150th birthday, this felicitous selection of works by the great painter’s contemporaries endeavours to draw a picture of the musical environment Klimt found in Vienna during his lifetime. Besides historically significant recordings with Bruno Walter, Robert Stolz, Herbert von Karajan or the Vienna Philharmonic, modern restoration technology here brings to life original recordings already produced during Klimt’s lifetime. In 1905, Gustav Mahler played a movement from his 4th Symphony on the piano, which was recorded on perforated paper rolls by Edwin Welte. Alfred Grünfeld played his Mazurka à la Viennoise the same year, and the unforgettable Fritz Kreisler can be heard with his famous Liebesfreud in the original of 1910. This magnificent collection, which does not overlook popular music by Johann Strauss Jr. and Franz Lehar, is completed by works by composers such as Brahms (Hungarian Dance No. 17), Korngold, Richard Strauss (Rosenkavalier Waltz), Zemlinsky and Schoenberg whose work coincided temporally and spatially with Klimt’s. The collection is interpreted by the sensitive young violinist Thomas Albertus Irnberger, accompanied by Evgueni Sinaiski and Jörg Demus.

• Wykonawca Various Artists
• Data premiery 2012-08-01
• Nośnik CD

Although well known and highly regarded in his lifetime and in the years following his death in 1596, the music of Philippe Rogier is largely known (especially to English audiences) through one motet alone, Laboravi in gemitu meo. But there is much to explore in this genuinely underrated composer. Philippe Rogier was one of a long line of Flemish composers who worked at the Spanish court. The high regard that the musically astute Philip II held for Rogier was not misplaced, because he is one of the most fascinating and rewarding composers of the late sixteenth century: extraordinarily versatile, capable of plumbing the emotional depths in his penitential works (of which there are many) as well as exalting the heights in his festive music. The main work on this disc includes the parody mass Missa Ego sum qui sum, based on a motet by Gombert. It must rank as one of the finest settings of the Mass ordinary of the late sixteenth century, dazzling in its invention and sheer beauty. Gombert had been one of the most influential composers of the post-Josquin period, developing a style of composition based on continuous imitation and almost relentless expressivity with an extraordinarily high level of dissonance. Rogier’s Mass seems to be a tribute to this style. Two twelve-part accompanied motets are recorded here, pointing to a well-developed polychoral tradition at the Spanish court. The remaining motets on this recording represent different facets of the composer: desperate cries in the pentitential works and sheer exuberance in Cantantibus organis, a motet in honour of St Cecilia. The much admired choir of King’s College London and their director David Trendell appear in their Hyperion debut.

• Wykonawca Various Artists
• Data premiery 2010-01-01
• Nośnik CD

Charles-Marie Widor was born in Lyon to a family of organ builders and consequently became an organist of great skill and an assistant to Camille Saint-Saëns at La Madeleine in Paris at the age of twenty-four. Today, Widor’s compositions for organ have a prominent position in the instrument’s core repertoire, but it is often forgotten that the composer wrote many other significant works, notably his two piano concertos. Surprisingly, these are the first recordings of the concertos and are a much-awaited addition to the numerous world premiere recordings featured in Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series, now reaching its 55th volume and still unearthing little-known works to consistently dazzling effect. Following the success of his renditions of the Draeseke and Jadassohn concertos, pianist Markus Becker makes a welcome return to the series. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the remarkable Thierry Fischer more than do justice to Widor’s imaginative orchestrations.

• Wykonawca Various Artists
• Data premiery 2011-09-01
• Nośnik CD

Haydn Sinfonietta Wien and Manfred Huss have possibly done more than any other performers when it comes to spreading the music of Haydn’s earliest years, resurrecting scores which for decades and even centuries have been lying forgotten in archives. Their endeavours began already in the 1980s, and recordings of the composer’s Scherzandi (the forerunners of the symphonies) and many other works were released on the Koch Schwann label in the 1990s. Long since deleted from the catalogue, these have become collectors’ items, with asking prices reaching upwards of USD 150 even for used copies. Beginning in 2009, the team’s collaboration with BIS has resulted in new and important additions to the Haydn discography, such as Acide, the earliest surviving stage work, and a collection of rare arias composed for the opera house at Eszterháza Palace. But parallell to these new projects, the acclaimed recordings of instrumental works have been resurrected, and remastered versions have been released together with newly written texts by Manfred Huss, taking in the results of the latest in Haydn research. Previous such collections are the 6-disc set of Scherzandi, Baryton Octets and Lira Concerti (BIS-CD-1796/98) and the 2-disc set of the complete overtures (BIS-CD-1818). Forming a worthy finale to this series of re-releases, the present set of five discs includes all of the extant early Divertimenti by Haydn: works composed in the 1750s and 60s for ensembles of winds and strings in various combinations and typically scored for between 5-9 players. The earliest divertimenti reveal roots in the Baroque (with beautifully eloquent slow movements), but also offer ample evidence of the young composer’s powers of invention and eagerness to experiment, both in terms of form (the minuets suggestive of those in much later symphonies) and instrumentation – besides some spectacular writing for the French horn, Haydn was one of the first to use both the clarinet and cor anglais extensively. A common factor in the works including strings is the all-important, and often virtuosic parts for the first violin – here safely entrusted to the eminent Simon Standage, who is also the soloist in the Violin Concerto in C major Hob.VIIa:1 which has been chosen as the closing work of the box. Besides the recordings originally released by Koch/Schwann on five separate CDs, this set also includes 70 minutes worth of new recordings, focussing on the Feldparthien – those divertimenti which only involve wind instruments.

• Wykonawca Haydn Sinfonietta Wien , Standage Simon
• Data premiery 2010-01-10
• Nośnik CD

Collection of works by composer Elliott Carter, brought together to celebrate his 95th birthday. Performed by artists with a long-standing relationship with Carter, the recordings feature two of his quintets, along with two works for voice and ensemble and two miniatures. 'Fragment II' (1999), was performed by the Arditti Quartet as was the 1997 recording of 'Quintet for Piano and Strings' which features pianist Ursula Oppens. Jeffrey Milarsky conducts 'Syringa' (1978), with performances from soprano Lucy Shelton, baritone Andre Solomon-Glover and the Ensemble Sospeso. The 1998 recording of 'Tempo e Tempi' is also performed by the Ensemble Sospeso with Shelton and is conducted by Stefan Asbury. Ursula Oppens plays the solo for 'Retrouvailles' (2000), and is accompanied by Steve Taylor, Charles Niedich, William Purvis and Frank Morelli in 'Quintet for Piano and Winds', recorded in 1991.

• Data premiery 2016-01-18
• Nośnik DVD

Tracklista: CD 1Satie E.: Piano Works, Vol. 1 (Kormendi)Nocturnes Nos. 1, 2 And 31. Le Premier2. Le Deuxieme3. Le TroisiemeNocturnes Nos. 4 And 54. Nocturne No. 45. Nocturne No. 5Premiere Pensee Rose + Croix6. Premiere Pensee Rose + CroixSonneries De La Rose + Croix7. Air De L'ordre8. Air Du Grand Maitre9. Air Du Grand PrieurReverie De L'enfance De Pantagruel10. Reverie De L'enfance De PantagruelReverie Du Pauvre11. Reverie Du Pauvre2 Reveries Nocturnes12. I.13. II.Prelude De La Porte Heroique Du Ciel14. Prelude De La Porte Heroique Du Ciel4 Ogives15. I.16. II.17. III.18. IV.3 Sarabandes19. I.20. II.21. III. CD 2Satie E.: Piano Works, Vol. 2 (Körmendi)Musiques Intimes Et Secretes1. Nostalgie - Froide Songerie - Facheux ExempleCaresse2. Caresse12 Petits Chorals3. 12 Petits ChoralsDanse De Travers No. 14. Danse De Travers No. 15. No. 2 Trois Danses De Travers6. No. 1 Trois Airs A Faire FuirNouvelles Pieces Froides7. I. Sur Un Mur - II. Sur Un Arbre - III. Sur Un PontPreludes Flasques8. I. Voix D' Interieur - II. Idylle Cynique - III. Chanson Canine - IV. Avec Camaraderie3 Nouvelles Pieces Enfantines9. I. Le Vilain Petit Vaurien - II. [Berceuse] - III. La Gentille Toute Petite FillePetite Musique De Clown Triste10. Petite Musique De Clown TristePages Mystiques11. [Priere] Fragment - Vexations - HarmoniesPrelude En Tapisserie12. Prelude En TapisserieLes Pantins Dansent13. Les Pantins DansentDanses Gothiques14. Danses Gothiques CD 3Satie E.: Piano Works, Vol. 3 (Körmendi)Valse-Ballet - Fantaisie-Valse1. Valse - Ballet - Fantaisie - ValsePetite Ouverture A Danser2. Petit Ouverture A DanserJe Te Veux3. Je Te VeuxPremier Menuet4. Premier MenuetLes 3 Valses Du Precieux Degoute5. Les 3 Valses Du Precieux DegouteAvant-Dernieres Pensees: I. Idylle - II. Aubade - III. Meditation6. I. Idylle - II. Aubade - III. MeditationCarnet D'esquisses Et De Croquis7. Carnet D'esquisses Et De Croquis4 Preludes8. Fete Donnee Par Des Chevaliers Normands ... - Prelude d'Eginhard - Deux Preludes Du NazareenSports Et Divertissements (20 Courtes Pieces)9. Sports Et Divertissements (20 Courtes Pieces) CD 4Satie E.: Piano Works, Vol. 4 (Körmendi)Le Piccadilly1. Le PiccadillyLe Poisson Reveur: Esquisse2. Le Poisson Reveur: EsquisseLe Piege De Meduse (Sept Pieces Pour Piano)3. Le Piege De MeduseLa Diva De l'Empire (Intermezzo Americain D'apres La Celebre Chanson)4. La Diva De l'EmpireJack-In-The-Box5. Jack - In - The - BoxVieux Sequins Et Vieilles Cuirasses6. I. Chez Le Marchand D'or II. Danse Cuirassee III. La Defaite Des CimbresHeures Seculaires Et Instantanees7. I. Obstacles Venimeux II. Crepuscule Matinal III. Affolements GranitiquesPeccadilles Importunes8. I. Etre Jaloux De Son Camarade Qui A Une Grosse Tete II. Lui Manger Sa Tartine III. Profiter...3 Morceaux En Forme De Poire9. 3 Morceaux En Forme De PoireEn Habit De Cheval10. Choral - Fugue Litanique - Autre Choral - Fugue De Papier3 Petites Pieces Montees11. I. De L'enfance De Pantagruel II. Marche De Cocagne III. Jeux De GargantuaApercus Desagreables12. I. Pastorale II. Choral III. FugueLa Belle Excentrique (Fantasie Serieuse) Grande Ritournelle13. I. Marche Franco - Lunaire II. Valse Du Mysterieux Baiser Dans L'oeil III. Can - Can Grand Mondain CD 5Satie E.: Piano Works (Selection) (Kormendi)Veritables Preludes Flasques1. Veritables Preludes Flasques3 Gnossiennes2. Lent3. Avec Etonnement4. Lent4ieme Gnossienne. Lent5. 4ieme Gnossienne. Lent5ieme Gnossienne. Modere6. 5ieme Gnossienne. Modere6ieme Gnossienne. Avec Conviction Et Avec Une Tristesse Rigoureuse7. 6ieme Gnossienne. Avec Conviction Et Avec Une TrisMenu Propos Enfantins8. Chant Guerrier Du Roi Des Haricots. Mouvt De Marche9. Ce Que Dit La Petite Princesse Des Tulipes. Tres Lent10. Valse Du Chocolat Aux Amandes. ValseEnfantillages Pittoresques11. Petit Prelude A La Journee. Modere12. Berceuse. Lent13. Marche Du Grand Escalier.Croquis Et Agaceries D'un Gros Bonhomme En Bois14. Tyrolienne Turque15. Danse Maigre - A La Maniere De Ces Messieurs16. EspananaChapitres Tournes En Tous Sens17. Celle Qui Parle Trop18. Le Porteur De Grosses Pierres19. Regrets Des Enfermes - Jonas Et LatudeDescriptions Automatiques20. Sur Un Vaisseau. Assez Lent21. Sur Une Lanterne. Lent22. Su Un CasqueEmbryons Desseches23. d'Holothurie24. d'Edriophthalma25. De Podophthalma3 Gymnopedies26. Gymnopedie No. 127. Gymnopedie No. 228. Gymnopedie No. 3Passacaille. Pas Trop Vif29. Passacaille. Pas Trop Vif6 Pieces De La Periode30. Desespoir Agreable. Calme31. Effronterie32. Poesie. Andante33. Prelude Canin. Lent34. Profondeur. Avec Calme35. Songe Creux. Tres CalmeRag-Time Parade (Arr. H. Ourdine)36. Rag - Time Parade

• Wykonawca Various Artists
• Data premiery 2016-03-11
• Nośnik CD