Oehms Classics

This series marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, which falls in 2024. It’s dedicated to Bruckner’s symphonies, all recorded in new transcriptions for organ by Hansjörg Albrecht. The third recording was made on the impressive organ of London’s Westminster Cathedral. A bonus track on each volume will be a brand new composition for organ that references Bruckner the composer. Two or three volumes will be released each year, with the project reaching its conclusion in 2024. Hansjörg Albrecht is – besides Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki, Martin Haselböck and Wayne Marshall – one of the few artists who are regularly present internationally both as conductor and concert organist. He is considered a musical innovator and lateral thinker without fear of contact. As a conductor, he consistently follows his own paths – between archive and new creation and with an extensive repertoire from Bach to Messiaen – and with his organ transcriptions he has established himself as a specialist among the virtuosos of his instrument. Hansjörg Albrecht is Artistic Director of the Munich Bach Choir & Bach Orchestra (founded in 1954 by the legendary Karl Richter). He also has a longstanding collaboration with the San Carlo Opera House in Naples, the Chamber Orchestra Moscow, the Staatskapelle Weimar and the C.P.E. Bach Choir Hamburg. As conductor and organist he performs worldwide in the major music centers such as London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Rome, Moscow, Tokyo and New York and regularly collaborates with internationally renowned artists and orchestras. He also conducts opera productions in Naples and Dubai, among others, as well as ballet projects with the dance companies of Marguerite Donlon and Boris Eifman. © Oehms Classics

According to a dictionary, a whirlwind is 1. A small rotating wind and 2. A wild person, moving briskly and violently. Both associations inspired us to choose this title for our recordings. In earlier centuries, women composers rocked many conventions, and today women composers sometimes still have to contend with considerable resistance or prejudice. The women who took up the pen for us in this project are all vibrant, strong and inspiring personalities with enormous focus and concentrated creative energy. The selection of works originate from female composers all over the world. Singer Pur are a German vocal sextet founded in 1991 founded by former members of the Regensburger Domspatzen. The five original members were joined by a soprano in 1994. The sextet is focused on classical music, but have also performed and recorded traditional folk songs. © Oehms Classics

Dark Spring is an opera about four young people under extreme pressure: the pressure to overachieve academically, to score high in the popularity contests at school or at college, and to perform romantically or sexually. The pressure has become entirely internalized as parents or teachers are absent and the protagonists are left alone with late capitalism’s demands of permanent self-optimization. The conflict between the expectation to succeed on the one hand and the sense of powerlessness and unattainable self-determination in an era of constant stagnation on the other hand grows increasingly acute until it eventually flips into violence: into Melchior’s sexual aggression and Moritz suicide. The opera focuses less on the narration of the four young protagonists’ story but rather on their attempt to articulate and understand the often contradictory feelings that come with it: Feelings of meaninglessness and alienation in a society that values only productivity and success but makes it unreachable for almost everyone; feelings of pain both as suffering and as sexual experience; feelings of love and kinship that briefly appear between the protagonists that nevertheless bring a sense of vulnerability. In a hyper-competitive world the display of emotions is seen as a weakness and a liability. The longing to open up to someone else, to reveal and feel oneself and one another, and to find an expression for that longing seems unsettling and dangerous. The four protagonists of Dark Spring sing songs. They articulate their feelings through the mask of the distancing formalization of rhyme, meter, stanza, and refrain. Under the surface of the objectified schemata of song an almost raw and undomesticated sound-world simmers, though, that breaks through at crucial points of the plot – a sound-world of noise, screams, and silence. © Oehms Classics

The Geiger von Echternach deals with the origins of the Echternach Jumping Procession, which dates back to the Middle Ages and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The ballad tells the story of Tall Veit, who on his return from the Orient is sentenced to death by hanging for allegedly killing his wife. The composer and poet are equally interested in a detailed description of the different emotional states of the musician Veits, which modulate his violin playing and move the listener more and more until they fall into a dance rage from which only Saint Willibrord can free them. © Oehms Classics

With the Festival Orchestra Riga under the direction of Karsten Januschke, Andreas Bauer Kanabas models a force field of unleashed passions between love, treason and despair along well-chosen arias of the serious bass subject. In the moment of deception, the soul experiences the greatest disappointment, but at the same time also clarity and truthfulness. It is the moments of deep longing and melancholy that Andreas Bauer Kanabas traces with his interpretations and from which he lets a great emotional power grow. © Oehms Classics

This compilation brings together popular orchestral works and ballet music by Tchaikovsky. Dmitrij Kitajenko and the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne, of which he has been Honorary Conductor since 2009, have recorded the complete symphonies by Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. These recordings have been awarded with numerous international prizes and are considered important reference recordings. Their recording of Tchaikovsky’s opera Iolanta in 2015 (with Olesya Golovneva, Alexander Vinogradov and Andrei Bondarenko in the lead roles) caused a sensation, and it received the "Opera of the Year" Award of the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA). © Oehms Classics

The accomplished Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel is dedicated to the performance of rarities by the exiled composers Karol Rathaus, Heinz Tiessen and Paul Arma. Their works, written between 1925 and 1949, reflect the Zeitgeist of Expressionism and the incidents of World War II. The sonatas by Tiessen and Arma are recorded here for the first time. Engaging and imaginative programming is a hallmark of the Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel. Individually, Judith Ingolfsson and Vladimir Stoupel are seasoned soloists who have won acclaim for their performances across the globe. Together they create connections, tell untold stories, and take audiences on a journey to the heart of chamber music. Their performance of the Sonata for violin and piano by Paul Arma at the Konzerthaus Berlin was hailed as the “sensation of the evening” by Deutschlandfunk “there was an intensity in the performance that no one in the audience could escape”. © Oehms Classics

After the signal event that was World War I, young, hopeful, gifted composers trooped into the French metropolis. In 1925, the publisher Michel Dillard coined the term "École de Paris" (School of Paris) for the foreign composers then living in Paris, especially the Hungarian Tibor Harsányi (1898-1954), Pole Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986), Czech Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), Russian Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977), and Romanian Marcel Mihalovici (1898-1985), whose works he specialized in disseminating. All five composers came to Paris from Eastern Europe and all, with the exception of Martinů, died there. All five initially attempted to translate the principal aspects of the difficult-to-notate idioms of folk music from their homelands into standard musical notation. Some works can be heard in a world premiere recording. © Oehms Classics

These works deal with the use of the violin's scordatura, i.e. the different tunings of the violin strings. The experimentation with sounds was already to be found in the works of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and runs right through the history of music: from Ysaÿe and Camille Saint-Saëns to contemporary works that are recorded here for the first time. As soloist and chamber musician, Valeria Zorina has performed at multiple international festivals, such as the Cardiff Festival (UK), Schwetzinger Festspiele, Hambacher Musikfest (Germany), the Evian Rostropovich Festival, Royaumont Festival (France), ANTIDOGMA Torino (Italy),as well as in numerous prestigious Concert Halls – Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), the Tempelliaukion Hall (Helsinki), Liederhalle (Stuttgart), Alte Aula (Heidelberg), Auditorio Nacional Madrid (Spain). © Oehms Classics

This series marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, which falls in 2024. It is dedicated to Bruckner’s symphonies, all recorded in new transcriptions for organ by Hansjörg Albrecht. The second recording was made on the impressive organ of the Brucknerhaus Linz, Austria. A bonus track on each volume will be a brand-new composition for organ that references Bruckner the composer. Two or three volumes will be released each year, with the project reaching its conclusion in 2024. So, stay tuned. “Memorable performances, high-tech sonics and informative annotations complete this superb and innovative first installment that sets my imagination alight.” (Classical Music Daily on the previous volume in the series) © Oehms Classics

"Arguably one of the strongest recordings in the whole Mörbisch operetta series, this is strongly recommended, and not just to die-hard operetta fans". (Fanfare on Der Graf von Luxemburg). This "Operetta Edition" presents popular works by Franz Lehár that were recorded at the Mörbisch Festival and feature the Mörbisch Festival Choir and Orchestra under the direction of Rudolf Bibl and Wolfdieter Maurer (Der Zarewitsch). The edition comprises Das Land des Lächelns, Giuditta, Die lustige Witwe, Der Graf von Luxemburg and Der Zarewitsch. © Oehms Classics

The award-winning French pianist Pascal Rogé presents a program of music by Gershwin and Ravel in a recording with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Bertrand de Billy. Rogé’s affinity for the French style and empathy with jazz make him particularly suited to this repertoire. His recordings of French piano music have received Gramophone, Grand Prix du Disque and Edison awards. In addition to the classical-romantic repertoire of the Viennese and German schools, 20th-century French music is also one of his specialties. “An intelligent, richly enjoyable performance of the ravel Concerto.” (BBC Music Magazine) “Roge’s playing of Ravel’s Left-Hand concerto is masterly. He has complete technical regard for the work; more importantly, he appreciates the range of the music, its darkness, menace, anger, other-worldly escape, introspection and defiance.” (International Piano Magazine) © Oehms Classics

Der ferne Klang by Franz Schreker (1878-1934) premiered on August 18, 1912 at the Frankfurt Opera House. Schreker had already begun composing his first full-length opera in 1901, after the text he had written in just a few weeks. Now the work, which was initially considered impossible to perform, but which made Schreker suddenly famous, is returning to the location of its premiere for the first time after 1945. Almost half of all operas by the Austrian, who with one exception was both composer and librettist for all of his stage works, performed or premiered in Frankfurt. The Choir of the Oper Frankfurt and Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester perform under the direction of Sebastian Weigle. © Oehms Classics

This recording combines a selection of Weinberg's early works with the Piano Quintet and some of the children's notebooks from the last two years of the war. Born in Warsaw in 1919, Weinberg fled to Moscow in 1939. There he made friends with Shostakovich, who always supported him. Weinberg wrote numerous works, including 22 symphonies, 17 string quartets and numerous chamber music as well as his operas Wir gratulieren! and Die Passagierin. Weinberg dies in Moscow in 1996. In addition to the pianist Elisaveta Blumina, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Shanshan Yao, Máté Szücs and Bruno Delepelaire also perform here. © Oehms Classics

There are very few recordings of Mascagni's Iris, of which only Cavalleria Rusticana is still played. He was, however, the author of some fifteen operas in a rather eclectic style which was influenced by verism among other things. Premiered in 1898, Iris, an opera in three acts, is part of a Japanese-inspired fashion which would culminate in Puccini's Madama Butterfly six years later, whose success would overshadow Mascagni's work.This new recording, in the absence of stars, makes it possible to reassess this opera and to repair the injustice of the oblivion into which it fell for such a long time. Yet the orchestration is light, the exotic touches discreet, and Mascagni's melodic vein never fails. Made in Berlin in 2021, this concert recording celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Berliner Operngruppe. Founded in 2010 by conductor Felix Krieger, its aim is to present operas outside the usual repertoire. The productions are presented in concert in a semi-stage production and then later published. © François Hudry / Qobuz

This collection contains the most important recordings by Alfredo Perl with piano works by Franz Liszt. A special highlight is the recording of the piano concertos with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Alfredo Perl studied with Carlos Botto at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Günter Ludwig at the Musikhochschule in Cologne and Maria Curcio in London. He gave his first concert at the age of nine and then performed throughout South America and Europe as recitalist and with the Santiago Philharmonic Orchestra and the Zagreb Symphony Orchestra. Perl has since been a prizewinner in major competitions, including the Ferruccio Busoni Competition in Bolzano and the Beethoven Competition in Vienna, and he won first prize at the International Piano Competition in Montevideo. Alfredo Perl is professor for piano at the Detmold University of Music and has been artistic director of the Detmold Chamber Orchestra since 2009. © Oehms Classics

Good music was not enough for him: Alexander Scriabin wanted people with his music to liberate, redeem humanity. Scriabin's ecstatic sound poem leads the romantic Symphony orchestra at its limits. A departure into infinity: “And the universe echoed / From the joyful call / I am!” Says the end of his soaring poem “Poème de l’extase,” which is the inspiration for the symphonic work. With the voices of the WDR Rundfunkchor. A sung ending sounds in this recording, which crowns the bold flight of the soul with an orgiastic ending. As a long-time guest conductor of the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Dmitrij Kitajenko proves his particular affinity for the interpretation of Russian music here, as in Scriabin's Second Symphony. Kitjaneko celebrated his 80th birthday in 2020. © Oehms Classics

This album by the young ensemble Salaputia Brass is dedicated to works by composers from England. The English tradition with the different brass formations meets here on the one hand arranged classical works by Gustav Holst, an original work by Arthur Butterworth, through arranged pieces by Anthony Holborne to the cross-genre themes from James Bond to the Beatles: All you need is Brass! They modestly call themselves “little fellows” (lat. Salaputia), but they have it all behind their ears - or rather, in their lips. Because nothing is too difficult for the young virtuosos from Salaputia Brass! The newcomers have already delighted in numerous concerts, including several times in the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, at the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Festival, at the Meran Brass Festival and as a guest on the ARTE TV program "Stars von Morgen". With their thematically designed programs, they manage the balancing act between the highest musical standards and entertaining listening pleasure for everyone. © Oehms Classics

"From the New World" is the subtitle of Dvorak's famous Symphony No. 9, implying a departure into a new musical world and representing a bridge between the European and American music traditions and their influences. Dvorak's music shares the programme with works by Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland. These new organ transcriptions are performed by Hansjörg Albrecht on the Organ system (large organ, concert organ, echo organ) of the main church St. Michaelis in Hamburg. Hansjörg Albrecht is – besides Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki, Martin Haselböck and Wayne Marshall – one of the few artists who are regularly present internationally both as conductor and concert organist. He is considered a musical innovator and lateral thinker without fear of contact. As a conductor, he consistently follows his own paths – between archive and new creation and with an extensive repertoire from Bach to Messiaen – and with his organ transcriptions he has established himself as a specialist among the virtuosos of his instrument. © Oehms Classics

This interpretation of Winterreise is certainly unusual. Here, there is no singer; instead, the text is recited. The music still allows Schubert’s themes and motifs to ring out, but it treats them with complete freedom. The instrumental timbres are also different: tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone and bass clarinet exchange with lute and theorbo. Axel Wolf and Hugo Siegmeth join narrator Stefan Hunstein on an introspective journey that is finely connected, both musically and interpretively. Winterreise is about human existence, about a redefinition of one’s position after a setback, when someone who has been rejected reflects on his life, surrounded by cold and darkness. This recording reflects an interplay between faithfulness to the original and freedom of expression, creating a personal world of winter travel that resembles a musical-text radio play. © Oehms Classics