In addition to his famous large-scale song cycles, Schubert also composed and published numerous smaller song compilations. Some of these “miniature cycles” consist of songs written at different times and under different circumstances, but which Schubert himself assembled on the basis of thematic and textual connections. The selected cycles appeared in print during Schubert’s publishing career...
NESHIMA is Orí Harmelin’s exciting debut solo lute and theorbo album. Orí explores a new realm of possibilities for personal creation as a modern musician using the musical language of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The album contains Orí’s arrangements of Madrigals, Motets and Chansons by Cipriano de Rore, Josquin des Prez and Thomas Tallis, alongside his own compositions of variation...
The Richter Ensemble performs music from the 17th to the 20th century exclusively on gut strings and uses its experience with historical performance practice to heighten the sense for the development of musical language over the centuries. The ensemble is passionately dedicated to the music of the Second Viennese School and, based on its research, has decided that the time is ripe to steer the...
After a very successful lifetime, albeit marked by long years of physical and psychological suffering, Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) chose Passy, on the outskirts of Paris, as the place to spend the final years of his life. Here Rossini recovered his health and began composing again after years of inactivity. During these years, in addition to the wonderful Petite Messe solennelle, he wrote...
Flemish composer Johan Huys is equally proficient on all keyboard instruments, but he is best known as a harpsichordist. He was president of the competition at the MA Festival Bruges for 39 years. For this world-famous competition, which is inextricably linked to him, he composed several pieces for harpsichord, including the compulsory work for the 2018 harpsichord competition: Ceci n’est pas...
In 1959, two composers wrote nonets: Nino Rota’s melodic Nonetto, on which he would continue to work for almost 20 years, and Bohuslav Martinů’s farewell chamber music piece, a nonet, which he composed as a last piece to satisfy his longing for his homeland. Eisler did not compose his nonet in his native country either, but arrived in Mexico in 1941 as a refugee from the Nazis. There he wrote...
When Eugène Ysaÿe composed his cycle of 6 sonatas op. 27 for solo violin in June 1923, gut strings were still very common and highly appreciated - statements by contemporary violinists such as Mischa Elman, Toscha Seidel and Jacques Thibaud confirm this. However, neither the dedicatees of Eugène Ysaÿe’s solo sonatas nor other contemporaries made recordings of these works. Martin Reimann has now...
