Info text: Works for viola solo It was not until the 20th century that an independent solo repertoire emerged for the viola. Especially in the period after the First World War, when virtuosity and late romantic pathos were distrusted, the dark colors, the simplicity, but also the rough and pithy nature of the viola began to be of interest. However, many works remain […]

Info text: After fleeing occupied Poland, Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996) lived in Soviet exile. Defended by Shostakovich in times of crisis, he was tolerated as a symphonist and film music composer (“The Cranes Are Pulling”, 1957), but remained an outsider throughout his life. From his rich chamber music work, Julia Rebekka Adler recalls the four solo sonatas for viola, which were written between 1971 and 1983 [...]

Program: music for double bass Giacinto Scelsi (1905–1988) Nuits (1972) 09:41 [01] C'est bien la nuit 03:24 [02] Le réveil profond 06:17 Isang Yun (1917–1995) [03 ] For Aki I (1981) 00:54 [04] For Aki II (1981) 01:01 Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) [05] Theraps (1976) 14:40 Manfred Stahnke (*1951) [06] Streetmusic III (1995) 08:00 dedicated to Frank Reinecke Hans Werner Henze (*1926) [07] S. Biagio 9 Agosto ore 1207 (1977) 08:37 Ricordo per un […]

Info text: He is an engineer, a designer of fragile structures. His “sound actions” do social work: professional musicians and amateurs work together, playing on self-made and traditional instruments. Disabled people can communicate with non-disabled people. Graphic, gestural and acoustic forms of expression intertwine. Skepticism and playfulness, and a fascinating transparency in thinking characterize the work of Josef [...]

Info text: Vital, lively music from an excellent soloist who studies the tricks and finesse of his own and many other instruments in great detail, always makes new discoveries and creates pointed, funny scenes on this basis. Matthias Arter, a student of Heinz Holliger, is a composer, oboist, conductor, creative project developer and organizer. His pieces are playful, concrete, associative: of themselves […]

Info text: The focus of the second part of the Maderna edition is on concert works, some of which became building blocks for the opera “Hyperion”. Arturo Tamayo can fill the instrumental solos entirely from the ranks of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra: in Hölderlin's Aria and the flute concertos with Thaddeus Watson, Sebastian Wittiber and Clara Andrada de la Calle, in the Stele per [...]

Info text: Everything has to be re-examined: Bruno Maderna follows this post-war maxim by choosing simple, workshop-like titles. Composition, practice, improvisation – for him this means a maximum of freedom, and at the same time a commitment to developing polyphony, to the logic and mobility of thoughts. To a weightless, transparent form that points beyond itself and questions itself […]

Info text: Georg Friedrich Haas creates music of hypnotic power. Under the simple title ... and ... he forces ensemble and electronics, microtones and tempered systems together in his own unique way. In the premiere concert in September 2008, this turns into twenty-seven minutes of maximum excitement, created jointly by the SWR's Experimental Studio and the Collegium Novum Zurich under the direction of Enno Poppe. […]

Info text: The irrepressible power of pre-Columbian myths, reborn in a modern language. Stefan Asbury brings the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne to a boil when Alberto Ginastera tells the creation story of the Mayas in his late work “Popol Vuh” (1975–83). The dramatic “Cantata para América Mágica” (1960), based on words by Mercedes de [...]

Info text: Markus Bellheim begins his recording of all of Olivier Messiaen's piano compositions with a major work in which the elements that are important for further work work together in an exemplary manner: Franciscan-influenced mysticism, synesthesia, the love of the voices of nature and the sharpening of awareness of foreign musical cultures with their diverse melodies and rhythms. In the “look of the prophets, the […]

Info text: Second NEOS recording with the fabulous Swiss clarinetist and composer Matthias Mueller Boris Tchaikovsky's Clarinet Concerto is presented here by NEOS as the first Western European recording. The work of the composer, who lived in the communist USSR, inspires with its Russian soul and playful insouciance. A concert far away from the Western European avant-garde trends that exudes joyful music with charm and nonchalance. Debussy's […]

Info text: Matthias Mueller impressively demonstrates that this wind instrument is suitable for virtuosity. Rossini's variations celebrate the romantic and bravura brilliance. The brand new clarinet concerto, which the Swiss soloist wrote for himself, focuses on tonal finesse and rhythmic variability. In the recorded solo works, these characteristics are taken to the extreme. In addition to the classics […]