Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38030
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Fantasie in C minor for large orchestra, Op. 11 (1806); Grand concerto pour le piano-forte, Op. 12 (1804); Serenata composta per la Signor Hunnius (1804); Ariaan a Naxos (Cantata a voce sola del Sig. J. Haydn)(1808)

Marianne Beate Kielland, mezzo-soprano; Riko Fukuda, fortepiano
Kölner Akademie/Michael Alexander Willens
The Salzburg composer Sigismund Ritter von Neukomm (1778-1858) was something of a musical globe-trotter, serving in St Petersburg and Rio de Janeiro, spending most of his life in Paris and nearly ten years in England. During the course of his rich and eventful life he became friends and collaborated with many famous musicians of his time, such as Cherubini, Moscheles, Cavaillé-Coll, Grétry, Dussek, Chopin, Beethoven, Czerny and Mendelssohn. Today, if one remembers Neukomm at all, it is as Joseph Haydn's last pupil. At best, he is known as one of the "small masters" – whose work is however now enjoying a new renaissance. In the series “Forgotten Treasures”, the Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens present a fine selection of his orchestral and vocal music. Die Kölner Akademie is a unique ensemble based in Cologne which performs music of the seventeenth through the twenty first centuries on modern and period instruments with world renowned guest soloists. Die Kölner Akademie has received the highest critical acclaim and excellent reviews for its outstanding performances and the CDs released in the recording project “Forgotten treasures” with the label ARS-Produktion.

Label: TALENT SACD 101
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CARL MARIA VON WEBER (1786 – 1826): Jubel-Overture
RICHARD WAGNER (1813 – 1883): Die Feen (Overture)
JULES MASSENET (1842 – 1912): Werther (Overture)
GIACOMO MEYERBEER (1791 – 1864): Fest-Overture
GEORGES BIZET (1838 – 1875): Les Pêcheurs de Perles (Prelude)
FRANZ VON SUPPE (1819 – 1895): Fatinitza (Overture)
FRANZ SCHUBERT (1797 – 1828): Fierrabras (Overture)

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Walter Proost

Label: BIS SACD 1652
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MARIO CASLTELNUOVO-TEDESCO (1895 – 1968): Figaro; NIKOLAI MEDTNER (1880 – 1951): Fairy Tale; ZINO FRANCESCATTI (1902 – 1991): Polka; ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810 – 1856): Träumerei; FRITZ KREISLER (1875 – 1962): La Gitana; FRANZ RIES (1846 – 1932): La Capricciosa; ERNESTO HALFFTER (1905 – 1985): Habanera; HENRYK WIENIAWSKI (1835 – 1880): Fantasie brillante sure “Faust”; SAMUEL GARDNER (1891 – 1984): Prelude; NINO ROTA (1911 – 1979): Improvviso in A minor; JERRY BOCK (*1928) & JOHN WILLIAMS (*1932): The Fiddler on the Roof; ERNEST BLOCH (1880 – 1959): Nigun; MAURICE RAVEL (1875 – 1937): Tzigan

Vadim Gluzman, violin; Angela Yoffe, piano
In a review in The Strad of Vadim Gluzman’s recent recording of the violin concertos by Tchaikovsky and Glazunov, the critic wrote of his ‘honeyed tone’, which ‘transports us back to the days of David Oistrakh, and recreates that innate Russian musicality of a previous generation…’ In a similar vein, the German magazine Fono Forum compared him to Heifetz and Milstein, adding that he passed the test with flying colours. When Gluzman now returns, it is with a dazzling program fit for any of those virtuosos of days gone by. Indeed, several of them appear in the list of contents in the roles of composer or arranger: Heifetz himself has arranged Fairy Tale, by Nikolai Medtner, while Henryk Szeryng’s version of Ernesto Halffter’s Habanera with this release receives its world première recording. Other examples of virtuoso-turned-composer are Wieniawski, Zino Francescatti (with a Polka) and Fritz Kreisler, whose La Gitana fits into the tradition of virtuoso pieces inspired by gypsy music – a tradition of which Ravel’s Tzigane is of course the jewel. A more unexpected item in the program is the excerpt from Fiddler on the Roof, in which the composer Michael Gluzman – father of Vadim – has distilled a duo version of the title music of the filmed musical. Besides the previously mentioned disc of concertos, Vadim Gluzman appears on a further three BIS titles. On all of these he performs with Angela Yoffe, his regular duo partner as well as his wife. This well-matched pair has been admired by the reviewers for their intense, passionate and powerful performances as well as for their supreme command of their respective instruments. About their first disc on BIS the reviewer on website Classics Today wrote: ‘Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe push their collective virtuosity sky-high’ – the same certainly applies to Fireworks, their latest offering!

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38012
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Chaconne in C sharp minor
Four Short Chorale Preludes
Variations & Fugue on an Original Theme in D major

Martin Schmeding, organ (Sauer organ of St Petri Cathedral, Bremen)
Martin Schmeding, born 1975 in Minden/Westphalia, studied at the College of Music and Drama in Hanover, at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam and at the Robert-Schumann-Hochschule in Düsseldorf. His organ teachers included Ulrich Bremsteller, Lajos Rovatkay and Jean Boyer, and he also attended master classes with Ludger Lohmann, Martin Haselböck, Andrea Marcon, Hans-Ola Ericsson, Michael Radulescu and Harald Vogel. He won a scholarship in 1995 from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes. After eight first prizes at national level in the German young people's competition "Jugend musiziert" he went on to win prizes at many other competitions, including the following: Mendelssohn Bartholdy (Berlin), Pachelbel (Nürnberg), Böhm (Lüneburg), Deutscher Musikwettbewerb (Berlin), European Young Organists (Ljubljana) and Musica Antiqua (Bruges). He was a finalist in the 1999 ARD Competition in Munich. 1999 also saw the Land of Lower Saxony award him its Bursary for Arts and Culture. He was Kantor and organist of the Nazareth-Kirche in Hanover from 1997 to 1999, leaving Hanover to succeed Oswald Gottlieb Blarr as Church Music Director of the Neanderkirche in Düsseldorf.

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38022
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Choral prelude “The saviour has arisen” (1934)
Four little Chorale preludes (1926)
Choral prelude to Joseph Haydn’s “God save Emperor Franz” (1933)

Martin Schmeding, organ
The majority of Franz Schmidt’s organ works is not religiously or liturgically inspired, like so many contemporary works. The premieres also took place mostly in concert halls such as the Musikvereinssaal in Vienna.
Nevertheless, time and again Schmidt was inspired by spiritual influences, such as for example in the “Four Little Chorale Preludes” (1926), both “large” chorale preludes about Josef Haydn’s “Gott erhalte” (“God Save Emperor Franz”) (1933) and “Der Heiland ist erstanden” (“The Saviour Has Arisen”) (1934) and the so-called Christmas prelude in A major (also known as “Pastorale”, 1934).

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38032
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Fantasia & Fugue in D Major
Prelude & Fugue in A Major
Toccata & Fugue A flat major
Two Interludes from the Oratorio “The Book with Seven Seals”

Martin Schmeding, organ
About Fantasia and Fugue in D major:
Against this framework, Franz Schmidt found completely independent solutions for his large-scale organ works, as his Fantasia and Fugue in D major already shows. It was completed on the 5th of January 1924, and first performed by Franz Schütz in a concert in the Main Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna on the 10th of February 1924, in honour of the composer’s fiftieth birthday.
It is clear to see he had recently been composing the variations on the “Theme from Fredigundis”, as the Fantasia and Fugue in D major combines variation and fugal principles in one large, single movement work. It starts with a theme showing the typical characteristics of a chorale, although not based upon any existing chorale melody, illustrating the increasing detachment of the organ from its original religious context and from church performances.
Schmidt develops the theme through a total of five variations, interrupted after the first and fourth by fugal episodes. This gives a formal structure in five larger divisions, coming surprisingly close to the North German five-part Toccata form.

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38019
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FRANZ DANZI (1763 – 1826) – CONCERTOS FOR BASSOON & ORCHESTRA
Overture in E flat major (P32); Bassoon Concerto in G minor
Bassoon Concerto in C major; Bassoon Concerto in F major

Jane Gower, bassoon
Kölner Akademie/Michael Alexander Willens (on period instruments)
All three concertos have second movements marked Andante, suggesting o simple, cantabile style with an easily flawing tempo, never pressed but considerably faster than the often ponderous, overworked treatment Andantes are sometimes burdened with. In no way does it seek to compete with the weight of the first movement. Instead all three Andantes provide the bassoonist with opportunities to display the vocal lyricism of the tenor register as Danzi’s melodies unfurl. Entirely banishing the anxiety of the first g minor movement is a concluding Polacca (polonaise) a witty engaging dance-like piece very popular in solo concertos of the time. As in the F major Polacca, there are many chances for tongue-in-cheek jocularity lively dialogue, os well as some sparkling passagework. By way of introducing these bassoon concertos we hove added another lesser known work by Danzi, his Overture in E flat major (P32). This music was probably used as “Zwischenaktmusik” within a theatrical performance, similar in function to the incidental music Schubert wrote for Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern (d797).

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38020
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VIENNA DOUBLE BASS CONCERTOS
WORLD PREMIERE RECORDINGS!
FRANZ ANTON HOFFMEISTER (1754 – 1812): Concerto in E flat major; WENCESLAV PICHL (1741 – 1805): Concerto in D major; JOHANN VANHAL (1739 – 1813): Concerto in E flat major

David Sinclair, double bass
Kölner Akademie/Michael Alexander Willens (on period instruments)
The works recorded here present examples of the Viennese bass concerto from its early period of the mid 1760’s to its heyday around 1785. All were written for the specially-tuned Viennese bass. While the Pichl and Hoffmeister concertos are premiere recordings, Vanhal’s well-known work is recorded here for the first time on a Viennese bass. The instrument used dates from 1729 and was made by Johann Christoph Leidolff (1690-1785). One of Vienna’s foremost violin makers, the Leidolff workshop was also responsible for keeping the instruments and bows of the Esterházykapelle in good repair.

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38026
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BERNHARD ROMBERG (1767 – 1841)
Trauer-Symphonie auf den Tod der Königin Luise von Preußen in C minor, Op. 23; Symphony No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 28; Symphony No. 3 in C major, Op. 53

Kölner Akademie/Michael Alexander Willens (on period instruments)
At the beginning of the 19th century Bernhard Romberg was celebrated as a great virtuoso on the violoncello and recognized as one of the most important composers of his time. Yet towards the end of his life he considered himself to be obsolete. At the beginning of the century the press had nothing but eulogies and superlatives for him. As a “composer and connoisseur of the arts he is the best cellist on earth” (Hamburg 1801), he was perceived as the “most perfect of all currently living cellists” (Berlin 1805) and considered to be “one of the greatest composers and most masterful of all living cellists”, and as “the first and greatest virtuoso on his instrument”, who was also considered to be a “truly significant” composer (Leipzig 1807). Even his compositional legacy – with the exception of o few works that are still used for education purposes today – fell into oblivion and was soon forgotten after his death.

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38027
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CHANT D’AUTOMNE
CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS (1835 – 1921): Morceau de Concert, Op. 94; Romance, Op. 36; Romance, Op. 67; JEAN-TOUSSAINT RADOUX (1825 – 1889): Méditation; EMILE PESSARD (1843 – 1917): Danse la Forét, Op. 130; PAUL JEANJEAN (1874 – 1928): Nocturne; Romance; AYME KUNC (1877 – 1958): Nocturne; ROBERT GUILLEMYN (? – 1945): Chant d’Automne; GEORGE TEMPLETON STRONG (1856 – 1948): Hallali; EMMANUEL CHABRIER (1841 – 1894): Larghetto; THEODORE DUBOIS (1837 – 1924): Cavatina; JULES MASSENET (1842 – 1912): La Mer, Mélodie de F. Schubert; ADOLPHE BLANC (1828 – 1885): Romance, op. 43bis

>Ulrich Hübner, natural horn & valve horn
Kölner Akademie/Michael Alexander Willens (on period instruments)
The CD gives a fine overview of what and how was composed for horn during the 19th century in France and its close surroundings. One searches in vain for large, multiple movement solo concertos from this period, finding instead a rich trove of shorter character pieces, emphasizing in particular the horn’s lyrical qualities. After his horn studies in Darmstadt, Stuttgart and Cologne Ulrich Hübner first played the modern horn for five years in the orchestra of the State Theatre of Mainz. In 1995 he left his orchestral position to concentrate on historical performance practice, playing since then in leading European orchestras such as Anima Eterna, Concerto Köln, Balthasar Neumann Ensemble and La Stagione Frankfurt. Ulrich Hübner’s recording of Mozart's Horn Concerto KV 447, with the orchestra Anima Eterna conducted by Jos van Immerseel, was highly praised by the critics and awarded the "Diapason d'Or" in 2006.

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38029
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VIRTUOSO CONCERTOS FOR OBOE
JOHANN CHRISTIAN FISCHER (1733 – 1800): Oboe Concerto No. 1 in C major; Oboe Concerto No. 2 in E flat major; Oboe Concerto No. 7 in F major
CARL STAMITZ (1745 – 1801): Oboe Concerto No. 2 in B flat major

Michael Niesemann, oboe
Kölner Akademie/Michael Alexander Willens (on period instruments)
Johann Christian Fischer (1733-1800) was one of the most celebrated oboists of the Classical Era. Born in Germany at Freiburg-im-Breisgau, he played for a time in the court band at Dresden before entering the service of Frederick the Great. On coming to London, where he is first recorded in June 1768, he became a member of Queen's Band and played regularly at court. Fanny Burney, daughter of music historian and composer Charles Burney, praised “the sweet-flowing, melting, celestial notes of Fischer's hautboy”. From 1979 to 1987, Michael Niesemann studied at the Hochschule für Musik Köln (Cologne), where he has taught modern and historical oboes since 1993. From 2004 to 2007 he was the professor for Baroque oboe at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg. In October 2007 he was appointed the oboe professor at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen. As a chamber musician Niesemann was a member of Musica Antiqua Köln (Reinhard Goebel) for ten years. As an orchestral musician, he was one of the founding members of Concerto Köln, with whom he played until 1993. From 1994 he has been principal oboist with Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s orchestras, the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38046
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Präludium in C minor (1841); Allegro moderato maestoso in C major (1845); Thema (Andante) mit Variationen in D major (1844); Sonata in F minor, Op. 65,1; Sonata in C minor, Op. 65,2; Sonata in A major, Op. 65,3; Sonata in D minor, Op. 65,6; Variations sérieuses in D minor, Op. 54

Martin Schmeding plays the Kuhn-organ in the Essen Philharmonie
Unlike his contemporaries Schumann and Brahms, who were also interested in the organ, Felix Mendelssohn had at least occasionally had lessons on the instrument starting in his early youth, and later even performed as a celebrated concert organist. He gained a remarkable reputation for it, not least in England, where it led to the composition of the cycles Op. 37 and 65. For the current recordings made in Essen and Bockenem, the pieces selected to go with the preludes and fugues and the sonatas are from the composer’s mature period from c. 1827 and do not include sketches or material used in later pieces. Those earlier versions together with Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s youth works would be a subject for another recording. As the organist of the Dresden Kreuzkirche from 2002 until 2004, Martin Schmeding (b. 1975) worked in one of the most important cities for church music in Germany. After teaching positions in Hanover, Leipzig, Weimar and Dresden, he was appointed professor of organ at the Freiburg University of Music in 2004. He is also the head of the church music department.

Label: BIS SACD 1704
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FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809 – 1847) – LOBGESANG
Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 52, ‘Lobgesand’ (‘Hymn of Praise’)

Judith Howarth, soprano; Jennifer Larmore, mezzo-soprano; Christoph Pregariden, tenor

Bergen Philharmonic Chor; KorVest (Bergen Vocal Ensemble); The Danish National Vocal Ensemble/DR

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Litton
Recorded at public concerts in the Grieg Hall, Bergen, on 23rd & 24th April 2008.
Completed in 1840, Mendelssohn's ‘Lobgesang’ Symphony is actually his fourth in order of composition, preceded by both the Italian (No.4) and the Reformation Symphony (No.5). It was composed to mark the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. Instead of dealing with the subject of printing or Gutenberg’s life, however, Mendelssohn chose to focus on the consequences of Gutenberg’s achievement, presenting it as the victory of light over darkness. He originally planned the work as a ‘smaller oratorio or larger hymn’, then as a ‘symphony for choir and orchestra’, and finally – according to the title page of the published edition – as a ‘symphony-cantata after words from the Holy Bible’. The work is made up of two main sections. The first, entitled ‘Sinfonia’, consists of three instrumental symphonic movements played without interruption, and the second is a cantata comprising nine movements. The whole, vocal and instrumental, springs from the same source, however: the words ‘Alles, was Odem hat, lobe den Herrn’ (‘All that has life and breath, sing to the Lord’) which open the cantata. As Mendelssohn put it in a letter ‘first of all the instruments sing to Him in their own way, and thereafter the choir and the other voices’. The successful partnership of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Andrew Litton has made an impact on international audiences at high-profile appearances in London, Vienna and New York, as well as at the famous Bergen Festival. On disc, the team’s interpretation of Prokofiev’s music to Romeo and Juliet (on BIS-SACD-1301), has received high praise, for instance on German website klassik.com where it was described it as ‘glittering, colourful, fiery, with great presence and dynamic scope and an impressive attention to detail’. In their Hymn of Praise – the first of a cycle of Mendelssohn’s symphonies – they are joined by a large choir, and a trio of soloists including the tenor Christoph Prégardien, giving an wrenching rendition of the highly expressive ‘Wir riefen in der Finsternis’ (‘We called thro’ the darkness’).

Label: ARS PRODUKTION SACD 38059
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FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY (1809 – 1847) – PIANO TRIOS
Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 49 (1839)
Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66 (1844/45)
Trio in C minor for Pianoforte, Violin and Viola (1820)*
Romance sans paroles dédiée à Mlle. Lise Christiani, Op. 109 (1845)
Albumblatt für Julius Rietz (1843)

Alte Musik Köln

With Tobias Koch, piano
Alte Musik Köln is a period music ensemble founded in 2006. The members of the ensemble, successful Baroque and instrumental specialists in their own right, each contribute a unique element to a particularly wide-ranging and harmonious whole. The successors to Musica Antiqua Köln have already toured in Asia and North America. A further Asian tour will take them to Korea and Japan. The present CD marks the beginning of a long-term cooperation with the label ARS. On their first recording, Alte Musik Köln turn their attention to Felix Mendelssohn.
The well-known piano trios Op 49 and Op 66 represent the peak of Mendelssohn’s achievement in his relatively small output of chamber music; both trios are similar in structure and mood, beginning with a sombre and intense first movement, followed by a lyrical and melodic slow movement; the third movement is a fleeting and magical scherzo and ending with an energetic finale. In 1819 the ten-year-old Mendelssohn had begun taking music and composition lessons with Carl Friedrich Zelter in Berlin who made his pupils acquainted with the works of the Viennese “Classicists”. This immediately bore fruit in the form of a trio for piano, violin and viola in C minor, with its date of completion noted as 9.5.1820 and recorded here for the first time.

*FIRST RECORDING!!!

Label: BIS SACD 1584
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FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809 – 1847)
‘Ruy Blas’ Overture, Op. 95
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 11
Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 ‘Italian’

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra/Andrew Litton
Mendelssohn is sometimes thought of as someone to whom composing came easily. This assumption arises partly from the fact that he was a child prodigy: he was only fifteen when he composed his First Symphony, by which time he had already written twelve string symphonies. The main reason, however, is that much of Mendelssohn's best music is so unforced, has such a natural flow, that – as Schumann once remarked – 'one entirely forgets the tangible means, the tools that he uses'. One such work is Symphony No. 4, widely known as the 'Italian' and one of Mendelssohn's most loved compositions – but also a work that seems to have caused its creator untold worries. Although it received an ecstatic welcome on its first performance in London in 1833, Mendelssohn could not bring himself to have it published, planning instead to revise it but in the end hiding it away in a drawer. A similar fate befell the Ruy Blas overture, written for a play by Victor Hugo that, after reading it, Mendelssohn described as ‘quite horrible and beneath all dignity… to an extent that you would not believe’. He was nevertheless pleased with his overture to the play – but again he would not let it be published during his lifetime, an indication of a self-criticism which hardly rhymes with the idea of him as a carefree composer. The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Andrew Litton began their cycle of Mendelssohn’s symphonies with Symphony No. 2 ‘Hymn of Praise’. Described as ‘suitably glowing’ by the reviewer in Financial Times, and ‘alert and vigorous’ in BBC Music Magazine, that disc is here being followed by the second installment from the Bergen team.