Johannes Brahms

This 4-CD set is devoted to recordings of symphonies by Brahms and Bruckner under by one of the greatest German conductors of the post-war period, Gunter Wand. Wand, who died in 1992, is considered to be one of the supreme interpreters of the music of these two renowned composers. The works are Brahms’s Second and Fourth Symphonies, and Bruckner’s monumental Eighth, and the recordings date from 1958, 1960, and 1971.

Throughout his life the great German conductor Gunter Wand returned again and again to the symphonies of Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and Bruckner, and the recordings presented here are of great historic importance and some of the finest he made. After the Second World War, Günter Wand was Germany’s youngest General Music Director, and in 1946 he assumed the direction of the concerts given by the Cologne’s famous Gürzenich Orchestra, the orchestra featured on these recordings.

During the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Decca recorded a number of albums with some of its key conductors of Overtures. Many of these were singled out by the press for their terrific sound quality (the fabled ‘Decca Sound’) and for their often adventurous programming. Some of them also included entr’actes and intermezzi. Prized as collectors’ items, many of the original LPs exchange hands at high prices. And most of these reissues, in Decca Eloquence’s ‘Romantic Overtures’ series appear in CD, in part or whole, for the first time.

Romantic Overtures – Volume 1 includes Kurt Herbert Adler’s extremely rare 1978 LP entitled ‘Overture’ and is a virtual feast of curiosities: Nicolai’s Tempelritter, Goldmark’s Merlin, Goetz’s Francesca von Rimini… The album concludes with Zubin Mehta’s Vienna Philharmonic recording of Brahms’s Tragic Overture. Recorded in 1976 at the sessions for the composer’s First Symphony it was deemed too long to fit on the LP and here receives its first international CD release.

On May 29th 2013, Helmuth Rilling, the founder and artistic director of the Gächinger Kantorei and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, will celebrate his 80th Birthday.

The spiritual father of the complete edition of the works of J.S. Bach on 172 CDs, a distinguished guest conductor, who has performed with leading orchestras world-wide, has put together for this occasion a special collection documenting his recorded legacy with Haenssler Classics over the past decades, featuring the recordings of his most admired and critically acclaimed works.

Ten CDs, focusing on central moments of Helmuth Rilling’s artistic growth are presented; many of them have received international awards. They show the conductor not only for his profound understanding of J. S. Bach, but as equally familiar with masterpieces of Romantic era.

The Violin Sonata No. 1 was written in 1851, at a time when Robert Schumann was – as expressed to his biographer Wasiliewsky – ‘very annoyed with certain people’, which may have been a reference to the tensions that existed between the composer and the Düsseldorf Musikverein. Schumann expressed his feelings of annoyance in the baroque-style finale through an air of robustness, even roughness, which sits in steep contrast with the fretful and tender opening movement. The public premiere was given by Ferdinand David and Clara Schumann in March 1852, but it was not until Joseph Joachim’s performance the following year that the work received the recognition it deserved.

Robert Schumann referred to the Violin Sonata as a ‘Duo’ with the two instrumentalists performing in equal partnership. In the Sonata by Johannes Brahms, on the other hand, the violin is always the principal voice, the piano never a competitor, but rather a subtle accompanist. Brahms wrote this work in memory of his godson, Felix Schumann, the youngest of Robert and Clara’s children, a gifted musician, who died tragically young of tuberculosis. He was only twenty-five. Clara Schumann was deeply moved by the piece, and particularly delighted by the finale with its quotation of ‘Regenlied’, one of her favourites among all of Brahms’s songs.

In her lifetime, Clara Schumann was best known as a great pianist, but up until her thirties she composed a fair amount of music, including a Piano Concerto, songs, and many piano pieces. Three Romances was the only work she wrote for the combination of piano and violin, and while the violin is allowed to sing out throughout, the subtlety and complexity of the piano part testify to its having been composed by a pianist of the first rank.

In 2002, at the age of twelve, Jennifer Pike notably became the youngest-ever winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition. She has given performances throughout the UK and abroad and, now aged just twenty-three, is widely regarded as one of the finest violinists in Britain. Tom Poster is internationally recognised as a pianist of outstanding artistry and versatility, equally in demand as a soloist and as a chamber musician across an unusually extensive repertoire. The two performed together in the Concert for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, featured on the recent disc of chamber works by Chausson with the Doric String Quartet (CHAN10754).