Future Releases

Dresden has always been a place for celebration, both in the golden Baroque era and today. Recently, Hartmut Haenchen, who was born in the Saxon city on the River Elbe, celebrate his 70th birthday in an atmosphere of sympathetic public approval. The Berlin Classics label has already released many of his recordings – quite a number of them made with his Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Chamber Orchestra, which he has been directing for over thirty years. The tradition is continued in honour of his birthday with the present recording that centres round a suitably festive theme.

Dresden was also the place where the composer Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729) worked as Kapellmeister at the court of August the Strong, Elector of Saxony. Heinichen composed the Serenata "La Gara degli Dei" (the contest of the gods) for celebrations to mark the marriage of August's son Friedrich August II and Maria Josepha, daughter of Emperor Joseph of Austria. The great political significance of this new union between the houses of Saxony and Habsburg explains the expansive dimensions of the celebrations, which lasted nearly a month! Each god was assigned a day of the week and Heinichen's open-air serenade was not simply a homage to the royal couple sung by the various gods, but simultaneously a preamble and introduction to the entire programme of events to mark the happy occasion.

The original manuscript is kept at the SLUB (Saxon State and University Library) in Dresden, and Hartmut Haenchen, who had already edited this particular work as a fifteen-year-old, performed it with distinguished soloists and his chamber orchestra on November 23, 2003 at the Konzerthaus in Berlin. The 27-piece orchestra faithfully followed the original score thanks to copies of the original copperplate manuscript.

The recording of this event by Deutschlandradio Kultur is now presented for the first time as a premiere recording on CD. The originality and inspired nature of this music, which was considered avantgarde in its time, is still able to astound listeners to this day. This is without doubt an exceptional and outstanding work by the Dresden master of the Baroque, which is well worth discovering.

Alongside the song texts with explanations, the booklet contains an introduction to the work plus input from Hartmut Haenchen about his work with his chamber orchestra. The result is a suitably tasteful CD to mark a special occasion!

The city of Prague was a cultural hotspot in the 1920s and 30s. From 1918 to 1935 the country's president was the European-minded and remarkably liberal philosopher Thomas Masaryk, and his successor Edvard Benes was a kindred spirit.

The three population groups, enriched by emigrants from Russia, the Ukraine, Germany and Austria, competed with one another but also inspired each other. This was the Prague in which the composers on this CD were involved. In their music we hear the old and the new, tradition and renewal, but above all, imagination and talent.

When the border between East and West opened up in 1991, their music had hardly been heard in the West for some fifty years, having been suppressed first by the Nazis and then by suffocating communist rule. With the exception of Ullmann, even today these composers have hardly reached our concert halls.

An essential album for all new parents!

Lullabies – The New Born Collection features the world’s best-loved lullabies, including favourites by Brahms, Schubert and Schumann, as well as music by star composers of today; Karl Jenkins, Eric Whitacre and Paul Mealor - the young composer of choral music for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in April 2011.

Born on the West Wales coast and a native Welsh-speaker, Catrin Finch is the former official harpist to His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales. Hailed as “The Queen of Harps”, she delights audiences with performances around the world.

14CD/2DVD

Christian Thielemann’s reading of Wagner’s complete Ring Cycle at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2011 was universally hailed as one of the greatest Wagnerian events of the last half-century and is now being released as a beautiful box set containing 14 CDs of the four Ring operas and 2 DVDs featuring introductory films to each opera.

With the Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera and an outstanding cast of today’s leading dramatic singers, these performances set the standard for Wagner interpretation in the 21st Century.

The 4 documentary films were directed by acclaimed producer Eric Schulz, complementing the audio recordings, providing an introduction, commentary and analysis by experts, including conductor Christian Thielemann. They will also be broadcast by the German/Austrian TV channel 3Sat in April – one feature per week starting on 4th April.

Booklet contains synopses in German, English and French and libretti in German and English.

This recording is the result of the passion the young musicians Camille Thomas (cello) and Beatrice Berrut (piano) have always felt for Russian music.

Whatever its period of composition, they find in this repertoire the profundity and complexity of the Slavic soul, taking to extremes the expression of human torments.

Camille Thomas: ‘For this recording we immediately thought of playing Russian music. In A Century of Russian Colours, we start with a very Romantic composition, Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata op.19. The programme continues with a very rarely recorded work, bearing the marks of Soviet communism, showing fear and anguish, but also the rigour and conformism of Dmitry Kabalevsky.

We end with a young composer who is very highly thought of in the musical world: Lera Auerbach, one of the last artists to be stripped of Russian nationality, who now lives in the United States and Germany.’

For their fourth Fuga Libera-project, the Russian orchestra Musica Viva recorded one very famous, and one forgotten piece by Antonín Dvorak. The well-known piece is the Serenade for Strings in E major, written by Dvorak in 1875. It is believed that Dvorak took up this small orchestral genre because it was less demanding than the symphony, but allowed for the provision of pleasure and entertainment. The other piece is the Cello Concerto in A major. Unlike its brother, the B minor Concerto Op. 104, this concerto has been more than overlooked. It was left un-orchestrated by Dvorak, existing only in piano-score form. It was only after his death that a few composers orchestrated this dazzling piece of music. Cello virtuoso Alexander Rudin, and Musica Viva let us taste from this magnificent forgotten treasure…

Written one after the other in the space of just three months and with unprecedented energy, Mozart’s last three symphonies carry within them the aesthetic ideal of their composer, touched by a grace that is already pre-Romantic, and thus form an exemplary musical testament. The Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, a pioneering collective among period-instrument orchestras, reveals a richness, a modernity, a visionary complexity that prepares the way for the Beethovenian revolution.

The approach of the orchestra founded and conducted by Philippe Herreweghe is to explore in depth the sonority and the motor rhythms of the symphonic writing of a Mozart here at the height of his powers.

To record this Mozart trilogy is a bold undertaking for any musician, and always an extraordinary event for the public!

Marin Marais, the most outstanding composer for the viola da gamba, was a master in the writing of so-called Pièces de Caractère, in which he called upon the most diverse subjects for inspiration: La Désolée (the desolate), La Guitare, Feste Champêtre (country fair), Le Tableau de l’Opération de la Taille (a description of a gallstone operation!) and so on. The choice of 'Images' in Marais’ five books of Pièces de violes is endless. A program full of worship, grandeur and sadness.

This disc is the counterpart of the 2012 Ramée publication "Hommages" (RAM1105).