Acanta label

This recording of a broadcast performance by North West German Radio of Debussy’s The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian comes from 1952. It features one of the greatest conductors of the time, Ernest Ansermet, conducting the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Cologne Radio Choir, and leading soloists from the period.

The legendary Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet had been a friend of Claude Debussy, and was highly respected for his readings of composer’s works. He was the first to conduct Debussy’s poetic drama “Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien” in Germany, at the Wallraffplatz broadcasting studios in Cologne on May 5, 1952. At its Paris premiere in 1911, the piece had provoked a regular scandal with its mixture of unabashed eroticism and religious ecstasy. North West German Radio commissioned a German translation for the broadcast which was used in this recording. All the soloists were female, with internationally acclaimed soprano Anny Schlemm joined by Margot Guilleaume, Anni Bernards and Martha Deisen.

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.

This recording of three of Stravinsky’s major works of the period was made in 1951 at the new radio station in Cologne, and features the composer himself conducting the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra in performances of Apollon Musagète, the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, and Oedipus Rex. The soloists in Oedipus Rex included Peter Pears and Martha Mödl. On October 8 1951 the newly built state-of-the-art complex “Funkhaus” at Wallraffplatz in Cologne put on a very special concert. No less a figure than Igor Stravinsky was called in as the godfather of the new “great broadcasting hall”. The programme performed consisted of three of Stravinsky’s recent works, “Apollon musagète”, “Oedipus-Rex” and, as a German debut, the “Symphonies of Wind Instruments”. The Radio Orchestra was conducted by the composer himself, and the soloists in Oedipus Rex were Peter Pears, Martha Mödl, Heinz Rehfuss, Otto von Rohr, and Helmut Krebs. The narrator was Werner Hessenland and chorus was an augmented version of the male voice choir of the NWDR.

The recordings on this album were made in the studio on the day before the concert.

Recorded in 1952

Johannes Brahms is one of the 19th century’s great composers of choral music.

This recording features some of his music for four and six-part choir, and includes the Liebeslieder Waltzes, the Neue Liebeslieder Waltzes, the Six Choral Pieces opus 93a, and the Five Choral Pieces opus 104. The singers are the Gächinger Kantorei and the conductor is the group’s highly regarded founder and musical director, Helmuth Rilling.

Gächinger Kantorei is an internationally known German mixed choir, founded by Helmuth Rilling in 1954 in Gächingen (part of St. Johann close to Reutlingen). It is dedicated mostly, but not exclusively, to sacred music. The ensemble operates in Stuttgart now and is therefore officially called the "Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart". The choir has up to 200 voices, and since 1965 it has performed music with orchestra as Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium Stuttgart.

Brahms’ 18 Liebeslieder Waltzes Op. 52 were published in 1869. They were premiered in Vienna the following year by Brahms and Clara Schumann, proving so popular that five years later Brahms published a second set of 14 songs under the title Neue Liebeslieder Op. 65. Both sets are set to words by the poet Georg Friedrich Daumer. The Six Choral pieces opus 93a incorporate texts by Rückert and Goethe, whilst the five opus 104 songs for Four to Six Voices are set to words by Rückert and Klaus Groth.

This 2CD set is devoted to songs performed by the popular soprano Melanie Holliday, a singer who continues to have a successful and varied career on stage and in television. It includes music from light opera and musicals and features famous duets with the likes of René Kollo and Rudolf Schock. The soprano Melanie Holliday has achieved her greatest popularity in Japan, where she was seen as embodying in song the light entertainment of Europe and the USA represented by Viennese operetta and Broadway musicals. In Japan, she also became the face of the global company Seiko, which has sent sales of her recordings to stratospheric levels.

Carole Dawn Reinhart was the first woman to make a name for herself worldwide as a trumpet soloist. This 2CD set features her as soloist with the Munich Philharmonic in the trumpet concertos of Leopold Mozart, Hummel, Telemann and Haydn. It also includes important works from the Baroque era, in which she is joined by the German Bach Soloists and the Amsterdam Chamber Orchestra.

Born in America, the trumpet virtuoso Carole Dawn Reinhart began her European career in Vienna and Berlin. The performances presented here are still considered to be of a very high standard.

The three CDs presented here showcase the vocal talents of the great soprano Mirella Freni in her most successful stage roles. Pride of place naturally goes to Mimì (La Bohème), closely followed by Liù (Turandot), Micaëla (Carmen) and Violetta (La Traviata), but there are also parts like Butterfly, which she never sang on stage, and interesting recordings from the early years of her international career.

Even the normally reserved Herbert von Karajan grew ecstatic when Mirella Freni was the topic of conversation. His high opinion of her was surpassed, nevertheless, by the world elite of opera critics who spoke of the “golden rain” that her voice poured out over her listeners. Her unique voice and her consummate vocal technique put Mirella Freni in a class of her own among 20th century sopranos.

The German composer Walter Graunfels is one of the forgotten figures of the first half of the 20th century. On this re-mastered recording of a radio performance from 1952 of his spectacular Te Deum, the legendary Günter Wand, a great champion of his music from the time, conducts the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and soloists Leonie Rysanek and Helmut Melchert.

In the German musical world of the 1920s and ’30s Walter Braunfels was a central figure and his successes were equal to those of his older colleague Richard Strauss. Many great conductors of the time, including Fritz Busch, Hans Knappertsbusch, Otto Klemperer and Bruno Walter, were keen to promote his music. Sadly, being half Jewish, Braunfels was one of the artists ostracised by the Nazis and was forced into hiding. Although after the war interest in the composer and his music waned, the conductor Günter Wand was one of his great admirers and from 1945 took it upon himself to bring Braunfels’s works to the attention of the public.

This recording of Braunfel’s massive Te Deum for Mixed Choir, Soprano, Tenor, Great Orchestra and Organ, op. 32, produced for a series of special concerts by Northwest German Radio, was made in 1952 on the occasion of the composer’s 70th birthday, and features Wand conducting the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra with soloists Leonie Rysanek and Helmut Melchert.