Schoenberg: Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten, Op. 15 (The Book of the Hanging Gardens)

Christian Gerhaher is the outstanding Lieder singer of our time. His recordings of the art songs and song cycles by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Mahler possess reference status, and have been awarded many major prizes. In the UK alone his awards include the 2009 BBC Music Magazine Award for Vocal Performance, a Gramophone award in 2006, and in 2011 he won the Olivier Outstanding Achievement in Opera award.

Gerhaher now presents his first ‘concept album’, which is at the same time his first album of songs by multiple composers in 10 years.

‘Ferne Geliebte’ (Distant Beloved) juxtaposes compositions from the two great Vienna schools, Viennese Classicism on the one hand, represented by Haydn and Beethoven, and the Second Viennese School with Schönberg and Berg on the other. The connection between them all is their preoccupation with loneliness, longing and hopeless love.

Christian Gerhaher is accompanied on the piano by his permanent duo partner Gerold Huber.

Leila Pfister has worked with Judit Polgar for many years and on this CD she interprets songs that that mark the change to the modern musical age. Honegger’s “Quatre Chansons” reflect the phase of reorientation during western music during World War II. Old and new, traditional and exotic serve as inspiration for a thoroughly heterogenous cycle.

The Canadian musician Glenn Gould was undoubtedly one of the greatest pianists of all time. To mark the 75th anniversary of his birth, and the 25th anniversary of his death, Sony BMG Masterworks presents this seminal artist’s vinyl recordings as re-mastered CDs, designed to replicate the exact artwork of the original gramophone records in miniaturised form. Already issued as part of an 80-CD box set (88697130942), these albums are now being made available individually.

This 4-CD boxed set presents historic recordings of works by Arnold Schoenberg, the founding father of 20th-century modern music, and his most prominent pupils, Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

These recordings, made between 1949 and 1965, comprise works which were written between 1906 and 1950, thus portraying practically the entire era of the Viennese School. Not only do they trace the multi-layered compositional developments of the Viennese School, but they are also significant musical and historic documents of multi-faceted interpretational approaches towards this music.

The Viennese School was formed before the First World War as a movement in music attempting to unite radical expressive techniques and traditional form concepts, demanding specially trained interpreters for this undertaking. In these RIAS recordings, first-rate artists from the circle of the three Viennese composers can be heard: Rudolf Kolisch, Eduard Steuermann, Winfried Zillig and Else C. Kraus were immediately shaped by their teacher, Schoenberg, whereas others, such as Peter Stadlen and Tibor Varga were in contact with the composer, or with Webern or Berg. Ferenc Fricsay or Suzanne Danco, on the other hand, did not belong to the circle of the Viennese School and its performance teachings. Their interpretations are of particular interest as they brought these works to life, unprejudiced by performance traditions of this music which, at that time, was hardly performed.

The comparison of the two recordings of Schoenberg’s 'Fantasy for Violin and Piano', Op. 47, with Kolisch and Varga respectively, and the sensational interpretation of Schoenberg’s 'Pierrot Lunaire' by the Munich singer Irmen Burmester alongside an outstanding instrumental ensemble under the direction of Josef Rufer (1949) are particular highlights of this anthology.

These radio recordings were made possible thanks to the indefatigable initiative of the music writer Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt in his role as Editor of New Music at the RIAS. He and his colleague Josef Rufer, who can be heard as conductor, ensured that those musicians who had returned from exile would be engaged to contribute to these radio documents. By doing so, Stuckenschmidt and Rufer intended, on the one hand, to continue the tradition of Schoenberg’s stay in Berlin from 1925 until 1933, and, on the other hand, to provide the music of the Viennese School with greater resonance within public awareness.

This edition is complemented by the publication of a text by Prof Dr Rudolf Stephan, the doyen of research into the Viennese School in Germany after the Second World War and editor of the complete works of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. He reflects on his comprehensive experiences with the music of the Viennese School, stretching back to the years immediately following the end of the war.

First complete recording of the Songs for Voice and Piano by Arnold Schönberg on a special priced 4 CD set.

Includes Gurre-Lieder (Early Version for voice and piano), Fifteen poems from “The book of the hanging gardens”, Brettl-Lieder and Early Songs.

This set documents Glenn Gould the concert pianist in unprecedented depth. The recordings range in date from 1951, when Gould was just eighteen years old, to 1960, a few years before he gave up concert life for good. They include all of the genres in which he performed live—solo works, songs, chamber music, concertos. And they cover almost the whole range of his repertoire: the earliest work represented here, by Bach, dates from the early eighteenth century; the latest, by Ernst Krenek (who befriended Gould, and outlived him), was composed in 1943. In between are composers who were central to the young Gould’s repertoire: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schoenberg, and Webern. Included here are some of his warhorses but also several works of which he never made an authorized studio recording or broadcast, as well as a few interpretations that differ significantly from those in his official releases.