Pairing the music of Schoenberg with the composer’s own paintings, "Expressionist Music" is a new album featuring remarkable interpretations of Schoenberg from soprano Claire Booth with pianist Christopher Glynn. This evocative album explores the expanses of human emotion through Arnold Schoenberg's captivating songs, each corresponding to Schoenberg's paintings. The particular works chosen for this recording encompass themes of expectation, flesh, nocturne, hatred, satire, thinking, and tears, providing a comprehensive journey through the complexities of human nature. Schoenberg's profound connection to painting is reflected in these songs, unveiling shifting colours, raw emotions, and profound sensuality.

The program presented on this CD, featuring songs and ballads by Carl Loewe along with texts and poems by Heinrich Heine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Max Frisch, and Ingeborg Bachmann, reflects the human relationship with the sea in various ways. Carl Loewe, who as cantor and organist was an important figure in Stettin in the mid 1800s, was so inspired by the sea during his travels that he wrote many songs and ballads that thematise the sea. This live recording of a song recital is one of the programs where the art forms of song interpretation and recitation complement each other to create a comprehensive dramaturgy. Nina Röder‘s paintings also inspire the listener visually, expanding the horizons of the program. The viewer is led to enchanted places in the works from her series „Über das Verschwinden” (About Disappearance) and encounters mysterious beings. This visual yet poetic perspective completes the circle by confronting the transience of humanity and nature – a theme more relevant than ever in times of climate change and rising sea levels.

Baritone Andrè Schuen began his Deutsche Grammophon career in 2020 with a critically acclaimed reading of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, recorded with his duo partner Daniel Heide. In 2022, the pair added Schwanengesang to their discography, a recording that went on to win the Solo Song category in the 2023 Opus Klassik Awards. Now they complete their trilogy of Schubert’s major song cycles with a thoughtful and moving interpretation of the 24 inward-looking songs that make up the composer’s Winterreise.

Music developed relentlessly in the tense environment of the 19th century. Many composers broke away from firmly established conventions, taking ever greater liberties and forming a counterpart to the industrial and technical revolutions taking place at the same time. Singer Pur traces that arc of tension in this programme, in which the individual composers no doubt differed widely in their attitudes to faith and spirituality. Anton Bruckner, known for his almost childishly blind faith, probably struggled far less with his attitude towards God than composers such as Franz Liszt or Max Reger.

For the second Graupner-focused release from the Kirchheimer BachConsort, the ensemble perform solo and dialogue cantatas by this exceptional composer. With his inexhaustible imagination he was able to create cantatas rich in contrasts and with variability, originality, diversified instrumentation, opulence, and drama.

David Greco and Erin Helyard present the first Australian recording of Schubert’s masterpiece on period instruments.

The Passio secundum Joannem or St John Passion[a] (German: Johannes-Passion), BWV 245, is a Passion or oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, the earliest of the surviving Passions by Bach. It was written during his first year as director of church music in Leipzig and was first performed on 7 April 1724, at Good Friday Vespers at the St. Nicholas Church.

Sie ist die Königin der Instrumente, sie befindet sich im UNESCO-Welterbe Trierer Dom, zählt zum immateriellen Welterbe der deutschen Orgeln und sie wird in diesem Jahr 50 Jahre alt: Die große Schwalbennestorgel der Firma Klais. Begeben Sie sich mit Domorganist Josef Still auf die Dom-Galerie und werfen Sie exklusiv im Jubiläumsjahr einen Blick hinter die Kulissen und auf das Meisterwerk der Orgelbaukunst, kleine Hörproben inklusive.

Eberhard Kummer was an Austrian concert singer, lawyer and an expert of medieval music from Vienna. Kummer was born in Krems an der Donau. He played the hurdy-gurdy, the harp and the guitar, and made important contribution to the restoration of medieval and the Austrian folksong. He received training as a classical bass-baritone. After an initial career as classical singer, he gradually specialized in restoring traditional Austrian folksongs and original medieval music from Europe, such as the German epic Nibelungenlied or medieval Minnelieder.

Erich J. Wolff’s name will be unfamiliar to many but in the 1920s an authoritative reference book on popular art song ranked his compositions fourth, behind Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler. The first volume in this series of Wolff’s Complete Songs introduces a composer of astonishing gifts whose Romanticism is as daring as his formal sophistication. Wolff’s songs are lyrical, serene and full of melodic beauty, coupled with piano writing that is both virtuosic and atmospheric.

In a diary entry from the year 1827, Robert Schumann writes: Solitude is the intimate encounter with oneself, […], it is an active, thoughtful, creative tranquility, the active state of the soul amidst the body's passivity. - Solitude is the nursemaid of all great spirits, the mother of heroes, the companion of the poet, the friend of the arts.

A musical journey through Renaissance Europe via pieces that were highly popular and whose melodies were reused and varied by some of the best composers of the time.

Hailed by the international music press and highly praised by music connoisseurs, the recordings of Bach’s entire body of vocal music made by the Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ), its conductor Masaaki Suzuki and numerous prestigious soloists, many of whom have remained remarkably loyal to the undertaking from the outset, are here brought together to form the only complete set of these works in high-resolution format.

One of the key German composers before Bach with more than 500 surviving individual pieces, Heinrich Schutz wrote mainly church music, and is credited with bringing the Italian style to Germany and continuing its evolution from the Renaissance into the early Baroque. Although he lived most of his long life in Germany, in his twenties Schutz made two visits to Venice.

“The Wagner Project” was recorded at the KammerMusikKöln’s “10+1” anniversary concert under the motto of Richard Wagner. With this album the ensemble, consisting of 15 instrumentalist and vocal soloist soprano Kathrin Zukowski, presents arrangements for chamber music ensemble of several rarities by the composer. Among other pieces, it contains the world premiere of Wagner’s extremely rarely performed French Songs in an arrangement commissioned from Simone Fontanelli coupled with the second public performance of Fontanelli’s arrangement of Wagner’s Wesendonck-Lieder, a further commission by KammerMusikKöln. In addition, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll is presented, in the composer’s own chamber music arrangement, a particularly gratifying piece for small ensemble.