In the year 1688, when the 52-year-old Georg Daniel Speer, son of a reputed peltmonger family of Breslau, had his 'Musicalisch-Türckischer Eulen-Spiegel' published in Ulm, he was an organist and assistant teacher in South Germany and already had an eventful life behind him. At the age of 18, he had set off through the Carpathian Mountains to Spisz (located in the north-east of present-day Slovakia). Throughout the following years, he worked as a mercenary for various armies, once as an army drummer, then as a bugler in the war of Hungary against the Turks. Finally, he reached Constantinople in the company of a 'high-born lord'.

Mit insgesamt 15 Studioalben (von denen sie mit 7 die Top 10 der deutschen Longplay-Charts enterte) hat Michelle in den zurückliegenden drei Jahrzehnten den deutschen Schlager wie kaum eine andere Künstlerin geprägt und sich mit ihrer sympathisch unangepassten, direkten Art zu einer der beliebtesten und erfolgreichsten Musikerinnen des Landes entwickelt.

Musik verbindet - und das in allen Bereichen. Darum erhalten Sie hier jetzt eine musikalische Jukebox vollgepackt mit einem großen Mix an Schlagern und zeitlosen Oldie-Klassikern zum Immer-Wieder-Anhören. Hier ist für jeden Geschmack etwas dabei. Wählen Sie selbst aus dieser CD-Sammlung Ihre persönliches Lieblings-CD. Vertreten sind Musiker, die die Welt mit ihrer Musik geprägt haben und uns damit viele Erinnerungen schenken. Mit dabei: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Vicky Leandros, Aretha Franklin, Jürgen Marcus, Roland Kaiser und viele andere.

Im Gegensatz zum berühmten späteren Amtsnachfolger J. S. Bach konnte Thomaskantor Sebastian Knüpfer vom politischen Arm ungehindert seinen musikalischen Fähigkeiten freien Lauf lassen. Das Ergebnis sind prächtige Psalm- und Choralkonzerte für den feierlichen Gottesdienst an der Thomaskirche.

"Denn er selbst, der Herr, wird mit einem Feldgeschrei und der Stimme des Erzengels und mit der Posaune Gottes hernieder kommen vom Himmel, und die Toten in Christo werden auferstehen zuerst". Dunkel und drohend lässt Telemann dazu den Donner grollen, den Zorn Gottes. Der Herr, der Richter naht. Es beginnt der Tag des Gerichts. Mit diesen Signalen hebt ein packendes musikalisches Geschehen an, das dem, der sich mit ihm auseinanderzusetzen gewillt ist, eine reiche, symbolgeladene Welt schönster, erfüllender, oft eigenwilliger künstlerischer Bewältigung von Wort und Ton eröffnet.

This recording is of the rarely performed late fourth version of the St. John Passion. Cantus Cölln performs the entire work as a double vocal quartet, producing vocal brilliance and immaculate solo sections. The ensemble is one of the most renowned vocal groups for Renaissance and Baroque music.

45 years after his debut Philips recording of Beethoven’s 9th, Seiji Ozawa returns to this epic masterpiece. The Mito Chamber Orchestra features many international star players including Radek Baborák (horn), Ricardo Morales (clarinet) and Philippe Tondre (oboe). The German baritone Markus Eiche leads a quartet of leading Japanese soloists and the Tokyo Opera Singers in a fascinating performance on a chamber orchestra scale.

We had idols who influenced us, from Jethro Tull to Deep Purple and later Supertramp. From the beginning, we tried to play as well as our Anglo-American colleagues, remembers Thomas Brück, bassist and singer of the Cologne progressive rock band Satin Whale.Generally labelled, as usual with a German rock band in the early 1970s, as Krautrock, the four Cologne musicians already developed on their debut album Desert Places (released in 1974 on the Brain label, the trademark for rock music from Germany) a quite independent and unmistakable sound with high recognition value. Reward of the effort - already the debut album was sufficient that in the same year the listeners of the German Radio Station Südwestfunk voted Satin Whale the most popular band in Germany in the contest Rocksound 74. The musicians then continued on their successful course.Over the years Satin Whale released 5 studio albums, a soundtrack (Die Faust In Der Tasche, 1979, starring Manfred Krug and Ursula Monn), a live double album and a remix album, for which Germany`s producer legend Conny Plank was responsible.Now a complete retrospective of Satin Whale's work is released in two box sets. The first box set The Studio Albums contains the 5 studio albums from the years 1974 to 1981, the second box set (released a few months later) contains the live album, the remix album and the soundtrack. A booklet with plenty of background information by Thomas Zimmermann and photos are documenting the history of the band.

Passion, solitude, nostalgia, the pain of the world, flight, death — these are the typical themes of Romanticism. Konstantin Krimmel has already explored this era of extreme emotion in Saga, his first recital album (Alpha549). Now, with collaborative pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, he plunges even deeper into this cosmos. "I simply love telling stories. Even as a child, I loved listening to old legends and tales", says Krimmel, who is indeed a fabulous storyteller-singer. The two artists have chosen here to compare songs by Franz Schubert and Carl Loewe that embody these great themes. The two composers, both masters of the Lied, had very different destinies: Loewe lived to be 72 years old, more than twice as old as Schubert, who had died aged 31.

Helsinki Baroque Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir led by Aapo Hakkinen join their forces together with an impressive vocal cast, Carolyn Sampson, Benno Schachtner, Werner Gura, Jonathan Sells and Cornelius Uhle, in this unique release of rarely heard choral works by Robert Schumann (1810-1856). This recording includes the world premiere recording of Schumann's 17-minute Adventlied, Op. 71 for soloists, chorus and orchestra, four choral ballades based on texts by Emanuel Geibel, and Schumann's version of Bach's Cantata BWV 105. Robert Schumann wrote in 1850: "Keep in mind that there are also singers, and that the highest in musical expression is achieved through the chorus and orchestra."

A fantasy that turned into a symphony? First and foremost, this double album enshrines the exemplary work of an ensemble whose designation 'Baroque Orchestra' by no means limits it's excursions into later repertories: under the watchful eye of a gifted conductor, the 'Freiburgers' (and co.) offer us a profoundly renewed vision of the Ninth, that myth among myths, that touchstone of a genre in quest of the absolute - and the direct descendant of a much earlier 'Choral Fantasy'. The latter work showcased one of Beethoven's most extraordinary talents: improvisation. Kristian Bezuidenhout has joined forces again with his concerto partners to let us experience this little-known score as if it had just been premiered… then transcribed by Beethoven himself!

This 2-CD set with The Purcell Quartet and a distinguished group of soloists is the third in a series devoted to Bach’s early cantatas and the second focussing on the Weimar period. On an earlier release, International Record Review wrote, ‘The Purcell Quartet and guests are most welcome: even the most distinguished of period performers with larger ensembles can’t achieve the intimacy that the forces here have at their disposal’.

When recording Bach's 199 sacred cantatas, various strategies have been employed to impose meaningful order on them. There's the "everything from BWV 1 to BWV 199" approach, the "everything in the church year" approach, and the less frequently employed "everything in chronological order" approach, adopted here by the Purcell Quartet. In this the second volume in the series, the four works come from Bach's Weimar period, specifically from 1714 and 1715: Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, BWV 12 (Weeping, sighing, sorrowing, crying); Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt, BWV 18 (For as the rain and snow fall down from heaven); Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61 (Now come, the heathen's Savior); and Komm, du süsse Todesstunde, BWV 161 (Come, sweet hour of my death).

Celebrating 80 years of vigorous artistic life with Brahms’ expansive and consoling mass for the dead, Ein deutsches Requiem, the hr-Sinfonieorchester (Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra) under its Chief Conductor Paavo Järvi, is joined by soprano Natalie Dessay, baritone Ludovic Tézier and the Swedish Radio Choir in an interpretation described as “exemplary” by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Lean and austere, yet deeply felt and profoundly spiritual, the first volume in Chandos' series of recordings of Bach's early Cantatas is a complete success. With one player and one singer per part, these are chamber music-scaled performances: it is quite lean and very austere. But that's fine: the musicians are all superb and the music benefits from their individual attention. Indeed, it gains immensely in intensity when a single musician is responsible for each part. Better yet, the music gains enormously in lyricism when those musicians are of the caliber performing here. The Purcell Quartet is arguably the best Baroque chamber ensemble in England and it is augmented here with equally fine additional players.