Brahms / Franck / Mertz / Wanderer Guitar Duo - Bahms Schubert Franck Mertz: Der Wanderer - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This selection of some of Wagner's finest orchestral excerpts opens with the 'storm-swept ballad' of Der fliegende Holleñnder, the opera which launched his epoch-defining later masterpieces. The entire span of Der Ring des Nibelungen is represented in this program, from the luminous rainbow bridge which leads the gods to Valhalla in Das Rheingold, the urgent drama of Die Walkure, and the atmospheric repose of the Forest Murmurs in Siegfried, to the tragic depths of Siegfried's Funeral March. This recording has been praised for it's 'radiant sensuousness'. (Gramophone) Volumes 2 and 3 in this series are available on 8.572768 and 8.572769.

Fuchs / Drobinsky / Blumenthal - Cello Sonatas Nos. 1 & 2 [COMPACT DISCS] date 07/14/1994

Geister Duo take their name from Robert Schumann's last piano work, the Geistervariationen, whose theme Brahms, a close friend of the Schumanns, used to compose his own Variations Op.23 for piano four hands. This recording proposes a bridge between these two composers. The record is rounded out with Dvorák's Bohemian Forests (Aus Dem Böhmerwalde). A relatively unknown work, it is for the duo, a masterpieces full of folk inspiration and rich in a variety of colors of the twilight of the 19th century.