Deutches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin - Ein Heldenleben & Ameriques - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Here loving service is done to a composer who is perhaps Sweden's most important symphonist and certainly it's most popular one. This is what FonoForum wrote of Vol. 2 of our edition of symphonic works by Hugo Alfvén, who numbers among the most productive and most versatile Swedish cultural personalities. Alfvén's Symphony No. 2 brought him a success that he termed his definitive artistic breakthrough. A second performance was held during the same year, and it was not long before it was also being presented in foreign countries. This work became his most popular symphony and the first of his compositions to appear in print (1900). At the time national Romantic tones had long dominated music by Swedish composers, while Alfvén adopted a taste that was more Continental - a fact that reviewers registered with astonishment. His Swedish Rhapsody No. 3, a composition featuring impressive work with motifs from Swedish folk music, rounds off this album.

Little is known about the life of Dietrich Steffkins. He worked during the apogee of solo music practice and was considered an extraordinary viola da gamba virtuoso. His compositions are collected in some funds together with the works of other musicians, and are still to be fully rediscovered. The purpose of this album is to testify to the compositional practice of an author who still offers great expressive possibilities through the research and use of the viola used in it's various forms.

Diana Krall's 12th album QUIET NIGHTS is one of her most successful to date This is the Deluxe edition which features a bonus DVD of live performance footage Including the first commercially available performance by Diana Krall & Elvis Costello.