Grieg / Cammarano / Deljavan - Complete Violin Sonatas Op. 18 & 13 & 45 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

In the early 19th century, while Haydn and Mozart remained revered, many of their once admired contemporaries quickly fell into oblivion and with them much delightful, finely crafted music. In a recital centered on songs of parting, Carolyn Sampson and Kristian Bezuidenhout seek to make some amends to this. They open with August Bernhard Valentin Herbing's Montan und Lalage, a miniature opera for one singer, with the keyboard-as-orchestra providing the scenery and stage action. Giving Bezuidenhout's fortepiano the recognition it deserves, the program also includes no less than two songs dedicated to the instrument, by composers we rarely hear of today Friedrich Gottlob Fleischer and Christian Michael Wolff. But even though Mozart and Haydn are still household names, it isn't on account of their solo songs, which makes the performers' decision to also throw light on their less familiar work a welcome one. The program features four songs each by them, including Mozart's Lied der Trennung (Song of Parting), which has lent it's name to the entire program, as well as Haydn's Arianna a Naxos, a dramatic cantata in which the Cretan princess Ariadne expresses her love of the Greek hero Theseus... and her agony when he sails off, leaving her alone on the island of Naxos.

Johann Bernhard Bach's four Orchestral Suites, composed for the court orchestra of the cultured duke of Saxony-Eisenach, are amongst the most varied and sophisticated musical works of the high baroque period in Middle Germany. It was not by chance that Georg Philipp Telemann, a one-time Kapellmeister at Eisenach, commented retrospectively InchI have to praise this orchestra, arranged for the most part according to the French style, for it surpassed the very famous Parisian opera orchestra.Inch From 1703, Bernard Bach was engaged as harpsichordist in this noble orchestra. His Orchestral Suites provide the only surviving InchsoundtrackInch of the illustrious musical life at the Eisenach court during the 1710s and 20s. And what a soundtrack cosmopolitan, and truly European, with sparkling virtuosic brilliance, as if written by a fiery Italian, whilst displaying the elegant taste of a noble Frenchman. In other words, the Inchmixed tasteInch, for which the best German composers of the late baroque period were famous, in it's finest form. Little wonder then that Bernhard Bach's suites became core repertoire for Johann Sebastian Bach's Leipzig Collegium Musicum, also influencing his compositions. All this provides sufficient motivation for the Thuringian Bach Collegium to continue their exploration through the Middle German courts for their second recording and, with unbridled enthusiasm in their music-making, to bring these jewels of the early Thuringian orchestral music back to life. Bon Appetit!

Grieg / Brankovic / Beikircher - Violin Sonatas [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/01/2011