Theatrum Affectuum / Bohlen / Matsunaga - Most Ravishing Things - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

This is the third recording to represent Giulio Prandi's interpretative research on the great Italian choral repertory, after the special and successful releases of works by Jommelli and Pergolesi, cornerstones of the golden age of the Neapolitan school. Faced with the challenge posed by Rossini's essential masterpiece, Prandi has chosen an original and courageous path, following deep reflection. The new critical edition of the Rossini Foundation of Pesaro is used here for the first time in a recording studio; three rare instruments roughly contemporary with the work - pianos by rard and Pleyel, a D bain harmonium - have been selected to ensure an authentic, vital, luminous sound, guaranteed by the artistry of the keyboardist and professor at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Francesco Corti; four illustrious soloists have been engaged Sandrine Piau, Jos Maria Lo Monaco, Edgardo Rocha and Christian Senn. Finally, the fundamental contribution of the Coro Ghislieri, an acknowledged world-class ensemble in early repertory, sets the seal on a recording of rare merit.

The Belgian pianist Thérèse Malengreau has a particular interest in the relationship between music and the visual arts. With her first on BIS she offers us a rare opportunity to acquaint ourselves with the music of Hans Erich Apostel, banned as 'degenerate' by the Nazis in 1938, and a rarity in performance ever since. At the same time, her album allows us insight into the interplay between composers and artists in other disciplines during the first decades of the twentieth century, in the context of movements such as Der Blaue Reiter, the arts magazine Der Sturm or the Vienna Workshop. The three works here were inspired by artwork by Otto Kokoschka and Alfred Kubin, two of them appearing on album for the first time. In his Op. 1, the Zehn Variationen, Apostel translates 10 drawings by Kokoschka into sounds - but as Malengreau suggests in her own liner notes, what the music describes is the varying degrees of expressivity and intensity of the drawings, rather than the images themselves. The closing work consists of 60 very brief sketches (less than 40 seconds on average), in which Apostel is reacting to Kubin's drawings (caricatures rather than portraits) of nuns and witches, generals or huntsmen. Apostel completed it in 1948-49, but as early as 1945 it provided material for what is probably his best-known work the ten pieces that make up the 15-minute long Kubiniana.

The Principality of Liechtenstein celebrates it's anniversary - and the Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra celebrates with a new in super audio quality! The orchestra's founding anniversaries are only one year and an important zero apart while in 2018 the orchestra was in it's 30th season, in 2019 the fourth smallest country in Europe - and the sixth smallest in the world - can look back on 300 eventful years. Under the baton of conductor Florian Krumpöck, the Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra performs the Symphony in D Minor op. 10 InchWallensteinInch by the European romantic Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839-1901).