Weinberg - Chamber Music - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

For his new CD InchMusic is the best consolationInch, trumpeter Joachim K. Schäfer uses a quote by Martin Luther as the title. And the choice of music is also comforting baroque concertos - mostly in major key - by Telemann, Albinoni, Vivaldi and others, interspersed with Bach chorale arrangements. He has chosen the organist Matthias Eisenberg as his virtuoso accompanist, and the two of them have chosen the Grünlichtenberg church for their recording, where there is a romantic organ by Christian Friedrich Göthel from 1867. This is not only a beautiful historical instrument, it is also in the Romantic tuning on concert pitch a = 432 Hertz. Joachim K. Schäfer is a great advocate of this lower tuning, as it was common in the 19th century (today's tuning to 440 hertz and even higher was only developed in the 20th century to bring more brilliance and tonal sharpness to the orchestra). In Schäfer's opinion, the lower tuning corresponds much more to the natural vibration conditions found in nature - the instruments sound better and the listeners also react with a much greater sense of well-being.

This presents music played at Charles University in Prague according to mid-15th-century sources, following the Hussite wars and the institution's renovation. The album provides a wide array of liturgical music, sacred pieces by young clerics, as well as music the university students played for entertainment. It features Gregorian chant, anonymous creations and compositions by Bernard de Cluny, Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz and Antonio da Cividale. Contemporary university students would be hard pressed to imagine life without social networking on their smartphones. In the 15th century, the role of social networking was pursued by communal singing, bringing the students together and being part of their everyday life on a variety of occasions. The foundation charter of the Recek College of Charles University in Prague (1438) stipulated for the students the duty to perform music every day within the liturgical services. On the other hand, secular music, including instrumental and dance, was prohibited (especially playing resonant instruments, singing in the vernacular languages and ribald songs), but the students constantly bent the rules. The liturgy prescribed for each day of the week served as the basis for the repertoire of the present recording, which, however, also affords scope to the secular music that in all likelihood the students used to play during their leisure time beyond the walls of the college. The unique album of Schola Gregoriana Pragensis and their very special guest, the clavisimbalist Corina Marti (La Morra), is being released along with an extensive study providing a comprehensive depiction of the 15th-century university music life. The fruit of the collaboration between musicians and musicologists from across Europe is a book with an album, an artefact that will become a natural part of the library of every connoisseur and lover of medieval music.

The recent of the world premiere of Sergei Rachmaninoff Complete Works for Piano Duo on cpo with over 150 minutes of music on two pianos and for four hands on one piano immediately rose to No. 1 on the jpc charts. Now the famous and successful Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo turns to the American composer Amy Beach. Her compositional oeuvre marks a high point within the great phase of consolidation experienced by art music in the United States between the Civil War and World War I. Amy Beach was not the first American woman who composed or the first America woman who earned money with her compositions; but she created a stir in the music world by forging ahead into genres in which previously only men had distinguished themselves. However, it was above all the piano that was Amy Beach's lifelong companion. She honored her instrument with solo compositions in a total of twenty-six opus numbers distributed equally over her entire compositional career from the 1880s to the 1930s. Even though her music for piano four hands or for two pianos is limited to a few compositions, they just as positively attest to their author's talent as do her works for two hands. The original version of Amy Beach's Variations on Balkan Themes op. 60 is her most extensive composition for piano two hands and the one that is the most challenging in playing technique. At the same time, the variations represent one of her most significant endorsements of folk music.