In addition to his symphonies, Anton Bruckner is best known for his sacred works: his stirring masses and his deeply moving a cappella motets. On this new BR-KLASSIK CD, to mark the Bruckner Year 2024, the Bavarian Radio Chorus and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester conducted by Peter Dijkstra present his Mass No. 2 together with five well-known motets and the two short Aequali for three trombones from 1847.

In this recital, Véronique Gens and Hervé Niquet bring back to life a neglected aspect of France’s Romantic heritage: songs with orchestral accompaniment. Aside from a few pieces by Debussy and Duparc, and Berlioz’s famous Nuits d’été, orchestral mélodies form a virtually forgotten continent. In collaboration with the specialists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, Alpha Classics now revisits these musical landscapes, taking us from Brittany (Hahn) to Persia, whose beauties Fauré and Saint-Saëns exalt in very different ways. Mélodies by Chausson, Gounod and Dubois and rarely heard instrumental pieces by Massenet, Fauré and Fernand de La Tombelle round out the journey with their musical reveries.

Soprano Diana Damrau, dazzling in the operas of Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi and Richard Strauss, also has operetta in her blood. With this album she tours three capital cities of operetta – Vienna, Berlin and Paris – and covers nearly seven decades of musical history. En route she relishes the romance, wit and melodies of numbers by such composers Johann Strauss II, Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Robert Stolz, Paul Abraham, André Messager, Henri Christiné, Oscar Straus and Francis Lopez. Her star guest is tenor Jonas Kaufmann and conducting the Münchner Rundfunkorchester is Ernst Theis, as expert in operetta as he is in symphonic repertoire. “For me, operetta is the most all-embracing genre of music theatre,” says Damrau, “Its indulgence, its yearning, its joyousness and its comedy all touch the heart and show the positive side of life … It rarely fails to work its magic on audiences.”

Puccini’s purely instrumental compositions, whether for orchestra or in the field of chamber music, were almost all written while he was still a student at the Milan Conservatory from 1880 to 1883. These works reflect the musical spirit of the time that shaped the young composer: the melodic influences of his teacher Amilcare Ponchielli and also the impressions left on him by the music of Richard Wagner. At the same time, however, these pieces already point ahead to Puccini the opera composer. It seems only logical, therefore, that many of the themes echoed in them subsequently reappeared in his stage works and became much more famous there than in their original form.

When the Berliner “Funk-Stunde” (“Radio Hour”) went out on the air on October 29, 1923, heralding the start of German radio, the first piece of music to be broadcast live was Fritz Kreisler’s Andantino in the Style of Martini. The fact that the era of the new mass medium began with an imitation of an old musical style is not without a certain irony – and reveals how little attention had been paid to the problem of music on the radio. It was indeed to be a further five years before the radio stations commissioned the first compositions for the medium. Here, under the heading of “generic radio music”, the following genres were defined: “radio suite, musical radio play, radio cantata, radio opera and symphonic light music”. Modern composers such as Paul Hindemith, Ernst Toch and Kurt Weill were all commissioned, along with light entertainment composers such as Edmund Nick, Mischa Spoliansky and Eduard Künneke.

Ivan Repušić made his debut as principal conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra in September 2017 with Giuseppe Verdi's "Luisa Miller". It was followed by "I due Foscari" in October 2018 and "Attila" in October 2019 (the complete recordings have already been released by BR-KLASSIK on CD 900323, 900328 and 900330). His successful cycle of early masterpieces by the Italian opera composer continues with the recent concert performance on April 23, 2023 of Verdi's stage work "I Lombardi" – also at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. Authentic fluidity and vocal splendour are provided here once again by outstanding performers and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. The Munich Radio Orchestra plays under the direction of Ivan Repuŝić. - This highlight of Munich's musical life from the early part of this year has now been released by BR-KLASSIK as a double CD.

29 October 1923 was a date steeped in history. In the middle of a year of political and economic crises, the age of public radio in Germany was ushered in with the first broadcast of the "Berliner Funkstunde" (Berlin Radio Hour) from the attic of an office building on Potsdamer Platz. Radio offered entirely new possibilities for the production and reception of music. The two compositions on this CD not only benefited from these developments but also played an active role in shaping them.

Time and again, composers – well-known and lesser-known – have arranged Franz Schubert's piano songs for orchestra. These versions are not in any way intended to cast doubt upon the powerful quality of the originals, they merely place them in a different light, and/or attempt to make them easier to perform on a larger scale – when an art song cannot be performed in an intimate salon or chamber music hall, it can also make an impact in a large concert hall. Baritone Benjamin Appl has compiled nineteen such arrangements from the 19th and 20th centuries for this new CD from BR-KLASSIK. The Münchner Rundfunkorchester, conducted by Oscar Jockel, provides accompaniment that is subtle and in keeping with the work.

'It would be difficult to find a simpler and more poignant subject', Massenet remarked during the composition of Ariane, a vast score in five acts premiered at the Paris Opera in October 1906. The libretto by Catulle Mendes is part ancient drama, part symbolist poem, and sets Phaedra and Ariadne, two sisters in love with Theseus, in violent conflict with each other. This epic work does not shrink from relating the combat against the Minotaur, from showing a ship tossed by the raging billows, nor even from transporting the audience to the Underworld where Persephone reigns. Despite its flamboyant orchestration, its grandiose scenography and its triumphant premiere, Ariane remains one of the few Massenet operas never recorded until now. The young Egyptian soprano Amina Edris takes the title role with ardour and passion, surrounded by a cast well versed in the specificities of the French style. The Bavarian Radio Chorus provides dedicated support in the epic scenes, under the baton of Laurent Campellone, a great champion of Massenet.

Gunnar de Frumerie grew up in a musical family. His mother was a skilled pianist who gave him his first piano lessons, and his father was an architect with a great and lively interest in music. Gunnar’s siblings and later several other family members also became good musicians. He himself appeared early as a pianist and started composing early on. At the age of nineteen, he won all three prizes in a com- position competition organized by the Hirsch piano store in 1927. He had submitted four piano pieces but only written the manuscript to one of the pieces himself; the others were written by his mother, father, and sister, so that the hand-writing would not reveal the author. The jury found all the pieces equally good. The surprise was therefore great when it was discovered that they had the same author. Unofficially, it was said that if there had been a fourth prize, he would have received it as well. It is music written by a young man who was still a student at the Royal Academy of Music. He made his public debut as a pianist in January 1929, playing, among other things, his own works in the main hall of the Music Academy.

BR-KLASSIK presents the live recording of a concert performance of Hindemith's opera "Cardillac" from the Prinzregententheater in Munich on October 13, 2013, in memory of the great conductor Stefan Soltész. Soltész died unexpectedly on July 22, 2022 - exactly one year ago - after collapsing while conducting Richard Strauss' "Die schweigsame Frau" at the Munich National Theatre. The Hungarian-born Austrian conductor was General Music Director of the Essen Philharmonic and Artistic Director of the Essen Aalto Music Theatre from 1997 to 2013. Both institutions were decisively shaped by him and received several awards during his era. He was a welcome guest conductor with the orchestras in Munich. In addition to the standard works from Mozart to Strauss, an important focus of his opera repertoire was classical modernism.

BR-KLASSIK presents the live recording of a concert performance of Hindemith's opera "Cardillac" from the Prinzregententheater in Munich on October 13, 2013, in memory of the great conductor Stefan Soltész. Soltész died unexpectedly on July 22, 2022 - exactly one year ago - after collapsing while conducting Richard Strauss' "Die schweigsame Frau" at the Munich National Theatre. The Hungarian-born Austrian conductor was General Music Director of the Essen Philharmonic and Artistic Director of the Essen Aalto Music Theatre from 1997 to 2013. Both institutions were decisively shaped by him and received several awards during his era. He was a welcome guest conductor with the orchestras in Munich. In addition to the standard works from Mozart to Strauss, an important focus of his opera repertoire was classical modernism.

At around autumn 1809, the management of Vienna’s imperial Hofburg Theatre commissions Beethoven to compose the incidental music for Goethe’s play Egmont, which premiered in Mainz in 1789. The plot of this tragedy is very much in keeping with the patriotic trend: it is set in Brussels, which is threatened by Spanish troops, and focuses on resistance against oppression and foreign rule. The hero, Egmont, places too much trust in the common sense and discretion of those in power – and this is his tragic mistake. In good faith, he allows himself to be lured into a deadly trap by the sinister Duke Alba, to whom he even explains his ideals of freedom and just rule. His lover Klärchen fails to persuade the cowardly citizens of Brussels to take violent action to free him, and, in her desperation, she commits suicide. What remains is the vision of a future freedom and victory – one that appears to Egmont in the form of Klärchen as he awaits execution in his dungeon.

The music of Peter von Winter has disappeared into obscurity. His catalogue of works focus predominantly on operas, but this new recording includes Symphonies and Entr’Actes performed by the Munich Radio Orchestra under Johannes Moesus.