Chamber Music & Recitals

The opportunity to celebrate, in 2020, the 250th birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven alongside the 30th anniversary of German reunification is akin to a gift for a label that has been instrumental in preserving the recording heritage of the GDR, offering as...

The operatic output of Stanislaw Moniuszko is most often associated with national themes and numerous references to patriotism and propagation of patterns related to the Polish culture. It turns out, however, that the composer's main goal was not always...

The Opera-Oratorio "Passio Christi" narrates the events of the Lord's Passion from the Last Supper to the dawn of Resurrection. The story is told through the feelings and emotions of some of the characters who took part in it in various ways: Peter,...

The opera Polydorus penned 289 years ago last found a place in the performance program of the G?nsemarkt Opera in Hamburg in 1735. The libretto by Johann Samuel M?ller depicts exchanges of identity, avaricious kings, queens bent on bloodthirsty revenge,...

The opera opens with a Wizard working his mystical ways and summoning the spirits of air, fire and water in the form of a brilliant ballet. His plan is to wed the Princess who is destined to select a husband that very day. An older Mother enters with a...

The opera Faniska, which premiered at the K?rntnertor Theatre in Vienna in 1806, is said to have been enthusiastically received by both Haydn and Beethoven. The libretto is available in German and Italian, and is based on the melodrama Les Mines de...

The opera centers on the love affair of Horatio Nelson, and Emma, Lady Hamilton. Completed in 1951, it was first performed in full in 1954. The British Embassy in Naples is the scene of a birthday party for Nelson, arranged to celebrate his victory at...

The opening of Venice's first opera house, the Teatro di San Cassiano, in 1637, was one of the major events in the history of opera. The protagonists of these new operas henceforth represented all the social categories making up this public and who, in...

The opening of Peter Grimes in 1945 changed British music and international opera forever. Amongst a host of premiere recordings, this set collects for the first time the 1948 scenes from Grimes (with original cast and conductor), the 1947 Glyndebourne...

The only surviving version of Carlo Gesualdo's First Book of Madrigals was printed in spring 1594 by the typographer Vincenzo Baldini. At the time, the composer was twenty-eight years old and had just left behind the murder of his wife, in 1590. In this...

The only surviving radio broadcast of Prokofiev playing his own music, plus a recital of some of his piano music by the great Russian pianist who served as his Ammanuensis1. Sonata No. 4, Op. 29 2. Visions Fugitive Op. 22 3. Music for Children Op. 65...

The one-act opera Djamileh by Georges Bizet set to the libretto by Louis Gallet tells an oriental love story between the slave named Djamileh and Cairo sultan Haroun. The plot, bringing to mind the atmosphere of One Thousand and One Nights, is a quite...