"wolfgang Paul"

Wolfgang Muthspiel is an Austrian guitarist, composer, and founder/owner of Material Records. His intuitive, probing style has made him a celebrated, in-demand sideman since the 1980s. He has worked with Gary Burton, Youssou N’Dour, Gary Peacock, Dave Liebman, Paul Motian, and dozens more.

After almost a decade, Hyperion is delighted to welcome back the world-famous St Paul’s Cathedral Choir under its new director of music, Hyperion artist and also director of The Cardinall’s Musick, Andrew Carwood. Joined by the St Paul’s Mozart Orchestra and a quartet of renowned soloists, Carwood leads sparkling performances of a selection of Mozart’s sacred music. Although they were commissioned to be sung at church services in Salzburg, all these compositions are suffused with Mozart’s typically unerring sense of dramatic pacing and a sensuous, operatic treatment of solo lines, as well as crisp and energetic choral writing.

All the music on this Naxos release by violinist Reto Kuppel and pianist Wolfgang Manz receives its world premiere here. Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) was known mostly as a singer and hardly at all as a composer, and the music of her son, Paul Viardot, was conservative even in his youth. This all might seem pretty obscure, but the truth of the matter is that the program has a good deal of freshness and charm. Start right in with the biggest surprise of all, the Violin Sonatina in A minor of Pauline, whom Liszt admired.

Beethoven’s contribution to the development of German song was significant – he wrote some 90 songs – but it has inevitably been overshadowed by his mastery of orchestral and instrumental music. Unlike Mozart and Schubert’s works in the genre, little is known about the composition and performance of Beethoven’s songs, but he is known to have greatly respected Goethe, as his settings amply show, not least in the incidental music to Egmont, from which Freudvoll und leidvoll is taken.

“Salon music” became a thing in 19th-century Europe, dominated by piano works, for the obvious reason that the piano was the dominant piece of furniture in the salons of those wealthy and/or privileged enough to even have such a thing as a “salon”. But the violin wasn’t far behind as an instrument of choice–after the voice, at least in part because its tone and potential for sensuality and charm, along with impressive virtuosity and emotional expression (features important to and expected by those who attended these salon gatherings) was equal to the voice, and even greater in range and–in the hands and fingers of a capable player–in its ability to dazzle with technical feats.

Wolfgang Rihm - Et Lux - Huelgas Ensemble, Minguet Quartett, Paul Van Nevel (2015) {ECM New Series 2404}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 221 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 146 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (pdf+jpg) -> 9 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2015 ECM Records | ECM New Series 2404
Classical / Contemporary Classical / Choral / Chamber Music / Strings

From a composer whose vast output plunders the stylistic gamut of western musical history and then some, here is a single movement requiem full of clean lines and troubled introspection. Et Lux is a 2009 composition for voices and string quartet in which Rihm dwells on certain phrases of the Latin death mass – particularly the notion of eternal light, which he calls “comforting yet deeply disturbing”. The same could be said of Et Lux as a whole. Tropes waft in from across the ages: this music treads the line of tangibility, with sudden rushes of anger or fondness and the messy half-memories that come with grief. The strings complete phrases that the singers can’t seem to summon. Conductor Paul van Nevel doubles the vocal parts to create broad, generous textures that sound lovely and lush against the strings’ icy clarity – all qualities that ECM’s engineers are expert at capturing.

Wann haben Sie schon einmal in einem Konzert Musik von Leopold, Wolfgang Amadeus und Franz Xaver Mozart gehört? Besonders Werke von Franz Xaver – Wolfgang Amadeus’ jüngstem Sohn – sind nahezu in Vergessenheit geraten. Den diffusen Anforderungen, die sich mit dem idealisierten Bild seines Vaters verbanden, konnte er nicht gerecht werden, und mit zunehmendem Alter dürfte er immer mehr darunter gelitten haben, den gleichen Beruf wie sein Vater ergriffen zu haben. Spannend ist sein Klavierquartett in g-Moll op. 1, besonders in der Gegenüberstellung mit dem seines Vaters.

The circumstances under which Mozart started to write uncompleted Singspiel Zaïde, some time in 1779 or 1780 in Salzburg, are not clear. It may have been in an effort to get a hearing at the new German Theater in Vienna, but by 1781 he realized that a serious opera of this kind was not suitable, given the Viennese preference for comedy. He then abandoned the project, and it was not staged until 1866 in an adaptation by Gollmick, with an Overture and closing section by Johann Anton Andrè. Further adaptations followed, but the version presented here consists only of the music Mozart wrote, adding up to about 80 percent of what the completed opera might have contained.