Bob Szajner Digital Ensemble Skater's Waltz 40

You have asked me to introduce the pieces featured on this CD. I am very happy to do so, and it seems to me, if you agree, that the best way is to do this is in the form of a dialogue, like those con­ versations we so often have, while walking or drinking a cup of coffee, about the meaning behind our writing music. In recent years, one theme has arisen more and more frequently in what you say: the question of extension in time. A central theme for music, which as we all know is an art that lives in the temporal dimension. Here we can listen to three compositions that you wrote over the last decades: Il dodicesimo studio (2013), Senti! Aspetta! (2019­2020), Offese fantastiche (2023). In these works, the first thing one notices is that your responses to this theme follow opposite paths: the piece for piano and ensemble goes in the direction of expansion, reaching a duration that is unusual for the ‘average’ of today’s music, the pieces for solo piano instead go in the direction of extreme contraction. As if you wanted to provoke the listener with two extreme choices.

Playful yet serious, imaginative yet true to the spirit of the originals: Alban Gerhardt and the inimitable Alliage Quintett offer a wholly new perspective on a variety of favourites drawn from the cello’s established repertoire and beyond.

Erased Tapes rounds off a jubilant year of tenth anniversary celebrations with a very special release, 1+1=X, a set of exclusive music from every artist on the label. Featuring never before heard tracks from Nils Frahm, Kiasmos and A Winged Victory For The Sullen, 1+1=X sees Erased Tapes artists come together to make an album as a collective. Sharing the same space, instruments and each others’ capabilities during a residency at Vox-Ton studio in Berlin, they recorded 20 songs to mark the label's 10-year history. The 3-LP box set, produced by label curator Robert Raths, is released on Record Store Day, April 21st 2018.

SOMM Recordings proudly announces this fifth and penultimate release in the complete cycle of the Beethoven Symphonies arranged for piano four-hands by the great Polish-German composer and pianist Xaver Scharwenka. This is a series that has consistently had listeners “waiting impatiently for the next volume” (MusicWeb International).

This album celebrates dance music, from waltz to tango, from slow foxtrot to quickstep, from samba to jive. Seventy years of music rooted in the 1920s, assembled by the enthusiastic musicians of the Ludwig Orchestra, who have taken to playing them at festivals, alongside their usual programmes devoted to Stravinsky or Schoenberg, to get the audience dancing – a phenomenal success story that now becomes an album, Dance with me!

The Zentaur-Quartett, founded in 2017, is dedicated exclusively to contemporary music. The double album String Quartets by aDevantgarde Composers is the debut release of the young ensemble, whose members are graduates of the Munich University of Music and Theatre. The works collected on this album from the years 1997-2019 are a passionate plea for the string quartet genre and open up 13 very different musical worlds. The stylistic spectrum ranges from microtonal sound pieces to compositions with late Romantic echoes.

8 Years of History is a witness to the first eight years of the 4 Seasons Festival. A classical music festival for and by young people, this is the challenge that was launched in 2014 by Oleg Gafner. Taking place 4 times a year, the Lausanne festival has distinguished itself by its programming with singular ideas and its choice of young local performers.

On his second release for Evil Penguin, Belgian piano prodigy Julien Libeer teams up with the new ensemble Les Métamorphoses to contrast authentic and neo guises of 18th century music. The true classicists are featured on this disc with unusually restrained work: Haydn’s Passion Symphony no. 49 is broodingly solemn, Mozart’s last piano concerto no. 27 deceptively intimate.