Cobra Daniel Romano's Outfit

Daniel Herskedal is the epitome of brilliance – an esteemed composer of beautifully lyrical, rhythmically charged music and a world-class performer and technically proficient on an instrument he has made uniquely his own.

Organ and tuba, not the most common pairing, but a very exciting soundscape with unexplored sound possibilities. Organist Magnus Moksnes Myhre and jazz tuba player Daniel Herskedal met for the first time as students at the music conservatory in Trondheim, and the duo have now created a completely new vibe with Desert Lighthouse. The sources of inspiration are many, and they meet in their common fascination with the oriental tonal language.

In this album called “Hope”, created during lockdown, violinist Daniel Hope presents a highly personal, yet distinctive collection of timeless classics by Schubert, Elgar and Pärt, several beloved traditional songs in stunning new instrumental versions and a brand-new arrangement of the inspiring and spiritual Misa Criolla by Ariel Ramírez. “Music has a tremendous power,” says Daniel Hope. “This album is my attempt to send out a ray of hope and to provide people, myself included, with a sense of support and perhaps even consolation.” Well-known favourites from Hope’s childhood such as Amazing Grace and Danny Boy are as integral to this album as Schubert’s Die Nacht and “Nimrod” from Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Several different periods are illuminated in this way, and the same is true of the most disparate styles and musical contexts. Daniel Hope is joined by the Zürcher Kammerorchester as well as prestigious singers like the vocal ensemble Amarcord, baritone Thomas Hampson and jazz-singer Colin Rich.

The young, already internationally successful Austrian baritone and ensemble member of the Munich Gärtnerplatztheater Daniel Gutmann presents songs by Robert Schumann based on poems by Heinrich Heine with Maximilian Kromer, piano, on this CD. In addition to Schumann's most popular song cycle, "Dichterliebe" Op. 48, from which the title of this album, "Tränenflut", is taken, this recording also finds the "Liederkreis" Op. 24 with it's nine songs enter this compilation. In addition, Gutmann and Kromer interpret with "Belshazzar", Op. 57, and "Die zwei Grenadiere", Op. 49/1, Schumann's settings of two of the German poet's best-known ballads.

The legendary British oboist Leon Goossens inspired all the composers represented on this recording, and all but one of the pieces were written for his oboe, on which he premièred the works by Delius, Bax, Bliss, and Finzi. The piece by Vaughan Williams is arranged for cor anglais, but it was on his own precious instrument that Goossens would première Vaughan Williams’s Oboe Concerto, in 1944. Nicholas Daniel has, with special permission from Goossens’s daughter Jennie, recorded Delius’s Two Interludes on Goossens’s (now 110-year-old) oboe, rather than his own modern oboe, and contributes a fascinating booklet note on the influence and experience of playing this instrument.

Georg Philipp Telemann was the most famous of all German composers during his lifetime and a master of all musical genres. Every piece in this album dates from his triumphant years in Hamburg, where he was the city’s music director. They are heard in exciting new arrangements reflecting Telemann’s own practice in transcribing his works for various instruments. The two Sonatinas come from the collection Neue Sonatinen of 1730–31, a rich source of material, while the Fantasias derive from the Fantasias for viola da gamba, with much polyphonic writing cast in galant style.