Das Properdin

The shipwreck of the "Medusa" was a symbolic testimony for many artists: for the painter Théodore Géricault, who captured the rescue of a handful of survivors on a monumental painting; for the writer Peter Weiss, who described his encounter with Géricault's painting in the novel "The Aesthetics of Resistance"; for the Austrian Franzobel, who published a "Medusa" novel in 2017; and for the composer Hans Werner Henze, who dramatized in an oratorio in 1967/68.

Théodore Géricault’s hugely imposing painting The Raft of the Medusa has stimulated imaginative responses from numerous artists ever since its creation in 1819, including composer Hans Werner Henze and his librettist Ernst Schnabel, who were inspired by Géricault to write a political oratorio on the painting’s tragic historical subject in 1967. Noted for its harsh-edged sounds, and melding a tender depiction of suffering with scathing irony and gripping dramaturgy, the political scuffles and rowdiness that broke out at its aborted premiere lifted the work into the canon of great classical music scandals.

Bachs Das Wohltemperierte Klavier has been called The Old Testament of piano literature and presents, in more ways than one, a pinnacle to be climbed by pianists and harpsichordists alike. As a leading accordion player with an astonishingly wide-ranging repertoire, Mie Miki has now accepted the challenge, selecting twelve of the 48 pairs of preludes and fugues. Mie Miki has previously recorded Bachs Italian Concerto for BIS, and as she did then, she performs the music from the original keyboard score without making any alterations to facilitate the transition to the accordion. The result is ear-opening; the accordions capacity for sustained notes brings out Bachs fugal counterpoint, while the fast and light action of the instrument lends a particular fleetness to the preludes.

Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Klavier has been called „The Old Testament“ of the piano literature and presents, in more ways than one, a pinnacle to be climbed by pianists and harpsichordists alike. As a leading accordion player with an astonishingly wide-ranging repertoire, Mie Miki has now accepted the challenge, selecting twelve of the 48 pairs of preludes and fugues.

One of the most remarkable things about German composers of the 17th and 18th centuries is the size of their oeuvre. One wonders where they found the time to compose so many works, considering the general slowness of life. It took days to travel from one part of Germany to another, and weeks to go from Germany abroad. Writing a composition by hand, copying parts for all performers, teaching, rehearsing - it is just amazing how much work they had to do. And in addition, there was an insatiable demand for music which they had to satisfy. This is also the main reason they composed so much.

The heroine dies. Not of a deadly disease, not of a broken heart, not in ecstasy nor by her own hand. There is no final aria, no perpetual drawing-out of the last breath, no resounding lament, no congregation of mourners. Only briefly does the music echo bygone happiness. This might sum up Janácek’s enchanting opera, recorded live in the usual top quality at Frankfurt Opera in April/May 2016. The Cunning Little Vixen was written between 1921 and 1923, with libretto adapted from a 1920 serialized novella by Rudolf Tesnohlidek. The opera incorporates Moravian folk tunes as it recounts the life of a clever fox and accompanying wildlife, as well as a few humans. Although it is described as a comic opera, it contains some serious themes, and some reviewers have called it children’s entertainment, while others insist it is a tragedy.

A magnificent oratorio, long forgotten, has been rediscovered in Leipzig. Gregor Meyer conducts the Gewandhaus Chorus and the camerata lipsiensis in Friedrich Schneider’s Das Weltgericht. The composer, pianist, organist, and Anhalt-Dessau court music director Friedrich Schneider was one of the most creative and productive minds in the Central German music world during the first half of the nineteenth century but today is unfortunately a forgotten man. Das Weltgericht was once one of the most famous German oratorios, inspired euphoric headlines everywhere when it was first composed, and occasioned genuine storms of enthusiasm among concertgoers. The libretto is by August Apel, who based his text on the biblical accounts of the Last Judgment in Matthew 24-25 and the Revelation of John. A plot in the strict sense is not narrated; rather, the persons are biblical messengers who tell us of heaven, hell, and earth. This oratorio situated between classicism and romanticism was often performed but then was forgotten for many decades.