Echo Klassik

Alleingang (Going it Alone), Markus Becker’s second solo album is released by BERTHOLD records on October 29th 2021. In his own inimitable style, the renowned concert pianist has created a jazz and classical music mosaic. In his first solo album Freistil (Free Style) he developed structures out of largely spontaneous improvisations. “In Alleingang,” explains Becker “I most often thought out structures and themes first, and then created the music live in the Sendesaal, Radio Bremen’s concert hall, where as always they did such a great job. That suits my own ‘Alleinstellungsmerkmal’ which is a lovely German word for ‘unique selling point’.”

Die Blockflötistin und ECHO Klassik-Preisträgerin Dorothee Oberlinger ist mittlerweile weit über die Alte Musik- und die Klassik-Szene hinaus bekannt. Erst Ende vorigen Jahres widmete die Vogue ihr einen Artikel und in der Talkshow »3nach9« begeisterte sie die Zuschauer, auch durch ihr Duett mit Klaus Doldinger. Auf ihrer neuen CD »Flauto Veneziano« widmet sich Dorothee Oberlinger ganz der Flötenkunst Venedigs von der Renaissance bis zum Spätbarock. Die Blockflöte, im Italienischen bis zum Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts schlicht »flauto«, war in Venedig bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts ein sehr beliebtes und verbreitetes Instrument.

NEWSDavid Garrett Announces First Career Anthology, ‘Unlimited (Greatest Hits)’. The collection also includes six brand-new songs to commemorate Garrett’s first hugely successful decade in the spotlight. Violinist extraordinaire David Garrett is set to release his first-ever Greatest Hits album, Unlimited, via Polydor/Island on 26 October.

ECHO classical music winner Olga Scheps and the Kuss Quartet are convincingly committed to the piano quintet of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, whose 100th birthday will be celebrated in December 2019. In recent years, Mieczyslaw Weinberg has received the attention due to the long-unknown Soviet composer, who lived from 1919 to 1996 - with performances of his operas at renowned festivals and the inclusion of his instrumental works in the repertoire. A central composition is his piano quintet, which was composed in Moscow in 1944, during the Second World War. Weinberg was a close friend of Dmitri Shostakovich, but this sometimes proved to be a career hindrance, as he was perceived as a kind of Shostakovich in miniature Olga Scheps, ECHO Klassik winner and the renowned Kuss Quartet have long been committed to Weinberg's unjustly neglected oeuvre - and this commitment also characterizes her passionate, almost relentlessly urging interpretation, which adequately confirms the singular rank of this work.