Florian Horwath

In September 2020 Florian Berner travelled to Tuscany. Playing in the local church, and initially just for himself, he recorded the first three of Bach’s six suites for solo cello. By early 2023 he completed the cycle in Köthen, where Bach was Capellmeister from 1717-1722. The two separate experiences captured performances of unique intuition and power.

The great “composer of the millennium” Johann Sebastian Bach stands like a solitary rock in the landscape of music history. There is less talk about where he came from and what influenced him stylistically. Chorwerk Ruhr embarked on a search for clues with highly interesting results: the young Johann Sebastian also listened to and studied works that were already around 100 years old. In any case, during his later years as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, he ensured that the collection of motets Florilegium selectissimarum Cantionum was purchased anew – it was used so frequently in lessons under his aegis that the music material was completely worn out. The collection by the early Baroque master and school cantor Erhard Bodenschatz, first published in 1603, illustrates the then new compositional technique of the Baroque in a clearly comprehensible way in songs mostly by German or Italian masters.

While today it is easy to listen to almost any piece at any time and in almost any place, before the invention of the record it was quite complicated: you had to go to a concert or to the opera or you played yourself… In the emerging bourgeoisie, arrangements of the most popular works in instrumentations suitable for chamber music were popular and, of course, Mozart's famous operas were at the top of the popularity scale. In many places, publishers set about transcribing Mozart's works for small and very small ensembles. The two violinists Florian Deuter and Mónica Waisman have found a whole series of such contemporary arrangements of Mozart's operas and piano sonatas in "pocket format" for violin duo, which bring the well-known melodies into the new form with much wit and finesse. In the process, the listener can grin and observe the reduction of the full sound and delve into delightful details of house music around 1800.

On their new GENUIN CD, baritone Florian Götz and the musicians of the Grundmann-Quartett dare to present well-known works in new contexts: they perform Franz Schubert's moving „Winterreise” in a version in which the vocal part is accompanied by English horn and string trio. Exciting chromatic worlds open up, and the moods of the individual songs take on new plasticity and tremendous expressive power. The subtle arrangement by Eduard Wesly, the uniquely personal baritone voice of Florian Götz, and the nuanced tonal mixtures of woodwind and strings all contribute equally to this.

Idiosyncratic, large-scale and in its fundamental disposition one of a kind, Florian Weber’s Imaginary Cycle, conceived for the unique instrumentation of brass ensemble and piano, is a hybrid of multiple musical languages that seamlessly blends the harmonious with the oblique. Here Weber presents a cycle in four parts, plus an opening and an epilogue, in which the German pianist is joined by a group of four euphoniums, a trombone quartet as well as flautist Anna-Lena Schnabel and Michel Godard on the seldomly used “serpent” brass instrument, together performing a work that blurs the line where improvisation ends and composition begins.

Idiosyncratic, large-scale and in its fundamental disposition one of a kind, Florian Weber’s Imaginary Cycle, conceived for the unique instrumentation of brass ensemble and piano, is a hybrid of multiple musical languages that seamlessly blends the harmonious with the oblique. Here Weber presents a cycle in four parts, plus an opening and an epilogue, in which the German pianist is joined by a group of four euphoniums, a trombone quartet as well as flautist Anna-Lena Schnabel and Michel Godard on the seldomly used “serpent” brass instrument, together performing a work that blurs the line where improvisation ends and composition begins.

The sea as a heartrending separator of lovers, as dream of an exotic ideal, as expression of an indistinct nostalgia and of strivings toward heavenward flights, or simply as the subject of the most resplendent sound paintings; in natural element garb, changeable and multifarious, the sea in French musical impressionism enjoys an ever renewed position.