Live Work Work Work Die

Julius Bauer, a man known not only for his intelligent, original, and witty texts but also as Vienna’s most influential theater critic, wrote the libretto for Die Juxheirat in 1904. This wild, dizzying, surprising, and bold work was far ahead of its times as well as reminiscent of The Taming of the Shrew – only carried to the absolute extreme.

"Imagine the universe beginning to sing and resound," Mahler wrote of his Symphony No. 8, the "Symphony of a Thousand." "It is no longer human voices; it is planets and suns revolving." Mahler was late Romantic music's ultimate big thinker. In his own lifetime he was generally regarded as a conductor who composed on the side, producing huge, bizarre symphonies accepted only by a cult following. Born in 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia, he came from a middle-class family.

Christian Thielemann writes: I see Die Meistersinger as the pivot and central point of Wagners entire oeuvre. On the one hand it is a reaction to Tristan; on the other, he had found himself in a blind alley with Siegfried, and together those two works showed him the way out of it. The fascinating thing about Die Meistersinger is that you can find everything in it. Hero and anti-hero, comedy and tragedy, upperclass and lower-class lovers, burlesque and reflection, the old and the new, in short a whole world. The magic words summing it up for me are atmosphere and poetry. How can I, as a conductor, make the music glitter in its exaggerations and parodies, and at the same time lend it authority? Conversely, how can I make its emotionalism sound not false but genuine, emphasizing the deeply felt popular note in the music? Wagner is fundamentally asking his interpreters to square the circle, which is what makes Die Meistersinger such a difficult work to perform. Perhaps it can succeed only by osmosis, if we open ourselves up entirely to all its moods, colours and aromas, inhaling them so deeply that they naturally emerge from us again at the right moment.

The Passio secundum Joannem or St John Passion BWV 245, is a Passion or oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach, the earliest of the surviving Passions by Bach. It was written during his first year as director of church music in Leipzig and was first performed on 7 April 1724, at Good Friday Vespers at the St. Nicholas Church.

Die Toten Hosen is a German punk band from Düsseldorf that has been highly successful in Germany since the 1980s. The band's name literally means "The Dead Pants/Trousers". "Tote Hose" is a German expression meaning "nothing going on" or "boring". Their name can figuratively be translated as "The Dead Beats".

“It would be worth striving towards a style that can combine the highest level of craftsmanship, originality, and high quality with the greatest popularity and folksiness.” (Hanns Eisler). This next release on Capriccios Hanns-Eisler-Edition contains songs and chansons from all periods of Eisler’s creative life. It also contains some of the fascinating orchestral suites that he had, almost exclusively, cobbled together and adapted from film scores in the 1930s. Not the least, it contains the world premiere recording of his incidental music for Die letzte Nacht – the epilogue to Karl Kraus‘ monumental, satirical work The Last Days of Mankind. The mastermind behind this project was the fabulous composer, conductor, and chansonnier HK Gruber. HK Gruber is arguably one of the greatest Eisler-experts.

2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the European Reformation, started by Martin Luther in 1517. To honor this occasion, Deutsche Grammophon is releasing a new interpretation of the complete Mendelssohn symphonies, crowned by a recording of the Reformation Symphony No. 5.

Without doubt, the recordings of Tangerine Dream have made the greatest impact on the widest variety of instrumental music during the 1980s and '90s, ranging from the most atmospheric new age and space music to the harshest abrasions of electronic dance. Founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese in Berlin, the group has progressed through a full three dozen lineups (Froese being the only continuous member with staying power) and four distinct stages of development: the experimentalist minimalism of the late '60s and early '70s; stark sequencer trance during the mid- to late '70s, the group's most influential period; an organic form of instrumental music on their frequent film and studio work during the 1980s; and, finally, a more propulsive dance style, which showed Tangerine Dream with a sound quite similar to their electronic inheritors in the field of dance music.