Michael Poupko

A coming together of two artists with enormous followings – Valentina Lisitsa, with her dazzling artistry and hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube, and Michael Nyman, with his hugely popular film soundtracks. This release, in the year of Nyman’s 70th birthday, features tracks from his multi-award-winning score for the 1993 smash hit film The Piano.

Michael Learns to Rock (also known as MLTR) is a Danish pop/soft rock band that performs songs in English. Formed in 1988, the band has sold over 11 million records worldwide, mainly in Asia, and in addition, another 6 million or more paid downloads for their single "Take Me To Your Heart" which was awarded "most downloaded single of the year 2006". The band has recorded eight studio albums as well as a number of live and greatest hits albums. The band's eighth studio album, Scandinavia, was released in 2012.

For the specific atmosphere of Oberon Michael Hofstetter found it crucial that the performance was played on the period instruments Weber composed for. In Giessen, he worked with four natural horns, natural trumpets, finely tuned trombones and not least flutes made of wood instead of metal. This produced an inexhaustible wealth of acoustic colors, enabling us to sensually experience what might really be meant by the concept of German Romanticism on the musical level. Michael Hofstetter conducts at many well known opera houses, orchestras and festivals, include the Bavarian, the Hamburg, the Hanover and the Stuttgart State Operas, Theater an der Wien, the Royal Opera Copenhagen, the Welsh National Opera, the English National Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Canadian Opera Company Toronto and many others. Future engagements will see him again at the International Handel Festival in Halle, with Orchestre National d‘Île de France in Paris and at the International Gluck Festival Nuremberg.

MTT, leading American champion of Ives’ work, states: “At its core, the music of Charles Ives is an expression of the heart and soul of America. The complexity of Ives’ rhythmic and harmonic ideas was very much ahead of his time, and, even as he was often labeled eccentric by his peers, he created a uniquely American sound. My aim with this album is to reveal the true essence of Ives’ music in order to allow the audience to see America through his eyes.”