Penthesilea

I am too cowardly to be a proper composer, Hugo Wolf confessed to a Viennese friend when he was barely 28 years old. And the result of his introspection was not so wrong: everything in his life, not only composing, proceeded in explosive spurts. He wandered through the deepest emotional valleys, suddenly flew up into the highest regions, suffered agonies when he couldn't think of anything to say, shouted his enthusiasm about a successful piece to the whole world and still managed to produce a respectable, albeit fragmentary oeuvre, from which the early poem Penthesilea after Heinrich von Kleist's tragedy of the same name stands out as a symphonic masterpiece. The Austrian baritone Benjamin Appl and the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra, led by its principal conductor Simon Gaudenz, have prefaced this highly dramatic monolith with twelve selected songs, most of which were orchestrated by their author himself: a dozen small, finely polished gems based on texts by Goethe, Mörike and Heyse, whose subtle arrangements leave no doubt that Hugo Wolf would certainly have had the makings of a "proper composer". Whether then, of course, the ingenious things would have been created that posterity owes to him - that is another matter.

Kateřina Kněžíková's lyric coloratura soprano has delighted audiences in numerous music centres worldwide, both at opera houses and concert venues. She has appeared with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Bamberger Symphoniker, Camerata Salzburg, the Czech Philharmonic, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, etc. under the baton of conductors of such renown as J. Bělohlávek, S. Baudo, M. Honeck, J. Hrůša, T. Netopil and R. Ticciati. The highlights of her career include the invitation to portray the title role in Janáček's opera Katya Kabanova in Glyndebourne. Kateřina Kněžíková's debut Supraphon solo album features enchanting fin de siecle songs, "… songs that are particularly close to my heart and voice, all of them dating from the turn of the 20th century, all of them tinged with Impressionism," as the singer herself put it.

November 1981 is double album by American jazz trumpeter Bill Dixon consisting of one disc recorded live in Zurich and another in a studio in Milan in November 1981 and released on the Italian Soul Note label.

Felix Draeseke’s works immediately reveal that he was a glowing admirer of Liszt and Wagner and a remarkably gifted creator of expressive harmonic designs and far-ranging melodic lines. Here Draeseke accomplished the feat of combining these powerful expressive means with classical forms. MDG is now rereleasing Draeseke’s Sinfonia Tragica, Piano Concerto, and Symphony No. 1 in a special edition featuring performances by the Wuppertal Symphony Orchestra in the historic Wuppertal Hall. The first release marked a discographic milestone.