Schmidt Hofner

Mute and Spoon are pleased to announce the release of VILLA WUNDERBAR, on 4 November 2013, a 2CD set, compiling the work of Can founder Irmin Schmidt’s solo and soundtrack work, including two unreleased Can remixes and a collection of soundtrack pieces personally compiled by long-term collaborator Wim Wenders. CD1 is a compilation of Irmin Schmidt’s extensive work as a solo artist over the past 30 years, whilst CD2 – selected and presented by the filmmaker Wim Wenders – is an insight into Schmidt’s vast work as a composer for film and television for which Wenders has written extensive sleeve notes. The two CD compilation includes tracks such as Villa Wunderbar, Kick On The Floods and Bohemian Step, alongside unreleased remixes by Schmidt of two Can tracks, Alice and Last Night Sleep.

This German version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, with set and costumes by Ita Maximowna, dates from the year 1967. The Hamburg State Opera Choir and the Philharmonic State Orchestra of Hamburg are conducted by Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, who worked as the opera company’s first conductor between 1935 and 1942 as well as from 1945 to 1971 and was chief conductor of the North German Radio Orchestra, which he had personally been responsible for reorganizing in the post-war years. It may come as a surprise to learn that the singers, all of whom are now international stars, were drawn exclusively from the Hamburg State Opera ensemble - further proof of Rolf Liebermann’s skill in identifying up-and-coming musicians!

It is an imaginary concert program comprising an enormous emotional spectrum from the extremely intimate (Malinconia, Waldesruhe, Prayer, etc.) to the virtuoso and life-affirming (Rondino, L‘abeille, and Andaluza); it is also a journey through disparate musical regions from North to South, from Finland to Spain, that poses some of the great questions of human existence: questions of meaning and duration, of inner peace, memory, and salvation. For years, the works I have selected here have always fascinated me with their inner greatness or melancholy beauty. Each of them is an homage to the virtuoso and lyrical possibilities of the cello and, not least, to the fantastic interpreters who have shaped my life as a musician – Emanuel Feuermann, Pau Casals, Gregor Piatigorsky, Gaspar Cassadó, Pierre Fournier, Mstislav Rostropovitch, and Arto Noras, to name only a few. Poe- tic moments of quiet contemplation encounter life-affirming, extremely sensual music of direct corporeal power.

inexplicably, both these Quintets by Bruckner and Schmidt are rarely performed and recorded. One demands to know why these magnificent works are not part of the standard repertoire. Here the scores are given performances of the strongest advocacy by the Vienna Philharmonia Quintet. The recordings were made for Decca over thirty years ago and they remain among the finest examples of late-Romantic chamber music on record.

I became sceptical when I noted that such a young singer had chosen to record at once these two late sets by Brahms and Wolf. They ought to be the province of baritones and basses (preferably the latter) of mature years, who have garnered the vocal and emotional experience to make the most of two of the profoundest compositions in all the field of Lieder. My scepticism was all too readily confirmed in listening to Schmidt tackle each.

As is evident in these works, Børresen was a highly talented Danish composer. His first symphony bears some resemblance to Tchaikovsky's Sixth, in particular in the last movement that ends quietly like Tchaikovsky's. However, it is an independent, assured symphony that is well worth hearing. Indeed, after listening to it several times, it is difficult to understand why this tuneful and highly likeable work is not played regularly in concerts anymore. Ole Schmidt and the Saarbrücken orchestra certainly make a strong case for the music.

Franz Schmidt is currently on his way to be recognized as one of the most important representatives of the post-Mahlerian, post-romantic symphonic tradition. Indeed, there is something about Schmidt's symphonies - the fourth in particular - that suggests a certain post-apocalyptic feeling, not in terms of any feeling of tragedy in particular but because it feels as if Schmidt are writing the somewhat sobering afterwords to the works of Bruckner and Mahler at the very end of the romantic era (the symphony dates from 1933).

The new recording is entirely dedicated to British music and offers a great selection of works by famous but also lesser-known composers: recorded are works by Edward Elgar (1857-1934), Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), Peter Warlock (1894-1930) and Karl Jenkins (b. 1944). The album opens with the earliest masterpiece, the famous Serenade in E minor for string orchestra by Edward Elgar, one of the greatest British composers and leading European composers of his generation. Among the hallmarks of Elgar's compositions are ingratiating character pieces that often share elements with English folk music.

This is the second CD by the young German pianist David Theodor Schmidt playing music by Bach and music inspired by Bach. In the first CD from 2007 Bach Reflections he played the Sixth Partita, the 12th of the preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, plus one of the Shostakovich Op. 87 Preludes and Fugues and the Liszt 'Variations on a motif by Bach ("Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen")'. I was somewhat critical of that earlier disc although I did feel that Schmidt is a talented newcomer to watch. I thought his playing was a bit callow and hoped he might mature. In this CD that hope has been fulfilled.