Schubert Ensemble

Schubert's 'Wanderer Fantasy' and Schumann's 'Fantasie' are two highly remarkable works: while musically embodying the romantic spirit of the age in their unconventional structures and lyrically imaginative styles, they also act as self-portraits to their creators through the evocation of their creative process. In these new orchestrations by Joseph James, the familiar beauty of the works is rekindled in exciting and fresh interpretations performed by the illustrious English Chamber Orchestra alongside concertante solos from members of the Schubert Ensemble.

A few years after the success of her album crossing Baroque music with folk, Love I Obey (ALPHA538), the Franco-American singer Rosemary Standley visits Schubert, this time with the complicity of the Ensemble Contraste: ‘We all have a few notes of Schubert buried deep inside us’ say the artists, who have got together around his music and brought to it an original sound texture, the result of their varied influences – classical, pop, jazz, folk.

Following the extremely successful recording of Haydn complete London Symphonies released in 2010, Marc Minkowski, Naïve and the Wiener Konzerthaus set up a new project, even more ambitious although similar in form: to perform for the Viennese audience and record the complete symphonies of Schubert in the same week, in March this year. 2012 marks the 30th anniversary of Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble. Major concerts will take place in Paris this Autumn to celebrate this event.

In addition to being a world-class violinist, pianist, conductor, and teacher, George Enescu was a well-renowned composer. In fact, his most celebrated violin pupil, Yehudi Menuhin, made the prediction that Enescu’s compositions would become ‘one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century’, and, indeed, in recent years Enescu’s works have become more widely performed.

Having focused on music from their home country before, the Norwegian Soloists Choir here present a German programme, featuring two of the most influential composers in 19th-century choral music: Johannes Brahms and Franz Schubert. It includes both sacred and secular music, scored for male, female and mixed choir a cappella and accompanied, starting with a selection from Brahmss deservedly popular Zigeunerlieder for mixed choir and piano.

There is little doubt that Vienna at the turn of the 19th century was the musical capital of the world; a nexus for the string quartet composer, who could alternate composing for the leading virtuosos of the day with creating works that satisfied the then-increasing predilection for domestic music-making. Against this background, striving to find his own voice and using the medium as a path towards his early symphonies, was the young, prodigiously talented Franz Schubert. Similar to Beethoven, Schubert stood out in his refusal to target the general public with his writing, though there is much evidence to suggest that the majority of his early string quartets were written for and first performed by his family’s own ensemble.

Berio had an abiding fascination with reconciling the past and the present, which can be seen in his orchestral realisations of works by Mahler and Brahms, and most notably, in Rendering (1990), his typically creative completion of unfinished symphonic sketches by Schubert.