Stefan Henneken Solid

BR-KLASSIK presents the live recording of a concert performance of Hindemith's opera "Cardillac" from the Prinzregententheater in Munich on October 13, 2013, in memory of the great conductor Stefan Soltész. Soltész died unexpectedly on July 22, 2022 - exactly one year ago - after collapsing while conducting Richard Strauss' "Die schweigsame Frau" at the Munich National Theatre. The Hungarian-born Austrian conductor was General Music Director of the Essen Philharmonic and Artistic Director of the Essen Aalto Music Theatre from 1997 to 2013. Both institutions were decisively shaped by him and received several awards during his era. He was a welcome guest conductor with the orchestras in Munich. In addition to the standard works from Mozart to Strauss, an important focus of his opera repertoire was classical modernism.

Simple melodies appealingly and tenderly hover over richly figured harmonies and seem to drift out into infinity. John Field is the author of these magical nocturnes, and one generation before the much more famous Pole (Chopin) he combined strongly expressive romanticism with an extraordinary keyboard intuition. Stefan Irmer performs on volume 1 of the complete nocturnes of John Field. Field never viewed his works as finished; every time he performed them he added something new to them – inspired by the circumstances, the public, and the atmosphere of the moment. For this reason, some of his nocturnes have been transmitted in significantly different versions. Stefan Irmer rises to this challenging piano adventure: employing musical means from our times, he continues Field's music, adding his own ideas to it. Influences from jazz and tango are also in evidence.

Stefan Sanderling, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland - Tchaikovsky: Suites for Orchestra Nos. 3 & 4.