Bettina Wohlfarth

The title of the album Fin de Siècle refers to the period around 1900, in which society experienced both upheaval and a sense of the end of time, as well as an adherence to traditional structures. Accordingly, compositions of Romanticism, Impressionism, atonal music, and echoes of jazz converge in this program featuring works composed over a period of 21 years. After their debut album in 2016, clarinetist Bettina Aust now presents her second album together with pianist Robert Aust on the GENUIN classics label. The album is a co-production with BR Klassik. The siblings have been playing as a duo for more than twenty years and are prize winners of international competitions.

Gustav Mahler described his Third Symphony as ‘a work in which the whole world is indeed reflected’, a claim supported by its large, six-movement structure and the use of huge orchestral and choral forces, plus a part for alto solo. The first performance of the symphony took place on 9 June 1902 in Krefeld under Mahler’s direction. This is the third recording of a Mahler symphony by the Essen Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Tomas Netopil. They are joined here by Bettina Ranch (alto), the Aalto Children’s Choir, the ladies of the Essen Philharmonic Choir and the children’s choir of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Many works by Camillo Schumann remained unpublished during his lifetime and today are housed in the Saxon State Archive – a fate very different from that of his elder brother Georg Schumann, whose oeuvre has experienced a selective, though continuous renaissance on the recording market during the past decades (e. g., on cpo). And yet Camillo Schumann’s oeuvre covers almost all the musical genres, and more than three hundred works by him have now been documented. The special qualities of Schumann’s compositional capabilities are present in fine fashion everywhere in his sonatas for clarinet and piano: careful, finely balanced architectonic structures with skillfully elaborated transitions between the individual movement sections, attractive dialogues between the voices, congenial use of the resources of the particular instruments, suspenseful intensifications, and neatly proportioned solutions and conclusions.

Brilliant Classics has made availabe this 6 disc set of a wide selection of attractive music in truly spectacular performances by Modo Antiquo under Bettina Hoffmann. It's imaginative, vital, energetic, thoroughly musical and really makes the old pieces come alive.