Die Suglingsernhrung

Following the success of Die Schöpfung (The Creation), which had swiftly gained popularity throughout Europe, Haydn’s librettist Baron Gottfried van Swieten suggested another project, based on James Thomson’s pastoral epic, The Seasons. One of Haydn’s last major works, Die Jahreszeiten depicts the yearly cycle of life in the countryside through the eyes of three peasants, providing us with music of thrilling vitality and creativity.

The conductor Jérémie Rhorer is today regarded as one of the finest interpreters of the music of Mozart in general and his operas in particular. After conducting Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2015, he performed it again at a memorable concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in September of that year with his orchestra, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie. It is this exceptional event, captured in a live recording conveying all the dramatic intensity of the opera, that we present today.

The Magic Flute (German: Die Zauberflöte), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a Singspiel, a popular form during the time it was written that included both singing and spoken dialogue. The work premiered on 30 September 1791 at Schikaneder's theatre, the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, just two months before the composer's premature death. Still a staple of the opera repertory, its popularity was reflected by two immediate sequels, Peter Winter's Das Labyrinth oder Der Kampf mit den Elementen. Der Zauberflöte zweyter Theil (1798) and a fragmentary libretto by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe titled The Magic Flute Part Two.

After their recent releases of Conti’s Missa Sancti Pauli and Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, conductor György Vashegyi and his Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir present a world premiere recording of a passion by a today virtually unknown composer, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel.

In his liner-notes to Hermann Max’s C.P.E Bach oratorio Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu the German musicologist Peter Wollny writes: "In the second half of the eighteenth century the German oratorio was marked by two characteristics. The tendency toward a highly individual depiction of emotions and the avoidance of dramatic operatic plots." Therefore composers turned away from stories from the Old Testament which were so successfully used, for instance, by Handel for his dramatic oratorios, and focused rather on the person of Jesus Christ. Bach's oratorio Die Israeliten in der Wüste seems to contradict this statement.

Der 25. Oktober 1929 war für Maria und Giuseppe Valente, die mit ihren drei Kindern Nina, Pietro und Silvio seit 1924 in Paris lebten, tCaterina Valenteatsächlich ein 'schwarzer Freitag'. Maria Valente hatte als Varieté-Star auf den großen Bühnen der Welt Erfolg und war auch in den USA so bekannt, dass sie mit ihrer Familie dort leben und arbeiten wollte. Der Börsen-Crash verhinderte diese Pläne, denn Familie Valente verlor, wie so viele andere auch, alle Ersparnisse. Sie blieben also in Paris, wo am 14. Januar 1931 die jüngste Tochter von Maria und Giuseppe zur Welt kam: Caterina.

Die in Österreich beheimateten Wiener Philharmoniker wurden 1842 von Otto Nicolai ins Leben gerufen. Unabhängig und demokratisch überlebte das Ensemble das Ausscheiden des Gründers und existiert auch im 21. Jahrhundert weiter. Nach Nicolais Ausstieg probte das Orchester nur gelegentlich, was sich 1860 änderte, als Karl Eckert den Dirigentenstab übernahm und für einen neuen Fokus sorgte. In den nächsten 60 Jahren leiteten viele berühmte Dirigenten das Orchester, wie z.B. Hans Richter und Gustav Mahler. 1933 fiel die Entscheidung, keinen "Festdirigenten" mehr zu engagieren. Seitdem wurde das Ensemble von Richard Strauss, Arturo Toscanini, Georg Solti und James Levine dirigiert.

Our Leo Fall cycle continues with Die Rose von Stambul. This operetta in three acts offers music that is full of feeling. This highly emotional work celebrated its premiere with great success at the Theater an der Wien in 1916. Die Rose von Stambul’s 422 straight performances made it the most successful operetta in the history of the Theater an der Wien, next to Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow. Within the shortest time performances followed throughout Central Europe. However, like Emmerich Kálmán’s The Csárdás Princess, it did not become an international success – primarily because of World War I, since the theaters of the Allied countries had stopped staging German-language works.Achmed Bey, the son of a Turkish minister, is married to Kondja, “The Rose of Stamboul”. However, she has exchanged letters with a passionate novelist and fallen in love with him. What she does not suspect: none other than her husband is behind this pseudonym – which provides plenty of opportunities for the expression of emotions – rendered in the Viennese waltz mode (“Ein Walzer muss es sein”) or tunes of Oriental flair.