Dossier 51

This album is a celebration of the 200th birthday of French composer Charles Gounod. He composed about forty piano pieces in all, and this collection of a number of them allows us to appreciate their charm and expressive variety.

During his first years in the service of the Esterházy princes, Joseph Haydn had every opportunity to show what he was capable of accomplishing as both instrumental soloist (on violin or keyboard) and composer; in fact, all his concertos, most of which date from the 1760s, offer a glimpse of a brilliant artist who gradually moved away from the style galant by inventing a new musical dialogue soon to become the Classical style.

Anyone familiar with Bruckner, his symphonic architectures reaching for the stars as well as his later Missas from the 1860s, may well be amazed at how deep his Missa Solemnis is still rooted in the solid tradition of Viennese Classicism. In this recording, this rarely heard and recently re-edited and newly published gem is put into the context of the inauguration service of collegiate provost Friedrich Mayr on 14 September 1854 in St. Florian, for which it was written. It is interspersed with the original Proper settings by Robert Führer, Joseph Eybler, and Johann Baptist Gänsbacher. Recorded at the Konzerthaus Berlin in June 2017. A co-produktion with Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

Feisty freakbeat, folk rock, funky pop and more from Hungary’s foremost female recording stars – backed by some of the nation’s leading beat bands.

La Contra Ola is the fascinating 1st ever survey of Spanish electronic music during the post-punk and synth wave phenomenon which swept subterranean US and European scenes circa 1980-1986.

Baptiste Romain, director of the ensemble Le Miroir de Musique, has just been appointed professor at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. To mark this occasion, he enriches the ‘Instruments’ series on the Ricercar label with a recital devoted to the medieval vielle (bowed fiddle): troubadour songs and dances and polyphonic compositions from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries illustrate the various stages in the evolution of this instrument, the ancestor of the violin.

Habibi Funk is dedicated to re-releasing a style of music that historically never existed as a musical genre. We use the term to describe a certain sound that we like from the countries of the Arab world. The songs we chose were created in places quite far from another and under very different circumstances. Some were written and recorded during war times, others in exile. Despite the differences we think there is a musical connection between them. Essentially, we are interested in the musical endeavors, in which artists from the Arab world mixed local and regional influences with musical interests that came from outside of the region. Even though the name suggests it’s all about funk music, our focus is more than just that.