Gabiele Clemens

The Soul of Things – a fusion of solo piano, harp, cello and electronics – draws inspiration from the mundane. The album can itself be heard as an ode to the ordinary things – a particularly good fountain pen, an old radio receiver – that somehow, in their very familiarity become extraordinary to us.

"David Pohle created his Zwolf Liebesgesange in the early seventeenth century, crucially advancing the emerging genre of the German song. The settings of the 26-year-old Pohle are valuable testimonials to the development of this genre. The poems by Paul Fleming, on which these settings are based, bear autobiographical features, mirrored by David Pohle in his compositions by the use of two equal voices. In a varied manner, the music and text tell of love, loss and pain, of happiness, determination and abstinence. Audite presents this premiere recording with a top-class cast of soloists and instrumentalists.

This exceptional recording was made using three original instruments that belonged to Paganini himself: the powerful 1743 Guarneri del Gesù violin; a six-string guitar by Ory, Paris, dated 1797; and a magnificent 1736 Stradivari cello, property of the Nippon Music Foundation and entrusted to Clemens Hagen, cellist of the Hagen Quartet. The three instruments are played together for the first time on this release. It was Giulio Plotino who conceived this project and took upon himself the difficult task of reuniting the three instruments. Indeed, this unique recording would not have been possible without him.

Like many of even the most prolific and celebrated composers of the sixteenth century, Jacobus Clemens non Papa (‘not the Pope’) has offered the history books little factual material with which to work. In contrast to the paucity of biographical material, however, many sources of Clemens' music survive. Indeed, he is one of the most widely published musicians of the entire century with fifteen Masses, over two hundred motets, many Dutch psalms and French chansons to his name.

Gidon Kremer and Harnoncourt imbue the Violin Concerto with intellectual strength and Romantic warmth.