Kaiser Quartet

Guitarist and composer Stephan Thelen releases his debut album for Moonjune Records worldwide on January 18, 2019. It's an instrumental, post-progressive album co-produced by Markus Reuter (Stick Men), featuring guest appearances of many leading electric guitarists including David Torn, Markus Reuter, Henry Kaiser, Jon Durant, Bill Walker, Barry Cleveland and Matt Tate, as well as drummers/percussionists Benno Kaiser, Manuel Pasquinelli and Andi Pupato.

Wilhelm Furtwängler is a musical titan, one of the greatest conductors of the 20th century. Some would say he is the greatest of all. A supreme, inimitable interpreter of the Austro-German symphonic repertoire, and of Wagner's music dramas, he remains a towering point of reference for performers and audiences.The unparalleled scope of this 55CD set makes it an essential for the music-lover. Not only is it the first collection to unite Furtwängler's entire catalogue of studio recordings, it also encompasses every live recording he made with a view to commercial release. Painstaking research has even unearthed a treasury of previously unpublished material, recorded in Vienna and Copenhagen.

We invite you to listen to 'Cuneiform Records: The Albums of 2019' and explore the wide spectrum of music we recently released over the year. Each track by each artist is unique; we invite you to sample all. And then, if you've not already done so, we encourage you to listen the full albums by the artists who most appeal to you.

The self-interested cabal that has controlled the legacy of the Second Viennese School has barely conceded that this music exists, but the fact is that, faced with mounting bills at his Society for Musical Private Performances during the ruinous inflation of the early '20s, Arnold Schoenberg organized a concert of arrangements of music by Johann Strauss (the younger) and opened it to the public in order to raise money, defensively pointing out that Brahms, too, liked Strauss waltzes. His proteges, Berg and Webern, were drafted to arrange one waltz each, with Berg snaring the familiar Wein, Weib, und Gesang, Op. 418 (Wine, Women, and Song), and Schoenberg contributed a pair.

For those who are new to an instrument, the first question is often: where to start? The ‘Best Loved’ series offers an easy answer to that question and a perfect introduction to the wonderful, varied world of classical music. Spotlighting individual instruments in some of the best-loved pieces ever written, and with a mix of solo, chamber and orchestral works, the series provides a convenient introduction to classical music’s infinite variety of instrumental sounds and styles.