Oehms

Flemish composer Adrian Willaert – who served as maestro di capella at the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice from 1527 until his death in 1562 – contributed so much to the Italian renaissance; while he wasn't the first to develop the Venetian polychoral style, its propagation in the mid-sixteenth century may well be laid at his feet. Willaert helped introduce the forms of canzona and ricercare, which greatly aided the growth of instrumental music in the years to come. The nearly overarching interest in chromaticism among Italian composers in the late renaissance can be traced to Willaert's door. Nevertheless, toss a dart into a crowd of music scholars and chances are you won't manage to hit one that has much of an opinion about Willaert's work or his music – it is seldom recorded and CDs devoted to Willaert alone are rare. On their own, these aspects make Oehms Classics' Adrian Willaert: Musica Nova – featuring the talents of expert vocal ensemble Singer Pur – special, valuable, and significant for purposes of study and filling a major hole in the renaissance repertoire. But beyond that, it is a fine listening experience as well.

Mahler’s Resurrection has been much recorded in recent years, so much so that new versions prompt one to groan inwardly and mutter: ‘Not another one’. Such ubiquity has its price, for any newcomer has to be something out of the ordinary if it’s to have any impact. Of recent releases David Zinman (Sony-BMG), Jonathan Nott (Tudor) and James Levine (Orfeo) definitely belong in this category; Vladimir Jurowski (LPO) and Markus Stenz (Oehms) manifestly don’t. And now Oehms are taking another bite out of the cherry, with the Hamburg orchestra led by their chief conductor Simone Young. Curiously, this was recorded at around the same time as the Stenz Mahler 2, which seems extravagant in this already overstocked field.

The 6th Symphony of Anton Bruckner was recorded live for SACD in December 2013 at two concerts in the Hamburg Laeiszhalle. Here, too, critics were unanimous in their enthusiasm, as could be read in the Hamburger Abendblatt of 16 December 2013.

Strauss’s ‘Fantastic variations on a theme of knightly character’, as Don Quixote is subtitled, is one of the composer’s most popular tone poems, principally because of the beautifully drawn central characters of the Don (performed by a solo cellist) and Sancho Panza (viola). These roles are luxuriously cast in this new recording, being taken by Hyperion artists Alban Gerhardt and Lawrence Power. The merry tale of Till Eulenspiegel completes this release.

The greatest strength of Oehms Classics' live recording of the Hamburg Staatsoper 2005 production of Mathis der Maler is the supple and dramatic conducting of Simone Young, the Australian general manager of the company. The score contains some of Hindemith's most overtly romantic and emotionally expressive music, as well as some extended passages that sound like academic note-spinning. Young is remarkably successful in accentuating the score's moments of sensuality, such as the opening "Concert of Angels," and manages to keep the dramatic momentum up during the more pedestrian passages. The sound is full, clean, and well balanced for a live opera performance.

J.S. Bach - French & English Suites and other works transcribed for recorder, viola da gamba and lute
Stefan Temmingh & Ensemble
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 371 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Oehms Classical # OC 795 | Country/Year: Germany 2011
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…He's a pleasure to listen to on a disc that will have the most appeal to those with an inclination toward speculative performance styles, and he is aided by total sonic clarity from the crack Oehms engineering team.

Although known almost exclusively for his instrumental concertos and the spurious Adagio attributed to him, Tomaso Albinoni was mainly a man of the theater; he composed 81 operas and, late in life, made his living as a singing coach. However, the best efforts of posterity to catch up with Albinoni's operatic creations are significantly stymied by the fact that only three of his stage works are fully extant, the rest preserved only in occasional and fugitive fragments in the form of single arias and other bits and pieces. "Il Nascimento dell'Aurora" is a serenata – or more specifically, a "festa pastorale" – a kind of courtly entertainment not really meant to be specifically dramatic or compelling and, in this case, dealing with the birth of Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora ….

Although known almost exclusively for his instrumental concertos and the spurious Adagio attributed to him, Tomaso Albinoni was mainly a man of the theater; he composed 81 operas and, late in life, made his living as a singing coach. However, the best efforts of posterity to catch up with Albinoni's operatic creations are significantly stymied by the fact that only three of his stage works are fully extant, the rest preserved only in occasional and fugitive fragments in the form of single arias and other bits and pieces. "Il Nascimento dell'Aurora" is a serenata – or more specifically, a "festa pastorale" – a kind of courtly entertainment not really meant to be specifically dramatic or compelling and, in this case, dealing with the birth of Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora ….

Gustav Mahler - Symphonie Nr. 4 „Das himmlische Leben“
Gürzenich-Orchester Köln / Markus Stenz / Christiane Oelze, Soprano
SACD ISO: 2,42 GB (Stereo + MCH DSD) | FLAC @ 24bit/88.2kHz: 806 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Rec. Info
Label/Cat#: Oehms Classics # OC 649 | Country/Year: Germany 2010
Genre: Classical | Style: Romantic / Modern

…In sum, this is simply a wonderful performance, excellently played, recorded, and sung, and it’s different enough from all of the competition to justify purchase even if you already think you own enough versions of this symphony.