Phantasie

"In the Spirit of BACH" is the title of Johannes Lang's debut album as St. Thomas organist in Leipzig. He was inducted into the prestigious church music post in January 2022. At the two organs of St. Thomas Church, the romantic Sauer organ and the baroque Bach organ, he has recorded a multifaceted program inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach's work.

Sumptuous, late-Romantic but little-known piano music including several world premiere recordings. The name of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948) is now emerging from the shadow cast by his wartime collaboration with Italy’s Fascist regime. Operas such as I quattro rusteghi and I gioielli della Madonna occupy a place on the fringes of the repertoire, and Brilliant Classics have made a persuasive case for him as a composer of chamber music in a post-Brahmsian mould with the release of his piano trios (BC95624). This album was recommended by Classics Today for the ‘eloquently sustained’ performance of Trio Archè, displaying ‘a whimsical discursiveness… that might be described as the lovechild of Schubert and Fauré.’

Paul Hindemith is without question, one of the 20th century's most industrious composers. One of his most famous accomplishments is that he successfully completed a sonata for every major instrument in the orchestra. Hindemith began his career as a violinist amid the turmoil of WWI, and he wrote by far more literature for the viola than any other composer in history. He had an early success becoming concertmaster of the Frankfort Opera Orchestra at the young age of 19. He later turned to viola in 1919, and it was to remain his favorite instrument for the rest of his life. Hindemith was the violist of the Amar Quartet, founded in 1921 for the premiere of the Second String Quartet. He later became known as a soloist in Europe, premiering his own viola works as well as the Milhaud Concerto No. 1 and the Walton Viola Concerto. When the Nazis expelled him from his post at the conservatory in Berlin and deprived him of his German audience due to his Jewish ties and the soprano-in-the-bathtub scene in the opera Neues vom Tage (News of the Day), which apparently shocked Hitler, Hindemith moved to Switzerland and made concert tours to the USA before emigrating there in early 1940.