Von Franz

So what if Liszt spent most of his life in France and Germany and never learned to speak Hungarian? The music of the Magyars' fiery favorite son played by a hot-blooded local boy is an irresistible combination. Even the delightful Dohnanyi filler (variations on ''Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'') doesn't really douse the flames. Put it in the CD player and let 'er rip! Just be sure to remove all flammable vestments first. (Entertainment Weekly)

With the tonal sweetness of Huggett’s three violins resonating pleasingly through the many double- and multiple-stoppings and her bowing demonstrating a delicious lightness and freedom, she admirably displays her eloquent command of Biber’s sublime and richly symbolic language. Huggett’s [approach] is ravishing in its sonorities, her supporting cast adding significantly to the exotic sounds of the various scordaturas and the overall effect of her intelligent, stylish and expressive playing.

This CD is a well-chosen sample of Biber’s finest ensemble music. One of the supreme violinists and virtuoso composers of the 17th century, much of Biber's work remains underplayed and relatively obscure. However, as Burnley wrote, over 100 years after many of the pieces on this disc were composed, ‘of all the violin players of the last century Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos are the most difficult and most fanciful of any music I have seen of the same period’.

Franz Josef Degenhardt - Spiel Nicht Mit Den Schmuddelkindern
FLAC | Artwork | 24Bit 96kHz: 856 MB | 16Bit 44.1kHz: 233 MB
Cat#: Polydor 2428 121 | Country/Year: Germany 19__, 1965 (ReIssue)
Genre: Chanson, Singer/Songwriter | Hoster: Uploaded/Filesonic

Franz-Josef Degenhardt is a German poet, satirist, novelist, and – first and foremost – folksinger/songwriter (Liedermacher) with decidedly left-wing politics. He is also a lawyer, bearing the academic degree of Doctor of Law. From the early 1960s onward, in addition to practicing law, Degenhardt was also performing and releasing recordings. He is perhaps most famous for his song (and the album of the same name) Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern ("Don't Play With the Grubby Children," 1965), but has released close to 50 albums, starting with Zwischen Null Uhr Null und Mitternacht…

Though other Baroque composers had written chorale arrangements for organ in which the cantus firmus was assigned to a solo wind instrument, the idea of writing a Fantasia for the same combination seems to have originated with Johann Krebs. His soulful, eloquent Fantasia in F minor for oboe and organ was celebrated in its day, and when you hear it on this engaging recording, you can well understand why. Though the fantasias are the more intricate works, the chorales with wind obbligato are admirable for their contrapuntal inventiveness and for the various ways in which the composer chooses to set the familiar tunes.

The 17th-century Bohemian/Austrian composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber is best known for his works for solo violin, especially the Mystery Sonatas. However, he also wrote a considerable amount of music for string ensemble, including a set of 12 chamber sonatas subtitled Fidicinium Sacro-Profanum which was first published in Nuremberg in 1683. The title refers to the fact that the music in the sonatas combine sacred and secular styles. In his collection, Biber set new standards in the field of string chamber music. In the first part he composes for a five-part string ensemble: 2 violins, 2 violas, violone and basso continuo, a combination that was established at his time as the standard ensemble in Austrian cultural circles.

Although highly productive and respected in his lifetime as a composer of Lieder, Robert Franz (1815–92) has since become a peripheral figure in music history. One reason may be that he avoids dramatic contrasts and instead aims at an emotional ambiguity: ‘My representation of joy is always tinged with melancholy, whilst that of suffering is always accompanied by an exquisite sensation of losing oneself’, he once wrote to Liszt. As a consequence his music appeals to those who are able ‘to admire the nuances of a charcoal drawing without longing for the colours of a painting’, to quote from Georges Starobinski’s liner notes to this recording. As they began to explore the songs of Franz, Starobinski and the baritone Christian Immler were moved by their findings to devise a programme which includes 23 of the composer’s often quite brief songs. Using the poet Heinrich Heine as their guiding star, they present these – all Heine settings but from different opus groups – in the form of two ‘imagined’ song cycles.

Reinhard Goebel and members of the Musica Antiqua Köln give an almost effortless and very listenable performance of Heinrich Ignatz Franz von Biber's Mystery Sonatas here. This is no mean feat, in that each of these sonatas save the first, and the final Passacaglia, is in a different and weird -scordatura- tuning.