Wunderbar

Wolfgang Riechmann started his musical career in 1966. After playing in a school band with Michael Rother and Wolfgang Flür, later famous with Kraftwerk and Neu, he then became member of an other Düsseldorf (Germany) located band called "Streetmark". It was end of 1977 when Riechmann started working on his solo career. The result was the LP "Wunderbar" which was released on SKY Records. Unfortunately he did not experience the release. In August 1978 Riechmann was killed - without any reason - by two drunk guys, who stabbed him to death.

Although he is chiefly known as a popular German television actor, Manfred Krug has also had careers as a film actor and as a pop-jazz singer. Born in Duisburg on February 8, 1937, he relocated to East Germany in 1949 at the age of 13, where he worked in a steel factory until he began acting on stage and in films in 1956. He recorded several successful pop-jazz albums in the early '70s, often in conjunction with composer Gunther Fischer. He also began a career as a writer under the alias Clemens Kerber. Frustrated with the political climate in East Germany (he had been forbidden to perform), Krug applied for and was granted permission to move to the West German portion of Berlin in 1977. Once settled there, he continued to act but sang and recorded only occasionally, and through the 1980s and 1990s and into the 21st century he has worked primarily as an actor in various television shows.

Barokkanerne, under the direction of baroque oboist Alfredo Bernardini, rings in Christmas with German baroque music by a four-leaf clover of composers who vied for the post of cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig - a position filled by J. S. Bach after candidates Telemann, Graupner and Fasch all declined for different reasons. The ensemble serves up Advent and Christmas cantatas by Graupner, Fasch and the great Bach himself, as well as a splendid Telemann concerto led by father and daughter Bernadini. Also contributing to the CD are soprano Berit Norbakken Solset, mezzo-soprano Marianne Beate Kielland, tenor Anders J. Dahlin and baritone Halvor F. Melien - all with careers spanning the globe. Barokkanerne are an Oslo-based Early Music ensemble and one of the very first independent professional baroque orchestras on period instruments in Scandinavia.

Korngold was just 23 when his most celebrated stage work was premiered in 1920 by no less than Otto Klemperer. The rich orchestration and brilliant bel canto vocal writing is here superbly realized by a cast led by Klaus Florian Vogt and Camilla Nylund, with “conducting to die for” (The Guardian) from Mikko Franck. “I regard Die tote Stadt as one of the greatest operas of the first quarter of the 20th century and the Finnish National Opera’s production makes it stand out as a true masterpiece, scenically and musically” (Seen and Heard International).