What better legacy could an opera-house director leave behind him than a string of excellent theatrical productions! Rolf Liebermann (1910-1999), who was actually a composer, certainly succeeded in doing this – particularly during the 14 years from 1959 to 1973 that he spent in charge of Hamburg State Opera. During the Liebermann era the company in this northern German city embarked on a new artistic and administrative course that had - and still has - an impact on the entire operatic scene in central and Western Europe. It is significant in terms of Rolf Liebermann’s artistic credo that he selected Joachim Hess’ 1969 production of Zar und Zimmermann to be included amongst the august ranks of his 13 opera films.

This album presents works for string orchestra by Lithuanian composer Algirdas Martinaitis (b. 1950) from his early breakthrough work Birds of Eden (1981) to a recent Valse triste (2020), giving a very broad vision of this composer. This programme is performed by Lithuanian musicians of the St. Christopher Chamber Orchestra conducted by Modestas Barkauskas and featuring violinist Rūta Lipinaitytė and soprano Asta Krikščiūnaitė.

The Viva Polonia! programme by the German-Polish musicians Ania Vegry (soprano), Roman Ohem (violin) and Oskar Jezior (piano) tells the story of the rich history of Poland. Songs and character pieces by nine Polish composers represent the arduous journey of the Polish people – from 1795 when the country vanished from maps until they regained independence in 1918. Spanning from the traditional to the modern, Viva Polonia! paints a musical portrait of Polish culture.

Recently, the E major Symphony has often been counted as Schubert’s 7th symphony. Unlike his other symphonic fragments, the Symphony in E major exists in a complete draft from the first to the last bar in all four movements. More recently, the symphony became accessible to a wider public again in the completed version by Brian Newbould (1982). Now the Austrian composer Richard Dünser, together with the conductor Mario Venzago, has presented a new version of the symphony fragment. The less inspired middle movements have been replaced by supplemented drafts from the year of Schubert’s death. The result: a «new» great symphony by Schubert with a playing time of over 40 minutes; an original and gripping work that immediately convinces with its idiomatic and formal unity.

This album contains a collection of works from the Seicento, most of them well known and recorded several times, although it also includes a composition (Cazzati’s La Verità sprezzata) that is little or not very often heard. It is a repertoire to which we have usually devoted ourselves. That is why we wanted to propose our own way of doing it, in all honesty and avoiding fashions and artifice, without pretentiousness, respecting only the rhetorical —and dramatic— discourse implicit in the texts and their setting to music, fleeing from affectation —but not from affetti— and unquestioned customs, taking advantage of the information provided by musicological research, making use of our intuition and experience, and also remembering the teaching we have received from our old masters. Inspired by Ripa’s allegory and by the idea of truth as άλήθεια or unveiling of the self that is hidden by the veil of appearance, we have endowed our performance with a certain natural simplicity, a deliberate nakedness, especially in moments of particular emotional intensity.

"Never for Ever" is the third studio album by English singer Kate Bush. Released in September 1980, it was Bush's first #1 album and was also the first ever album by a British female solo artist to top the UK album chart, as well as being the first album by any female solo artist to enter the chart at #1. It has since been certified Gold by the BPI. It features the UK Top 20 singles "Breathing", "Army Dreamers" and "Babooshka", the latter being one of Bush's biggest hits. Bush co-produced the album with Jon Kelly.

This 2nd album from the TarantinosNYC features 2 tracks from Tarantino's latest, Django Unchained, and 2 from Pulp Fiction. Also features a collection of soundtrack favorites from 60s and 70s surf, soul, spy and spaghetti western films and 6 originals! Surfin' the Silver Screen is another exploration of great soundtrack material, as might have been curated by Quentin Tarantino. We include two tracks from the classic Pulp Fiction, Bullwinkle Part II and Son of a Preacher Man, which is arranged in Booker T & the MG's style. We also have two tracks from the latest QT masterpiece, Django Unchained. First is the theme from the original spaghetti western Django and the second is Lo Chiamavano King.

Tape Five is an international studio project based in Germany created by multi-instrumentalist songwriter-producer Martin Strathausen. Tape Five combines a variety of styles and influences: The focus on Swing or Electro-Swing, but also Bossanova, Latin, Soul and NuJazz with their very own vivid retro interpretation in a classy way. For years, Tape Five has expanding global record sales and millions of Spotify streams, it´s albums frequently appear in the top 40 charts of the big international online-retailers…

After two albums that downplayed their penchant for gothic sounds and mystical lyrics, Uriah Heep brought these elements back to the fore on 1975's Return to Fantasy. The resulting album retains the musical experimentation that marked Sweet Freedom and Wonderworld but has an overall harder-rocking feel that makes it more consistent than either one of those albums. Return to Fantasy throws down the gauntlet with the title track, which builds from a tapestry of spooky synthesizer and organ riffs into a thunderous rock tune where the guitar and organ duel over a galloping backbeat laid down by Lee Kerslake. It's bracing stuff and one of the finest rockers in the Uriah Heep canon.

French band formed in 1968 by former Pingouins lead singer Jacques Mercier. In the early 1970s they released two eponymous albums covering a wide variety of psych, prog, blues-rock and experimental styles, and also had some success with few pop singles…

A sequence of piano sonatas offers one of the most direct looks into a composer’s most private and most practical obsessions, not to mention one easy way to measure the evolution (or lack of evolution) of their compositional techniques. Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert turned them out by the dozen. The romantics were much more cautious, with Chopin, Brahms, Schumann writing only three apiece. In the 20th century, certain Russians regained ground in terms of sheer numbers, such as Mednter (14), Scriabin (10), Prokofiev (9) and Ustvolskaya (6). As for some prominent Americans, Copland, Carter and Barber wrote one, Ives wrote two, Sessions three and Wuorinen four. George Walker is one of the few leading American composers of the 20th century to produce as many as five piano sonatas. Taken together, they securely chart a lifetime of stylistic change. Walker managed many other feats, a number of them connected to being the first black person to break through various glass ceilings: the first to be accepted at the Curtis Institute of Music, first to study with Nadia Boulanger and the first to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Walker is also one of the only major composer-pianists to have recorded worthy performances of virtuoso standard repertoire including Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto” and the Brahms second piano concerto.

Edward the Great collects most of Iron Maiden's hits, including the punishing "Number of the Beast", the super-dramatic "Can I Play with Madness?" and their sole chart-topper "Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter". Since their late-1970s rise as prime movers of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Iron Maiden have unleashed a ferocious pack of hit singles and million-selling albums. Their recipe was simple: They took their lyrics from bloody world mythology and classic gothic literature and backed them with a soaring, bulldozing twin-guitar assault driven on by main man Steve Harris' relentless bass. It was an approach that would influence countless rock bands, from Metallica to a string of Scandinavian death-merchants.

“It would be worth striving towards a style that can combine the highest level of craftsmanship, originality, and high quality with the greatest popularity and folksiness.” (Hanns Eisler). This next release on Capriccios Hanns-Eisler-Edition contains songs and chansons from all periods of Eisler’s creative life. It also contains some of the fascinating orchestral suites that he had, almost exclusively, cobbled together and adapted from film scores in the 1930s. Not the least, it contains the world premiere recording of his incidental music for Die letzte Nacht – the epilogue to Karl Kraus‘ monumental, satirical work The Last Days of Mankind. The mastermind behind this project was the fabulous composer, conductor, and chansonnier HK Gruber. HK Gruber is arguably one of the greatest Eisler-experts.

The most influential and enduring progressive rock group ever, Yes has expanded the frontiers of musical onsciousness since 1968. Revered for instrumental virtuosity and bravura vocals in a signature sound fusing rock, classical, pop, folk, metal, and more, their sonically adventurous albums are matched in renown by the sheer force of their concert spectacles. Spanning 1969-2001, and a number of the band's legendary line-ups, this remarkable 2-CD compilation pulls masterworks from throughout their career for a revealing overview of their artistic evolution. 2-CD collections by legendary artists.

For the first time, the successful series of BR-KLASSIK audio biographies is devoting itself to a 20th-century composer: Dmitri Shostakovich. His symphonies are still highlights in the concert hall, and his fate has inspired great novels. But what do we really know about his life? He liked to play his cards close to his chest – and had good reason to do so…