Turkish master pianist Gülsin Onay, who has already recorded the two piano concertos by her mentor Saygun for cpo, presents a most revealing confrontation of two masterworks from Turkey and Armenia: the compact 4-movement Piano Concerto from 1942 by Ulvi Cemal Erkin (1906-72) in a decisively Turkish style, and Aram Khachaturian’s famous 1936 Piano Concerto with its enchanting Armenian flavour. The Bilkent Symphony Orchestra is led by José Serebrier, one of the few great old conductors of our time and an unsurpassed master of orchestral balance and natural shaping of melodic cantability.

Piano: Gülsin Onay
Bilkent Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: José Serebrier
Recorded at: Bilkent Concert Hall, Bilkent University, Ankara, 10-14 January 2011
Engineer, recording producer: Günter Appenheimer
Final editing, mixing & mastering: Eckhard Steiger
Executive producer: Christoph Schlüren
CD released by kind permission of Bilkent University Music Faculty, 2021
Design: Daily Dialogue (Maximilian Schachtner, Malin Schoenberg, Oliver Schwamkrug, Mario Naegele)

After his fabulous Szymanowski album for Naxos, Italian pianist Andrea Vivanet recorded this album of Russian pieces between tradition and classical modernity in Tiflis. The album opens with Sergey Taneyev’s breakneck Prelude and Fugue (his late and only piano work from 1910). It is followed by four miniature cycles by the great Rimsky-Korsakov pupil Nikolai Tcherepnin in première recordings: 6 Préludes Op. 17 and 5 Morceaux Op. 18 (1900-01), and the folksong-based ‚Primitifs‘ from 1926 that are more modern in their whole attitude. The album’s second half consists of Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes Op. 34 from 1933. Played with irresistible verve and charme, this is an indispensible gem for all the lovers of romantic and early-20th-century piano music.

Studio Live Recording, Grand Hall of the Tbilisi State Conservatoire (Georgia), 25 March 2021

Sound Engineer: Paul Kvatchadze
Final Mastering: Andreas Ziegler (AFZ Musikproduktion)
Booklet Notes: Martin Blaumeiser
Executive Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Photo Andrea Vivanet: Lika Baindurshvili
Sponsored by THE TCHEREPNIN SOCIETY

Aldilà Records ARCD 022 (Gramola 98022)

With his transcriptions of music by Arvo Pärt, Gunter Herbig offers the direct continuation of his spiritual journey on the electric guitar that began with his enthusiastically acclaimed Gurdjieff transcriptions. The music of Arvo Pärt is reduced to the aerial purity of the subtly amplified instrument that gives it a weightlessly floating quality with seemingly endless space in seemingly eternal time dimensions. This unorthodox spiritual journey finally leads into the magical region of Arvo Pärt’s most transcribed work ’Fratres’, an inward-oriented hymn on the common origin, destiny, and future of mankind.

Transcribed for the guitar by Gunter Herbig
Guitar: Gretsch White Falcon
Amp: Fender Hot Rod Deluxe III
Produced/sound/editing by Dick Le Fort
24bit/96kHz
Recorded in April 2020 at the Music Production Company in Hataitai, Wellington, New Zealand

Gunter Herbig, Brazilian-German guitarist living in New Zealand, is well-known for his benchmark-setting performances of New Zealand guitar music by Lilburn and Farquhar for the Naxos label. His Gurdjieff transcriptions for electric guitar ’ex oriente’ on BIS Records achieved legendary status and are considered by specialists and music-lovers all over the world as superior to any of the many recordings for piano. He extended his electric guitar discovery journey with a most exemplary cross-sectional expedition of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ guitar music that leads to its final culmination in the famous Aria from ’Bachianas brasileiras’ No. 5 sung one octave lower than the original by the great samba singeress Alda Rezende. This album, and particularly the final ’Aria’, is destined to achieve cult status.

Recorded January/February 2019
at The Music Production Company in Hataitai, Wellington, New Zealand
96 kHz/24 bit
Producer and sound engineer: Dick Le Fort
Microphones: AKG C4000B
Guitar: Gretsch 'White Falcon' G7593 tuned at 432Hz
Amp: Fender Hot Rod Deluxe
Design: Daily Dialogue (Maximilian Schachtner, Malin Schoenberg, Oliver Schwamkrug, Stella Klump)

Rolf Schulte, German violin virtuoso living in New York, is a household name in contemporary music circles. His recordings oft he violin concertos by Schoenberg and Stravinsky are held in high esteem among connaisseurs but he is a master violinist in classical and romantic repertoire as well. ’The Violin in Stravinsky’s Life’ offers Schulte’s complete Stravinsky recordings for West German Radio (WDR) in Cologne (1976–79). Apart from Stravinsky’s original trio version of his ’Histoire du soldat’ with clarinetist Hans Deinzer this album presents an exemplary of Stravinsky’s music for violin and piano, in original versions as well as in well-known contemporary arrangements: Suite italienne, Divertimento, Duo concertant, and pieces from ’Firebird’ and ’Nightingale’, with pianists Jeffrey Swann and David Levine.

All recordings made at WDR Funkhaus Köln, Saal 2
4 November 1976:
Executive producer: Anne-Margret Neumann; recording producer: Leopold von Knobelsdorff; sound engineer: Dieter Frobeen
29 October 1979:
Executive producer: Schubert; recording engineer: Andreas Priemer
31 October 1979:E
Executive producer: Schubert; recording producer: Fleck; sound engineer: Andreas Beutner
5 November 1979:
Executive producer: Schubert; recording producer: Becker; sound engineer: Dieter Frobeen

Piano: Jeffrey Swann
Piano: David Levine
Clarinet: Hans Deinzer
Design: Daily Dialogue (Maximilian Schachtner, Malin Schoenberg, Oliver Schwamkrug)

Pi-hsien Chen, iconic performer of contemporary piano music by Boulez, Barraqué, Stockhausen and Cage as well as of Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, is documented live in concert in a 2005 recital with Olivier Messiaen’s large-scale masterwork ’Ving regards sur l’enfant-Jésus’, released for the first time on a double-cd in collaboration with WDR Cologne (West German Radio). A living icon of modernity performs an immortal icon of modernity.

Recorded live in concert, St. Cäcilien, Köln, 4. Juli 2005
Executive Producer: Werner Wittersheim
Recording Producer: Sebastian Stein
Recording Engineer: Ingret Koch
Mastering. Karin Karbach
Design: Daily Dialogue (Maximilian Schachtner, Malin Schoenberg, Oliver Schwamkrug)

In close collaboration with Christoph Schlüren, Catalan Trio Montserrat (Joel Bardolet, violin; Miquel Córdoba, viola, Bruno Hurtado, cello) ascends the Mount Everest of string trio literature: Heinz Schubert’s extremely demanding, highly dramatic, symphonically built Chamber Sonata, flanked by the multifaceted, elegantly elaborated, late-romantic Trio Sonata in seven movements by Paul Büttner and Reinhard Schwarz-Schiling’s translucent late string trio. The program opens with three fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, arranged for string trio and with slow introductions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Paul Büttner (1870-1943) and Heinz Schubert (1908-45) are world première recordings.

Studio Live Recording
Neutraubling, Cap à pie Studio, 12 August 2020
Artistic vision & structural preparation: Christoph Schlüren
Recording Engineer & Mastering: Andreas Ziegler, TyxArt
Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Design: Daily Dialogue (Maximilian Schachtner, Malin Schoenberg, Oliver Schwamkrug, Stella Klump)

Joseph Keilberth (1908-68) was one of Germany’s leading conductors of the 20th century. Particularly singers considered him the finest maestro of them all. He had a great sense for counterpoint and transparent structures and a strong affinity to German music of the late Romantic and expressionist era such as Reger, Pfitzner, Berg, Hindemith, or early Schoenberg. Keilberth was a regular guest conductor of Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra (today’s WDR-SO), and this album presents a selection of Cologne radio recordings 1955-67 of contemporary masters. Heinrich Kaminski’s Concerto grosso (1921-23) was considered as the most complex and difficult multi-polyphonic composition of its time, which is followed by the filigree textures of the 1935 Partita by his pupil Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling. Karl Höller’s Fugue for strings (1948) and his Passacaglia and Fugue after Frescobaldi (1939) are masterworks of post-Regerian opulence between impressionism and neo-classicism. Hindemith was Keilberth’s favorite among his contemporaries and is represented here by his 6 orchestrated Songs from Rilke’s ’Das Marienleben’ with magnificent soprano Agnes Giebel and his late Organ Concerto with its dedicatee Anton Heiller as soloist.

First commercial releases; the works by Kaminski and Höller are available for the first time

Recording Producer: Hans-Georg Daehn
Executive Producer: Karl Koch
Licensed in 2021 from WDR Cologne

Beth Levin counts among the world’s most monumental pianists of our time. Her live in concert recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations and last three sonatas are legendary. Her second album for Aldilà Records presents a live concert from Festival Baltimore 2019, comprising Handel’s Suite in D minor, Anders Eliasson’s Carosello, and – in an unsurmounted performance – Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata. "You may agree with it or not. No one plays Beethoven like Beth Levin." (Christoph Schlüren, 2013)

Recorded at Festival Baltimore, Linehan Concert Hall, University of Maryland, 29 June 2019
Recording Engineer: Alan Wonneberger
Recording Producer: Peter Karl
Executive Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Design: Daily Dialogue (Maximilian Schachtner, Malin Schoenberg, Raphael Wicki)

The young London-based, Catalan-Swiss violinist and multi-instrumentalist Violeta Vicci performs a uniquely versatile recital of solo works for violin, viola, and soprano. The program’s backbone are Bach’s Partita in E and Ysaÿe’s 2nd Sonata for solo violin. Ragnar Söderlind’s early, magically melancholic Elegy for violin solo, Jean-Louis Florentz’s orientally melismatic Vocalise, and Imogen Holst’s folkloristic Suite for viola solo are world première recordings. Violeta Vicci links these compositions with improvised transitions, combining voice and string artistry, partly in overdub technique, embracing a large scale of stylistic devices.

Recorded at Space Mountain Studios, Spain, 7-12th November 2018
Recording engineer, editing, mixing, mastering: Jon Alexander
Aldilà Executive Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Artwork cover image: Alexandra Barreña
Photography: Sandra Crilo
Booklet Text: Violeta Vicci
Corrections: Helen Glaisher-Hernández
German and Spanish translations: Christoph Schlüren, Javier Barreña
Design: Daily Dialogue ( Maximilian Schachtner, Malin Schönberg, Raphael Wicki, Oliver Schwamkrug)

A unique combination of the complete fugues from Johann Sebastian Bach’s ’Art of the Fugue’ with three completions of the unfinished final fugue by Donald Francis Tovey, Karl Hermann Pillney and Kalevi Aho and two B-A-C-H interludes by Robert Schumann and Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling. Performed by the Salzburg Chamber Soloists in pure string orchestra polyphony, conducted by the leading counterpoint exegete Christoph Schlüren.

Including 3 completions of the unfinished final fugue by Tovey, Pillney and Aho linked by 2 B-A-C-H Fugues by Robert Schumann and Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling

Salzburg Chamber Soloists
Dir. Christoph Schlüren

Cover Sculpture: Fritz Klein (civil name: Gottfried Klein, 1924-83): ’Der Horchende’ (’The Listener’, mid-1950s; fruitwood around lead sheet, eyes carved and framed with lead)

Live Recording: Odeïon, Waldorf Campus, Salzburg, 25 October 2019 (Original Sound, Original Dynamics)
Sound Engineer (Analogue Equipment): Johannes Brüning
Digital Transfer: Thomas Wersche
Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Design: Daily Dialogue (Max Schachtner, Malin Schoenberg)

Korean master pianist Pi-hsien Chen is a household name in the circles of Avantgarde music. Her recordings of the 3 Sonatas by Pierre Boulez, of Stockhausen’s and Cage’s piano music are considered as peak performances by most commentators. She is also a very renowned performer of Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart and Beethoven. Here she presents four of the last five sonatas by Franz Schubert that are described by Georg Albrecht Eckle as ”grandes sonates” in the highly sophisticated liner notes where he also explains why the final sonata in B-flat is not counted as a ”grande sonate”. Pi-hsien Chen’s fundamentally unsentimental but deeply lyrical Schubert style is unique in its own right.

Pi-hsien Chen, Piano
Recorded in Altenbach, June 2016 & October 2017
Sound Engineer: Jakob Haendel
Piano Technician: Hans Giese (Steinway D 1984)
Liner Notes: Georg Albrecht Eckle
Cover Painting: Christoph Gesing
Artwork: Daily Dialogue (Malin Schoenberg)

Aldilà Records ARCD 008, 2018 (Gramola 98008)

Argentinian pianist Hugo Schuler, a renowned expert in the polyphonic art of Johann Sebastian Bach, presents on his debut double album a two-part project: First, he combines some preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier with 20th century masterworks by the great South German renewer of counterpoint Heinrich Kaminski and his late pupil Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling in world première recordings. The album concludes with a towering performance of the Goldberg Variations.

Recorded in March 2013 in Vicenza, Centro Studi Ludwig Stein
Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Engineers: Ladislav Krajcovic & Jan Machut
Piano Tuner: Tiziano Ferrari (Fazioli)
Liner Notes: Hugo Schuler & Christoph Schlüren
Photo: Maximilian Rossner
Artwork: Daily Dialogue (Malin Schoenberg)

Aldilà Records ARCD 007, 2017 (Gramola 98007)

Born in Beethoven’s home town Bonn, Lucas Brunnert presents a through-composed violin solo recital centered around two well-known sonatas by Bach and Hindemith. Includes world première recordings of: the large, highly elaborate, free-tonal sonata by Eduard Erdmann, the famous Baltic-German pianist and symphonist; the tragically melancholic war-fantasia by Heinz Schubert; and the densely built, sonorous prelude by Edmund von Borck (Schubert and Borck fell in Second World War). Lucas Brunnert plays with total structural understanding and absolute command of his instrument.

A German Album for Violin Solo
Recorded in Schloss Laudon, Hadersdorf, Wien-Penzing, 17 & 18 December 2014
Engineers: Ladislav Krajcovic, Jan Matus
Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Photography: Maximilian Rossner
Design: Daily Dialogue (Maximilian Schachtner, Malin Schoenberg, Raphael Wicki)

1838 – 1973 - 1828

Studio Live Recording

Having listened to her phenomenal live recording of Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas, Christoph Schlüren asked legendary Brooklyn-based pianist Beth Levin to record a first album for Aldilà Records in Vienna. Levin, who was taught by masters such as Marian Filar, Rudolf Serkin, and Leonard Shure, responded with a riveting program confronting Schumann’s ’Kreisleriana’ and Schubert’s late Sonata in C minor D 958. Between these towering architectures she inserted Anders Eliasson’s ’Versione’, a dramatic little piece of improvisatory attitude and inscrutably organic coherence, and herewith started her series of Eliasson recordings.

rec. Wien-Hietzing (Vienna), Wiener Militärpfarre/Ehrensaal der Österreichischen Streitkräfte (Hall of Honours of the Austrian Armed Forces), Bösendorfer Grand Piano 225 (1984), 7 October 2014

Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Engineers: Ladislav Krajcovic, Jan Machut
Piano Tuner: Christoph Bartl
Photography: Maximilian Rossner
Artwork: Paul Ole Ballhaus

In memoriam Anders Eliasson

Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling’s String Symphony after his only string quartet in F minor from 1932 is the main work in this versatile string orchestra program. The 40-minute work in three movements is a timeless continuation of the advanced counterpoint from Bach via late Beethoven and Bruckner to his teacher Heinrich Kaminski. Conducted by Christoph Schlüren, other highlights include (in live recordings) Arvo Pärt’s visionary ’Orient & Occident’, the world première performance of Peter Michael Hamel’s memorial piece ’Ulisono’, and Rebekka Hartmann’s phenomenal performance of Anders Eliasson’s ’In medias’ for violin solo.

rec. Berlin, Großer Sendesaal Rundfunkhaus Nalepastraße, 21-22 November 2010 (Live in Concert: 20 November)

Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Sound Engineer: Jindrich Maßner
Photography: Maximilian Rossner
Artwork: Paul Ole Ballhaus

For Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, his colleague Sergio Fiorentino (1927-98) was ”il solo altro pianista”, and Horowitz and Lonquich are among his famous admirers. Thanks to Ernst Lumpe, the great enabler of Sergio Fiorentino’s late second career, we got these tapes of a recital Fiorentino played in Münster in 1994, including Bach’s 5th French Suite, Franck’s ’Prélude, Aria et Final’ and Schubert final Sonata in B-flat, as well as encores by Chopin, Schubert, and the ’Rosenkavalierwalzer’ by Strauss/Singer. The straight-strung ’exhibition grand’ Érard from around 1880 is of particularly striking effect in Franck’s music that sounds more natural than on any later instrument. The second CD ends with a 1955 BBC studio live recording of Rachmaninoff’s 4th Piano Concerto from Edinburgh that was later erased by the BBC but was rediscovered by Ernst Lumpe who prepared this stunning document for its first release. This is the first album in the ’Aldilà Historic’ series.

CD 1 + CD 2

Münster/Westfalen, Erbdrostenhof, 20 June 1994
Recording: Ernst Lumpe

Sergey Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Sergio Fiorentino (Pf)
BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, dir. Ian Whyte
BBC Studio Live Performance
Edinburgh, BBC Hall, 22 June 1965
(provided by Ernst Lumpe; original tape has been erased by the BBC)
Digital Remastering: Jindrich Maßner

Ottavia Maria Maceratini’s second album ’Untitled’ combines three main works by Robert Schumann with two French bird-interludes: Rameau’s timeless ’Rappel des oiseaux’ and Ravel’s mysterious ’Oiseaux tristes’ with its underlying valse-metre. In Schumann’s G-minor Sonata Ottavia Maria Maceratini offers a ride on knife’s edge without losing the clear structure and form. The Symphonic Etudes with their highly contrasting variations are tied together in a truely symphonic development, and the final ’Faschingsschwank in Wien’ takes no prisoners. Legendary Munich critic Beate Kayer compared these performances with Clara Haskil, and the unorthodox album was nominated for the ICMA awards.

Recorded München, Musikhochschule, Großer Saal, 20 May 2012
Sound engineer: Jindrich Maßner / Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Photos: Maximilian Rossner / Artwork: Alexis Zurflüh

Ottavia Maria Maceratini received her main pianistic impulses from Eliso Virsaladze and was sustainably supported by Gidon Kremer. With the DSO she gave the German première of John Foulds’ revolutionary piano concerto ’Dynamic Triptych’ in Berlin. Her debut album ’One Cut’, recorded with only one little edit, was the Aldilà Records debut as well. Including the première recording of the expressionist Notturno tempestoso from Heinz Tiessen’s ’Nature Trilogy’, this album is a bold journey through the history of piano music from Domenico Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt and Debussy to John Foulds’ wildly ornamentic ’April-England’. This album was enthusiastically acclaimed and described as a magnificent bouquet of most beautiful surprises.

Recorded Live in München, Musikhochschule, Großer Saal, 29 November 2011
Sound Engineer: Jindrich Maßner
Producer: Christoph Schlüren
Photos & Artwork: Maximilian Rossner