Info text: Fleeting waltzes as 'permanent music' "Unfortunately not from me," Johannes Brahms once wrote under the opening bars of the waltz On the Beautiful Blue Danube, and there are numerous testimonies of Brahms' admiration of the waltz king Johann Strauss and their mutual appreciation. The waltz was not only a distinctive idiom of the Habsburg imperial capital Vienna in the 19th century, but [...]

Info text: NEOS is offering an absolute special feature for Christmas 2008: a newly discovered Christmas mass from the 15th century! Rupert Huber, director of the WDR Rundfunkchor Cologne, was looking for a program for the 2007 Christmas concert. A musician friend drew his attention to an old book that her father had given her as a gift. As it turned out, […]

Info text: "MOURNING MUSIC AS A PRAISE OF THE SUFFERING" The sound shape heard here reconstructs the original form of Johannes Brahms' German Requiem before its triumph in choral-symphonic sound power. This arrangement comes from the composer Heinrich Poos (born 1928), who primarily made vocal music and was a professor of music theory in Berlin for many years. Poos gives us a […]

Info text: RICHARD WAGNER ON BEETHOVEN'S "HEROIC SYMPHONY" This highly significant tone poem - the master's third symphony, and the work with which he first set out in his own unique direction - is in many respects not as easy to understand as its name suggests precisely because the title “heroic symphony” involuntarily leads one to […]

Info text: CONCERT POUR PIANO SEUL (CONCERT FOR PIANO ALONE) Original version of the 3rd Piano Sonata op.14, based on the autograph in the British Library, London Robert Schumann perhaps lives on primarily in his compositions for the piano. There is therefore no need to spark a rank dispute with the song and vocal composer, especially since Schumann's aftermath has a […]

Info text: JS BACH: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BWV 988 Thoughts on the work and interpretation Whether string trio, harpsichord or piano – the Goldberg Variations cannot be captured with terms such as “interpretation style” or “faithfulness to the work”. As is well known, the character and value of an interpretation depend only to a very limited extent on the question of “stylistic appropriateness” or the “tone color” of the chosen instrument, although criticism and […]