News from the Naxos Music Group
Label of the Month – Capriccio
Founded in 1982, the CAPRICCIO record label has become well-known for the individual character of its diverse catalogue. While standard repertoire by Bach, Beethoven and Mozart has its place, most of the label’s CD and DVD titles feature music from all historical periods that is either less well known or has been recently rediscovered.
Capriccio enjoys an enviable diversity of recordings: operas by Hasse, Graun, Schreker and Zemlinsky; the symphonies of Joseph Martin Kraus, Gossec, Schulhoff and Ullmann; the comprehensive Kurt Weill Edition; the complete film music of Shostakovich and Schnittke; and the ‘20th-century Portraits’ series, featuring music by composers such as Ernst Bloch, Egon Wellesz and Paul Dessau.
Eminent artists have ensured a consistently high standard of performance over the years. These include Christoph Eschenbach, Bo Skovhus, Harriet Krijgh, Christine Schäfer, Ramón Vargas, Tzimon Barto, Matthias Goerne, Anne Schwanewilms, Christine Schornsheim, Jochen Kowalski, Hermann Prey, the Vienna Boys’ Choir, Concerto Köln, Max Emanuel Cenčić, Vladimir Spivakov and Dmitri Kitajenko.
Since 2015 Capriccio has recorded two modern times programmes each year with the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and Karl-Heinz Steffens. These feature orchestral works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann (ECHO Klassik 2015), Luigi Dallapiccola, Henry Dutilleux, Karol Szymanowski, Alberto Ginastera, George Antheil and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
In 2017 Capriccio will release the complete symphonies of Bohuslav Martinů, Dvořák‘s rarely performed cantata The Spectre‘s Bride, and Mahler’s Das klagende Lied. This is joint venture with the Austrian Broadcast Company (ORF), the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Cornelius Meister. Capriccio has been managed by Johannes Kernmayer since 1989.
RECENT AND UPCOMING RELEASES
Schwanengesang
Bo Skovhus, Tenor • Stefan Vladar, Piano
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The Poisoned Kiss • Fantasia on Sussex Folk Tunes
Martin Rummel, Cello • Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz • Karl-Heinz Steffens
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Frank Dupree, Piano • Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz • Karl-Heinz Steffens
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The Symphonies
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra • Cornelius Meister
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Rossini in Wildbad Festival
Rossini in Wildbad has become a well-established festival over the past 28 years, hallmarked by splendid CD recordings and international radio transmissions. It is renowned for discovering both new operas of the bel canto repertory and outstanding young singers. Naxos has continuously issued a number of recordings from the festivals. These performances, recorded live, have received tremendous critical acclaim.
This year, the three-week festival was held in July, with an extensive programme of works by Rossini that included L'occasione fa il ladro (Opportunity Makes a Thief), Aureliano in Palmira, Maometto II and Eduardo e Cristina.
Conductor Antonino Fogliani has been the music director of the festival since 2011, and has conducted to great critical acclaim some rare bel canto works. He has conducted Rossini’s Semiramide (8.660340-42) at the Festival, which attracted this comment from Gramophone: “The Wildbad [performance’s]…completeness and theatrical cogency make it an indispensable addition to any representative collection of serious Rossini on record.”
Recent recordings from the Rossini in Wildbad Festival
![ROSSINI, G.: Sigismondo [Opera]](https://www.naxos.com/sharedfiles/images/cds/others/8.660403-04.gif "ROSSINI, G.: Sigismondo [Opera]")
Sigismondo
![ROSSINI, G.: Adelaide di Borgogna [Opera]](https://www.naxos.com/sharedfiles/images/cds/others/8.660401-02.gif "ROSSINI, G.: Adelaide di Borgogna [Opera]")
Adelaide di Borgogna
![BELLINI, V.: Bianca e Gernando [Opera]](https://www.naxos.com/sharedfiles/images/cds/others/8.660417-18.gif "BELLINI, V.: Bianca e Gernando [Opera]")
Bianca e Gernando [Opera]
![ROSSINI, G.: Bianca e Falliero [Opera]](https://www.naxos.com/sharedfiles/images/cds/others/8.660407-09.gif "ROSSINI, G.: Bianca e Falliero [Opera]")
Bianca e Falliero
Three ECHO Klassik awards for the Naxos Music Group
ECHO Klassik, Germany’s most prestigious awards body in the field of recorded classical music, has announced details of this year’s winners. Naxos and its affiliated labels have received awards for three outstanding recordings.
The Naxos label received two awards. Henning Kraggerud’s performance of Mozart’s Violin Concertos Nos. 3, 4 and 5 (8.573513) was named Concerto Recording of the Year (18th century), while Berg’s Wozzeck (8.660390-91), featuring Roman Trekel and Anne Schwanewilms, was named Best Opera Recording (20th-/21st-century).
“Kraggerud’s buoyant, mellifluous spontaneity and spotless intonation are in a class apart.” – The Strad
Also available on DVD (2.110368)
![BERG, A.: Wozzeck [Opera]](https://www.naxos.com/sharedfiles/images/cds/others/8.660390-91.gif "BERG, A.: Wozzeck [Opera]")
“aken from concert performances, but ones which combine a powerful sense of drama and story-telling (so crucial in this work) with a quite intense focus on the music-making.” – Gramophone
Christian Tetzlaff becomes Best Instrumentalist for his recording of Brahms’ violin sonatas on the Ondine label (ODE1284-2). This represents the fourth ECHO Klassik award for Christian Tetzlaff.
“Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt convey a sense of wide-eyed discovery, ardent conviction and warm affection in Brahms’s violin sonatas that’s not only immensely satisfying but unexpectedly moving as well.” – Gramophone
Christian Tetzlaff continues his highly successful series of chamber music recordings on Ondine with two recordings featuring Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by Bach and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto.
Featured Playlists – Classical Music Playlists for the End of Summer
Summer is drawing to a close, but there’s still time to make one last road trip before we all get back to business (or back to school for students). Wherever your travels take you, bring along, listen along, and sing along to a selection of music to enhance your experience: from tunes to help the hours pass on your journey, to music to accompany the sounds of crashing waves, and perhaps a playlist to entertain the kids as they explore their new adventure land. As usual, we’ve got it all covered. Remember to Follow and Add the playlist to your library and enjoy whenever and wherever you’d like!
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A bit of crazy, a touch of class, a lot of action – Kingsman 2 trailer
This summer’s blockbuster season is in full swing, and cinemas are doing brisk business in promoting the sequel to the 2014 hit Kingsman: The Secret Service with a new trailer for Kingsman 2: The Golden Circle, which opens in theatres this October. The music in the trailer has remixed the unmistakable opening measures of Giuseppe Verdi’s Dies irae from his Messa da Requiem. Listen to the original Dies irae (Latin for ‘day of wrath’), and then check out the trailer to see why this piece of music is particularly well-suited to the sequel’s anarchic, gun-slinging action.
Need to license some music for a project and don’t know where to start? Visit Naxos Licensing to find out how!
Celebrate Guitar Music – Singular voice. Stunning expression.
Naxos’ Guitar, Lute and Vihuela catalogue spans a wide range of music written for the instruments. Collectors wishing to assemble recordings by composer will find noted representatives of successive historical periods, including John Dowland, Silvius Leopold Weiss, Mauro Giuliani, Fernando Sor, Francisco Tarrega, Agustin Barrios Mangoré, Joaquín Rodrigo, Leo Brouwer and Hans Werner Henze. The catalogue also boasts some of the best artists of the instrument, including Enno Voorhorst, Adam Holzman, Jeffrey McFadden, GRAMMY® Award winners Norbert Kraft and Jason Vieaux, and guitar superstar Pepe Romero.
NEW AND UPCOMING RELEASES
Michael Gielen Edition: The Mahler symphonies
Michael Gielen is one of the most prominent conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries. To celebrate his eminent career, and with his 90th birthday imminent, SWR Classic is releasing the Michael Gielen Edition, which comprises 50 years of recordings in 10 volumes from the SWR Archives. Volume 6 will be released in September and features Gielen’s most comprehensive Mahler collection to date: 17 CDs, a bonus DVD of a performance of Symphony No. 9, and the first release of Gielen conducting Rückert-Lieder and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (SWR19042CD). Succeeding volumes will include music by Beethoven, Janáček, the Second Viennese School, and works written after the Second World War.
PREVIOUS VOLUMES IN THE MICHAEL GIELEN EDITION
– The Art Music Lounge
– Pizzicato ★★★★★
– The WholeNote
– Gramophone
– Pizzicato ★★★★
Onslow’s string quintets. Expressions of elegance.
It was Robert Schumann who praised the Anglo-French composer Georges Onslow, alongside Mendelssohn, as one of the successors to the chamber music legacy of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. His string quintets were intended for a market of cultivated amateurs, with parts for a second cello or bass. No. 10 in F minor, Op. 32 reflects Beethoven’s influence, its Sturm und Drang elements revealing a masterly balance between the stable and unpredictable. No. 22 in E flat major, lively and playful, offers an almost Schubertian songfulness. This recording will be released in September (8.573689).
Volume 1 of the series (8.573600) was warmly received by critics:
“ … brilliant playing all around” – Fanfare
“These five players make a beguiling case for this music. Their ensemble sound is attractive: it is warm and slightly inward which, combined with the small-room acoustic, makes for a real chamber-music feeling.” – Gramophone
“The group’s performance here captures the subtle shades and shifting dynamics with great lyricism: sagacious, thoughtful and expressive.”
– International Society of Bassists Magazine
Featured Digital Platform – Naxos Music Library
With almost 2 million tracks available to subscribers, and with more than 800 new CDs added each month, the Naxos Music Library is the world’s largest online resource for classical music.
The library offers the complete Naxos and Marco Polo catalogues plus recordings from over 650 record labels. These include Sony Classical, Warner Classics/Erato, Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, and RCA Records, with more labels joining every month. It also covers a wide range of genres, from classical music to opera, jazz, musicals, world music and pop/rock.
NML can be accessed from any computer, anywhere, anytime, and the HTLM5 player can stream music though the standard internet connection of most phones and tablets.
Click here for a 15 minute preview to browse and listen.
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Artist of the Month – Bo Skovhus, baritone
Twenty years ago, Bo Skovhus made his first recording of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin (The Fair Maid of the Mill) as a young baritone at the outset of his career. Now an established interpreter of opera and lieder, he has released a series of new recordings of Schubert’s song cycles with renowned pianist Stefan Vladar:
“I’m very thankful to be able to do this again. As a young man you tend to not reflect as much. Now that I’m older, I understand the music more and more. Especially for this cycle, it’s important to have another point of view.”
– Bo Skovhus
Bo Skovhus was born at Ikast in Denmark and studied at the Aarhus Music College, at the Copenhagen Royal Academy for Opera and in New York. A principal with the Vienna State Opera, he also appears regularly at the Vienna Musikverein and the Vienna Konzerthaus. In April 1997 he was awarded the Austrian title of Kammersänger. Alongside a wide operatic repertoire that ranges from Mozart to Berg and Britten, Bo Skovhus also has a number of distinguished concert appearances to his credit. He also devotes a large part of his time to lieder recitals, an essential element in an international career that has taken him to major musical centres throughout the world. He has performed the role of Don Giovanni in Houston, at the Paris Opera, in Dresden and elsewhere.
SCHUBERT’S SONG CYCLE BY BO SKOVHUS
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