Arthaus presents a rare document of an early nineties operatic highlight: the Japanese premiere of Wolfgang Sawallisch’s last production at the Bavarian State Opera. The Company’s tour of Nagoya and Tokyo in autumn 1992 under director and principal conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch was a particularly important event. Sawallisch was celebrating both the twenty-fifth anniversary of his first appearance as visiting guest conductor of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo and his departure, after twenty-one years, from his two principal posts with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. Sawallisch - an acclaimed interpreter of the music of Richard Strauss - chose Die Frau ohne Schatten to commemorate these anniversaries.

Une compilation d'oeuvres du grand Jean-Sbastien Bach pour son pouse. Un incontournable de toute bibliothque musicale ! Cadeau Anna Magdalena Bach de son poux Jean-Sbastien, ce petit livre deviendra vite un album familial. Leurs fils (Johann Christian, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Gottfried Heinrich) l'utilisent galement pour leurs essais de composition. Pour autant, ce livre est aussi ouvert aux autres compositeurs de l'poque. On y trouve des partitions pour clavier (principalement des menuets, marches et polonaises) mais aussi des chants et des chorals. Cet enregistrement est servi par certains des plus grands artistes actuels de l'art baroque rassembls autour du claveciniste Olivier Baumont : Anne Magout, Christine Plubeau, Aurlien Delage et Julien Chauvin.

The Grosses Festpielhaus in Salzburg has been the scene of countless memorable musical events - operas, concerts and recitals - for 50 years. Here is a unique chance to celebrate the glories of this distinguished era. In an exceptional collaboration with the Salzburg Festival, we have prepared a 25-CD box set - 5 complete operas, 10 concerts and 2 recitals - featuring many of the world's greatest artists, in recordings with classical status and others that are appearing on CD for the first time.

Wolfgang Flür began his solo career in the mid-'90s, a decade after leaving Kraftwerk, with a Mouse on Mars-produced album under the name Yamo. He's since put out music under his own name, and has become more active since the 2000s, even if he hasn't been prolific on an album level. 2015's Eloquence (Complete Works) included collaborations with Meat Beat Manifesto's Jack Dangers, Anni Hogan, and (as a bonus track) Pizzicato Five's Maki Nomiya, as well as a previously issued single sharing the name of his controversial memoir, "I Was a Robot." (The other members of Kraftwerk took Flür to court over some of the book's contents, following its initial German publication.)

The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and their Music Director Riccardo Chailly have already acquired legendary status – glorious reviews and many awards for their recordings testifying to their continuing success. At Leipzig’s International Mahler Festival, to mark the centenary of Mahler’s death, they performed his monumental Second Symphony in the Gewandhaus – together with two marvellous soloists and choral forces quite beyond compare. About the final movement the composer said: “The increasing tension, working up to the final climax, is so tremendous that I don’t know myself, now that it is over, how I ever came to write it.”

Letzten Monat konnte ich Ihnen den letzten komponierenden Enkel Johann Sebastian Bachs vorstellen, und diesen Monat können sie die lohnende – und spannende – Bekanntschaft mit einem seiner Zeitgenossen machen, der ebenfalls aus der weitverzweigten Bach-Dynastie stammt: Johann Michael Bach (1745–1820). Er gehört ebenfalls der Enkelgeneration Johann Sebastians an; der hessische Bach-Zweig, aus dem er stammt, hat sich jedoch so frühzeitig von den thüringischen Hauptlinien getrennt, dass heute das genaue Verwandtschaftsverhältnis zu Johann Sebastian nicht mehr geklärt werden kann.

Hans Werner Henze’s uncompromising individualism and remarkable compositional legacy has ensured him a permanent place in the Western musical landscape. The works in this programme represent his abandonment of avant-garde extremes, and are very much part of this quality of durability in his music. Chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice in the international music scene whose many Naxos recordings include a complete cycle of Brahms’ symphonies as well as the ‘outstanding achievement’ (BBC Music Magazine) of an acclaimed cycle of the symphonies of Prokofiev.

This Bartered Bride ’s acting and singing is generally of a high level. Lucia Popp was caught at a perfect time for this role. She’d gradually been developing her voice into a larger, more dramatic instrument, and here displays a lyric’s warmth with the power of a spinto. She clearly enjoys the challenge of the only serious aria in the entire work (in act III; performed in German as “Wie fremd und tot”), providing many fine interpretative points and a great deal of tonal variety. The audience goes wild, as well they might.

Five years after first conducting the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra in their Venezuelan home, Claudio Abbado continues his commitment to this stunning ensemble in this first joint audiovisual concert recording. Prokofiev's extrovert Scythian Suite is a gift for the boundless energy of these young players, while the intricacy and anguish of Berg's Lulu-Suite are an Abbado speciality, with soprano Anna Prohaska, in her Lucerne Festival debut, singing the heroine's dazzling statement of self-justification. The concert ends with an impassioned account of Tchaikovsky's Pathétique, his final symphony, one of the most moving works in music history.

It is almost exactly a quarter of a century since Pierre Boulez recorded his complete Webern survey. This new collection, apart from being useful for anyone who doesn't want to buy three whole CDs of Webern, offers an interesting insight into how Boulez's way with a composer probably more central to him than any other has changed. For a start he gives him a little more time: most of the pieces here are slightly but significantly slower than they were in 1970. This allows lines to be more subtly moulded, phrases to acquire a touch more poise. This is not to say that Boulez has softened and now phrases Webern as though he were Chopin, but grace and even wit (the second movement of the Quartet) are now noticeable alongside his customary precision. The Ensemble InterContemporain have been playing these pieces constantly since they were first founded, and it shows in the absolute assurance of their performances.