Ries’s aptitude for Beethovenian sturm und drang is phenomenal. The impression is inescapable in the Overture from “Die Räuberbraut” where it is moderated by the Schumann of the Fourth Symphony. That particular flavour is varied with a touch of storminess redolent of Berlioz’s Le Corsair towards the end. The Overture from “Liska oder Die Hexe von Gyllensteen” is a shade more balletic, with a dash of Weber’s Oberon and Euryanthe and even a foreshadowing of Tchaikovsky.

According to the thoroughly credible words of his contemporaries, Johannes Bernardus van Bree, the long-time musical director of the Felix Meritis Society of Amsterdam, was not only an extremely talented violinist and composer. He was also, to the delight of those around him, a very pleasant, flexible character who strove all his life to please others. This made him shy away from tormenting the conservative capital of the Netherlands with avant-garde provocations. However, it did not stop him from skilfully and sensitively composing unusually appealing works in the conventional vocabulary of the early Romantic years. His highly dramatic overture in the "unfinished" key of B Minor and his original Symphonic Fantasy, which is a mere stone's throw away from Robert Schumann, are particularly surprising.

During the first half of the nineteenth century Sigismund von Neukomm was one of Europe’s most highly regarded composers. Although he maintained an intimate artistic friendship with Joseph Haydn until the older composer’s death, he was a composer with a mind of his own and full of originality. This fact is very convincingly demonstrated by his four orchestral fantasies presented here which he termed an ‘Essay in a New Genre’. Here we encounter Sturm und Drang and anticipations of romanticism in their purest form.

Michael Alexander Willens führt dieses Werk in solistischer Besetzung auf und erzielt dadurch ein Höchstmaß an Klarheit, Homogenität und Stringenz. Ein wichtiger Baustein für die Geschichte der oratorischen Passion.

Our CD presents a selection of five works from the extensive, largely unexplored Easter Cantata oeuvre created by Georg Philipp Telemann during the course of his sixty years in Eisenach (1708-12), Frankfurt am Main (1712-21), and Hamburg (1721-67). Four of the works recorded here date from the 1720s and take us back to the years in Telemann’s creative life as a composer when he was the new music director of Hamburg’s five principal churches and was reorganizing the city’s church music and modernizing it in musical respects.

From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, the overture became an orchestral piece intended to precede a large-scale dramatic work. This recording brings together twelve overtures from Mozart’s operas. They foreshadow the action, sometimes stylistically, sometimes by quoting themes that will appear later, to create a dramatic impression before we even see anything on stage – think of the memorable overtures to Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflöte. The twelve overtures brought together here cover 21 years of Mozart’s career: from Mitridate, composed when he was just 14, which testifies to the young composer’s familiarity with the galant style then in vogue, to La Clemenza di Tito (1791), the high point of his work in the opera seria genre that was to disappear with him, not forgetting masterpieces such as Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte.

The Kölner Akademie under its proven conductor Michael Willens now presents more atmospheric Christmas compositions by Francesco Durante, one of the greatest Neapolitan church composers of the first half of the eighteenth century. Durante continued the Neapolitan tradition of composing Christmas cantatas or motets, with a series of vocal works that he assigned to the category of the ‘Pastorale’ in order to indicate their relation to the Feast of Christmas and to the shepherds in the field.

Francesco Durante was one of the great Neapolitan church composers and teachers during the first half of the eighteenth century in Naples. He chose to focus on sacred music and his Magnificat in B flat major is doubtless the best known, most beloved, most performed, and most recorded work by him among the Neapolitan Christmas compositions on volume 1.

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was one of the most important figures of the Romantic movement, inspiring such later composers as Robert Schumann (Kreisleriana), Léo Delibes (Coppélia), Jacques Offenbach (The Tales of Hoffman), and Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (Nutcracker) through his fantastic tales. Yet Hoffmann was a composer in his own right, and he had modest success with his operas Undine and Aurora, along with his Symphony in E flat major, and various vocal and chamber pieces. Hoffmann's symphony, the Overture to Undine, and the Overture and March from Aurora are programmed on this 2015 CPO release with the Symphony in A major by Friedrich Witt, a contemporary of Hoffmann who focused his energies almost entirely on instrumental music.

Anton Eberl is often referred to when discussing contemporaries of Beethoven and Mozart. He was one of Beethovens leading rivals in the field of instrumental music, but unfortunately most of his work has disappeared. Having studied with Mozart there was no other composer whose works were more frequently passed off a Mozarts than Anton Eberl. The Piano Concertos opp. 32 and 40 presented here are performed on a period pianoforte and follow the model of the solo concerto developed toward the end of the eighteenth century as realised exemplarily and individually in Mozarts Piano Concertos.

World-Premeire Recordings Rombergs Cello Concertos. Sic transit gloria mundi all those who occupy themselves with Bernhard Rombergs life and work are immediately reminded of this traditional piece of wisdom. At the beginning of the nineteenth century he was acclaimed as an excellent virtuoso on the violoncello and recognized as one of the most important composers of his times. Even during his lifetime, however, he was forced to experience how his star declined, his playing style was regarded as old, and his compositions vanished from concert programs.

„Women who compose independently are rare in the music world. As abundant as the literary world is with female talent, the musical scene has few to champion, and among these few, Emilie Mayer is at the top. Her prolific output resembles a wellspring. She transforms every sensation, every feeling and every emotion to music.“ Elisabeth Sangalli-Marr (c. 1828–1901) described Emilie Mayer’s unique position in the music world of the time with these words in a Biographische Skizze (biographical sketch) published in 1877. Indeed, no other composer of her generation was so unimpressed by patriarchal gender conceit and rigid role attributions as „Europe’s greatest female composer“ (as Emilie Mayer is described in the subtitle of a recently published biography).

Composed in 1786, the Piano Concertos Nos 24 in C minor and 25 in C major are regarded as two of Mozart's finest achievements in the genre. Both are large-scale works, with durations of more than 25 minutes each – the C major concerto is in fact one of the most expansive of all classical piano concertos, rivalling Beethoven’s fifth concerto. Their grandeur immediately made them popular fare in the concert hall – Mendelssohn, for instance, had No.24 in his repertoire through the 1820s and 1830s – and new recordings appear regularly. It is nevertheless relatively rare to hear them performed on original instruments and with orchestral forces corresponding to what Mozart himself would have been familiar with.

Thuringia-born Johann Melchior Molter (1696-1765) is at best known as the composer who wrote some of the earliest concertos for the clarinet, which had just been invented at the time. Otherwise, the practical exploration of the oeuvre of the long-time Karlsruhe court kapellmeister is still in its early stages. In the highly acclaimed series 'Forgotten Treasures' at ARS PRODUKTION, Michael Alexander Willens and his Kolner Akademie present some of the concertos and orchestral works in first recordings, which once again make us take notice because of their above-average quality and remarkable inventiveness.