The Romantic

Mahler, Strauss & Wagner: Liebestod / Bamberger Symphoniker

The music of Wagner, Mahler and Strauss is very close to the heart of the Bamberg Symphony and even seems to have ingrained itself in their DNA, to which the award-winning recordings of Mahler 4 with Jakub Hruša and Mahler 9 with Herbert Blomstedt impressively attest. With this concept album, they reflect on the topic of death, which Jakub Hruša does not interpret solely as a moment full of despair and tragedy. (Accentus)

1CD# ACC30599 $19.99

Schumann: The Symphonies & Overtures [3 CDs]

During their long collaboration (1997–2019) Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra developed a project they named ‘Opening Doors’, performing orchestral works from the Romantic era with the smaller-than-usual forces of a chamber orchestra. Due to the often revelatory results of this approach, the team went on to present at concerts around the world and on several recordings. (BIS)

3SACD# BIS-2669 $39.99

Saint-Saëns Volume 4.: Duos for Harmonium & Piano

The rise in popularity of the harmonium in the second half of the nineteenth century brought with it a large repertoire of chamber music, especially in France, where the instrument had been developed and refined. The combination of harmonium with piano was an especially popular one. The accordion, taking the role of the harmonium on these recordings, produces sound in a near identical way. (Nimbus)

1CD# NI8111 $18.99

Respighi: The Birds; Ancient Dances & Airs

With the present album, the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and John Neschling bring us the sixth and last installment in a series that has been called ‘the finest-ever survey of the composer’s orchestral output undertaken by a single conductor’

BBC Music Magazine. (BIS)

1SACD# BIS-2540 $19.99

Schubert: Symphony No. 8 in C major D 944

A romantic horn melody from the distance is taken up by the woodwinds, continued by the cellos and violas, takes hold of the entire orchestra and leads into an exuberant, lively Allegro. Without resistance we surrender to this flow of melodies, harmonies, coldness gives way to warmth, and willingly forget for an hour all struggle and cramp around us. (Tacet)

1SACD# TACET249 $24.99

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 (1887 version)

It is an elaborate, raw earlier version of Bruckner’s 8th Symphony that Markus Poschner performs here, in the latest edition by Paul Hawkshaw. More ornate, brassier, and with more economically employed woodwinds, this version doesn’t smoothen edges and doesn’t round corners: An interesting insight into emboldened Bruckner at his unadulterated self. (Capriccio)

1CD# C8087 $19.99

Dvořák: Symphonies Nos. 7 & 8

Dvořák: Works for Cello & Orchestra / Daniele Rustioni, Enrico Dindo

The Czech composer Antonín Dvořák was gaining international fame during the latter part of the 19th century for a string of highly successful and popular works across many genres. His Cello Concerto was premiered in London in 1896 – its symphonic character and wonderful melodic invention made the concerto one of his most beloved and frequently performed works. (Dynamic)

1CD# DYN-CDS7977 $16.99

Saint-Saëns: Violin Sonatas, Berceuse & Fantaisie pour violon et harpe

Saint-Saëns’s chamber music broke new ground in France at a time when public taste tended to favor opera and opéra-comique. His first Sonata for violin and piano, one of the earliest composed in France, is a masterpiece of boundless beauty. Its emotional impact and its highly poetic content are served by the composer’s perfect mastery of formal architecture. (BIS)

1SACD# BIS-2489 $19.99 Welt & Traum – Songs by Wolf, Liszt, Ullmann & Mahler

“And all, all was well again! / […] Love and pain / and world and dream!” So ends the fourth of Gustav Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, settings of texts the composer had partly taken from the collection “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (the lad’s magic horn), recompiling and extending them. (Haenssler Classic)

1CD# HC22040 $18.99

Gianandrea Noseda chose Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 for his first Philharmonia concert as General Music Director of the Opernhaus Zurich. This performance is now released as a live recording, together with Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7, which was recorded at a later date. Slavic repertoire is very close to Noseda’s heart, and he succeeded in conveying this passion to the musicians of the Philharmonia Zurich. (Accentus)

1CD# PHR0113 $25.99

The Bruckner Symphonies (Organ Transcriptions),

Vol. 5

This series marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner, which falls in 2024. It’s dedicated to Bruckner’s symphonies, most of them recorded in new transcriptions for organ by Hansjörg Albrecht. The 6th recording was made on the church organ of St. Margaret in Munich with the transcription of Bruckner’s 5th Symphony by Erwin Horn. (Oehms Classics)

1CD# OC 481 $14.99

Mendelssohn: 12 Early Symphonies (Remastered) [4 CDs]

In 1970, Kurt Masur took over the direction of one of the best orchestras in Germany and the world: the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. One year later, in 1971, these recordings of the 12 Youth Symphonies by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy were made. They are testimony to the emergence of a fruitful artistic relationship between Kapellmeister and musicians that was to last 26 years. (Berlin Classics)

4CD# 0302855BC $29.99

Beach & Maier-Rontgen: Female Composers of the Romantic Era, Vol. 2

In the Romantic period, works for the flute were almost as rare as women composers, and the flute had fallen out of fashion as a solo instrument. Entirely unjustly, the Swiss duo of Miriam Terragni and Catherine Sarasin thinks, and so they repeatedly take works for the violin as the basis for arrangements. In the case of these two sonatas, an extremely worthwhile project! (Coviello)

1CD# COV92209 $18.99

Hartmann: Piano Works, Vol. 4

Danish Romantic composer JPE Hartmann was born 1805 and lived nearly to be 100 years. During his time he was the most influential composer in Denmark and wrote beautiful music for solo piano. Here Danish pianist Thomas Trondhjem has reached the fourth volume in this enterprising series. (Danacord)

1CD# DACOCD950 $16.99

Berlioz’s Lost Oboe: Early French Romantic Music for Oboe and Piano

This recording unearths a handful of evocative oboe compositions from early nineteenth-century France. These works, all of which have never been recorded before, belong to a large corpus of neglected nineteenthcentury chamber music for oboe and fortepiano, and bear witness to a lively, dynamic tradition of wind playing in France. Performed here on a ten-keyed French oboe and fortepiano. (Ramee)

1CD# RAM2108 $18.99

Donizetti: String Quartets, Vol. 2 [2 CDs]

Saving the imagination. This was one of the secrets of good composition according to Donizetti. Indeed, this economy of invention proved especially effective in chamber music, particularly in its noblest formation: the string quartet. The Mitja Quartet was founded in 2008 by four musicians from Naples, Cosenza, Potenza and La Serena (Chile). (Urania)

2CD# LDV14095 $29.99

Schubert: Mass in A-Flat Major, D678

In his Mass in A flat, Schubert set himself the great task of composing a “Missa solemnis”, as he later entitled the work. As with the Mass he wrote in the last year of his life, he severed the bonds imposed by tradition on the four earlier works of 1814–16. His highest ambition for the effect it might have on the world is linked in the A flat major Mass with a deeply personal confession, the formulation of his own faith, of “true devotion.” (Haenssler)

1CD# HC22041 $18.99

Bruckner: Symphony No. 7

The first performance of Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony at the Zurich Tonhalle took place on 14 January 1924, to mark the centenary of the composer’s birth. Under the direction of Walter, Furtwängler, Klemperer, Böhm and Karajan (to name but a few!), the orchestra has since given many performances of this monumental work which was its composer’s first great success. (Alpha)

1CD# ALPHA932 $18.99

Romantic Era Titles In Brief

R. Schumann: Piano Works / Gerhard Oppitz [2 CDs]

Within the realm of Romantic piano music, where new discoveries are constantly just around the corner, the contribution of Robert Schumann has always played a major part. (Haenssler)

2CD# HC22045 $18.99

The Young Chopin – Early Piano Works

“Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!” These were the words of Robert Schumann when he spoke of the young Chopin. His bold, virtuoso music enthralled the musical elite of the Romantic period and still grips us today. (Genuin)

1CD# GEN 23814 $18.99

Schumann: First Masterworks [2 CDs]

Pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman is one of the most versatile and constantly interesting musicians of our time. His vast repertoire encompasses music from the Baroque to 20th-century composers. (Nimbus)

2CD# NI6433 $18.99

Schubert: Elysium – A Schubert Recital

For their latest recital for BIS, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton present an all-Schubert recital themed around Elysium, the mythical idea of a blessed and happy eternal future. (BIS)

1SACD# BIS-2573 $19.99