Profil Autumn Highlights:

ECHO for the Dresden Staatskapelle and GOLDEN DIAPASON for Bernard Haitink

Autumn 2009 yields another rich harvest for the constantly growing Profil catalogue. This season's prizes and awards furnish particularly impressive proof that the label from Neuhausen in southern Germany has turned into more and more of a global player in the course of the past six years.

On October 18, at this year's ECHO award ceremony in the Semperoper, Volume 30 of the Edition Staatskapelle Dresden will receive the coveted trophy in a category specially created for it. Enthusiastically acclaimed around the world in the past year and more, the audio documentary of Fritz Busch's contribution to music in Dresden (PH 07032) is honoured at a historic venue with the ECHO for exceptional editorial achievement in addition to its German Record Reviewers' Prize and many international awards.

At the end of the following month, on November 25, the live recording of Bruckner's 8th Symphony (PH 07057) released as part of the Edition Staatskapelle Dresden will be honoured in Paris with the GOLDEN DIAPASON OF THE YEAR. Maestro Bernard Haitink conducted this memorable concert shortly after the devastating floods of 2002 in Dresden's Palast der Republik, as the Semperoper was out of action on account of the flood damage.

The name of Rudolf Kempe is new to the Edition Staatskapelle Dresden. Vol. 28 features a concert recording of 1974 with Richard Strauss's "A Hero's Life" and Debussy's "Prelude to the afternoon of a faun" and presenting the late Malcolm Frager as the soloist in Schumann's A minor Piano Concerto. This release prompted the following comment from klassik.com magazine: "Strauss's Heldenleben in particular, that spectacular and far from modest musical self-portrait of a 35-year-old, is so impetuously vital, so intelligent, positively uplifting, played almost as a single great arch, that it spans three quarters of an hour without a single lapse of tension, not even during the extended violin solos by Peter Mirring. Kempe never succumbs to the ever-present temptation to showcase himself or belittle himself by bragging. Instead, he makes sense of the interlocking voice patterns too well, approaches the climaxes with too fine a shading, has simply too keen an eye for the parts and the greater whole, in a word, retreats too much behind the music, and in doing so, attains a well nigh perfect consummation just two years before his death."

See the full review here.


f. l. t. r. Günter Hänssler, Jens-Uwe Völmecke, Janet Berridge, Götz Alsmann, Steffen Lieberwirth

Such awards would not be possible without the archive of Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR Figaro — the arts programme of Mid-German Radio) and the team around producer-in-chief Steffen Lieberwirth, constantly on the search for great occasions in the long recording tradition of the Staatskapelle Dresden.

Günter Wand Edition

In other respects too, this is proving a "hot autumn". An 8-CD box adds another milestone to the Günter Wand Edition. The new issue contains hitherto unreleased recordings by the conductor with the German Symphony Orchestra (DSO), including three Beethoven symphonies (Nos 1, 3 and 4), Johannes Brahms (Sym. 1 & 4), Anton Bruckner (Sym. 5 & 9), Franz Schubert (Sym. 8 & 9) and Schumann's 4th Symphony.

Alpine Symphony & Till Eulenspiegel

PROFIL's collaboration with the symphony orchestra of West German Radio (WDR) has yielded new fruit too. August 2009 saw the release of Richard Strauss's "Alpine Symphony" and his symphonic poem "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" in a musically brilliant new recording on SACD. The outgoing principal conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Semyon Bychkov reveals himself once more in this recording as an orchestra director at the peak of his powers, who can motivate such a prestigious body as the WDR orchestra to reach new heights.

Merlin - Opera

Even today, Carl Goldmark (1830-1915) remains an unjustly forgotten Romantic composer. His best known work, the opera "The Queen of Sheba", was once one of the most often performed works in the German-language opera literature. This CD world premiere on Hänssler Profil presents Goldmark's opera "Merlin" complete. The high-calibre cast is matched by the high-end sound quality in this recording of Goldmark's evocative music, which will represent a real discovery for many an opera lover.

DISCORSI

DISCORSI is the name of the new CD from David Geringas, on which the internationally renowned cellist plays works by Vytautas Laurusas. Two pieces, the "Madrigale strumentale" and the "Concerto da camera", are true world premieres. Geringas has been a close friend of the composer since 2002. The fruit of this inspired artistic relationship is to be heard on the present album.

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

"Precise euphony" is how klassik.com magazine characterizes the voice of soprano Gudrun Sidonie Otto, who has chosen this Mendelssohn year to present a CD of seldom performed songs by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. What makes this recording special is undoubtedly her accompaniment by Wolfgang Brunner on an 1815 Viennese fortepiano. "Gudrun Sidonie Otto wins over the listener with her clear, mobile and euphonious voice, and her bright, brilliant timbre takes her effortlessly through all registers, always sure of her intonation. Her varied approach to tone and phrasing, enriched by an engaging richness of colour, brings out the variety of the songs. In what is surely her most dramatic piece, 'Andres Maienlied' op. 8/8 (illustrated on the CD by a very interesting film clip), she really makes the witches dance, without drifting into operatic territory. She succeeds in 'Entsagung', too, with an amazingly moving simplicity and warmth in precisely capturing the plain, hymn-like air of this piece. What is more, the listener can enjoy a highly differentiated articulation of the words."

See the complete review here.

Orpheus and Eurydice

Another CD premiere is the new release of an altogether historic recording from 1955: during that year's Aix-en-Provence festival, the internationally celebrated tenor Nicolai Gedda sang the part of Orpheus in a production of Gluck's "Orpheus and Eurydice". Gedda was singing the title role in the original key, which takes any singer of such roles to the limits of his vocal abilities. Gedda is the first (and as yet the only known) tenor to have mastered the French version of Gluck's "Orpheus" in its original, murderously high register (live and in the studio). The somewhat earlier recording with Léopold Simoneau is set in a lower key, while newer recordings use period instruments tuned to a lower pitch. All in all, this recording is a musical treasure that belongs in every opera lover's collection.





Wishing you an eventful and exciting musical autumn 2009,

PROFIL EDITION GÜNTER HÄNSSLER