![Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens - Wilms: The Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/12/18/vrcz5hllk0g2b_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens – Wilms: The Piano Concertos, Vol. 2 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 59:23 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
Born in the vicinity of Cologne, only two years after and some sixty km distant from Beethoven, Johann Wilhelm Wilms was once a musical force to be reckoned with. In Amsterdam, where he lived from the age of 19, his music was actually performed more frequently than Beethoven’s at one period, and his orchestral works were played in such musical centres as Leipzig. Besides chamber music and solo sonatas, Wilms composed several symphonies and concertos, among them piano concertos for his own use.
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Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens – Wilms: The Piano Concertos, Vol. 1 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:22:28 minutes | 1,46 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © BIS
Born in the vicinity of Cologne, only two years after and some sixty km distant from Beethoven, Johann Wilhelm Wilms was once a musical force to be reckoned with. In Amsterdam, where he lived from the age of 19, his music was actually performed more frequently than Beethoven’s at one period, and his orchestral works were played in such musical centres as Leipzig. Besides chamber music and solo sonatas Wilms composed several symphonies and solo concertos (for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and cello) as well as piano concertos for his own use, five of which were published between 1799 and 1820. (Two more have been lost.) He also appeared regularly as soloist in concertos by other composers.
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![Die Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens - Telemann: Gelobet sei der Herr, TWV 1:602/1216 & Bequemliches Leben, gemächlicher Stand, TWV 1:123 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/11/r19bsw2obt5yb_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Die Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens – Telemann: Gelobet sei der Herr, TWV 1:602/1216 & Bequemliches Leben, gemächlicher Stand, TWV 1:123 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:42 minutes | 1,38 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © CPO
Opulent and imaginative Telemann oratorios In the church year 1730/31, Telemann performed a year of a special conception: in the divine service, downright oratorios were to be sounded. And so the focus of our latest Telemann CD is his magnificent oratorio for the Feast of St. John the Lord with expressive texts by the poet and musician Albrecht Jacob Zell. Zell succeeds in imagining dramatic, almost theatrical scenes and thus gives Telemann templates for sound painting design. Not only the vocal line-up is with u. a. three basses extremely lush, the instrumentation is also very rich, up to the use of four horns and three transverse flutes. Telemann once again unfolds a wide range of expressions. The lament of the Egyptians about the killed children, in F minor and chromatic turns, is poignant, full of external movement and tension, the depiction of the fleeing people and their pursuers who did not reach them with chains of sixteen on the one hand and syllabic declamation on the other.
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Kölner Akademie & Michael Alexander Willens – Mozart: Overtures (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:02 minutes | 1,13 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
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, playing on period instruments, and its conductor Michael Alexander Willens demonstrate Mozart’s unrivalled ability to capture the audience’s attention with these brilliant overtures, some of which are among his most famous works, both on stage and in concert.
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Tobias Koch, Kölner Akademie & Michael Alexander Willens – Emilie Mayer: Piano Concerto · Overtures (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:06:49 minutes | 720 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CPO
„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).
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Ronald Brautigam, Die Kölner Akademie & Michael Alexander Willens – Beethoven: Piano Concertos (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:37:13 minutes | 2,61 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
As one of the finest pianists of his era and an improviser of genius, Ludwig van Beethoven’s preferred vehicle for musical exploration was the piano. His earliest composition, from 1782, was a set of piano variations and he continued to compose for solo piano until the last years of his life. His interest in the concerto form diminished as his deafness forced him to retire from performing. Nonetheless, with his five piano concertos composed between 1788 and 1809, Beethoven not only achieved a brilliant conclusion to the Classical piano concerto, but also established a new model for the Romantic era: a sort of symphony with obbligato piano which remained a reference point well into the beginning of the twentieth.
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Ronald Brautigam, Kölner Akademie & Michael Alexander Willens – Weber: Complete Works for Piano & Orchestra (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 55:58 minutes | 947 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Carl Maria von Weber wrote music that has been admired by composers as diverse as Schumann, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky. But in his lifetime he was also recognised as one of the finest pianists of the period, with an exceptional technique and a brilliant gift for improvisation. Especially during the 1810s he toured extensively, and like other composer-pianists he wrote works to use as his personal calling cards, among them the two piano concertos recorded here. They were both composed in 1811-12, but while the First Concerto takes Mozart’s concertos as its model, Piano Concerto No. 2 looks towards Beethoven. This change of direction was probably influenced by the fact that Weber had acquired a score of Beethoven’s recently published “Emperor” Concerto. In any case there are some striking similarities between his concerto and Beethoven’s: the use of identical keys, and the inclusion of a slow, subtly orchestrated Adagio and a closing playful rondo in 6/8.
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Die Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens – Mozart: Serenades, Volume 1 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:41 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Die Kölner Akademie and Michael Willens have previously recorded Mozart’s complete piano concertos with Ronald Brautigam, earning praise for their fresh and colourful contributions to the series. The team now releases the first of four projected disc with further Mozart scores, beginning with two of the composer’s best-loved serenades. Serenades were a characteristic feature of Salzburg musical life: opening with a march and continuing with as many as eight or nine separate movements on an orchestral scale, such works will have been ringing in Mozart’s ears from childhood. Thirteen serenades of varying scope and scorings are included in Mozart’s catalogue of works, and of these the well-known ‘Posthorn Serenade’ is the ninth. It is also the last serenade that Mozart composed before leaving Salzburg for Vienna. The nickname stems from Mozart’s inclusion of a solo for post horn (‘corno di posta’) in one of the movements, but the wind instruments play an important role throughout the serenade, with extended solos for flute and oboe.
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Michael Alexander Willens – Lukas-Passion (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:30:45 minutes | 987 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CPO
Kölner Akademie and Kölner Akademie Choir’s rendition of Lukas-Passion is a powerful and moving interpretation of this lesser-known work by German composer Johann Heinrich Rolle. This oratorio retells the story of Christ’s Passion according to the Gospel of Luke, and Kölner Akademie’s and Kölner Akademie Choir’s performances bring the emotional depth and spiritual intensity of this work to life. The soloists are exceptional, with their rich and expressive voices conveying the drama and pathos of the story. The choir’s nuanced and dynamic singing creates a sense of collective urgency and devotion that is both compelling and uplifting. Kölner Akademie’s period-instrument playing is also remarkable, lending a unique and authentic timbre to the performance. This album is a must-have for anyone looking to explore the rich tradition of German Baroque music and to experience the profound beauty and power of sacred choral music.
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Beate Mordal, Elvira Bill, Georg Poplutz, Matthias Vieweg, Andrey Akhmetov, Kölner Akademie, Michael Alexander Willens – Wolf: Christmas Cantatas (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:15:42 minutes | 820 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CPO
In the 18th century, “well-stocked” church music was a natural tradition throughout central Germany: church services were embellished along the ecclesiastical year with cantatas appropriate to the liturgy for the glory of God, but also for the joy and “spiritual edification” of the visitors. From this treasure of hitherto unknown Christmas music, four cantatas by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf are presented for the first time on this recording. Wolf worked as court kapellmeister in Weimar, and the fact that Goethe rejected him as “self-indulgent” should not prevent us from admiring him as a very important composer of the transition. Musically, Wolf was greatly influenced by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in the empfindsamer Stil and by the works of the Berlin Kapellmeister Carl Heinrich Graun. He was also a prolific composer whose works were received with admiration by his contemporaries. The four cantatas show elements of the early classical and sensitive styles; the cantata choruses are often homophonic and songlike, polyphonic sections rather rare. All the cantatas prove to be individually conceived works that testify to the composer’s mastery. Beautiful sounding arias, the naturalness of their expression and the dramatic compression in the individual movements are still convincing today. At the same time, the cantatas bear witness to the high quality of Protestant church music in the period after Johann Sebastian Bach and illustrate the high value of music within the liturgy. Today they can be a welcome addition to the repertoire for the Christmas season.
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Die Kölner Akademie & Michael Alexander Willens – Mozart: Haffner Serenade & Ein musikalischer Spaß (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:25:51 minutes | 1,48 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © BIS
Besides an acclaimed series of recordings with Ronald Brautigam of the complete piano concertos by Mozart, Mendelssohn and Beethoven, Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens are undertaking a survey of Mozart’s serenades and other incidental works. Their first album in this series included the Posthorn Serenade and demonstrated, according to the reviewer on MusicWeb-International, that the ensemble is ‘amongst the best groups in the world of period performance.’ Since then the team has recorded works associated with the Freemasons, and here takes on one of the most famous of the serenades, the ‘Haffner’, named after Sigmund Haffner, who commissioned it for the festivities surrounding his sister’s wedding in 1776. A notable feature of Mozart’s serenades – and the large-scale Haffner is no exception – is the incorporation of virtuosic solo parts, here performed by the violinist Alexander Janiczek. On the amply-filled disc (almost 86 minutes!), the at times quite imposing Haffner is followed by Mozart’s ‘Musical Joke’ – Ein musikalischer Spaß, K?522. A work in four movements, this is a delightful and very skillfully crafted parody of musical incompetence. It is written for strings and a pair of horns, and its frequent caricatures of the second-rate – whether in composition or performance – are brilliantly observed, by Mozart as well as the present performers.
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Elena Harsanyi, Elvira Bill, Mirko Ludwig, Andreas Wolf, Kölner Akademie & Michael Alexander Willens – Two Passion Oratorios (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:14:58 minutes | 1,34 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © CPO
“The Passion music Johann David Heinichen wrote for the Dresden court is a document of cultural and confessional openness of the Saxon residence, and his two Italian oratorios heard here are surrogates of large-scale Passion music. “”Come? S’imbruna il ciel”” – composed in 1728 – is the latest of the sepolcri, his other Passion “”L’aride tempie ignude”” the first of the sepolcri to survive from Heinichen in Dresden. Both texts are by Stefano Pallavicino, who had been active at the Dresden court since 1719. In the first-mentioned Passion, the meditation on the Passion event recurs to the experience of the earthquake that, according to biblical accounts, occurred immediately after the death of Jesus. The description of the violent natural events gives Mary the Mother of God, John (Jesus’ favorite disciple), and Mary Magdalene an opportunity to reflect on their relationship to the Crucified. Different aspects of affection and love are thematized. The meditation on the Passion event in the second-named Passion is designed as an allegorical play of death (Morte) and hope (Speranza), divine love (Amor divino) and penance (Poenitenza), and follows an easily comprehensible dramaturgy. The affinity to opera seria is evident in both passions not only in the arrangement of the pieces. The keys, gestures and instrumentation also correspond to the models familiar from baroque musical theater. Full of affect!
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