A jewel of harp literature are the Danses (with the two parts "Danse sacrée" and "Danse profane") by Claude Debussy for harp and string orchestra. The colors, the nuances and the unique dynamics created by the fusion of plucked and bowed strings are unsurpassed.

The work was commissioned by the Pleyel company in 1903 for their chromatic harp built at the time. The idea for it - in competition with the constantly expanding mechanics of the Erard double-pedal harp - arose from the increasing chromaticism in the music of the time, which meant that the pedal work was becoming ever more extensive and difficult to perform. Pleyel tried to solve the problem by building a harp with crossed strings (diatonic and chromatic string rows) and to promote this instrument by commissioning works from renowned composers. The advertising strategies went as far as a class for chromatic harp at the Conservatoire in Brussels around 1900 and later in Paris.

Debussy accepted the commission, but another year passed before the matter became more concrete. The decisive factors were probably the insistence of the commissioner and the competition of the Revue musicale. Debussy chaired the jury. One of the nominated works was by the composer Lacerda. It bore the title Danse du voile as part of a suite of Danses sacrées.

In mid-May 1904 Debussy's Danses then finished. He had had some difficulty with the instrument and the whole composition, as we learn from his letters. The first performance took place in Paris in November 1904, praised by the public, but rather critically received by the critics, above all Fauré, for whom the work "...revealed nothing of Mr. Debusy's very own talent that was not already known".

The pedal harp becomes standard

The chromatic harp, also due to its thinner and drier sound, was not able to establish itself. Already in the reprint of the Danses In 1910, "chromatic or pedal harp" was added. Henriette Renié, harp virtuoso and composer, performed the work that year on the double pedal harp, which was only right for Debussy, as this instrument had more sonority and expressive possibilities. When he composed his Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp in 1915, the chromatic harp was hardly in use anymore. The Danses was one of Debussy's most frequently performed works during his lifetime.

The new Henle edition, edited by Peter Jost, will certainly be able to replace Durand's first edition in many respects. The notated chromatic harp part can be transferred directly to the modern double pedal harp, the legibility is exemplary and many long-standing printing errors have been corrected. The preface (dt/fr/en) summarizes well how this work came about and what significance the chromatic harp had. The notes (dt/fr/en) are very detailed and informative.

I have the study score; a piano reduction is also available (HN 1584). It is pleasing that the harp part is free of fingering or pedal suggestions, as these are realized individually by the harpists.

Claude Debussy: Danses, for harp and symphony orchestra, edited by Peter Jost, study score, HN 7584, € 11.50, G. Henle, Munich

On April 21, 1914, the futuristic Intonarumori were presented at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan. However, Luigi Russolo's sound machines were not well received by the audience. The second piece, Si pranza sulla terrazza del Kursaalwhich, from the title, is a rather idyllic scene, there was a tumultuous riot. Italy also had its scandal, but it remained far less well known than Stravinsky's Sacre or at the Vienna Watschenkonzert in 1913. Yes, it has something picturesque about it.

The topic was a natural choice for a musicologist who wrote his doctoral thesis on animal music and has devoted himself to the musical environment of hotels and spas for some time now: Mathias Gredig. Taking this scandal as his starting point, he explores the contrasting context in which Futurism is to be understood, not only as an art that pushes boundaries, but also as one that sees itself as part of tradition. Russolo, for example, vehemently resisted understanding his sounds as naturalistic. The critic Agostino Cameroni received a slap in the face for this.

In seventeen chapters, Gredig succeeds in placing Russolo's work between extremes, between a peaceful hotel lobby and the war enthusiasm of Marinetti, the founder of Futurism, between pleasant sonority and an orgy of noise, between seclusion and provocation. Russolo's radicalism was perhaps not so radical after all, but also a biography, as was not entirely unusual at the time.

You have to love the art of digression to fully enjoy this little book. Gredig likes to digress, for example to delve into cooking risotto or throwing bombs. Sometimes he gets into speculation, sometimes he is a little hasty and you want a few more explanations, and a few times he is a little too casual, for example when he writes about musicians who were killed and ended up in a coffin. An underlying irony can be felt almost throughout, for example towards the initially not so anti-fascist Toscanini.

At the end is a destroyed idyll: the shattered musical instruments in the Hotel Kursaal Diana in Milan after the explosion on March 23, 1921.

Mathias Gredig: Grandhotels, Risotto und Bomben, Geschichte der futuristischen Geräuschkunst, Fröhliche Wissenschaft 232, 173 p., € 15.00, Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2024, ISBN 978-3-7518-3012-6

In recent years, the Bärenreiter publishing house has also devoted a great deal of attention to the French piano repertoire. Numerous new editions of works by Debussy, Ravel, Satie, Fauré, Chabrier, Vierne and Camille Saint-Saëns have appeared in rapid succession. The latter's two collections of etudes op. 52 and op. 111 have also recently been published.

Each booklet comprises six completely different numbers, which perhaps refers to Bach's role model, who liked to group his suites together in sets of six. However, with the total number of twelve, Saint-Saëns could also have been inspired by Chopin's Etudes op. 10 or op. 25.

In any case, some of the pianistic tasks are reminiscent of Chopin. There are two etudes in Opus 111 that deal extensively with thirds (diatonic and chromatic/large and small/right and left). Arpeggios, chromatic scales and double stops of various kinds are also omnipresent.

But Bach is also honored. After all, three numbers bear the title "Prélude et fugue". The training of polyphonic playing was obviously also central to the piano virtuoso Saint-Saëns.

The concluding étude of each booklet is somewhat more extended and combines various playing formulas into a longer concert piece. In Opus 52 this is a brilliant waltz, while Opus 111 concludes with a toccata based on the finale of the 5th Piano Concerto (the so-called "Egyptian").

The two collections of etudes are rarely or never heard on concert stages. There are probably reasons for this. Because, with the exception of the two final numbers mentioned, the pieces are not really musically captivating at length. The focus is too much on the purely pianistic. And even the fugues are not really convincing in their academic tone. As practice material for certain technical challenges, however, Saint-Saëns' etudes are a rich treasure trove. Especially No. 2 from the first book (Pour l'indépendance des doigts) offers original and tricky tasks ...

His Etudes op. 135, which deal exclusively with the left hand, should also be mentioned in this context. Editor Catherine Massip has written detailed and readable introductions to all three collections. These deal with the history of the composition, the dedicatees, the interpretation and the reception of the works.

However, if you want to get closer to the composer Saint-Saëns musically, you should perhaps take a closer look at his chamber music.
His Violin- and cello sonatas, but above all his two piano trios op. 18 and op. 92, are real masterpieces that are still underappreciated in our part of the world.

Camille Saint-Saens: Six Etudes pour piano, Premier livre op. 52, edited by Catherine Massip, BA 11854, € 21.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel

Id.: Deuxième livre op. 111, BA 11855

The late violin sonatas by Camille Saint-Saëns entered the repertoire of the best musicians soon after they were written. The first, written in 1895 and premiered by the composer with the violinist Otto Peiniger in England in the same year, is extraordinarily virtuosic. It was obviously created for the concert hall, has many a dreamy moment and is light-footed with its four varied movements.

The second sonata, written in 1896 during a long journey in Egypt, is more profound and is suitable as chamber music. Saint-Saëns premiered it together with his friend Pablo de Sarasate on the occasion of his fiftieth stage anniversary in the Salle Pleyel. (He had first performed there as a 10-year-old in 1846).

Both sonatas are still based on the traditional four-movement form, and the classical scheme can also be clearly heard within the movements, although here it is imaginatively expanded. Harmonically, the bold modulations are striking, which manifest themselves in the music with many accidental changes. Rhythmically, Saint-Saëns likes to draw inspiration from ancient speech meters, and the dialogues between the two parts are alternately singing and sparkling.

Here is a brief description of the second sonata: the dotted male main theme is followed by an undulating female counter-theme and a sighing, then rebellious final theme. In the short development section, Saint-Saëns interweaves the three and virtuosically builds them up to a climax from which the recapitulation thunders, its new surprises leading to a brilliant coda. The witty syncopated Scherzo has a calm Bachian fugato trio. The three-part Andante with its stretched mystical song, which is accompanied by fine melismatic accompaniment, is loosened up with a 3/8 allegretto middle section. A graceful rondo finale begins harmlessly, builds up to ascending bird calls, which bring the sonata to a cheerful close, and recalls a motif from the first movement in the middle section.

The large set of notes is completely unencumbered by editorial additions and is easy to turn over. The editors' prefaces (French, English, German), from which I have drawn the information, are valuable in that they quote many letters from Saint-Saëns, which also contain tips for the performers.

Camille Saint-Saëns: Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano in D minor op. 75, edited by Fabien Guilloux and François de Médicis, BA 10957, € 31.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel

Id.: Sonata No. 2 in E flat major op. 102, BA 10958, € 28.95

Luzia von Wyl, born in 1985, studied piano and composition in Zurich, Bern and her home town of Lucerne and prefers to stage her projects herself. The artist is particularly associated with the so-called Third Way, a style that combines jazz with new music.

Already her debut Frost (2014) was released together with her formation, the Luzia-von-Wyl-Ensemble. Further albums have since been added, most recently 2024 Frakmont. Its title alludes to the popular name of Pilatus. They recorded seven tracks in 2021, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The work has been released on von Wyl's newly founded label LU-Records, which promises the musician, who lives in Lucerne and New York, artistic control and also allows her to publish both recordings and scores.

Challenging and impressive

Right from the first track, Thunder, her flair for rhythm, odd time signatures and emotionality shines through: What begins with a few jingle bars that seem like clips from a news program quickly picks up speed and follows multi-layered paths - from the thundering orchestra to dreamy piano passages to the furious finale with Lionel Friedli's drums.

Further compositions such as Mulinoin which strings, accordion and a marimba carefully feel each other out, or the capricious Ronkwhich combines driving rock rhythms with free-form piano intermezzi, takes the listener on a journey into the blue, circling through changing soundscapes. This is challenging and impressive at the same time.

The unifying element is the rhythms, which are always captivating, innovative and could also be used for a movie script set in the mountains. Frakmont is an extremely dynamic listening experience that testifies to Luzia von Wyl's unquenchable curiosity and shows her unbroken passion.

Luzia von Wyl Ensemble: Frakmont. Luzia von Wyl, compositions and piano; Gary Versace, accordion; Amin Mokdad, flute; Nocola Katz, clarinet; Marcel Lüscher, bass clarinet; Maurus Conte, trombone; Vincent Millioud, violin; Karolina Öhman, cello; Christoph Utzinger, double bass; Fabian Ziegler, marimba and thunderbolt; Lionel Friedli, percussion. LU Label LU01

"Adolf Reichel is an unknown" is how Jannis Mallouchos' monograph on the Bernese chief conductor, composer, pianist and teacher of German origin begins. 652 pages later, the unknown man has been researched as exhaustively as few of his peers, in a scholarly book that reads as grippingly as a novel. In the literature on early socialism and the Vormärz, Adolf Reichel (1816-1896) has long been an old acquaintance. But years ago, a handful of musicians (Suzanne Reichel, Adrian Aeschbacher, Stefan Blunier) tried in vain to draw attention to Reichel as a composer.

It then took a Greek composer and musicologist, a German professor, a Dutch archive, an Austrian publisher and a coincidence to rediscover the Swiss musician: Mallouchos came across Reichel's great-great-granddaughter on the Internet, who had just tracked down her ancestor's music manuscripts, which had been lost for decades.

Excellent networked personality

Mallouchos meticulously traces Reichel's adventurous path from good Prussian subject to supporter of oppositionists and revolutionaries known to the police (who today would probably have to put up with the label "terrorists") and finally to serene republican and Swiss citizen with Emmental citizenship, the progenitor of a dynasty that today counts six generations of musicians without a break.

Mallouchos traces Reichel's encounters with countless important personalities from Friedrich Schleiermacher to Alexander Herzen (whose collaborator Marija Ern he married), Georg Herwegh, Frédéric Chopin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Karl Marx and Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen, his stations in "revolutionary and romantic" (John Eliot Gardiner) Europe and his long-standing symbiotic friendship with the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin down to the finest ramifications and cross-relationships. He places Reichel's memoirs, his theoretical works, his letters and his compositions - beautiful and thoroughly touching music, written conservatively but very adeptly in the idiom of classical Romanticism between Beethoven and Schumann - astutely and knowledgeably in the intellectual-historical contexts of their epoch.

The book concludes with work analyses, a bibliography and a list of Reichel's 279 works, which we will hopefully soon see published and hear performed again.

Jannis Mallouchos: Adolf Reichel (1816-1896), Political, cultural-historical, music-theoretical and compositional aspects of a musician's life, 652 p., € 80.00, Hollitzer, Vienna 2023, ISBN 978-3-99094-084-6

While recordings and recitals of songs by female composers in the 1980s were still limited to a few names such as Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel, Cécile Chaminade, Mel Bonis and Alma Mahler, in 1992 the music series "Frauen komponieren" ("Women compose") published by Schott from the 19th century also included Josephine Lang and Luise Adolpha Le Beau, as well as Luise Reichardt, Emilie Zumsteg and Johanna Kinkel.

The wealth of vocal music created by female composers for one voice with piano accompaniment is presented for the first time in Maria Behrendt's extremely carefully edited compilation Evening sounds Night songs expressed. It makes it clear that songs occupied a central position in the work of Romantic women composers within the German-speaking cultural area. Fanny Hensel, Clara Schumann, Josefine Lang and Johanna Kinkel are now joined by ten female composers who, it must be assumed, were previously hardly known to the specialist world.

The diversity of the texts is also noteworthy, as the poets Wilhelmine von Gersdorf, Anna Ritter, Aline Sello and Friederike Serre stand out alongside the frequently set poets Goethe, Heine, Lenau, Geibel and Heyse. The lack of biographical data on Isidore von Bülow, Mary Norris and Julie Wilhelmine von Tschirschky shows how much biographical information remains to be researched.

As Maria Behrendt concentrates her very special selection on evening songs, night songs, dreams, longing and nocturnal moods, one can guess how much there is still to discover in songs by 19th century women composers outside of these themes.

Of the total of 15 songs by as many female composers, the through-composed songs by Maria Arndts, Anna Bochkoltz, Bertha von Brukenthal, Clara Faisst, Fanny Hensel, Marie von Kehler and Mary Norris stand out from the verse songs by Josephine Lang, Aline Sello or Helene Zitelmann due to their stronger individuality. The editor has contributed exemplary individual annotations to the new editions, which are largely based on first editions and provide precise information about the sources as well as dedications and music text revisions.

Abendklänge Nachtgesänge, selected songs by female composers of the 19th century for voice and piano, edited by Maria Behrendt, Urtext, EB 9477, € 25.90, Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden

It's not easy to get over the song that opens this wonderful album. Truth tells the autobiographical story of a young woman. She strikes up a conversation with a famous poet in a bar known for serving alcohol to minors and is persuaded by him to accompany him home, where she just manages to escape a serious sexual assault. However, the song is less about this than about the truth that caught up with the man a few years ago: He was convicted by a newspaper - and by Ella Ronen - of serial assault.

Ella Ronen wraps this story in a melody that the elliptically recurring mini refrain ("The truth is on its way") in combination with the velvety alto voice and a subtle guitar arrangement accentuated with conga and zither (?) makes truly unforgettable. In English, the effect would be described as "haunting" - I can't think of an accurate translation. In any case, I had to Truth many times before I could tear myself away and get involved with the remaining nine songs.

This makes it all the more gratifying to be able to report that Ronen's fourth album is an all-round joyful success. Recorded with the American producer Sam Cohen (Kevin Morby, Alexandra Savior etc.) in upstate New York, it is The Girl With No Skin a remarkably diverse and subtle work that also indulges in angry moments ("Fuck cute/I'm tired of cute/cute has never ever served me"). Ella Ronen grew up in Tel Aviv before ending up in Lausanne as a student, where she recorded her debut album in 2014. She now lives in Zurich with her two children and is a co-founder of the feminist Mino Collective together with Brandy Butler and Sarah Palin.

Ella Ronen: The Girl With No Skin. Irascible Records/BB*Island

"100 minutes of piano music from the last 100 years in the context of social inequality and unequal power relations" promises the double CD by Thurgau pianist Simone Keller. The result is a highly heterogeneous and diverse anthology of structurally disadvantaged music by female composers and people of color, primarily from the USA and Switzerland. Inequality in music history is an explosive topic, but of course you can't hear it in the individual pieces. Because when they are interpreted as wonderfully as they are here, you wonder once again what went wrong.

Some personalities such as Ruth Crawford Seeger or, more recently, Julius Eastman are now part of any basic course in modern music. But there are others to be discovered, such as the St. Gallen poet and composer Olga Diener (1890-1963), whose texts Hermann Hesse described as "far too much dream and far too little poetry". Her "secret language", according to Hesse, speaks again today with its peculiar twists and turns.

Despite the background, it has not become a riotous anthology, but a rather calm one. It also includes something new: the slowly unfolding piece Black/blackness: After Mantra(s) for piano and electronics by Jessie Cox, which touches on questions of the climate crisis. Or a Properly Scottish of Cristina Janett, who comes from a family of folk musicians. "I discovered folk music with its diverse influences much later," writes Keller, a pianist from a farming family, "and it was only when I worked with Cristina Janett that I realized how much it was part of my identity." It is precisely such processes of awareness that are central here.

Finally, there is the composer Irene Higginbotham (1918-1988), known or barely known for having written the song Good Morning Heartache wrote for Billie Holiday. He appears three times on this album and gives it its title, as well as a book that Simone Keller has published in two languages, German and English. It not only contains further texts on the compositions, but also sheds light on the socio-cultural background against which they were written and at the same time leads us beyond this into our own time. The questions posed here, seemingly gently, are urgent.

Simone Keller: Hidden Heartache. Intakt CD 419

Simone Keller et al: Facetten 21 - Hidden Heartache, Kulturstiftung des Kantons Thurgau, 320 p. with music booklet, Fr. 32.00, Jungle Books, St. Gallen 2024, ISBN 978-3-033-10349-8

Rosmarie Tüzün-Gamma from Oftringen is the fourth generation to play the traditional Schwyz zither with great passion. Her mother was Rosa Gamma-Gwerder, a very good zither player who grew up on the Büölacher farm in Rickenbach/Schwyz. Even after her marriage to Schattdorf, the "Büölacher-Rösli" used to make music at home with relatives and friends. Ten years after her death, her daughter Rosmarie was given all of her cassette tapes. "The music touched me so much that I got my mother's old Schwyz zither out of the cupboard for the first time in 30 years," she says. She immediately had the instrument overhauled by zither maker Herbert Greuter in Schwyz and found an understanding teacher in Luise Betschart, Illgau.

Melchior Ulrich, Schwyz, noted 25 dances from the cassettes: "The live recordings were all made in Rosmarie Tüzün's parents' house in Schattdorf as relatives and friends played music together. Conversations and laughter often drowned out the main voice of the zither, which had to be guessed in places." Now the pieces are in the "dancey" Büölach style, lively and infectious, under the title Büölach Schwyzer zither dance available as a music book.

It is available at
Tel. 078 697 07 31 or rosmariegamma@gmail.com.

Step by Step on DrumsVolume 1, by Marco Kurmann is very appealing, interesting and child-friendly thanks to the numerous comic-style illustrations. It guides pupils and teachers in a targeted manner. The teaching aid was designed as a guide for music school lessons and deliberately contains no explanations and very little text. In this way, the author allows teachers to incorporate their own ideas and input. There is also plenty of space on the pages for this.

After a brief overview of what the first step involves, we start with quarter and eighth notes on the snare. Gradually, various grooves with eighth notes are introduced and soon the toms are included. In between, there are short theory sections in which answers to the respective questions are entered and there is room for your own additions.

In the five steps of volume 1, the students get to know the individual instruments of the drum set, deal with basic musical terms and learn notes from the whole to four-sixteenth note figures. Drumset solos, snare drum duets and drumset duets conclude each step. Audio files for the pieces can be downloaded as full versions or click tracks from the author's website. The duets are even available with the first or second voice separately and in two different tempos.

Thanks to the successful mixture of sensible rhythmic progression and many beats that increase in difficulty, this teaching aid offers a clear, structured structure as well as exciting and varied learning. In 20 steps, divided into four volumes, the Step by Step on Drums the ideal basic training in the first four to six years of drum lessons.

Marco Kurmann: Step by Step on Drums, Leitfaden für den Schlagzeugunterricht, Volume 1, 98 p., € 24.00, Leu-Verlag, Neusäss, ISBN 978-3-89775-189-7

We owe this huge amount of hard work to the Romanian violin teacher Petru Munteanu. On 442 pages, he has compiled the most important statements of all published violin schools clearly and with many music examples and illustrations. He currently teaches at the Leopold Mozart Center at the University of Augsburg. So it is only natural that Leopold Mozart's Thorough violin school is the focus of the 1769 and 1789 editions. The other textbooks are compared with them. It turns out that Leopold Mozart foresaw many things in great detail that are still valid today.

Munteanu outlines the special features of each violin school presented in gray boxes, which is very helpful because of the countless, otherwise repeatedly identical views of the various pedagogues. Particularly interesting is the description of Carl Guhr's school, who factually and in detail pointed out the violinistic peculiarities of Paganini's playing and was even able to create from memory a version of Nel cor più non mi sento by Paganini.

In the sixth chapter, which is often referred to, "Violin teaching and the violin schools today", Munteanu poses three questions, which he attempts to answer with the help of quotes from experts (Seiffert, Seling, Eberhardt, Kolneder, Hausegger, Flesch, Galamian ...): Who, what and how should we teach? I found only a few stimulating thoughts, but a central one by Carl Adolf Martienssen on the third question: In learning language, every child is a "child prodigy". "The child prodigy complex is psychologically the immediate direction of the will of the auditory sphere towards the sound goal ... of the instrument to be played ..." This should inspire every teacher to use this important black box!

Petru Munteanu: Violin secrets from 500 years, Leopold Mozart's violin school in the context of violin teaching traditions, 442 p., € 49.80, Wissner, Augsburg 2023, ISBN 978-3-95786-306-5

New Klezmer Tunes is already the third volume of klezmer pieces for clarinet by Joachim Johow, born in Berlin in 1952. In this collection, consisting of 16 original compositions, he refers to the tradition of Jewish itinerant musicians who played at weddings and other festivities and combines the joy of making music with everyday life in the pieces. This can be seen in pictorial titles such as In the morning in the alley, At the fair, Worries, In the café, In the evening etc.

The pieces are of varying degrees of difficulty. Some have a relatively easy range and rhythm, others are in the medium level of difficulty with more demanding rhythms. Many pieces only use the low and middle clarinet range up to a maximum of a three-note C.

As in his earlier compositions, Johow juxtaposes soulful, slow and mostly minor-key melodies with fast, dance-like and playful pieces. The composer uses different minor-key variations and plays with the expressive possibilities of the excessive second leap. Some ornaments such as trills, bounces and suggestions are already present in the musical text, but there is additional scope for personal interpretation.

The edition published by Schott in the World Music series consists of the clarinet part and a piano accompaniment. In addition, audio files of all pieces, each with a complete recording as well as just the accompaniment, can be downloaded with a code or used free of charge on streaming portals. The recordings are well cared for and musically played, although they could also be arranged a little more freely to suit the style of music in order to provide pupils with further ideas for interpretation. The piano accompaniments for most of the pieces can also be played well by piano learners (or clarinet teachers). In addition, the harmonies are also given for all pieces.

The New Klezmer Tunes are well suited as pieces to enrich lessons as well as for student concerts or other performances.

Joachim Johow: New Klezmer Tunes, 16 Pieces for Clarinet, ED 23389, € 20.50, Schott, Mainz

Two musicians who have known each other for a long time are responsible for these new discoveries of works by Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739) that are well worth hearing. Soprano Nuria Rial and conductor Nicoleta Paraschivescu naturally got to know each other in Basel, the former studying at the University of Music, the latter with Andrea Marcon at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where she founded her ensemble La Floridiana in 2011. And they both enjoy exploring baroque music, where the pool of music seems inexhaustible.

A precious manuscript decorated with drawings forms the starting point for the recording of the cantatas; it belongs to the Schneider-Genewein Collection in Zurich. A stroke of luck for Paraschivescu: "These cantatas have never been recorded before. A total of around 400 solo cantatas by Marcello are documented, many in different manuscripts and in different libraries. But this particular one contains two unique pieces. This manuscript is also special because it is very elegant and elaborate, with painted initials."

The enthusiasm and attachment to Marcello's music is unmistakable in the interpretations. The music is colorful and very agile. The chosen sequence of works is exciting and successful, as the symphony and cantatas alternate, which makes the whole thing even more lively. The cantatas are also exciting. Ti sento Amor, ti sento is a piece with a typical lamento character, in which Qual turbine improvviso In contrast, wild storm and rage dominate.

The full richness of this music unfolds in the harmony of Nuria Rial's silvery-sounding, perfectly conducted soprano and the fast-paced and nuanced Ensemble La Floridiana. The spatial effect of the acoustics rounds off the recording.

Benedetto Marcello: Sinfonias & Cantatas, La Floridiana, Nuria Rial, Nicoleta Paraschivescu. German Harmonia Mundi 196587106829

Laurent Menager (1835-1902) is the best-known composer of the 19th century from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. He studied with Ferdinand Hiller in Cologne, then returned to Pfaffenthal, a small district in the lower part of Luxembourg City, where he worked as an organist, music teacher and choirmaster throughout his life. He was instrumental in the founding of the General Luxembourg Music Society (now the Union Grand-Duc Adolphe), of which he became choir director in 1891.

His oeuvre mainly comprises vocal compositions (songs, operettas) and a string quartet as well as a Prière du Soir for violoncello and piano. His songs strengthen the cultural identity of "Lëtzebuergesch", Luxembourg's official national language, which is increasingly giving way to French in everyday life today.

Menagers Paraphrase pour cordes sur la mélodie "Kuck Friêmen op d'Kârt" op. 45 is available as a signed autograph and is published here in a single edition from volume 6 of the critical complete edition of his works. After a short, recitative-like, dramatic introduction in E minor, the cello introduces the song theme in G major. The remaining strings take the lead and continue to modulate the thread until the fast six-eighth note final section in E major with a groovy ending.

The level of difficulty for the performers is medium, even a chamber orchestra instrumentation is conceivable, possibly with solo passages.

This short song paraphrase is certainly an amusing addition to the repertoire! And a cultural excursion into a language area that otherwise appears to us as a blank spot on the musical map. The song text by Michel Lentz, the poet of Luxembourg's national anthem, reads: "

Kuck, Friêmen, op d'Kârt an da fens dû e Land,
'T stêt Letzebur'g driwer geschriwen;
I arrive in the world where I am a child
Méng allerschënst Joere bliwen.

And translates: "Look, stranger, on the map, you'll find a country,/It's got Luxembourg written all over it/That's where I was born and where I stayed as a child/Many beautiful years."

Laurent Menager: Paraphrase pour cordes sur la mélodie "Kuck Friêmen op d'Kârt" op. 45, for 2 violins, viola, violoncello and double bass, score with parts, EM 2632, € 24.90, Merseburger, Kassel