Music is the key

Music Is The Key will be closing soon. Over the last year maintaining this site and keeping it up to date has become an expensive and time consuming task. With other projects at hand that also require attention, this decision was made. This site has been quite an experience and an adventure. Because through it we all have gotten to discover and to know about new composers, interpreters and their works as well as new musical styles. It also has given us the opportunity to relive the classics, their sounds, their feelings and their emotions. Thank you all very much for this musical journey . See you again soon! Music Is the Key cerrará pronto. Durante el último año el mantenimiento de este sitio se ha convertido en una tarea cara y que consume mucho tiempo. Con otros proyectos en proceso que también requieren atención, se ha tomado esta decisión. Este sitio ha sido toda una experiencia y una aventura.  A través de él hemos podido llegar a descubrir y conocer nu...

Mariss Jansons considers Dmitri Shostakovich to be one of the most serious and sincere composers ever, and finds the fifteen symphonies in particular to be deeply moving and captivating. He sees their music as bearing shattering testimony to a traumatic era of political darkness, while remaining a timeless expression of existential human feeling and experience. Over a period of seventeen years, Mariss Jansons has recorded all the Shostakovich symphonies, on each occasion together with the orchestra he was artistically associated with at the time. Six of the performances were with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. In 2006 the cycle was completed in time for the centenary of the composer's birth. The performance of the Thirteenth Symphony was awarded a Grammy in the 'Best Orchestral Performance' category.

A recording of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ninth” is always a great event, especially because the symphony’s final chorus, Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”, is understood around the world as a plea for peace and international understanding. It was no coincidence that the catchy melody to the text “Joy, beautiful spark of divinity” was chosen as the Hymn of the European Union. This recording of Beethoven’s great choral symphony under the direction of Bernard Haitink and with excellent instrumental and vocal soloists is not only an outstanding interpretation of the work but also very much an event in itself – because these recordings document Haitink’s last ever concerts with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. Only a few months after his two Munich concerts on February 21 and 22, 2019, the great Dutch conductor – who celebrated his 90 th birthday on March 4 – announced the end of his career. The two Munich concert events at the beginning of the year featured the Symp...

One of the most peculiar features of the arts in the lavish Versailles court of the Sun King was his conservatism. His instrumental music produced a series of dances during decades, the so-called suites, of unchangeable composition, barely reminding us of old rhythms like the gallarda or the pavana which made room for novelties such as the gigue or the sarabande, installed from then on for future decades.  The gambist Marin Marais , referred to as the angel for his delecacy in comparison to the devil Forqueray, played a central role in that little but great world of short melodic stories, charming subtleties, delicate ornaments and changing repertoire - Changes that made everything remain the same. Surely De Visée, a musician like Marais from the Sun King's own chamber, accompanied him dozens of times on the theorbo and the guitar.Our concert, a close visit to that court environment, will take the form of a large suite, initiated by a prelude in improvised style, followed by e...

As we know it today, Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera, was first performed in 1814. But it had begun life in 1805 as Leonore, when its premiere in Vienna, to an audience largely made up of French officers from Napoleon’s occupying army who could not understand any of the German text, had been a disaster. Beethoven revised the score immediately, cutting swathes and recasting the original three acts into two, but he was still unhappy with the result, which was withdrawn after two performances the following year. When it emerged again, eight years later, both the music and the words had been even more substantially altered, and this time the premiere was a huge success. et though Fidelio is now a central part of the operatic repertory, some insist that the 1805 Leonore is the better, more dramatically convincing work. One of those is John Eliot Gardiner, who in 1997 conducted one of the three previous recordings of the original score, and another is René Jacobs, who is r...

Himmelsmusik (‘heavenly music’), a programme of sacred songs and cantatas by German composers of the 17th century, presents a striking contrast with the previous Erato album from Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L’Arpeggiata: Händel Goes Wild .   Himmelsmusik sees Pluhar taking a more sober and traditionally scholarly approach. She and L’Arpeggiata are joined by star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and the distinguished Belgian soprano Céline Scheen in a programme that includes the celebrated lamento ‘Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte’ by Johann Christoph Bach (born over 40 years before his relative Johann Sebastian), Heinrich Schütz’s ‘Erbarm Dich mein, o Herre Gott’ and prompts discovery of works by such lesser-known figures as Johann Theile, Philipp Heinrich Erlebach, Christian Ritter and Franz Tunder. An instrumental piece by the Verona-born Antonio Bertali highlights the influence of Italian music on German composers of the time. In an interview with the...

Maestro Marek Janowski leads a sensational cast — including star vocalists Lise Davidsen and Andreas Schager — on this new recording of Der Freischütz, the German Romantic opera par excellence. In the years after its 1821 premiere, the catchy melodies, picturesque charm and spooky scenes of Der Freischütz thrilled audiences throughout Europe. Janowski’s inspired reading lifts out the symphonic qualities of Carl Maria von Weber’s masterpiece, and makes clear why colleagues such as Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner raved about the work. The excellent cast consists of Lise Davidsen (Agathe), Andreas Schager (Max), Sofia Fomina (Ännchen), Alan Held (Kaspar), Markus Eiche (Ottokar) and Franz-Josef Selig (Eremit). Janowski conducts the Frankfurt Radio Symphony and MDR Radio Choir. For this recording, the original spoken dialogues have been replaced by short narrations, written by Katharina Wagner and Daniel Weber and recited by Corinna Kirchhoff and Peter Simonischek. Mare...

As if in a mirror, this recording juxtaposes the original piano versions of two of Ravel's masterpieces (Le Tombeau de Couperin and Alborada del gracioso) with their respective orchestrations. The Concerto in G major combines the two facets, both when the piano is integrated into the overall sound and when it plays its role as a soloist. The subtle playing of Javier Perianes and the refined sonorities of the Orchestre de Paris , conducted by Josep Pons, also remind us that Spain was the most significant source of inspiration in Ravel's output.

The Spanish ‘Golden Age’ witnessed an astonishing musical flowering, worthy of Spain’s newfound preeminence on the world stage. Focusing on works for Christmas and Epiphany, Stile Antico explores this glittering musical treasury, drawing together an irresistible mix of sumptuous polyphony and infectiously joyful folk dances. The centrepiece of the disc is the superbly rich and luminous Missa Beata Dei genitrix Maria by Alonso Lobo. Interspersed between its movements are motets by Tomás Luis de Victoria, Francisco Guerrero and Cristóbal de Morales, an exuberant ‘ensalada’ by Mateo Flecha and classic villancicos - Spain’s answer to the traditional carol.

Lars Vogt continues his series of concerto recordings with the Royal Northern Sinfonia with this new recording of Johannes Brahms’ (1833–1897) First Piano Concerto together with Four Ballades (Op. 10) for solo piano. As in previous albums, Lars Vogt conducts from the keyboard. The evolution of Brahms’ 1st Piano Concerto took several steps. Originally conceived to become a Sonata for Two Pianos through orchestration it was developed into a four-movement Symphony until reaching into its final form of a Piano Concerto in three movements. During the process, which lasted from 1854 to 1856, some movements were also discarded and replaced by new material. This music is packed with much drama. No wonder since these years were particularly tumultuous in Brahms’ personal life: it was during this period when his great mentor Robert Schumann was sent into an asylum and ultimately died. It was also time when Brahms formed a close, lifelong friendship to Clara Schumann. Some of the...

It is true that images have the power to keep a trace of the past. Gottfried von der Goltz and the Freiburger Barockorchestra prove with this recording that music too conceals the secret of the memory deep within. Though rarely played, much less recorded, Mozart’s youth symphonies bear the reminiscence of the child the composer used to be, as well as including the seeds of his future masterpieces. With this album The Freiburger Barockorchester fulfil the portrait of the brilliant composer, whose influences lie in these symphonies and contredanses, as well as his musical tastes: from the G minor tonality that we hear in the Symphony K. 22 to the aria Non piu andrai that can be heard in the first Contredanse - the music of the young Mozart echoes to the elder. Conducted by Gottfried von der Goltz, expert of the repertoire, the orchestra offers a genuine performance and interpretation, delivering the last piece of the Mozart puzzle.