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Eisler: Works

Capriccio

$29.99 Jan 07, 2022

It would be worth striving towards a style that can combine the highest level of craftsmanship, originality, and high quality with the greatest popularity and folksiness.' – Hanns Eisler. This latest release in Capriccio‘s Hanns Eisler Edition contains songs and chansons from all periods of Eisler’s creative life. It also contains some of the fascinating orchestral suites that he had mostly assembled as adaptations of film scores from the 1930s. Notably, the programme contains the world premiere recording of his incidental music for Die letzte Nacht – the epilogue to Karl Kraus‘ monumental, satirical work The Last Days of Mankind. The mastermind behind this project was the great composer, conductor, and chansonnier HK Gruber, arguably one of the greatest authorities on Eisler.

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Eisler: Works
Capriccio Jan 2022
CD
$29.99

40th Anniversary: Symphonic Highlights

Capriccio

$35.99 ~~$47.99~~ Save 25% May 06, 2022

When Capriccio started out in 1982, still producing LPs and tapes, it was the first digital Beethoven Symphony cycle with the Dresden Philharmonic and Herbert Kegel that first turned heads. Several other key projects were pivotal to the label quickly establishing a reputation as a source of quality music and performances. Foremost among them, never out of the catalogue and still loved today, are the recordings with Sandor Végh. Then, in the mid-nineties those of Sir Neville Marriner’s, who, after long being synonymous with the Philips label, recorded widely for Capriccio, both with his Academy Of St Martin in the Fields and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. Contemporaries of Mozart’s that have emerged on Capriccio include Joseph Martin Kraus, François-Joseph Gossec, and Jan Ladislav Dussek. They are performed by early music and classical period Capriccio-favorites such as Concerto Köln or the CPE Bach Chamber Orchestra. This box set features the label’s most important ensembles, orchestras, and conductors, from the classical period to the 20th century, when, in 2005, Capriccio released the first complete Shostakovich Cycle with the Gürzenich Orchestra and Dmitrji Kitajenko.

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40th Anniversary: Symphonic Highlights
Capriccio May 2022
CD
~~$47.99~~ $35.99

Brahms: String Quintet; Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht / Végh, Mozarteum Camerata

Capriccio

$16.99 Aug 12, 2016

This re-release is one of CAPRICCIO’s most famous recordings which has been remastered for optimal quality and offered at a special price. The first work chosen for this release is Johannes Brahms’ String Quintet in G Major. The piece, scored for two violins, two violas, and cello, was intended to be the composer’s last piece of music. The one movement string sextet Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night) is considered Schoenberg’s earliest important work. The piece is inspired by Dehmel’s poem of the same name, and was written in just three weeks.

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Brahms: String Quintet; Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht / Végh, Mozarteum Camerata
Capriccio Aug 2016
CD
$16.99

Mendelssohn Hensel: The Year, Nocturnes, Introduction & Capriccio / Frezzotti

Piano Classics

$20.99 May 27, 2022

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was born in Hamburg in November 1805, the eldest of four siblings (the second was Felix, followed by Rebecca and Paul). The Mendelssohn family, of Jewish lineage, and belonging in the upper bourgeois class, gave a brilliant cultural education to their four children. Fanny was not only an exceptional pianist, but also an exceptional composer; her style is very close to that of Felix, the best known of her siblings. Her output is rich and substantial and includes more than four hundred pieces, comprising Lieder, organ works, chamber music, cantatas, an oratorio and an orchestral overture. In spite of her prolific creative output, some of her works remain still unpublished. This album focuses on a part of her piano works written between 1838 and 1841, which are particularly interesting.

The piano cycle Das Jahr (The Year) (1841) is the main work of this collection, written during her Italian journey. It is made up of twelve pieces, each bearing the name of a month, plus an epilogue, each expressing the particular feelings and atmosphere of the month in question. There are many thematic cross references between the pieces, as well as numerous references to Bach, connected to the music typical for the Lutheran worship. Also included are the two Nocturnes and the Introduction and Capriccio in B minor, in which the influence of her brother Felix is particularly evident. Italian pianist Martina Frezzotti studied with Lazar Berman at the Piano Academy of Imola and later with Elisso Virsaladze at the prestigious Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where she obtained her Doctorate in Music with full marks in 2012, the first Italian in history of this prestigious university.

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Mendelssohn Hensel: The Year, Nocturnes, Introduction & Capriccio / Frezzotti
Piano Classics May 2022
CD
$20.99

R. Strauss: Orchestral Works

Capriccio

$16.99 Jan 06, 2017

Capriccio Encore is a series of re-releases of the most famous recordings from Capriccio’s back catalogue, fully re-mastered and competitively priced. The legendary recordings of artists such as Sandor Végh, Ton Koopman, Sir Neville Marriner and the Vienna Boys’ Choir also contain repertoire highlights that have a particularly special appeal, from the baroque to the present day. This Encore release features iconic works by Richard Strauss performed by the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart, lead by Sir Neville Marriner.

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R. Strauss: Orchestral Works
Capriccio Jan 2017
CD
$16.99

CAPRICCIO - VIOLIN & PIANO WKS

Erato

$18.99 May 13, 2008

Capriccio - Mendelssohn, Schubert, Debussy, Etc / Renaud Capucon, Jerome Ducros, Composer: Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Schubert (Dresden), Franz Schubert, Sir Edward Elgar, Performer: Jerome Ducros, Renaud Capuçon. The notes to Renaud Capuçon and Jérôme Ducros's recital of miniatures focus on the emergence of this pair of French musicians a decade ago and the affinity they display with this repertoire. And affinity there surely seems to be. The arrangers of these pieces, Wilhelmj, Heifetz, Kreisler, Dushkin, and Píhoda themselves championed works of this kind and surely knew how to put them across. It's gratifying to add Capuçon to the list. On Wings of Song, like Schubert's Ave Maria, may be a Heifetz specialty, but Capuçon and Ducros strongly personalize them, with the violinist even providing his own arrangement of the latter. So, like La capricieuse, they display a range of persuasive dynamics and a willingness to employ a subtle palette of expressive portamentos and nuanced changes in tempo harking back to another era to make their various rhetorical points. Dynamic range seems to be one of the keys to their success: the middle section of Humoreske and the lurches of Prokofiev's "Masks" rise to an intensity to which few listeners may be accustomed, especially in an era of somewhat dutiful performances of such pieces. If a majority of them suggest triste rather than capriccio, and evoke polite rather than rowdy gatherings, the exceptions, like Dinicu's Hora staccato, provide thumping good entertainment of a more visceral kind. In fact, while Heifetz's performance may dazzle listeners with down-bow flying staccato of a brilliance never before (and never since) encountered, Capuçon's communicates hotter gypsy passion, while remaining exciting on a purely instrumental level. Still, the pervasive melancholy (for example, Capuçon has included Kreisler's Liebesleid rather than his Liebesfreud or even Caprice viennois)-exhibiting a narrower range than do similar collections by others, like Francescatti, Milstein, Heifetz, or Oistrakh, to name a few who compiled effective collections-may nudge it, despite the devotion of both performers to the kind of pieces they've chosen (including a few less familiar ones, like Strauss's "Einsamer Quelle" and the two Schumann songs), into a category that overlaps what some call "crossover." And insofar as that nudge increases it's appeal for some audiences, it's sure to decrease it for others. Still, for those who like this kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they'll like. Strongly recommended to them, but nearly as strongly recommended to others as well.

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CAPRICCIO - VIOLIN & PIANO WKS
Erato May 2008
CD
$18.99

Dimilitarized Zones: Marches

Capriccio

$16.99 Oct 30, 2012

The 20th century compositions asssembled on this disc embody the reaction of the ensemble to the political misuse of music. The Unmilitarised Zones by HK Gruber are islands of peace in a chaotic sequence of the most varied march fragments that go from the Badenweiler March via Sousa's Washington Post march to the Hungarian march of Berlioz. (Capriccio)

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Dimilitarized Zones: Marches
Capriccio Oct 2012
CD
$16.99

Capriccio's 40th Anniversary: Instrumental Soloists from Barto to Zimmermann

Capriccio

$35.99 ~~$47.99~~ Save 25% Aug 05, 2022

Capriccio continues to celebrate its 40th anniversary with this retrospective of some of the greatest instrumental recordings in its catalog. The keyboard mavens: Ton Koopman in Bach-Senior, the great Christine Schornsheim in Bach-Sons Concertos, and Tzimon Barto, the muscular master of the soft touch, in Brahms. Wind-aces Burkhard Glaetzner (oboe), Eckart Haupt (flute), and Reinhold Friedrich (trumpet) playing baroque and classical period masters. The trusty Petersen Quartet and the inquisitive Linos Ensemble, who have always been an essential element of the repertoire exploration that soon became Capriccio’s hallmark, and the arch-musician Tabea Zimmermann and Vladimir Spivakov representing true highlights among the high strings. A generous and tasty synopsis of what this plucky label is about!

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Capriccio's 40th Anniversary: Instrumental Soloists from Barto to Zimmermann
Capriccio Aug 2022
CD
~~$47.99~~ $35.99

'Round Midnight

Capriccio

$21.99 Feb 12, 2016

The title of this album comes from the Thelonius Monk piece, Round Midnight. At the time of the song’s publication, Monk was labeled an outsider. His intense harmonies and the complexities in his music put others off. The virtuosic performances on this recording, however, present an acceptable medium for such elaborate polyphonies.; Alongside this composition from a jazz great, this album also includes a wide range of moods, from the gloomy Saint-Saens Dance Macabre, to Purcell’s Fairy Queen. This album of “nighttime” themed music is performed with ease, agility, and fervor.; Performers are Falk Maertens and Raphael Mentzen, trumpet, Paolo Mendes, Horn, Andreas Klein, Trombone, and Johannes Lipp, Tuba. All are members of the Deutschen Symphonie-Orchesters Berlin.

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'Round Midnight
Capriccio Feb 2016
CD
$21.99

Alla czeca

Capriccio

$21.99 Oct 09, 2015

Following on from their most successful album “sound escapes” (Capriccio C5239) the young, aspiring Signum Quartet address Bohemian music culture. Beside Antonín Dvorák’s famous String Quartet Op. 106 and Josef Suk’s Meditation on the Old Czech Chorale ‘St. Wenceslaus’ (1914), an impressionistic offering on the beginning of WWI, is the 1923 composed Five Pieces for String Quartet by Erwin Schulhoff, which experiments with dance forms and provides a most virtuosic challenge. “… the Signum Quartet, which must already be counted among the best ensembles of its generation…” (Pizzicato)

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Alla czeca
Capriccio Oct 2015
CD
$21.99

Vladigerov: Orchestral Works, Vol. 3 / Vladigerov, Bulgarian Chamber Orchestra, Bulgarian National RSO

Capriccio

$29.99 Apr 01, 2022

From the diversity of Bulgarian musical culture Pancho Vladigerov stands out as undoubtedly the most important composer for the musical self-conception of modern Bulgaria. As the mentor of generations of Bulgarian composers in the 20th century, up to now he has formed a salient figure in the music life of his country. Revered as a living legend, he was in a position to continue his work largely unaffected by the demands of the Communist regime, although his musical diction, based on late Romantic tradition and keynote-related tonality, would hardly have provoked any reprisals anyway. With these recordings, produced in the 1070s in Bulgaria, Capriccio releases an 18 album Vladigerov-Edition to preserve this colorful music also for the next generations.

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Vladigerov: Orchestral Works, Vol. 3 / Vladigerov, Bulgarian Chamber Orchestra, Bulgarian National RSO
Capriccio Apr 2022
CD
$29.99

Giuseppe Austri, Capriccio fantastico, Works for violin and

Dynamic

$16.99 Jul 18, 2025

Though he was admired by figures as illustrious as Rossini and Verdi, violinist-composer Giuseppe Austri has been largely forgotten, unlike his great contemporaries Paganini, Sivori and Bazzini. These premiere recordings show how inventive and virtuosic his works for violin and piano are, suggesting that he must have been a performer of transcendent technical and expressive abilities. Austri was in the mould of the great itinerant virtuosi of his time and, though his compositions can display Paganini-like writing, he matches incendiary passages with graceful cantabile and intimate delicacy.

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Giuseppe Austri, Capriccio fantastico, Works for violin and
Dynamic Jul 2025
CD
$16.99

Strauss: Capriccio / Stein, Vienna Philharmonic

Orfeo

$32.99 May 03, 2024

Capriccio was the last contribution of, by then, nearly 80-year-old Richard Strauss to 20th-century musical theatre and from the very beginning intended for the Salzburg Festival. From a charming plan sketch by Stefan Zweig, the poet and librettist of "Die schweigsame Frau," driven out by the Nazis, Richard Strauss and his pupil and friend Clemens Krauss created a highly witty and elaborate late work, which, however, disconcerted the art observers for a long time. How could Richard Strauss, in the midst of World War II and the most brutal disregard for spiritual values, write a work that seemed to serve such an unimportant intellectual game, a genuine ‘art for art’s sake’? Yet it is precisely artistic thoughts relieved of all reality that give "Capriccio" its special place even within Strauss’s complete works.

The present recording from 1985 was already at the premiere an unequivocal success – a fact credited above all to Horst Stein and the Vienna Philharmonic and which led to numerous press headlines. With its markedly intellectual approach and its high musical standard, this festival performance drew a large audience to Salzburg over a total of three summers.

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Strauss: Capriccio / Stein, Vienna Philharmonic
Orfeo May 2024
CD
$32.99

Sacred Music Highlights / Capriccio 40th Anniversary Edition

Capriccio

$47.99 Feb 04, 2022

Since the beginning of Capriccio's catalog, the sacred repertoire has held a very special place among the label's recordings. Started with the most famous boys' choirs in the former German Democratic Republic (such as the Dresden Boys' Choir and Thomanerchor Leipzig), continued with boys' choirs in the West (including the Vienna Boys' Choir, Tölz Boys' Choir, and Regensburger Domspatzen), and up to artists like the Rheinische Kantorei with Hermann Max, top-tier ensembles have filled the gaps in recording history. Here, long-silent cantatas and oratorios by Zelenka, Hasse, Telemann, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach appear having been revived by Capriccio. This 40th Anniversary Box includes several remastered versions of long-out of print records, as well as a representative selection of niche- and standard repertoire productions.

REVIEW:

It must not have been easy to select which music to include in this commemorative package for the 40th anniversary of the Capriccio label, but the truth is that the more than 10 hours of music that they offer us is exquisite and an excellent example of the trajectory of this record label...which has always opted for the opening of new territories.

Let's highlight the obvious: the ten albums are dedicated to religious music mostly performed by groups of German origin, such as Das Kleine Konzert and La Stagione. They offer works by authors who are consecrated today, but were not always so much when Capriccio bet on them, as in the cases of C.P.E. Bach and Telemann.

The care of the sound recording (from the first minute of the beautiful first disc with Monteverdi's Vespers) makes it possible to distinguish all the flourishes of this music, either with its melodic ornaments, or with its intricate contrapuntal textures, such as in Bach's Motets, given by a boys' choir, the Rostocker Motettenchor. And it also has a section dedicated to 19th century music, with Schubert's Hymns, Brahms's German Requiem, and music by Saint-Saëns and Mendelssohn. All recorded between 1983 and 2002, this music is a living testimony of the good work of this still-active label. Long live Capriccio!

-- Ritmo

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Sacred Music Highlights / Capriccio 40th Anniversary Edition
Capriccio Feb 2022
CD
$47.99

Szymanowski: Concert Overture, Sinfonia Concertante, etc. / Steffens, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie

Capriccio

$21.99 Nov 18, 2016

Periodically someone decides the time is ripe for a re-appraisal of the music of the Ukrainian-born Polish composer Karol Szymanowski. Among his most persuasive advocates have been such eminent conductors as Pierre Boulez and Simon Rattle, both of whom have committed much Szymanowski to disc. But, for one reason or another, he remains a name known to many while his music remains largely unknown. Possibly the Etude in B flat minor for piano – one of the most deeply moving of all piano études, with its powerful echoes of Rachmaninov – will be familiar to pianists, but little else from his broad output finds its way into the consciousness of music lovers. This latest disc devoted to Szymanowski on Capriccio’s “Modern Times” series does all it can to keep Szymanowksi obscure, but the music succeeds where Capriccio fails, and I would recommend this most strongly to all of those for whom Szymanowski is merely a name that sounds like a Russian transliteration of Schumann or a spoof composer with a name derived from a cross-fertilization of Schumann and Tchaikovsky. These are not the best performances you will find, and the packaging is grim, but the music is wonderful and for those whose idea of hi-fidelity is listening to music through their computer speakers, the flat recorded sound will not unduly disturb the pleasure of an encounter with this gorgeous music.

The trouble with describing the music of an unfamiliar composer is that one reverts to comparisons with better-known ones – as if originality of voice is given only to those whose music has crossed the fickle threshold of popular taste.

With the Concert Overture which opens the disc, one can possibly be excused this, for if any music ever sounded like a Richard Strauss tone poem, this does. From its boisterous opening to its triumphal conclusion, it is a feast of Straussian gestures and ideas, a wonderful orchestral romp and a stirring musical journey. And this is what Szymanowski intended, for in 1904 when he wrote it, Richard Strauss was the dominant figure. If the booklet notes are to be believed, Szymanowski deliberately aped the style of Strauss “as a provocation to the, in his view, completely fossilized structures of Polish music”.

At this point we must break off to mention those booklet notes, tightly compressed into a distinctly unappealing booklet which seems designed to put off potential buyers. Christian Heindl’s German text is dense enough, striving to place Szymanowksi in some sort of context with Polish music at the start of the last century. But the English translation (claiming to be the work of one Ian Mansfield) is a disgrace. Seeming to have done little more than run the original German through a free online translator, and not even having made the effort to check the spelling afterwards, Mansfield comes up with such incoherent nonsense as; “he ranks as one of the many tone wolves and practically outsiders in music”, “the composer instrumented the cycle for chamber orchestra”, and “meaningful for the concert hall and fathoming it to the depths”.

Soprano Marisol Montalvo is, thankfully, infinitely more eloquent in the cycle of five songs, Slopiewnie, which bears the same opus number as Szymanowski’s great opera, King Roger but is otherwise unconnected. Exotic, sometimes harmonically brittle, sparsely orchestrated but highly effective, these are a world away from the lush world of Strauss’s orchestral songs and present a musical voice which is both distinctive and accomplished. There is nothing identifiably Polish about these settings of Polish texts by Julian Tuwim, but the booklet note suggests the musical idiom is derived from Gorals, an ethnic group which “has its area of distribution in the Polish Tatra and the Beskids, but also in parts of Slovakia”. It also observes some stylistic parallels with Stravinsky and Les Noces. Montalvo has a pure, shining vocal quality with an innately focused sense of pitch.

The major work on the disc is the Fourth Symphony, subtitled Sinfonia Concertante, but which is, to all intents and purposes, a fully-fledged piano concerto. Szymanowski wrote the work for himself to play (although he dedicated it to Artur Rubinstein) and called it a Symphony to disguise his shortcomings as a concerto soloist. Ewa Kupiec is the fleet-fingered soloist, delivering the almost Ravelian delicacy of the first movement with a refreshingly light touch supported by the kind of clear-textured orchestration which seems such a feature of Szymanowski. Even as the movement builds up to its great climax, the feeling of delicacy and suppleness Kupiec brings to the performance is never lost, and Karl-Heinz Steffens seems to have an instinctive feel for the balance which comes across even when the recording engineers have done little to assist. A gentle, fluttering second movement introduces all manner of magical orchestral effects, much in the manner of a Bartók night-music movement but built around Polish rather than Hungarian folk songs. And in the final movement it is the spirit of Polish dances which seems to dominate in music that sounds like Ravel and Bartók holding hands but is, in reality, uniquely the voice of Szymanowski – stunning orchestral writing, impeccably crafted moments of climax and repose and an exotic musical language which is utterly enthralling. Steffens maintains a wonderfully incisive rhythmic momentum which his German players throw themselves into with great gusto.

The Nocturne and Tarantella is an orchestration, made two years after Szymanowski’s death by Grzegorz Fitelberg, of a work originally written for violin and piano. It draws attention to Szymanowski’s fondness for the exotic, combining Spanish and Italian elements in a scintillating dance-like display, where only the final cadence seems indicative of a composer not quite of the very first rank, but with a voice all his own.

– MusicWeb International (Marc Rochester)

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Szymanowski: Concert Overture, Sinfonia Concertante, etc. / Steffens, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie
Capriccio Nov 2016
CD
$21.99

CAPRICE

WARNER CLASSICS

$17.49 Oct 03, 2006

Voted Young British Classical Performer of the Year at the 2006 Classical Brits, Alison Balsom follows her critically-acclaimed album Bach: Works for Trumpet with Caprice, a novel and demanding program of specially arranged popular classical works. The album features sparkling transcriptions of Mozart's 'Rondo alla Turca' and the Queen of the Night's aria (from the Magic Flute) as well as the scintillating 'Variations on Bellini's Norma' by the French virtuoso Jean-Baptiste Arban. Amongst the more lyrical numbers, Balsom plays arrangements of Rachmaninov's haunting Vocalise and the exquisite Nocturne from Tomasi's Trumpet Concerto. She also brings her unique sound to two pieces played by the trumpet alone: Paganini's well-known violin Caprice No.24 and Debussy's Syrinx.

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CAPRICE
WARNER CLASSICS Oct 2006
CD
$17.49

Capriccio malinconico - Works for Violin & Piano

Ars Produktion

$20.99 May 30, 2025

For his debut album, Arsenis Selalmazidis has chosen works by Schnittke, Ravel and Faure because their work had a profound influence on him. All the pieces are arranged in such a way that the difference between the musical eras is barely noticeable. With this album, it is important to him to give listeners the opportunity to slow down and pause for a moment in the hectic rhythm of modern music.

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Capriccio malinconico - Works for Violin & Piano
Ars Produktion May 2025
CD
$20.99

Penderecki: Capriccio for Violin & Orchestra, Etc

DUX

$21.99 Jan 01, 2000

Strangely compelling.

You would expect Krzysztof Penderecki to draw the best out of his musicians in his own work, especially after an impressive track record in this field in the past. I listened to the re-release of his recordings for EMI from the 1970s, and these are still impressive even when compared with this new digital recording.

Taking the Capriccio, the earlier recording is a tad more compact at 11:38, but easily equals the new recording in terms of drama. The soloist is set closer with the new recording, so that the balance is less natural in terms of what you might experience in the concert hall, but in all other respects this new recording is an improvement. The detail in terms of instrumentation comes through far more clearly – percussion of course, but all of those other sliding and quivering exotic sounds from all quarters, like the bowed saw for instance, are revealed in all their glory. I’ll still listen to the earlier recording for its chilling atmosphere, but recommend the new one for sheer clarity.

De Natura Sonoris No.2 is an early 1970s chiller classic, continuing and developing some of the textures in Capriccio in a purely orchestral context. Again comparing the EMI recording, made when the piece was brand new, this new Dux version has more immediacy and clarity, but more importantly shows up some of the ways in which Penderecki’s view on the work has changed over the years. There are some dynamic differences in the balance here and there, and those dry, choking clusters in the strings in the beginning are taken more slowly and with less of a sense of murderous drama. Strangely, even though the new recording is a good two minutes shorter than the old one, the new version seems slower: listening to the cacophonous brass and strings beyond four minutes into the piece, there is a greater sense of drive and urgency in the old EMI version. Where Penderecki saves time in the new recording is by compressing the longer stretches of static atmosphere earlier in the work, which are less of a novelty these days. Either way, the old analogue tape coped badly with those fireman’s bells and the sheer weight of noise from the massed brass and percussion in this work, making this new recording a welcome alternative. The sliding brass beyond 5:00, with its conversational interruptions, is a definite goose-bump moment, and the final held note under that scraped percussion is like a small chorus of drowned angels.

Penderecki’s more recent style, in any case since the ultra-romanticism of the early 1980s, has in some way proved even more controversial than his earlier avant-gardism, and the Piano Concerto does sit rather strangely with its ghostly forebears on this disc. The work was written after a great deal of procrastination by the composer, who “refrained from writing a piano concerto for many years because I was afraid [of the] many excellent concertos written in the 20th century.” The final push came from a commission from New York, with Emanuel Ax and the Philadelphia Orchestra in mind as performers. Started in June 2001, the work was originally to have followed the Capriccio design, but after the terrorist attacks of September 2001 the light-hearted nature of such a title seemed inappropriate. The work took on a more serious character, and the non-religious title ‘resurrection’, which refers to mankind’s universal desire for renewal and re-birth after disaster and crisis.

The style of the work is linked to Penderecki’s 1996 seventh Symphony, The Seven Gates of Jerusalem, but also integrates the grand stylistic gestures of Mahler and some of the romanticism of the great piano composers such as Rachmaninov. At over 30 minutes in duration it certainly has a symphonic scale, and with no intermission between any of the sections the uninterrupted musical narrative is a ride of considerable intensity. If I have any problem with this work – and I do consider it a substantial masterpiece – it is the difficulty one has in establishing an individual character to either the source, the composer, or the intended message – the expressive aim. I don’t claim that all music should have immediate clarity in either of these aspects, but I doubt if I have any colleagues even in the musical fraternity who would be able to put their finger on what is going on here. I don’t mean this in a technical sense – the work is about as difficult to listen to as Shostakovich’s 1st Symphony; but in terms of where, what, why, huh?

The booklet notes may have something of an answer to give. ‘The piano part is treated in a very original way in as much as… it explores first and foremost the piano’s percussive qualities.’ Yes, but not ‘in contrast to the major works of the piano literature’ as far as the 20th century goes: composers since Bartók have been doing little else. In any case, there is plenty of running up and down the keyboard in fairly standard romantic style, so I don’t feel any great claims can be made for originality in the solo part. More telling is that ‘the sound idiom employed by the composer harks back to the great symphonic tradition of the turn on the 19th century’. This push-me-pull-you treatment results in something akin to Saint-Saëns and Busoni fighting under a duvet, with the eclectic spirit of John Adams and the hothouse mania of Scriabin acting as referees. One of the central elements in the piece is a chorale, whose introduction at 7:10 is sheer White-Christmas Hollywood. The whole thing quasi-concludes with a final massive statement of this main chorale ‘theme’ at 28:17, with recorded bells kicking in at 29:23 which are as corny as hell. The only thing we miss at this point is a few blasts from a cannon, and the spirit of Tchaikovsky might be appeased as well: the title ‘resurrection’ might as well stand for a ‘revival’ of this way of expressing triumph of the human spirit over destructive forces.

Despite all this the Piano Concerto is strangely compelling – one of those works you know you’ll be playing again, if only to remind yourself of the strange conundrums it proposes – was it really like that? Yes, it really is, and one has to stand in awe of the way in which Penderecki rather audaciously and uniquely creates a new work out of such a gallimaufry of antique recipes. I do however wonder quite what place it will ultimately take in the canon of 21st century musical art.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

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Penderecki: Capriccio for Violin & Orchestra, Etc
DUX Jan 2000
CD
$21.99

Bob Van Asperen Froberger Edition: Capriccio 7

Aeolus

SACD

$21.99 May 27, 2016

A "seventeenth-century Art of Fugue" -- The seventh volume of the Froberger Edition on Aeolus is perhaps the craziest: a roller-coaster ride through the world of the fugue, performed with virtuosity and the spirit of adventure. Bob van Asperen plays himself here into an absolute frenzy! Froberger's Capriccios show a composer who not only perfectly mastered his métier, but drove his art forward to new heights. Not without reason, the accompanying text (written by the performer) points out many connections to the works of J. S. Bach. With Bob van Asperen, the Edition features an exceptional interpreter who performs these works just as passionately as knowledgeably. Eighteen multi-part Capriccios are to be heard, also including a recently discovered work. As in all the other volumes of the Edition, an important historical instrument is employed: here it is the large Arp Schnitger organ of the Ludgerikirche in Norden (Eastern Friesland, Germany), which with its numerous stops allows the wealth of polyphony to resound.

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Bob Van Asperen Froberger Edition: Capriccio 7
Aeolus May 2016
SACD
$21.99

Capriccioso: Under The Blue Skies
Cello Classics Nov 2007
CD
$13.99

Puccini: Messa di Gloria; Capriccio sinfonico

Naxos

$19.99 Nov 14, 2025

Giacomo Puccini achieved global renown as an opera composer, but the choral, vocal and orchestral works recorded here reveal little-known aspects of his output, including several rarities. Puccini's early training was in church music, with the Messa di Gloria a clear indication of his great talent. The recently discovered Preludio a orchestra shows his wider ambitions, with the Germanic influences of the Capriccio sinfonico resulting in music destined to reappear in operas such as La Boheme. The elegiac and prescient aria Ad una morta contrasts with the celebratory Inno a Roma, a rousing occasional piece that features plenty of Puccini's characteristic melodic flourishes. A digital EP of the Preludio sinfonico and the Requiem is also available for download and streaming (9.70398)

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Puccini: Messa di Gloria; Capriccio sinfonico
Naxos Nov 2025
CD
$19.99

Mix & Match

Capriciosi affetti - The Venetian Sonata in the Sixteen Hundreds

Stradivarius

$18.99 May 17, 2024

Capriciosi Affetti takes us on a journey around the instrumental sonata in early 17th-century Venice through two and three-part compositions with continuo by Biagio Marini, Giovanni Battista Fontana, Dario Castello, Giovanni Picchi, Giovanni Legrenzi, and Marco Uccellini. Ranging from the tradition of the Canzon da Sonar and the Musica a Ballo, our journey certifies the wealth of experimentation within the sonata concertante, with its kaleidoscopic variety of contrasts. Along with the outcomes of vocal music, musing around the affetti played a pivotal part in the development of instrumental writing that was as idiomatic as it was advanced from a technical, timbral, and sound point of view. Composers called affetti those peculiar technical and execution modalities of expression through which instrumental music, lacking a written text, wished to give an abstract representation of the variety of accents and everchanging inflections within human passions and frames of mind.

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Capriciosi affetti - The Venetian Sonata in the Sixteen Hundreds
Stradivarius May 2024
CD
$18.99

The Chamber Music Arrangements / Linos Ensemble

Capriccio

$47.99 Sep 21, 2018

Founded in November 1918 by Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and a few of his confidants, the Association for Private Musical Performances constituted perhaps the most progressive and most intensive opportunity for a select Viennese musical circle to familiarize themselves with contemporary and the latest works of the international composers’ scene in the immediate aftermath of the First World War and hence at the time of a dearth of a cultural spirit of optimism and innovation. Schoenberg had a close personal tie with many of the composers performed at the association concerts, as in the case of Zemlinsky. The association became a nursery for the entire modern music from Richard Strauss and Debussy to Webern, as far as the instrumentation of the works allowed. This release explores some of the chamber music works that came out of that association, including pieces by Bruckner, Mahler, Webern, and Schoenberg himself, among others.

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REVIEW:

The Linos Ensemble offer fastidiously prepared performances of fascinating repertoire in unusual arrangements. The quality of the music-making on offer transcends the historical importance of many of these reductions. Given the fact that these discs have been laid down over a twelve year period, recording standards are consistently excellent. Indeed it is a delight to be able to hear the sound of the harmonium so perfectly integrated into the texture in so many of these arrangements.

– MusicWeb International

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The Chamber Music Arrangements / Linos Ensemble
Capriccio Sep 2018
CD
$47.99

Sale

Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture, Capriccio Italien, Romeo & Julie
Urania Records May 2013
CD
~~$32.99~~ $16.49

Horn Quintets: Mozart, Hoffmeister, Hauff, Beethoven
Capriccio Sep 2011
CD
$21.99