You can look forward to a very special new release in September: The soprano Hasmik Papian and the pianist Vardan Mamikonian present with „Hommage à Komitas“ Armenian and German Songs from Komitas.

The Armenian monk Komitas, collected hundreds of folksongs around 1900 during the course of his travels through the Armenian highlands. He set a portion of his collected folk melodies as arts songs. Together with some German songs written by him this SACD presents this cultural treasure for the first time to a wider audience.
You’ll be captivated by these gripping Lieder, so typical of the Christian-Armenian identity on the point of intersection between Orient and Occident, which tell of majestic mountains and of longing for the lost homeland, of the profound and ever-continuing suffering of this people, as well as of love.

The special musical content is also reflected in the exclusive appearance of the SACD, which is also visually convincing with its hard-cover packaging and golden foil embossing – sure signs of high quality and elegance. The SACD will be available in September.

from pizzicato 6/2006

MAXIMUM QUALITY, ALSO FOR THE ALARM CLOCK-RADIO

Ludger Böckenhoff of Audite remains firmly convinced by the SACD. After years of being disgruntled, the classic labels are now looking into the future somewhat more optimistically. Not only did sales of their products not continue to decrease in 2005, but they even rose slightly. One of the great hopes of the field was the Super Audio Disc, SACD, with Surround Sound, which guarantees a new, improved listening comfort. The major labels have now unfortunately abandoned this direction because they are waiting for a new format with yet more storage capacity, the Blue Ray Disc. Others stand firmly by the SACD, and one of these label heads is Ludger Böckenhoff of Audite. Rémy Franck had the following conversation with him.

SACD is still in the picture and you are one of the defenders of this format. On the other hand, one hears that other labels are already abandoning ship. Do you still believe in the SACD format?

It is the so-called major labels that are now slowly but surely dropping their original support of this format, probably because the next sound-carrier format – the Blue Ray Disc - is already very openly being worked on. That is without doubt a business interest, of course, an interest which applies to the much larger video market. For video, a new format with a much higher data quantity could really be a necessity; for me, as the person responsible for a purely audio music publishing company, everything that goes beyond the SACD is, at the moment, a step backwards. The SACD is easy to use, it allows for reproduction of six audio channels at an unbelievably high standard where nothing is lost – you surely can’t beat that with still denser formats. When new formats are forced into the music field, consumers will look back onto the period of the SACD with wistful nostalgia, a time of plug and play in the best sense of the words. But things haven’t gone that far yet, and even if the majors are no longer making SACDs, there are nonetheless very heavyweight labels that stand by it firmly. Besides all this, the reception of a CD is considerably worse than that of an SACD. The cliché of the throwaway medium is associated with the CD, and that is fortunately not true of the SACD!

Is the success of the SACD as such, then, already visible on the market, are your sales higher because you produce SACDs?

That varies widely from market to market, from region to region. In America, for example, the SACD is quite successful. The clients in Europe react in very different ways. Germany is certainly also a positive market for this kind of sound carrier, whereas other countries take to it less enthusiastically.

Have you been able to find out on what kind of system people listen to classical SACDs? Are they usually copied onto home cinema systems or do many people already have high quality Surround systems?

I don’t have any verifiable statistics! Let’s be realistic: probably 98% of our SACDs are played on normal CD players, with a number of these on the alarm clock-radio in the bedroom or on the kitchen radio and the rest on the stereo system. But that can’t keep me, as a producer, from offering a medium that is capable of delivering maximum quality. And that is the SACD!

And the Surround effect is for you, as always, a clear advantage: many people probably don’t know what they’re missing when they haven’t heard Surround, do they?

Well, I remain convinced by Surround, as much as ever! But you mustn’t view it in isolation from the content, from the programme and its interpretation. Surround by itself is of no use if the music itself is not of high quality.

At this year’s ARD competition in Munich audite-artist Hisako Kawamura won the second prize!

Additionally she was awarded the Special Prize for the best interpretation of the commissioned work “Deux Préludes” composed by Manfred Trojahn; the prize is provided by the Alice Rosner Fondation.

At audite Hisako Kawamura produced Piano works by Robert Schumann (Faschingsschwank aus Wien, Fantasiebilder op. 26) and Franz Schubert (Sonata in A major, D 959).

Congratulations from the audite-team!

Our production Hommage à Komitas won a Supersonic!

The Supersonic is awarded by the music magazine Pizzicato. We are happy about this recognition for Hommage à Komitas with Armenian and German songs by Komitas interpreted by Hasmik Papian and Vardan Mamikonian.

Our production “Schubert String Quartets Vol. III” with the Mandelring Quartet was included in the Quarterly Critics’ Choice (“Bestenliste”) of the German Record Critics’ Award (“Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik”).

The lists recommend new releases which merit special attention for the quality of interpretation and for their value to the repertoire. These lists provide a candid picture of new releases which, in the jury’s opinion, are of outstanding importance when judged on purely artistic and audiophile grounds.

Each recording of the Schubert series with the Mandelring Quartet combines a renowned quartet with a less known work: On Vol. III you find the famous quartet in G major D 887 (op. post. 161), on Vol. II the quartet in A minor D. 804, Op. 29 (“Rosamunde”) and on Vol. I the quartet D minor, D. 810 (“Death and the Maiden”).

Also, the Mandelring Quartet releases a complete edition of Shostakovitch’s string quartets at audite. Vol. I is already available. And the series “Brahms and his contemporaries” will be continued as well; so far available is “Brahms & Gernsheim”.

Besides the old - but nevertheless still active - internet-addresses www.audite.DE, www.audite.NET and www.audite.BIZ we now have registered to www.audite.EU. We are happy to show our European roots in our internet address! At www.audite.eu you find our familiar audite-homepage with all its possibilities.

price stability at audite

Although the sales tax in Germany was put up from 16% to 19% at the beginning of this year we do not have put up our product prices. We take over the additional costs for you.

“Which musician impresses you currently the most?”

56 leading German music critics answered this question in the German music magazine “Partituren” (January/February issue 2007).

In the category chamber ensemble Rémy Franck from “pizzicato” writes this:
“The Mandelring Quartett set new standards in string quartet playing and show chamber music on highest level in its most gripping way.”

The HambacherMusikFest was founded in 1997 under the artistic direction of the Mandelring Quartett and last year celebrated its tenth anniversary. The happy combination of the highest musical standards with the delightful local colour of the surrounding Palatinate countryside has allowed an attractive event to develop and flourish, enhanced by its own personal character. In 2007 the Mandelring Quartet has once again invited distinguished artists from Germany and abroad to perform during the week of the Feast of Corpus Christi in June and has put together a varied programme of chamber music ranging from the classical age to our own day.

This internationally acclaimed quartet, based in Neustadt on Germany’s Weinstrasse, has undertaken to present a concert schedule which offers, alongside the established repertoire, a constant flow of new discoveries. This mix is reflected in the ensemble’s discography, in which Schubert and Shostakovich rub shoulders with less familiar names such as Gernsheim and Dessoff in the series “Brahms and His Contemporaries”. It is to the Mandelring Quartet’s credit that since the 1990s the string quartets of Berthold Goldschmidt have been enjoying a renaissance after years of oblivion during the Nazi dictatorship, and that compositions by Georges Onslow, much appreciated during the 19th century, are now being heard more frequently. The Quartet’s successful collaboration with the audite label, based in Detmold, climaxed recently with the award of the German Record Critics’ Prize for its recording of Schubert’s towering late Quartet in G D 887 and his delightful early G minor Quartet D 173.
The HambacherMusikFest bears the Mandelring Quartet’s unique artistic imprint. At this eleventh Festival, lovers of chamber music will again be able to hear programmes combining classic works with masterpieces which are seldom performed in the concert hall because of their unusual instrumental combinations.

At the end of May 2007 Germany celebrates the 175th anniversary of the “Hambacher Fest” at which, in 1832, a demonstration by 30,000 people in front of Hambach castle formed the culmination of the first great civilian movement to call for a free and united Germany.
The programme of the 11th HambacherMusikFest from 6 to 10 June 2007 has been chosen to underline the importance of this historic jubilee by selecting works by composers who were forced to come to terms with the political and economic conditions prevailing in those days. Once again there will be eight concerts, three of them in the castle’s great hall, where the sequence will open on 6 June and end on 10 June with a gala performance. All these concerts, whether in the castle, in the benign, sunny context of two nearby vineries or the fine baroque church of St Jakobus, have come to exert a magnetic pull on audiences.
This year the Renn Quintet will also be participating in the variety and multiplicity of musical events on offer. This brass quintet introduces five instrumentalists renowned for their sparkling virtuoso programmes. The Mandelring Quartet and the Renn Quintet will be supported by some internationally distinguished soloists: the French pianist Claire-Marie LeGuay, the Israeli pianist Tomer Lev and the Dutch double-bass player Niek de Groot, all of whom also have extensive experience of performing chamber music.

The standard of the music on offer and the chance for the public to get really close to the artists are proving a great attraction, with the added delights of the idyllic location, the stylish setting of the castle and church and the charm of the Palatinate vineyards. The fact that people eagerly return year after year is evidenced by the great number of repeat bookings.

Information on the Festival is available on +49/6321/92043 and online . Information on the Mandelring Quartet and its concert schedules can be found on it’s website.