Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Chelsea Gallo
Capriccio · C5555 · 70 minutes
Johanna Senfter spent decades composing in near-total obscurity, and hearing her First and Ninth Symphonies side by side gives you a real sense of a voice that never quite got its moment — late-Romantic in language, personal in feeling, and genuinely curious in the way it develops ideas. Chelsea Gallo draws committed playing from the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, and even if the music doesn’t always land with full conviction, there’s enough here to make you glad someone finally gave it a proper listen. If you’re the kind of person who likes poking around the edges of the canon, this one’s for you.
“This is interesting fare, certainly, if not always convincing; and American conductor Chelsea Gallo encourages the Rheinland-Pfalz orchestra to give of their best.”
— BBC Music Magazine, July 2026,3 out of 5 stars
Oliver Triendl (piano), Benedict Kloeckner (cello), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Markus L. Frank
Capriccio · C5565 · 66 minutes
Kjell Flem writes music that feels rooted in Scandinavian introspection without ever getting cold or distant — there’s a warmth running through both concertos here that pulls you in from the first bars. Oliver Triendl and Benedict Kloeckner are two soloists who genuinely listen to an orchestra rather than performing over it, and with Markus L. Frank and the Berlin Radio Symphony that balance sounds exactly right. The pairing of piano and cello concertos on a single disc also gives you a real sense of Flem’s world, rather than just a snapshot.
Meccore String Quartet
Capriccio · C5559 · 50 minutes
Noskowski sits in that fascinating late-Romantic pocket where Polish nationalism and Viennese craft quietly negotiate with each other, and these string quartets carry that tension beautifully — you hear melodies that feel rooted in folk memory even when the counterpoint is doing very serious academic work. The Meccore String Quartet plays this repertoire with real conviction, finding the warmth in Noskowski’s writing without smoothing out its occasional angularity. At fifty minutes it’s a compact, focused listen that leaves you wanting to dig further into a composer who deserves far more attention than he typically gets.
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Christopher Ward
Capriccio · C5554 · 81 minutes
Paul Büttner spent decades laboring in near-total obscurity, and these two wartime symphonies reveal a composer wrestling with big Romantic gestures while the world was literally falling apart around him — there’s a desperate grandeur to the writing that feels completely earned. Christopher Ward and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra lean hard into that orchestral sweep, letting the music breathe and surge without ironing out its rougher emotional edges.
“This recording of the two wartime symphonies by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin under Christopher Ward pays lavish attention to the rich orchestral sweep and intensity towards which Büttner…”
— BBC Music Magazine, May 2026,4 out of 5 stars
Oliver Triendl (piano), Nina Karmon (violin), Benedict Kloeckner (cello), Roland Glassl (viola)
Capriccio · C5424 · 65 minutes
Max Meyer-Olbersleben is one of those late-Romantic composers who somehow slipped through the cracks of history, and hearing his chamber music here makes you genuinely annoyed that happened. His writing has this rich, dense harmonic language — somewhere between Brahms and Reger — that feels completely assured rather than derivative. Oliver Triendl and his colleagues dig into the textures with real conviction, and the interplay between Nina Karmon’s violin and Benedict Kloeckner’s cello in particular has a warmth that makes the music feel freshly discovered rather than dutfully excavated.
