Hey!

Welcome to issue 19 of our newsletter.

The first one in 2025. We took a short break over the turn of the year to reflect, discuss your feedback, and focus the newsletter even more on the wishes of the community.

With today's edition, the sheet music category will therefore return to the idea for which it was originally intended: small, short practice pieces or miniatures for in-between. We are very happy to have Leon Albert, a guitarist and composer, who will play this category with his inimitable style and humor.

Maybe you know his 24 Präludien für den erweiterten Bekanntenkreis (24 Preludes for the Extended Circle of Acquaintances)!? If not: check them out.

In view of the increasing amount of bad news, there will also be a new category with the “Feel-Good Tune of the Week”. Feel free to send such tunes our way at any time.

Everything else – read for yourself.

Enjoy!

YOUTUBE FIND OF THE WEEK
with Evan Taucher

In mid-February in Berlin, after spring has briefly pretended to take over from winter, there’s a good chance of getting snowed in again. There's nothing wrong about that. At least if you can watch a video like our video of the week from time to time where Evan Taucher plays on a porch in Mauritius. Beautiful scenery, palm trees and birds in the background. In short: summer vibes.

“Maria Luisa” by Julio Sagreras is a wonderfully light composition, too. Evan plays carefree, and the fact that the whole thing was simply shot with an iPhone almost fits in with the concept.

Check it out and fill up on those good vibes.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK
with Peter Graneis

This vinyl record was given to us by a friend who is also a friend of Peter's and has been sitting on the record shelf for some time now. Until, yes, until we happened to hold it in our hands last week while we were actually looking for a different one.

We wished we had discovered this beautiful guitar album by Peter Graneis earlier. A refreshing and well-rounded track list that keeps you at it throughout.

You can listen to it again and again! We certainly will.

We particularly liked “Due Canzoni Lidie” (Nuccio D'Angelo), “Des Pas Sur La Neige” (Claude Debussy) and “Prelude no. IX” (Vlastimir Trajković)!

Check it out. It's worth it!

MOURNIG-ROUTINE
A coffee with Leon Albert

Hi Leon, what‘s the routine for this week?

Welcome to this new sheet music routine with me. I am delighted to be part of the newsletter this way. (Thanks for that!)

“Chorang” is to be understood as a chorale. My current routine in this sense is: Sing what you play and play what you sing!

I look forward to all further editions and routines.

Have fun with my etudes – you make me very happy when you play them. Like music to my ears.

You’ll hear from me!

KNOW-HOW
with David Gorol

How did it come to our minds to get a violinist as an interview partner for our (classical) guitar newsletter?

Following the principle “the best inspiration is to be found outside”, we’d like to widen our perspective once again. In this case, for undiscovered music. And David Gorol is a true master in this field!

In addition to his work as an internationally sought-after guest concertmaster, David has been involved with rediscoveries for many years as the director and creative head of the Berolina Ensemble (including Ensemble of the Year 2014, winner of an Opus d'Or and two ECHO Klassik awards). The ensemble's numerous recordings of unknown contemporaries of well-known composers of the classical and romantic periods speak for themselves.

Let us take you on a short journey through history and the questioning of current conditions in the classical music industry. But above all – be inspired!

Hi David, what motivated you to focus on rediscovering works that were lost in the abyss of time (especially from the classical and romantic eras)?

At first, it was the occasional lectures in music history and conversations with musicologists that made me curious about who else was actually composing alongside the well-known composers. Later, it was the lack of variety in the one-sided programs of the various cultural institutions. Not so long ago, for example, you could experience Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in three different productions in one season at the opera houses of Berlin. I don't want to criticize this piece‘s right to exist, but an educational mission and exciting programming (also among the "houses") looks different.

Thanks to the curiosity of individual pioneers in terms of instruments and performance practice, the baroque scene has enjoyed a kind of renaissance in recent decades, which I wish for the other eras from early classical to late romanticism. In my opinion, this would help to improve the still sad reputation of the "dusty cliché" of classical music.

Instead, we find composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and Mahler in almost all concert programs. The best works of their oeuvre are undoubtedly among the highlights of our high culture. But they were not individual beacons of light in an otherwise dark time – rather, they were the brightest of a multitude of stars in the firmament. Perhaps a "lesser star" only wrote 30 percent of his works in the quality in which the "greats" left 70 percent of their output. But these would do the "Beethoven's 5th"-saturated audience good. Our greed to only want to hear works by the best, or only what we already know, makes us blind and no longer Carabelli of criticism. If a concert program included the "world premiere of the first composed piano piece by the 3-year-old Mendelssohn", it would arouse more interest than a revival of Ignaz Brüll's opera The Golden Cross. That is tragic!

There are so many symphonies, operas, concertos and sacred works to rediscover!!!

I couldn't change anything about the institutions' programs. So I founded the Berolina Ensemble with clarinettist Friederike Roth in order to at least open up more musical variety, from duo to decet, for the genre I have lost my heart to: chamber music.

If you then have such gems in your repertoire, it is, contrary to expectations, not the listeners who are hard to convince. It is the concert organizers who need to be encouraged to give their audiences new "magic moments".

Could you briefly describe one or two approaches or ways in which you come across these works and composers?

One possibility is to take a closer look at the environment of the well-known composers, to track down "composer friends" in biographies, to search for composers associated with composition competitions, or simply to explore the participants of musical salons from the relevant period in which they took part.

Another possibility is to take a closer look at the classes of well-known composition professors (Bargiel, Graedener, Zemlinsky etc.) and their colleagues.

You quickly find what you are looking for and realize that it is not a random search for "run-of-the-mill composers" that you have never heard of, but that they are often recurring names – even greats of their time – who followed compositional schools and "ideals".

Brahms goes along with Brüll! Schubert goes along with Hüttenbrenner! Would Mahler exist without Rott? Heinrich Hofmann: His Frithjof Symphony was the most-performed work in the German Empire! And much more.

These are not secrets! They were just forgotten – just as Bach was once forgotten!

What was the most exciting rediscovery for you?

One of the most exciting rediscoveries was the octet Dem Lande meiner Kindheit (To the Land of my Childhood) by Waldemar von Bausznern (1866–1931). With the instrumentation of 3 violins, cello, double bass, flute, clarinet and piano, the Transylvanian Saxon imitates a typical "gypsy band" of the time and, with the completion of the work in 1914, a few weeks before the outbreak of the First World War, even foresees the end of "the land of his childhood" with the partially concealed introduction of the anthems of Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Rákóczi March). A musical testimony to the times!

During your research, have you come across any composers who wrote for guitar?

The Berlin composer Carl Wilhelm August Blum (1786–1844). Pupil of Antonio Salieri, later court composer of the Berlin State Opera and partly director of the Königsstädtisches Theater in Berlin, where he is mentioned alongside the composers Rossini and Bellini.

In addition to operas, his compositional output consists almost exclusively of literature for guitar alone or for guitar with other instruments or voice. Have fun discovering him!

Another is a diplomat from Vienna who only composed under a pseudonym, but whom I still reserve for the Berolina Ensemble... ;)

Imagine you could have one sentence printed on a poster to be put up in huge numbers at all the (classical) music festivals in the world. What sentence would that be? 

Workers! Listen to more classical music! (This includes employees, civil servants and the self-employed)

More about David Gorol und his Berolina-Ensemble:

Website: http://www.davidgorol.com/
Berolina-Ensemble: https://www.berolina-ensemble.de/

FEEL-GOOD TUNE OF THE WEEK
with Branco Galoić

An upbeat and positive melody! It makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning. Or take a look at the sky in the middle of the day. Stress? Bad news? Put on your headphones, let your hair blow in the wind and jump on the good mood train!

Our feel-good tune of the week!

OUTRO

We hope we could take you with us on our first discovery journey in 2025. Once again, it was a great pleasure to listen to so much great music!

As always, feedback and suggestions are welcome in reply to this email!

Stay tuned!  Stefan & Willi

New Classical Guitar is a newsletter by Willi Leinen and Stefan Degel from TMBM. You can find our music and more information about our journey at http://t-m-b-m.com/.

On Spotify, we curate a playlist with our favorite pieces. Feel free to follow our New Classical Guitar Playlist at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ZwxJRAsW9Zs2JiS2eLy6a?si=9b2a737f01c043a4 and recommend new additions.