The century was only twenty-one years old, and so was Ernst Krenek, when his Serenade op. 4 was premièred on 31 July 1921 at the newly launched “Donaueschingen Chamber Music Performances for the advancement of contemporary music.” The event soon came to be known as Donaueschingen Festival, now one of the oldest specialized music festivals worldwide: Krenek’s music has occasionally been heard there since then – albeit as a series of utterly contrasting works one would hardly ascribe to the same composer.

Award-winning violinist Christian Tetzlaff is joined by his sister, cellist Tanja Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt on this exciting Grammy-nominated recording of the complete piano trios by Brahms, a body of works at the very core of the romantic chamber music repertoire. Tetzlaff, considered one of the world's leading international violinists, was named Instrumentalist of the Year in 2005 by Musical America and was the 2015 ICMA Artist of the Year. Vogt was appointed the first ever Pianist in Residence by the Berlin Philharmonic in 2003 and is highly sought-after as a soloist and chamber musician.

The passing away of Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928–2016), one of the most performed Finnish composers after Sibelius, left a deep void in the field of Finnish contemporary music. This new album by cellist Tanja Tetzlaff and pianist Gunilla Süssmann includes Rautavaara’s rarely heard works written for cello and piano. This album showcases Rautavaara’s skill in writing music for these two instruments and gives an opportunity for discovery.

Here are two works composed by Schubert at the very end of his short life. Schwanengesang (Swansong) was written in Vienna in the autumn of 1828. He died on 19 November at the age of thirty-one, and Die Taubenpost (Pigeon post), which closes the collection, is said to be his very last composition. The fourteen songs, by turns light-hearted, sombre and melancholy, are settings of poems by Ludwig Rellstab, Heinrich Heine and Johann Gabriel Seidl.