Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns is one of the outstanding personalities in French musical life – as composer, teacher, and organist. Denis Rouger, one of his successors at the Église de la Madeleine in Paris, with a very personal portrait.
Personalities
We take a look at fascinating biographies, or report on particular aspects in the works of Bach, Mozart or Mendelssohn, Matsushita, Miškinis or Močnik. And we present the performers on our CD label, such as Frieder Bernius and the Stuttgart Kammerchor, Hans-Christoph Rademann and the Gaechinger Cantorey, and Calmus Ensemble. As well as this, you will get to meet our editors who report on their editions published by Carus - all true experts of choral music.
In Handel’s footsteps through London
When George Frideric Handel crossed the English Channel the first time in 1710, London was enjoying a huge economic upturn. The building boom altered the cityscape of the second largest city in Europe, with almost 630,000 inhabitants, the financial market grew and experienced the first stockmarket crash, the social contrasts were stark, but a simple musician such as Handel could die a rich man. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of today’s metropolis, we can still set out on a walk in the footsteps of Handel.
Bobbi Fischer’s musical universe
Universal is an ambitious adjective, but one which perhaps best describes the musician Karl Albrecht Fischer, alias “Bobbi Fischer”. Beginning with classical music, his musical horizons encompass chansons, Latin music and jazz, and extend to world music.
In search of Bach in his music library
It is an exciting undertaking to research the intellectual and musical horizons of a great composer. What Bach was interested in, whether it be musical, literary, theological or even the natural sciences, what was in his music cabinet apart from his own compositions – this sometimes arouses greater attention than studying well-known works by the composer for the umpteenth time.
Handel’s English oratorios
The period in which the above-mentioned works were written was a very fruitful phase in Handel’s creative output. He composed the ode Alexander’s Feast in 1735/36, Israel in Egypt and Saul in 1738/39, and Messiah followed in 1741/42. Furthermore, during this period he composed not only the oratorio L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (1740), but also a further eleven (!) operas, including what is probably his best-known, Xerxes, and – as his very last opera of all – Deidamia in 1741.
