Muller / Ruhland - Ever Ancient Ever New [CD]

Following Tatjana Ruhland's cpo release with flute compositions by Carl Reinecke, which has just been awarded the OPUS KLASSIK 2018 for the best concerto recording of the year, music critics have described her as "the top class in her field" and as "a virtuoso and nimble flutist" with "a warm tone full of interpretive intensity." On her new cpo album she dedicates herself to three flute concertos by August Eberhard Müller. Beethoven esteemed Müller as an artist, and Goethe valued him as a music expert; contemporary lexicographers praised him as a composer and as an interpreter on the flute, piano, and organ, and Friedrich Rochlitz, the founding editor of the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, described him as a composer whose works were "of definite, enduring value." Müller also did not have to beg for prestigious posts: he was the St. Thomas choirmaster and organist and Johann Sebastian Bach's fourth successor in Leipzig from 1804 to 1810 and the court music director in Weimar, "seat of the Muses," from 1810 until his death. Müller's flute concertos, eleven in all, were printed between 1794 and 1816, and two single pieces for flute and orchestra were published in 1804 and 1817. It thus may be said that he thoroughly occupied himself with this genre or instrumentation during his active years as a composer, and his flute concertos make no secret of his great admiration for Mozart.