The Olmos Ensemble has a new album out, called “Made in Germany.” It’s all music by German composers — Richard Strauss, Rudolf Tillmetz, and Ruth Schonthal — and it’s all pieces that have never been recorded before.
The album’s centerpiece is a setting of Strauss’s “Don Quixote,” that massive orchestral work, here distilled into six instruments, in the first recording of Laszlo Varga’s highly regarded arrangement. The Olmos’s cellist, Julian Schwarz, says Varga “took all the key characters: the violin representing Dulcinea, the viola representing Sancho Panza, and the cello representing the protagonists Don Quixote,” and then the piano and clarinet and French horn fill in with Straussian texture.
Schwarz points out that “the ensemble has been around for 32 years. The one area that we wanted to increase was our recorded legacy. And many years ago before I joined the group, there was recording that was called ‘Made in France.’ And with generous help from our sponsors the Bennett family, we have embarked on a multiple-CD project, taking albums from different countries, showcasing the virtuosity of the ensemble in all of our different configurations.”
If this one is any indication, music fans all over will have new things to look forward to for some time to come.
