Jeremias Schwarzer's album featuring four concertos for recorder by Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Liza Lim, Dai Fujikura and Iris ter Schiphorst, recorded with four top-class orchestras, has been awarded the German Record Critics' Prize.
Recorder virtuoso Jeremias Schwarzer is one of the world's leading ambassadors for his instrument. His collection of concertos composed between 2009 and 2021 reflects his persistent work in cultivating the repertoire for the recorder, which can be heard here in an unusual solo role. The four works are very different in character, but demonstrate the remarkable versatility of the recorder. They were recorded in live performances with well-known orchestras and equally well-known conductors: the Munich Chamber Orchestra under Alexander Liebreich, the SWR Symphony Orchestra under Rupert Huber, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under Jonathan Stockhammer and the Ensemble Resonanz under Peter Rundel.
Released in spring 2025, the album has immediately received rave reviews: "These four works, each remarkable in its own way, spotlight the wide-ranging skills and creativity of Jeremias Schwarzer himself as well as the composers’ challenging, sharply delineated visions," says Blogcritics, and the platform AnEarful finds: "Schwarzer handles every technical difficulty with flair, but what leaves the most lasting impression is his adventurousness and sure hand on the expansive musical stories these composers tell." The neue musikzeitung particularly emphasises Samir Odeh-Tamimi's composition Madjnun and writes: ‘Odeh-Tamimi also allows Jeremias Schwarzer's breakneck virtuosity in the solo part to unfold and let off steam in a very direct way.’
Now the album has also been awarded the German Record Critics' Prize. The current 153 critics, divided into 32 specialist juries, reviewed all new releases on the recording market from the last quarter. Twenty-eight winning titles made it onto the list of the best, including Jeremias Schwarzer's New Recorder Concertos in the contemporary music category. As the winner of the current list of the best, the album is one of four award-winning albums in the field of contemporary music in 2025. It was released by the New Focus label in New York and can be listened to in full length free of charge here as a non-commercial project.
The piece Whistle Blower by Iris ter Schiphorst is also available as a video, as are conversations with the composer and with Jeremias Schwarzer about the work: