Our amazing Product Manager Ana Milovanović selects the forthcoming album Schubert: Octet D 803 with the Scharoun Ensemble:
“From the very beginning, this release felt like a particularly inspiring project. Schubert’s Octet in F major, D 803 is such a legendary work – expansive in scale, yet disarmingly simple at its core. Knowing that it would be performed by the remarkable players of the Scharoun Ensemble immediately suggested that this would be something special.
Schubert’s music often carries a strong sense of duality. Beneath the luminous lyricism, there is frequently an undercurrent of melancholy, a tension between light and shadow that gives the music its distinctive emotional depth. With this in mind, we wanted the visual concept of the album to reflect that same idea. The artwork plays with this almost “bipolar” character of Schubert’s world: hopeful, bright, and full of life on one side, yet more introspective and darker on the other.
To express this, we created a mirrored landscape in which contrasting reflections coexist. The scene is meant to evoke the feeling of stepping into an echo of the Kammermusiksaal in Berlin. The geometric shape visible on the ground subtly mirrors the hall’s distinctive floor pattern, connecting the visual world of the cover with the physical space where this music feels so at home.
The performance itself is exceptional. When we first received the master files from the ensemble’s producer, he wrote something that made me stop what I was doing and listen immediately. He believed this recording would become a reference version of the work.
After hearing it, I could only agree.
It has been a great privilege to be part of this project and to shape the final album around such a remarkable performance. My highest recommendation.”
