LOUIS LEWANDOWSKI

This world premiere album shines the spotlight on Louis Lewandowski (1821–94), a true pioneer of Jewish sacred music. Eighteen Liturgical Psalms presents the first complete recording of the composer’s choral masterwork. Lewandowski’s psalm settings, first published in Berlin in 1879, fell silent under the Nazis and remained so after the Holocaust. They were rediscovered in the 1990s, edited from the original manuscript by Andor Izsák and republished to mark the centenary of the composer’s death. Professor Izsák, who was born in the Budapest ghetto in 1944, has championed music by Lewandowski and other great Jewish composers for well over half a century. He conducted the Hungarian Radio Choir, five soloists and organist Márton Levente Horváth for this landmark recording of the Liturgical Psalms, using the spacious acoustics of Hungarian Radio’s legendary Studio 6 in Budapest to reconstruct a lost tradition of synagogue music-making. Deutsche Grammophon is proud to present this world premiere recording and wishes to thank the Hungarian Government and Hungarian Radio Art Groups for their generous support.