Frank Bungarten has taken on a significant task: an entire album of works by legendary Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. The composer's music is lush, complex, and richly textured, which is not a surprise given that Villa-Lobos was classically trained. But Villa-Lobos also incorporated inspiration from music of native Brazilian peoples and African cultures, so one cannot consider him purely a formal art music composer. Thus it takes a very skilled musician to be able to technically master the music and to convey the emotion and rhythms. Bungarten is perhaps most successful in the first set of works, Suite populaire brésilienne, which is a set of five dances.

For his new recording featuring compositions by the guitarist Johann Kaspar Mertz, distribguished performer Frank Bungarten has selected a very special instrument: a contraguitar designed on the basis of an exemplary historical model by Johann Gottfried Scherzer with a series of additional bass strings on a second neck.

"Serenade to the Dawn" is an SACD release featuring works by Burkhard, Haug, Rodrigo, Bozza, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Villa-Lobos. Andrea Lieberknecht and Frank Bungarten present some of the most enthralling compositions of the twentieth century for flute and guitar. Beautifully recorded and finely played, this is something new and exciting from MDG.

For his new recording featuring compositions by the guitarist Johann Kaspar Mertz, distribguished performer Frank Bungarten has selected a very special instrument: a contraguitar designed on the basis of an exemplary historical model by Johann Gottfried Scherzer with a series of additional bass strings on a second neck. As a result, we now can experience the opulent sonority of Mertz’s works just as they were originally heard – now for the first time since the death of the “last Viennese virtuoso” in 1856.