This is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording
The proliferation of music for strings can make it easy to overlook the grand tradition of arrangements for brass. Italian masters Giovanni Gabrieli and Girolamo Frescobaldi are the featured composers on the re-mastered and re-released recording THE ANTIPHONAL MUSIC OF GABRIELI. A collaborative effort of the Philadelphia, Chicago, and Cleveland Brass Ensembles (along with E. Power Biggs on organ), this album evokes the majesty and charm of the Italian Renaissance.
No soloists take center stage; instead, the collaborative interplay of performers builds layers of harmonies through the melody. The superbly engineered stereo recording makes the most of this interplay, creating the impression of being surrounded by the orchestra; a diagram illustrating the seating arrangement used during the recording session is a useful tool in understanding the music. Understanding of the music aside, the clarity and precision of performance make this album a very serene and enjoyable listening experience.

Leen de Broekert present his own Van Vulpen organ in the Abbey in Middelburg with adventurous music. With music by Buxtehude, Böhm, Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Boëly. Included on this CD: Aria: La Capricciosa is by far Buxtehude's most extended composition for keyboard instrument. In 32 variations the composer unleashes his imagination on the Bergamasca, a 15th-century dance-tune from the region of Bergamo. Many 16th- and 17th - century composers took the melody and/or harmonic scheme of the Bergamasca as a starting point for a series of variations. Perhaps, being a manualiter work, La Capricciosa is firstly conceived for the harpsichord. However, if one concentrates on the variations written in an idiom appropriate for the organ, the variations 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 15, 20, 19, 24, 29, 30, 13 and 1 may be convincingly arranged as a cycle of 16 parts. Whilst still a boy of fourteen, Felix Mendelssohn composed the Ostinato in C minor. It is obvious that he must have modeled this work on Bach's Passacaglia in C minor. As towards the end of the piece Mendelssohn's writing seems to have become more and more sketchy, the danger of an anti-climax looms. By putting, where necessary, some flesh on the bare bones of Mendelssohn's composition, Leen de Broekert tried to bring the work to a convincing culmination. He also added a short introduction. Leen de Broekert (1949-2009) studied Piano and Organ at the Royal Academy of Music in The Hague. He graduated in both subjects. He also qualified as a harpsichord player and fortepianist with Jos van Immerseel. In 1979 he was one of the laureates of the International Contest for Organ in Bruges, with an honourable citation for his Interpretation of Bach. As a fortepianist and organist he was frequently asked for concerts in Germany as well as in Holland. He also performed in England, France, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Italy and Switzerland and recorded several CDs both on pianoforte and organ. Leen de Broekert was the organist of the Koorkerk (Abbey church) in Middelburg. He died, at the age of sixty, after a short illness, in Middelburg on 29 July 2009.

Her life reads like the classic Baroque success story: brought up motherless in a Venetian orphanage, maturing into an "unparalleled violin virtuosa", treated as an equal by Antonio Vivaldi: Anna Maria dal Violin. Midori Seiler and Concerto Köln depict the life of this exceptional woman in La Venezia di Anna Maria. All her life long, Anna Maria (born 1696, died 1782) lived and worked in the Ospedal della Pietà. The Venetian orphanage for girls did more than just offer a home and a refuge to girls abandoned by their mothers. It was a school, a musical conservatory and a tourist attraction at the same time. As maestro di concerto of the Ospedale, Antonio Vivaldi took Anna Maria under his wing. Starting out as her mentor and teacher, he eventually wrote over two dozen Concerti per Anna Maria. She brilliantly mastered the violin and a host of other instruments, and was praised as the "veritable embodiment of all that is good and beautiful", as a creature "ascending into Paradise". Before long everyone was demanding to hear her and it is largely thanks to her that Vivaldi's instrumental concertos blossomed as they did. Baroque specialist Midori Seiler and her congenial partner Concerto Köln offer a virtuoso portrayal of this artistic teamwork between Anna Maria and Vivaldi.

The fireworks on this live recording from 2005, featuring the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra led by Nicholas McGegan, are definitely of the vocal variety.

"Nobody does baroque better than Nicholas McGegan and his Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. And nobody does Handel better than McGegan and the PBO, either. So, there's no wonder the team do such a good job with Handel's Atalanta." -- John J. Puccio, Classical Candor

"Magnificent...the most vibrant, exhilarating stretch of musical showmanship this organization has offered in many a long season. Not since a decade ago have Philharmonia audiences witnessed a performance so deep, so affecting or so rich in musical splendor."
-- San Francisco Chronicle

"It is a particular joy to see a peformance such as this, utilising many of the dramatic and musical conventions of the eighteenth century, but with more than a nod towards modern sensibilities, especially when the score is as full of glories as Atalanta, and when performed this well."
-- Sandra Bowdler, The Opera Critic

A leading ensemble of period performance practice, Concerto Koln has been acknowledged for their rediscovery of musical rarities. Regardless, the ensemble still views the Baroque as being shaped by two driving forces- Bach and Handel. For this release, parts of three masterpieces have been coupled for the first time: Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto,” No. 5 and No. 1 of his Orchestral Suites along with Handel’s “Water Music.” Artistic Director Lorenzo Alpert explains the symbiotic nature of this release: “Our intensive engagement over the last 30 years with composers, music theorists and contemporaries from the time of Bach and Handel… opens up new vistas for us as we approach the works of these two great masters… What a joy to recreate a sound that seemed lost forever!”

As a child, Sebastian Knauer was present at seminal performances of the St Matthew Passion and the “Christmas Oratorio” in St Michael’s Church in Hamburg. And even at that early age, he enjoyed playing Bach on the piano. But his childhood enthusiasm was tempered with respect for the works of the great Thomaskantor. “I noticed at once: It is a huge challenge – not only in terms of keyboard technique, but mentally too,” he recalls. “In my student days and during the first few years of my career as a pianist I was constantly working on his music, but rarely played it in public concerts. Particularly when it came to the piano concertos, I never really felt myself to be ready, because I was searching all the time for my own picture of the music.” Sebastian Knauer deliberately gave himself time, engaging himself intensively with Bach’s musical cosmos until he was prepared to take his discoveries before an audience. The conductor’s artistic credo, that what matters for historical performance practice is not the sort of instrument you play, but the way and the style in which you play it, is one that Sebastian Knauer fully subscribes to. That is no less true of “Bach & Sons 2”, on which the pianist has once more explored the musical legacy of the Bach dynasty. It is this mixture of exceptional curiosity with the aspiration to enrich the established repertoire with unusual pieces that so typifies Sebastian Knauer – elsewhere and on this recording. Alongside the two Concertos BWV 1055 and 1056 there are real rarities on this release, such as the Concerto by C.P.E. Bach. The compositions selected by Sebastian Knauer are of great interest not only as repertoire but because they give an absorbing account of how the piano-concerto genre evolved. That is relevant to the works of C.P.E. Bach, an intermediary between the classic Baroque of his father and the dawning age of Viennese Classicism.

To mark the 250th anniversary of the death of George Philipp Telemann, mandolinist Alon Sariel presents a diverse compilation of remarkable works by the great German composer. Together with his ensemble Concerto Foscari he plays repertoire that has never been heard before in this musical form. Born in the Israeli city of Beersheba, Alon Sariel encountered the mandolin at a young age. Constantly in search of a new challenging, he discovered Telemann's solo fantasias, which were originally written for another instrument, and arragned them for the mandolin. Clearly impressed by this discovery, he started to take a broader interest in Telemann, his incredible wealth of ideas and his compositions, whcih are not limited to any particular genre. Telemann effortlessly mastered every style of his age.

Bach’s Cello Suites, the finest of all such works in the literature, speak in pure and clear voice, always spiritual yet down to earth. Isang Enders (b. 1988) was principal leader of the Dresden Staatskapelle cello section for four years before embarking on his solo career. He is a co-founder of the Ceres Ensemble and a founding member of the Int’l Shostakovich Festival. “The suites should speak, sing, dance, hunt and contemplate – altogether subjectively and characteristically. The subjective aspect of this recording is the result of my firm conviction." – Isang Enders

For the last four years, IGOR LEVIT’s name has been the first to be mentioned whenever there has been talk of the most exciting of the younger generation of pianists. What is so surprising about Levit is not only the maturity of his interpretations, but his boundless appetite for new repertoire of works as difficult and demanding as possible. Following his landmark recording, Beethoven – The Late Piano Sonatas, for which he has won international acclaim, Levit is again tackling another complex and difficult major work, J.S. Bach’s six partitas. Written between 1726 and 1730, the partitas BWV 825-830 are considered one of Bach’s masterpieces and are among the most difficult and challenging works for piano. Igor has studied Bach’s work extensively and has reached a deep understanding of the partitas allowing him to play them with such emotionality and musical “thirst” that this recording will be a benchmark for all other pianists.

Igor Levit has received international acclaim since he appeared as the youngest artist ever at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in 2005, where he won four awards. Born in Russia, Levit moved to Germany with his family at the age of eight. He is a graduate of the Hochschule fur Musik in Hannover, where he achieved the highest grades in the academy’s history.

On his debut Navona Records release, ALL THE WAY BACK, pianist and composer Vytautas Smetona presents a collection of keyboard repertoire that highlights his enthralling and committed interpretations of some of the great composers' masterworks as well as an example of his faculty as a cultivated and dynamic composer.

The pieces on this album offer Smetona technical feats and expressive themes, all of which the pianist handles with ease, determination, and eloquence. From Bach's lyrical and joyous Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp Major, BWV 848 to the somber and dramatic range of Liszt's Funerailles (October 1849), Smetona evokes passion and refinement in his performances. The technical mastery of works such as Brahms's Intermezzo in B-flat Minor, Op. 117, No. 2, Schumann's Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17, and Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 23 is handled by Smetona with sophistication, lucidity, and powerful passage work. Smetona shows us a balance between accurately playing the notes on the score and interpreting the feeling between them.