Brilliant Classics Sale 2026

Brilliant Classics Sale 2026

Big works. Big collections. Brilliant savings.

For the next two weeks, save 25% on over 300 Brilliant Classics titles, including an incredible selection of iconic box sets perfect for building—or expanding—your classical collection.

Explore music from some of the world’s most celebrated composers, including Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Bach, and many more, all at a price worth making room on the shelf for.

Shop now before the sale ends Wednesday, October 7th, 2026 at 9:00AM!

    Brilliant Classics

    Cherubini: Six Sonatas for Fortepiano / Pierini

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Luigi Cherubini
    Artist
    Simone El Oufir Pierini
    Released
    Feb 03, 2023

    In the second half of 18th century, keyboard music in Tuscany was flourishing. Many composers wrote music for both the fortepiano and the harpsichord: the former, which was invented just before the turn of the 18th century in Florence by harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), rose to an incredible degree of popularity in the last decades of the century at the expense of the latter, which experienced the last moments of its glorious history. At any rate, it was by no means uncommon that composers published music intended to be played on either instrument, as almost all keyboard pieces written in Tuscany during the 1780s were explicitly addressed per il clavicembalo o fortepiano (for the harpsichord or piano).

    The Florence-born composer Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842) published his Sei Sonate per il Cimbalo around 1780; they are currently believed to be the first published work by the composer, although he had written operas and religious music prior to the publication of this work. The style of these sonatas is not too far from the musical fashion of the time: they all consist of two movements, the first in sonata-form, the second a rondò where the second theme is typically characterized by highly virtuosic writing. All six sonatas follow this strict formal code, however, Cherubini manages to create a surprising variety in the themes and their development. Each sonata could, in fact, depict a different stock character from the commedia dell’Arte, with their strict formal codification employed in a theatrical way thanks to the perfect balance of ideas set out each time. Even the bass seems to be adjusted depending on the mood of the theme – Cherubini employs Murky bass, Alberti bass and even counterpoint. The harmonic closeness between the key signatures of each sonata gives further cohesion to the whole set.

    After careful consideration, Simone El Oufir Pierini found the fortepiano to be the best instrument to play these works on, although in the printed edition it was explicitly said that they should be played on the harpsichord. The piano, a new instrument, was highly favoured by the new Tuscan court, and the potential of this new instrument was sought out with keen interest by composers. The employment of the fortepiano for these sonatas hopefully sheds new light on these pieces, written by one of the most influential composers of the time.

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  • Cherubini: Six Sonatas for Fortepiano / Pierini
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    Cherubini: Six Sonatas for Fortepiano / Pierini

    Brilliant Classics Feb 2023
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    Brilliant Classics

    Grieg: Complete Music for Piano 4-Hands; Peer Gynt Suites / Plano, Del Negro

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Edvard Hagerup Grieg
    Artist
    Roberto Plano, Paola Del Negro
    Released
    May 26, 2023

    During the years leading up to the beginning of the 20th century, Edvard Grieg was the most significant Scandinavian composer. His 4 Norwegian dances Op. 35 are arrangements for piano four-hands of old folk tunes. The Symphony in C minor was composed in 1863–64. The melodies of its second and third movements later came to be known in the present arrangement for piano duet known as 2 Symphonic Pieces Op. 14. Grieg composed a score for Peer Gynt of some 90 minutes of incidental music, from which he selected the most beautiful numbers for two orchestral suites which he arranged in versions for piano solo and piano four-hands.

    Grieg wrote the 2 Walzer-Capricen Op.37 for piano four hands in 1883. The 2 Nordic Melodies, Op. 63 were originally written for string orchestra in 1895. The work is dedicated to the Norwegian and Swedish ambassador to Paris Frederik Due. Due sent Grieg some compositions for violin and piano, and one of his melodies appears in the first piece: ‘In Folk Style’. The second piece, comprising the ‘Cow-Call’ and ‘Peasant Dance’, is a reworking of two pieces (Nos. 18 and 22) from Grieg’s Op. 17 (25 Norwegian Folk Ballads and Dances).

    REVIEW:

    Grieg had a mastery of the two-piano idiom that is well represented here by Plano and Del Negro. I am very pleased to have this excellent release in my library. It has great piano sound and some of my favorites along with a few rare pieces.

    -- American Record Guide

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  • Grieg: Complete Music for Piano 4-Hands; Peer Gynt Suites / Plano, Del Negro
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    Grieg: Complete Music for Piano 4-Hands; Peer Gynt Suites / Plano, Del Negro

    Brilliant Classics May 2023
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    Brilliant Classics

    Bariolla: Ricercate for Organ / Manfrè

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Ottavio Bariolla
    Artist
    Silva Manfre
    Released
    Apr 22, 2022
    ‘Ottavio Bariola represented absolute musical perfection. The organs of the [church of] Madonna di San Celso are honoured to have passed through the hands of such an excellent performer. His listeners rejoiced while he pressed the keys, and the original way he moved up and down the keyboard provided an earthly imitation of the harmony of heaven.’ This rapturous description, provided by the abbot Filippo Piccinelli in his work L’Ateneo dei Letterati Milanesi (Milan, 1670), provides a good summary of all the biographical information available for the organist and composer Ottavio Bariolla. The organist and organ builder Costanzo Antegnati, son of the renowned Graziadio Antegnati who built the organ for the church of Santa Barbara in Mantua played on this recording, bears witness to the fact that Bariolla was still alive in 1608, naming him in his Arte Organica (Brescia, 1608) as one of the many ‘illustrious and most excellent composers’ that inspired him to write his treatise. The only copy currently known of Ottavio Bariolla’s Ricercate per sonar d’Organo (the original has been lost) is contained within the German organ tablature held in the Biblioteca Nazionale di Torino (Fondo Giordano 8). This tablature, which has been dated to between 1637 and 1640, was drawn up by scribes working in southern Germany and is the largest manuscript source of keyboard music, featuring an incredible 1770 compositions. Bariolla was one of the first composers in the prime of the ricercar to break away from monothematic composition, preferring to use multiple themes in his Ricercate and therefore pre-empting the direction taken by his successors, including Giovanni Maria Trabaci, the best-known composer of the Neapolitan school, and Girolamo Frescobaldi.
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  • Bariolla: Ricercate for Organ / Manfrè
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    Bariolla: Ricercate for Organ / Manfrè

    Brilliant Classics Apr 2022
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    Margola, Ghedini, Rieti: Piano Trios / Mythos

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    Composer
    Giorgio Federico Ghedini, Franco Margola, Vittorio Rieti
    Artist
    Mythos Trio
    Released
    Jan 21, 2022
    This recording features rarely performed musical works by three renowned 20th-century Italian composers: Franco Margola, Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Vittorio Rieti. Margola was profoundly influenced by Alfredo Casella, whom he met while still a student of composition. After graduating, Margola began to compose his Piano Trio in A, and on hearing the piece, Casella immediately rated it among the best modern trios, including it in the repertoire of his own piano trio and performing it in Italy and abroad. The composition, in three movements, is characterized by drama and darkness, with moments of great expression but also fleeting, volatile brilliance. Its concision of articulation and form, its ability to consistently maintain a tight and fully logical discourse and its modern but comprehensible harmonic language all conspired to make this composition one of the most appreciated in Margola’s catalogue. In Due Intermezzi (Two Intermezzos), written by Ghedini at the age of 23, the sublime mastery of counterpoint and use of forms that would become the composer’s signature are already evident and accomplished. Each intermezzo has a distinct character: the first, marked “tranquillo” (calm), pervaded by an intimate atmosphere giving in to momentary expressive outbursts; the second tinged with irony and a buoyant spirit. Unlike Margola and Ghedini, who spent their entire professional lives in Italy (both renowned professors and eventually directors of conservatories), the advent of Mussolini’s fascism forced Rieti – who had Jewish roots and whose music was considered deviant by the regime – to emigrate first to Paris and then to the United States. He was a composer particularly admired by the American public and often performed there, despite being almost completely ignored in his native country.
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  • Margola, Ghedini, Rieti: Piano Trios / Mythos
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    Margola, Ghedini, Rieti: Piano Trios / Mythos

    Brilliant Classics Jan 2022
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    Brilliant Classics

    Scharwenka: Piano Trios / Gustav Trio

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Ludwig Philipp Scharwenka
    Artist
    Trio Gustav
    Released
    Jun 24, 2022
    Around a quarter of a century ago, scholars embarked upon fruitful research into composers active between the mid-19th century and the lead-up to World War One, many largely hitherto ignored by all but music historians, consisting of at least two generations who focused either on ‘absolute’ music (in central Europe) or music for the theatre (in Italy and France). Philipp Scharwenka (1847–1917) was one such figure. Born to a family with ancient Bohemian roots but determinedly German in its culture, Philipp and his concert pianist brother Xaver attended Berlin’s Neue Akademie der Tonkunst, where Philipp would eventually also teach theory. He began composing in earnest in 1874 and the following year founded his own school with his brother, where he would teach composition for the rest of his life. Philipp Scharwenka’s chamber works, which date mostly from the turn of the century, are some of his most notable compositions and include three piano trios (the first two, recorded here, with violin and cello; the third with violin and viola). The Trio Op.100 in C sharp minor, published by Breitkopf in 1897, unfolds in flowing, measured writing across three movements with a clearly defined formal range. The composition feels like a well-oiled machine, including all the expressive techniques developed over the years in expertly dosed quantities, and sometimes achieving intense – and never long-winded – lyricism. The subsequent Trio in G Op.112, published in 1902, again by Breitkopf, is also in three movements. The work’s tonal regions, while very clear and based on sonata form in both the first and third movements, deviate slightly from the traditional relationships by including the relative minor keys too. This is nothing out of the ordinary: it is simply a way to keep the form compact and flowing while testing out slightly more unusual tonality.
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  • Scharwenka: Piano Trios / Gustav Trio
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    Scharwenka: Piano Trios / Gustav Trio

    Brilliant Classics Jun 2022
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    Brilliant Classics

    Bach: Concertos for Recorder, Vol. 2 / Bosgraaf

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Johann Sebastian Bach
    Artist
    Erik Bosgraaf, Collegium Musicum Riga, Agnese Kannina, Maris Kupcs
    Released
    Oct 28, 2022

    With a catalogue of acclaimed albums for Brilliant Classics stretching well into double figures, the Dutch recorder virtuoso Erik Bosgraaf goes back to Bach for his latest release, with an album of arrangements as imaginatively conceived and as stylishly executed as Volume 1 (94296), released in 2011, which won glowing reviews from the international music press. Bach wrote as inventively and idiomatically for the recorder throughout his career as he did for every other instrument at his disposal, but he left no concertos in which the instrument takes the spotlight.

    Thus Bosgraaf and his colleagues have attempted to answer the question, what might Bach have done, or could he have done, if he had written concertos for the recorder? They have looked for inspiration to the cantatas, and not only those where Bach composed memorable recorder parts such as the Actus Tragicus. For example, the album’s opening G major concerto is compiled from a tenor aria of dazzling runs in BWV74, followed by the sorrowful opening Sinfonia of BWV12 (in which the oboe originally takes the starring role), and then another tenor aria from BWV81 which graphically illustrates the foaming waves of a stormy sea. In both aria transcriptions, Bosgraaf’s recorder takes over the vocal line, and paints vivid sound pictures with his remarkable palette of tone colors. A second concerto in D major draws its music from similar sources, followed by a Partita which the Dutch musicologist has arranged from movements of the Fifth French Suite. A further concerto is supplied by a relatively ‘straight’ transcription of the familiar (but sublime) A minor Concerto for violin, BWV1041.

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  • Bach: Concertos for Recorder, Vol. 2 / Bosgraaf
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    Bach: Concertos for Recorder, Vol. 2 / Bosgraaf

    Brilliant Classics Oct 2022
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    Dreyer: Sacred Music

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Giovanni Filippo Maria Dreyer
    Artist
    Rossana Bertini, Elena Cecchi Fedi, Le Tems Revient, Baroque Lumina, Giacomo Bededetti, Giacomo Gran
    Released
    Apr 22, 2022
    Known in his day as ‘il Tedeschino’ (‘the little German fellow’) Giovanni Filippo Maria Dreyer was born in Florence in 1703, and made a name for himself as a castrato soprano in opera houses across Italy and farther north: he enjoyed senior posts at theatres in Wroclaw and Prague before joining the imperial theatre in Moscow. By 1737 he had returned to his home city, where he joined a religious order at the Church of SS Annunziata and became its maestro di capella. The library of SS Annunziata preserves the collection of Salmi Brevi à 4 voci con Strumenti (Short Psalms for four voices with Instruments) composed in 1740 and in part presented here for the first time. The style emulates the popular Neapolitan school of the time, pre-eminently represented by Pergolesi and Alessandro Scarlatti. The harmonic writing is broad, clear and expressive, such as to be appreciated by the general public and not only by a small circle of specialists. Also featured here the motet Verbum caro for two sopranos and continuo, and the more elaborate settings of Domine ad adjuvandum and Inno a 4 per San Filippo, both featuring arias interspersed with choral movements like a cantata. Like the Salmi Brevi, these pieces have never seen the light of day beyond the shelves of the library at SS Annunziata. Invited to research and perform them, the violinist and conductor Giacomo Benedetti has produced these stylish recordings with fellow Italian singers and instrumentalists schooled in historically informed performance practice, and the result is an attractive window onto music-making in the churches of Baroque Florence.
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    Dreyer: Sacred Music

    Brilliant Classics Apr 2022
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    De Ribera, Navarro: Masters of the Spanish Renaissance / Chenoll, Amystis, Ministriles de Reyna

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Juan Navarro, Bernardino De Ribera, Tomas Luis De Victoria, Sebastian De Vivanco
    Artist
    Coro Amystis, Ministriles De La Reyna, Jose Duce Chenoll
    Released
    Mar 25, 2022

    This new recording presents two composers who stood at the cradle of the Golden Age of Spanish Renaissance, Bernardino de Ribera (c.1520- c.1580) and Juan Navarro (c.1530-1580). Both were connected to the Cathedral of Avila and in their musical capacity they were the teachers of several masters-to be, among them the great Tomas Luis de Victoria. During his early musical years, Victoria sang the music of Ribera and Navarro on a daily basis, and they taught him everything he needed to know about polyphony, singing, counterpoint and organ playing. This disc presents also works by de Victoria and Sebastian de Vivanco.

    These are superb performances by the Spanish vocal ensemble Amystis, specialized in presenting hidden gems from the Spanish Renaissance and Baroque. Their previous recordings for Brilliant Classics with works by Cabanilles and Comes gained excellent critical acclaim in the international press. Early Music Review: ‘Amystis are worthy exponents of this glorious music, negotiating its considerable complexity with aplomb.

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    Fischer & Kerll on the Organ of the Monastery of Mor / Soares

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Johann Kaspar Ferdinand Fischer, Johann Kaspar Kerll
    Artist
    Rui Fernando Soares
    Released
    Jan 21, 2022

    J.C.F. Fischer was likely Bohemian, and a very influential musician and composer in his day. Little is known of his career until the 1690s, when he was named capellmeister to Ludwig Wihelm of Baden, where he remained until his death at Rastatt. His largest and perhaps most significant work is the Musicalischer Parnassus of 1738, a collection of keyboard pieces organized into nine suites. In it, Fischer combines the French orchestral style with the German style. Each of the suites is named for one of the nine Muses. This recording features movements from the Urania and Euterpe suites, along with a Prelude and Chaconne from his remaining oeuvre. This repertoire is usually associated with the harpsichord and rarely performed on the organ, yet there are similarities with the “variations” style so often employed by Buxtehude and Bach in organ works.

    Kerll, the Saxon son of an organist and organ maker, showed musical promise from a very early age. He travelled to Vienna to study under Valentini, then capellmeister at the Viennese Imperial Court, and he converted to Catholicism, which later led him to Rome where he likely had contact with Carissimi and Frescobaldi. He was named principal musical director to the Elector of Bavaria in 1656, and became one of the most acclaimed composers of his day. His influence on Handel and J.S. Bach is notable. His works display a mastery of the Italian concertante style and highly developed contrapuntal technique.

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    Fischer & Kerll on the Organ of the Monastery of Mor / Soares

    Brilliant Classics Jan 2022
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    Bellafronte: Piano Sonatas & 12 Preludes / Deljavan

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Raffaele Bellafronte
    Artist
    Alessandro Deljavan
    Released
    Oct 28, 2022

    Born in 1961, the Italian composer Raffaelle Bellafronte has produced a wide-ranging body of work in a modern tonal idiom. Previous albums of concertos, guitar music and chamber works paint a portrait of a lively mind and a personal voice embracing large dramatic gestures and lyric reflection, each as quintessentially ‘Italian’ in their expression as the other. The set of 12 Preludes opens with a magnificently imposing evocation of stillness, colored by the kind of bittersweet harmonies to be found in Bartok and the sense of musical space associated with Messiaen, building a surprisingly complete soundworld within the brief space of three minutes. The remaining preludes are no less ingenious in their economy of mood and gesture. Melancholy and frenzy alternate; glittering and asymmetrical rhythms stand in stark opposition to slow ostinato figurations; dense contrapuntal writing is cast against terse homophony.

    Bellafronte trained as a pianist himself, and he composes for the full spectrum of the instrument’s heroic and sensual possibilities. There is a satisfying crunch to the harmonies and immediately appreciable breadth of vision to the opening paragraphs of the Sonata Prima Désaccord (2006),where contrapuntal and propulsive ostinato writing combine to pull the listener through a compelling narrative which feels longer than its 12-minute duration. From three years later, the Second Sonata experiments with a Haydnesque binary form of two quick movements – a nervous, lopsided march followed by a frustrated would-be fugue with a brutal and macabre conclusion. The Third Sonata (2014) is the most substantial piece here in both duration and ambition, launched with a momentum worthy of Bartók or Alkan. The quick-slow-quick form is superficially conventional, but it encloses a wealth of surprising excursions which challenge tonal stability and once more pitch the listener into a pianistic tumult.

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  • Bellafronte: Piano Sonatas & 12 Preludes / Deljavan
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    Bellafronte: Piano Sonatas & 12 Preludes / Deljavan

    Brilliant Classics Oct 2022
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  • Da Crema: Lute Music / Cerasani
    Brilliant Classics

    Da Crema: Lute Music / Cerasani

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Giovanni Maria da Crema
    Artist
    Domenico Cerasani
    Released
    Jun 14, 2024
    Giovanni Maria da Crema remains to this day a mysterious figure in the history of the lute, with very little information known about his life. However his oeuvre is crucial to understanding the lute's place in 16thcentury Italy. His Libro primo, published in Venice by Antonio Gardane in 1546, is presented as an edition "newly reprinted and corrected by the author himself", indicating the existence of a rival prior edition, namely that published by Girolamo Scotto, with the same contents and minimal differences. Two years later, also in Venice, Scotto would publish Francesco da Milano's Libro settimo which also includes keyboard pieces by Giulio Segni da Modena intabulated for the lute by Giovanni Maria da Crema. Some of these intabulations had already appeared in Giovanni Maria da Crema's Libro primo without mention of Giulio Segni's authorship of the keyboard original. This recording features the Libro primo, with the addition of three pieces from the Da Milano Libro settimo. The former aims to present a broad overview of lute music in the mid-16th century. Divided into implicit sections, it opens with 15 ricercars, among the most interesting of the period, in a continuous alternation of styles and characters. Some of them clearly show the influence of Francesco da Milano, with at least two of them (the Nono and Undecimo) attributed directly to Da Milano in other sources. The chansons section is quite extensive and includes intabulations of songs by composers well-known and anonymous. A personal selection was made for this recording. Next is a series of motets. The beautiful four-voice Quae est ista by Nicolas Gombert for example is masterfully intabulated by Da Crema. The madrigal genre is represented by five pieces; two each by Philippe Verdelot and Jacob Arcadelt are included on the recording. The Libro primo closes with a series of dances, primarily of two types passamezzo and saltarello - which in some cases form a pair based on the same musical material. This recording represents a highly personal selection of Giovanni Maria da Crema's lute works dictated solely by the performer's taste and artistic needs. Like Da Crema's contemporaries, Domenico Cerasani believes this music to be of extraordinary value, able to engage today's listeners and immerse them in the fascinating and multifaceted world of the 16th-century lute.
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    Da Crema: Lute Music / Cerasani

    Brilliant Classics Jun 2024
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    Brayssing: Complete Music for Renaissance Guitar / Rossignoli

    CD · 1 disc

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    Composer
    Gregoire Brayssing
    Artist
    Federico Rossignoli
    Released
    Apr 22, 2022
    As with many composers from the early modern period, very little is known about Gregoire Brayssing. This recording features his only surviving work, printed in Paris in 1553 as the fourth volume in a series dedicated to the guitar published by Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard. Brayssing’s collection provides us with a few clues about his life: the frontispiece describes him as ‘de Augusta’, meaning he was born in the German city of Augsburg. The Quart livre, despite containing only 20 pieces, is a pre-eminent example of writing for renaissance guitar, on a par with the works of Alonso Mudarra and Miguel de Fuenllana. It includes six short (some very short) contrapuntal fantasias, true gems of the repertoire, which showcase the composer’s ability to take full advantage of the instrument’s technical and expressive resources, including the fourth course with two strings in octaves, which the upper voice uses on more than one occasion. This device is employed throughout the book, but without ‘strangling’ the instrument, as happens in Fuenllana’s works. The psalms are next, expertly crafted and ornate, with Brayssing’s arrangement in a lower key of the first part of the motet In exitu Israel by Josquin des Prez a particular highlight. The composers of the other psalms are not known. The book continues with six chansons from leading composers of the time and a frottola, the famous O passi sparsi by Sebastiano Festa, all intabulated in the same manner as the psalms that precede them. Concluding the book are two long and intriguing compositions, completely unlike anything else in the repertoire: L’Alouette and La guerre, faitte a plaisir. The title of the former turns out not to be a transcription of Cle´ment Janequin’s famous work, but an original composition by Brayssing.
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  • Brayssing: Complete Music for Renaissance Guitar / Rossignoli
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    Brayssing: Complete Music for Renaissance Guitar / Rossignoli

    Brilliant Classics Apr 2022
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    Piatti: 12 Capricci for Cello Solo / Tarantino

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    Composer
    Alfredo Piatti
    Artist
    Luciano Tarantino
    Released
    Jan 21, 2022
    Alfredo Carlo Piatti began a precocious and distinguished career as a cellist in his native Bergamo, as well as in Turin and Milan. He left Italy at 21 to seek his fortune and on his travels met Franz Liszt, who gave him an Amati cello, and Felix Mendelssohn, who conducted one of his first concerts in London. In early 1847, having performed across Europe and with considerable experience under his belt, he settled permanently in London. After enjoying an illustrious half-century among the upper echelons of London’s musical elite, he returned to Italy in 1898 and spent his final years living with his daughter and editing his body of compositions. On his death in 1901, he bequeathed the Fondo Piatti-Lochis to the city of Bergamo, a precious collection of manuscript and print editions of his entire oeuvre, containing around 60 instrumental pieces, a similar number of short vocal compositions and around 40 transcriptions and reworkings of music by major composers of the past. It includes the first edition (produced by Piatti himself) and two autograph manuscripts of his 12 Caprices Op.25. Both manuscripts bear the same date: ‘London, 26 June 1865’. The Caprices became Piatti’s best-known compositions, and they have been recorded and performed by cellists all over the world, who find them difficult to master but also undoubtedly an extremely interesting challenge. Within them, Piatti explores the full technical and expressive potential of his instrument. The left hand is forced into possible and seemingly impossible positions, often giving the impression of flying rapidly and lightly over the strings, while the right hand adroitly manages the bow, testing out all the various ways of generating sounds and traversing all pitches and tonal colors.
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  • Piatti: 12 Capricci for Cello Solo / Tarantino
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    Piatti: 12 Capricci for Cello Solo / Tarantino

    Brilliant Classics Jan 2022
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    Araja & Pellegrini: Harpsichord Works / Bissolo

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    Composer
    Francesco Domenico Araja, Ferdinando Pellegrini
    Artist
    Enrico Bissolo
    Released
    Feb 11, 2022
    This recording provides a comparison of the keyboard music of two composers born in Naples whose careers took them beyond national borders. Francesco Araja was born in 1709 and became capellmeister and court composer to Tsarina Anna in St. Petersburg; Ferdinando Pellegrini whose birth probably dates back to 1715, lived and worked in Lyon, London and Parisa. While Araja’s life and musical production are essentially tied to the theatre, he achieved fame through sacred music. The turning point in Araja’s career came with an offer from the Neapolitan violinist Pietro Mira to work in St. Petersburg as a court musician. He was also named choirmaster upon his arrival in Russia, a position he held for many years. His musical production, apart from the operas and cantatas he composed for the Russian court, consists of an oratorio and a collection of Capricci for the harpsichord. The latter, featured on this recording, are extremely free compositions with a varied character, sometimes brilliantly virtuosic. In the absence of well-defined musical form, they consist rather of a series of episodes, or tableaux, with the common thread being the compositional skill through which Araja demonstrates his deep knowledge of the instrument and its performing technique. Details on Pellegrini’s life are scarce. After his birth in Naples there are traces of a relocation to Rome, where the records of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia document his enrolment in 1743. After Rome, Pellegrini moved to France. Further testimony places Pellegrini in Paris (until 1762) in the serviace of Alexandre Le Riche de la PouplinieÌre. La PouplinieÌre’s brother-in-law, the Abbeì de Mondran, wrote of Pellegrini as “a true demon at the keyboard”. Pellegrini composed a series of sonatas for solo harpsichord. The style is galant, characterized by elegant phrasing, melodic invention and repetitive accompanimental formulas.
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  • Araja & Pellegrini: Harpsichord Works / Bissolo
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    Araja & Pellegrini: Harpsichord Works / Bissolo

    Brilliant Classics Feb 2022
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    Beethoven: Triple Concerto and "Piano Concerto no. 0" / Trio RoVerde, Mardirossian, Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen

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    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven
    Artist
    Wurttembergische Philhamonie Reutlingen, Vahan Mardirossian
    Released
    Jan 07, 2022

    Beethoven’s Triple Concerto Op.56 for piano, violin, cello, and orchestra was unique in the musical literature at the time, and he knew it: he proudly wrote to his publisher that the combination of a piano trio with an orchestra was entirely new. But the innovations go beyond the combination of concertante instruments, extending as well to the importance accorded the orchestra, elevated to the status of an equal, symphonic protagonist alongside the three solo parts alone, in all possible pairings and as a threesome. This was new, and the audience was indeed perplexed when the work was first performed in Vienna in May 1804. There is no indication that the concerto was performed a second time during Beethoven’s lifetime.

    The Piano Concerto in E-flat “Number Zero” (WoO 4) is a work rarely performed and therefore practically unknown to the wider public. Written by Beethoven in 1784, at the tender age of 14, it comes down to us as an unsigned 32-page manuscript with the author’s corrections: the solo piano part and the piano reduction of the orchestra parts are completely preserved, but the orchestral score itself has been lost. This manuscript was discovered in 1890 in the archives of the Artaria Foundation and was transferred to the Berlin State Library. It was published that same year. Beethoven researcher Willy Hess later restored the orchestral parts on the basis of the preserved material. The first outing of this careful, accurate work was given in 1934 by the pianist Walter Frey in Oslo (first part only), and the complete reconstruction was performed in 1968 at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.

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    Brunetti: Divertimenti / Proyecto Brunetti

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    Composer
    Gaetano Brunetti
    Artist
    Proyecto Brunetti, Fernando Pascual, Pere Joan Carrascosa, Isabel Lopez
    Released
    Jan 21, 2022
    Proyecto Brunetti is a flexible ensemble formed with the aim of promoting the chamber music of Gaetano Brunetti (1744-1798). Its founder-cellist is Pere Joan Carrascosa, who has also edited the manuscripts of this divertimento collection for publication and written the authoritative booklet essay on the composer’s life and work. The album can be considered a first port of call for anyone looking to investigate the figure of Brunetti. When they do so, they will find music of elegant gestures and appealing gentility, clear-cut melodies and subtle innovation. The greater part of his surviving music is cast in the genre of string trio which was a reliable source of entertainment for both amateur musicians and audiences in the latter half of the 18th century. There are 47 such trios in eight collections of six (minus one in the last case), and this album presents the third such collection. Brunetti probably wrote it between 1772 and 1774 while in service to the Prince of Asturias, later to become Charles/Carlo IV of Spain. The Prince himself probably played second fiddle to the composer in those pieces scored with two violins, with the composer’s son Francesco on the cello. Structurally straightforward, each divertimento comprises two movements cast in either a basic sonata or rondo form. It is their melodic freshness, harmonic invention and the stylishness of their writing, treating all three parts as equals, that elevates them beyond the value of ephemeral entertainment.
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    Nocturne: Music for Harp / Luise

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    Composer
    Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Carl Czerny, Claude Debussy, John Field, Frederic Chopin
    Artist
    Alessia Luise
    Released
    Jan 07, 2022
    A meticulous, focused search for sound informs the selection of pieces on this recital, a voyage through 19th-century European music, in the vehicle of the nocturne, along the route of harp transcriptions. In these works, the composers capture night as a sliver of time, evoking the intimate and introspective side of the Romantic spirit. Night is also a metaphor for transformation, from darkness to light, for transcription from one musical instrument to another. For this ‘reduction of a big thought to a practical instrument’, as Ferruccio Busoni put it in 1913, the harp was a popular choice, particularly in the late 19th century, when the instrument’s repertoire was augmented by a number of excellent transcriptions and reductions by renowned harp teachers and performers. Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata provides the ideal starting point for a sonic journey through the light and dark of the Romantic spirit. Czerny’s short arabesques, Der Abend und die Nacht, continue the theme of twilight and night-time fantasy. Irishman John Field did not invent the nocturne, but he was responsible for the ‘crystallization of an idiom’ that, a generation later, Chopin would take to new heights. The second movement of Brahms’s Piano Sonata No.3 evokes a nocturne, but on a larger scale. Debussy’s Clair de lune envelops the listener in a night freed from traditional formal structures, providing a brief escape from the 18th-century style of the preceding movements. His Nocturne in D flat, on the other hand, transports us back to Romanticism, its mysterious bass octaves and tender arpeggios leading to a melody of expansive, Chopinesque lyricism, which stands out above the changes in harmonic color. With its pure, abstract sonority the concise Les Soirs illumineìs par l’ardeur du charbon presents night as verging on silence.
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    Viozzi: Complete Music for Solo Guitar / Gallo

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    Composer
    Giulio Viozzi
    Artist
    Andrea Gallo
    Released
    May 27, 2022

    Born in the northern port city of Trieste in 1912, the Italian composer Giulio Viozzi worked and lived in the region throughout his life before his death in Verona in 1984. He composed in a modal, melodic, diatonic language inflected by Bartok but essentially shaped by native traditions of cantabile writing whether for instruments or voices. Viozzi’s music for the theatre won success and performances throughout his lifetime, notably the opera Il sasso pagano (1964), which makes the modern neglect of his output all the more surprising: this is the only modern album available which is dedicated to his music, and it should introduce many listeners to a distinctive voice in the musical landscape of 20th-century Italy.

    As he explains in his booklet introduction, Andrea Gallo was astonished when he first encountered Viozzi’s music for guitar, through the Fantasia (1964), which itself reworks two shorter earlier works, a Gavotte and Brasileira both indebted to the folk tradition. He finds a magical, surreal quality to Viozzi’s repetitions and his evocation of mood in a piece such as the Chromatic Study of 1982. While Viozzi wrote several fantasias for three guitars, his solo output for the instrument centers around the more Classical forms of the Suite variata (1978) and the Sonata (1984), also in three movements. Two works of the mid-70s, the Itinerario and Racconto, are more experimental in technique and impressionistic in mood. This album introduces the names of both Viozzi and Andrea Gallo to the ever-growing library of guitar music on Brilliant Classics. Born in 1990, Gallo studied at the conservatoire in Milan and is based there while giving recitals and appearances across Italy and farther afield.

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    Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings, Op. 48 / Lychkov, Leducq-Barôme, Baltic Chamber Orchestra

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    Composer
    Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
    Artist
    Baltic Chamber Orchestra
    Released
    May 27, 2022

    The second half of the 19th century witnessed a proliferation of significant works for strings alone including the Serenades for Strings by Dvorák (1875) and Tchaikovsky (1880) and Grieg’s Holberg Suite (1884), followed by a trio of works for strings in 1892 from Suk, Wolf and Elgar. Tchaikovsky’s music for string instruments is notable for its range and consistency – and this culminates in the magnificent Violin Concerto and one of the greatest works ever conceived for string orchestra, his Serenade of 1880. Earlier, in 1873, Tchaikovsky wrote incidental music to Ostrovsky’s three-act drama The Snow Maiden. Though he abandoned the idea of adapting it into an opera, when Rimsky-Korsakov composed one on the same subject, he retained affection for this little-known work. Judging by the beautiful Melodrama of Act II, its neglect is unjustified. Eight years before that, as a 25-year-old student at the St Petersburg Conservatory he composed a String Quartet in B flat. If, as some authorities believe, it had four movements, only one has survived. Such is the inner power of the music that it takes on a more expressive hue when performed by a full string orchestra as on this recording.

    Towards the end of 1884, the Moscow Society of Artists wished to honor veteran actor Ivan Samarin’s 50-year artistic career, and Tchaikovsky enthusiastically contributed a musical entr’acte. Tchaikovsky’s publisher Jurgenson persuaded the composer the music was worthy of publication, under the title Elegy, as Samarin died the year after the celebrations. When Tchaikovsky suddenly died near the end of 1893, the slow movement of his Third String Quartet was arranged for string orchestra by Glazunov for performance at his funeral service. Glazunov’s subtle and sympathetic arrangement of this fine music for full string orchestra honors his friend, the great composer, in truly noble fashion.

    REVIEW:

    This attractive program includes Tchaikovsky’s familiar Serenade for Strings along with four shorter works, the last of which, the Glazounov-arranged Andante Funebre e Doloroso from the Third Quartet, was played at Tchaikovsky’s funeral in 1893.

    The chamber orchestra's playing is full and warm, rich in vibrato and expression. If you like Russian music played by native musicians (I’m thinking here of the old Leningrad Philharmonic, which became the St Petersburg Philharmonic in 1991) you’ll enjoy this. It’s some of Tchaikovsky’s most attractive music, richly played and beautifully recorded.

    -- American Record Guide

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    Frederick II the Great: 9 Sonatas for Flute & Harpsichord / Petrucci, Pisa

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    Composer
    Frederick II The Great
    Artist
    Gian-Luca Petrucci, Paola Pisa
    Released
    Feb 11, 2022

    Though Frederick II of Prussia, better known as “the Great” (1712–1786), was one of the greatest strategists of history; he found a way of reconciling his army life, his battles, and his political determination with his passion for the flute and for music in general. He played every day, even when he was at war, and in the course of his life he composed, among other things, 121 sonatas and 4 concertos for flute, annotating some of these works with the phrase ‘Frederick composed [it] amidst torments’.

    In Potsdam Frederick had teachers of extraordinary skill, ranging from Johann Joachim Quantz to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and while he was certainly influenced by their style, he also proposed a style of his own that was not only closely associated with forms of ‘recitative’ influenced by vocal music, but also inspired – in certain respects – by his masonic faith. In fact, in his music one finds interesting esoteric symbolisms associated with numerology, masonic keys and the concept of the initiatory journey. Almost all the sonatas for flute and continuo are in three movements in an ascending progression of tempos: Adagio, Allegro, Presto. Of particular interest is the Sonata in C minor (King’s Catalogue No.190) in which an introductory Recitativo and an Andante cantabile lead to the closing movement, which is a Fugue (the only example of this genre of composition in all his works). Moreover, the subject of the fugue includes an evident reference to the ‘Thema Regium’, the famous theme that the King gave to Johann Sebastian Bach during their meeting in Potsdam in 1747, which formed the basis of the Musical Offering BWV1079.

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