The acclaimed Schubert symphonies recordings by B'Rock Orchestra and Rene Jacobs now appear in a complete boxset. Finally recording Schubert offered Jacobs the opportunity to return to his first great musical love. His interpretation is rooted in profound research into early nineteenth-century developments and ideas, as well as a thorough exploration of Schubert's music and persona. Jacobs perceives this cycle as a series of multiple contrasting tandems of symphonies, oscillating between Italianate lightness and darker currents of Romanticism, between elegant forms and expansive endeavours, all in line with Schubert's dynamic, multi-faceted personality. Schubert's symphonies never acquired the paradigmatic status of his contemporary Beethoven, but with these recordings, Jacobs makes a compelling case to value and understand them on their own terms. He performs these works together with B'Rock Orchestra, one of the most adventurous period instrument ensembles of our times, with whom he has built up a congenial working relationship. In addition to his Schubert symphonies, multi-award-winning conductor Rene Jacobs released Haydn's Stabat Mater (2023) on PENTATONE, together with the Kammerorchester Basel and Zurcher Sing-Akademie. B'Rock Orchestra returned to the label with Antwerp Requiem (2022) and Handel: Water & Fire (2023).
Behzod Abduraimov's performances combine great musical depth with phenomenal technique: 'He has a magical touch,' wrote The Times. This recital is yet another illustration of his many talents: it begins with variations by Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and a teacher of Liszt. Next, the famous Après une lecture de Dante (whose title is borrowed from a poem by Victor Hugo) represents Liszt's Année de pèlerinage en Italie (1846-1849). The title is borrowed from a poem by Victor Hugo... Another era, another poetic inspiration (Verlaine), with the Suite Bergamasque, an allusion to the festivals of the Lombard commedia dell'arte, which Debussy composed between 1890 and 1905... Still celebrating, this time in Saint Petersburg, with 'it's crowds, it's shacks and it's small traditional theatre, the character of the magician and conjurer... and the animation of the dolls, Petrushka, his rival, and the ballerina', notes Stravinsky, who in 1921 wrote a piano transcription of his ballet Petrushka, composed ten years earlier. Brahms and a peaceful Intermezzo from his Klavierstücke Op. 119 conclude this infernal programme.
Since relaunching Sinfonia of London in 2018, John Wilson's hand-picked orchestra has attracted the highest critical acclaim from both national and international press, performed at the BBC Proms every year since 2021 (their live début), and made their international début at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam in 2025. Regularly touring in the UK, they have also released 25 albums (this is the 26th), covering a wide range of repertoire, including works by Korngold, Respighi, Ravel, Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Britten, Walton, Bliss, and Rodgers & Hammerstein. The album opens with Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, followed by Debussy's Clair de lune (orchestrated by John Wilson). Chabrier's Joyeuse Marche and Ravel's Une Barque sur l'océan (orchestrated by their composers) are followed by Saint-Saëns' symphonic poem Danse macabre. The programme ends with all of the movements from Bizet's two Carmen Suites, but in John Wilson's preferred order!
Bach: Mass in B Minor / Christie, Les Arts Florissants
HARMONIA MUNDI
CD
$27.99Apr 13, 2018
A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month!
This is a marvellous new B Minor Mass and it is, without a doubt, the most French-sounding version of the piece to have yet come my way.
That might sound like a lazy stereotype. After all, it’s performed by that most renowned Francophile among musicians, William Christie, who has dedicated his life to rehabilitating the French Baroque and whose efforts have meant that names such as Lully, Rameau, Charpentier and Marais have been not only rescued from their specialist niche but have been given an uncontested place among the concert programmes of the Anglo-Saxons. With his ensemble Les Arts Florissants he has become one of the greatest champions of that music, so it’s hardly surprising that some of the interpretative dust of the French Baroque should rub off onto his Bach.
It’s not just a trope to describe his Bach as Gallic, however. It’s there right from the start. The opening Kyrie is the most mellifluous and honeyed I have heard since the advent of historical performance practice. The two great fugues proceed with cultured smoothness that sounds as though they have one eyebrow perpetually raised. It’s a sound of which, I suspect, Lutheran Bach would have profoundly disapproved. I rather liked it, however, and as a change from what has become the norm of period practice I found it very effective.
That’s only one example of one of the performance’s wider traits. Throughout, it has an elegance, an élan, a nonchalance, almost, that would make them seem entirely at home if performed in the court of ancien regime Versailles. The solos with their instrumental obligatti, for example, sound refined and polished in a manner that is a hundred miles away from the church and more from the realm of the theatre. There’s nothing wrong with that, though, and it’s in keeping with Christie’s vision. My favourites included Katherine Watson in the Laudamus te, with a wonderfully dusky violin, and André Morsch’s playful combat with the horn in the Quoniam. Tim Mead’s lovely countertenor is a repeated highlight, be it slotting into Watson’s soprano in the Christe or sustaining a blisterinly poignant Agnus Dei at the end.
Not only are the orchestral and instrumental playing super throughout, but the choral singing is top notch, too. That, however, will come as no surprise to those how know and love the work of Les Arts Florissants, and it’s great to hear them tackling one of the central works of the German repertoire. It’s a Teutonic world that they can’t be too practised in, but they bring something remarkably distinctive to it.
The main reason for the performance’s success, however, is Christie himself. Bringing his lifetime’s experience to the B Minor Mass must, surely, have been a labour of love rather than an expectation, and the results are wonderful. There is majesty aplenty in the Gloria, whose opening casts off the mellifluousness of the preceding Kyrie as though emerging into a new light, producing rumbustious, gloriously winning tone that brought a broad grin to my face, as did the outer bookends of the Credo. The Sanctus is taken at a rapid pace, with brilliantly detailed violin inflections to enliven the texture, and the final Dona nobis pacem is brilliantly paced.
Perhaps the highlight of the work is the Easter sequence, however, and, in particular, the Crucifixus. Here you get the unmistakeable whiff of the Opéra, because Christie slows down the pace and stresses the beat with what comes close to string (and voice) sforzandi in a way that surely mimics the nails being repeatedly battered into Christ’s suffering body. It’s this movement that will tell you whether this performance is for you. Some might find it vulgar or too overtly theatrical. I thought it wonderful, an example of the conductor using his experience in the theatre to enlighten and deepen his vision of Bach.
Choose for yourself, but I thought this the most memorable B Minor Mass to have come my way since the (entirely different) performance from John Butt and the Dunedin Consort. Explore it and be surprised.
Having worked extensively with period instrument ensembles throughout my career, I was intrigued and fascinated about the possibility on this album of a delicious colliding of the two worlds. Alison Balsom. On this new recording Alison Balsom and her long term friend and conductor Trevor Pinnock bring alive works from Telemann, Handel, Vivaldi, Albinoni and Marcello. A baroque album, confronting the period instruments of the Pinnock Players and Alison's use of a modern instrument: a rotary valve piccolo trumpet. Alison comments: "The piccolo trumpet is a modern invention - something that Bach and his contemporaries could not have known was to come - it's power, it's gleaming bright tone and it's 20th century engineering technology. And this instrument is a world away from the subtle multifaceted sounds of the natural trumpet of the Baroque era. That said, the opportunity to perform much more chromatic and virtuosic music such as that originally written for solo violin or oboe, has seduced me and my trumpet colleagues since the days of the great Maurice Andre. He showed the world how intensely sweet the piccolo trumpet could be in it's upper register".
The first in a new cycle of Dvorak symphony recordings, Dvorak: Symphonies 5 & 6 is the second release from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and it's Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor, Jaime Martin, on the MSO's own record label. Recorded in 2023 at Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne, these performances-under Concertmasters Dale Barltrop (Symphony No.5) and Tair Khisambeev (Symphony No.6)-were artistic highlights of the MSO's second season under Martin's baton. The artwork approach to the MSO's Dvorak cycle profiles iconic scenes from across Melbourne and the state of Victoria, beginning with the Twelve Apostles of the Great Ocean Road, a day trip from Hamer Hall.
Bach: Cantatas Vol 1 / Suzuki, Bach Collegium Japan
BIS
CD
$21.99Nov 01, 1995
Those who lament the austere, dispassionate, "scholarly" approach that more often than not informs today's original-instrument performances of Bach cantatas will find much to rejoice in Masaaki Suzuki's grand and heartfelt, if not overly devotional conceptions. For instance, as you listen to the opening Sinfonia of Christ lag in Todesbanden you're immediately struck by the emotive delicacy of the string playing and how perfectly it introduces the subject's necessary resolve and sadness. Moments later when the chorus enters and the momentum shifts, the urgency of the ensemble likewise changes to deftly communicate just the right measure of boldness and hope. Throughout the piece Suzuki's uncanny ability to extract every nuance from Bach's sublime score recalls the efforts of Karl Richter, Günther Ramin, Fritz Werner, Karl Ristenpart, and Helmut Winschermann--bygone patricians of this repertoire who were equally considerate of the music's every emotion, from deepest angst to overwhelming joy. Though BWV 4 is one of Bach's most famous and oft-recorded cantatas, Suzuki's rendering of it ranks with the very best.
The two other cantatas offered--Nacht dir, Herr, verlanget mich BWV 150 and Der Herr denket an uns BWV 196--also receive outstanding performances. In BWV 150, soprano Yumiko Kurisu's seamless and spirited rendering of the aria "Doch bin und bleibe ich vergnügt" is a marvel, as is the fifth-movement trio "Zedern müssen von den Winden", expertly performed by countertenor Akira Tachikawa, tenor Koki Katano, and veteran Dutch bass Peter Kooy. Also noteworthy is Suzuki's brilliant negotiation of the complex rhythms of the chorale "Meine Augen sehen stets zu dem herren", imparting a rarely heard uplifting quality to the setting. BWV 196 is highlighted by the final chorale "Ihr seid die Gesegneten", where Suzuki's sensibly dignified conclusion impresses more favorably than the overly exuberant let's-get-it-over-with treatment Konrad Junghänel and the Cantus Cölln offer in their fairly recent Harmonia Mundi recording (type Q1384 in Search Reviews).
BIS's sound is of audiophile quality, with an expansive yet detailed sound stage that spectacularly complements Suzuki's grand realization. As Volume 1 in a complete traversal of Bach's sacred and secular cantatas, this auspicious entry offers the promise of an extraordinary and very important cycle that shouldn't be missed by anyone who loves these works. This is the kind of Bach rarely heard anymore--performances that make you want to devote time to them, to listen at lifelike levels and follow the text religiously. -- ClassicsToday.com
Danish Saxophone Quartet who has been widely known for their superb performance of contemporary music embarked on a new field of classical repertoire a few years ago. Their rendition of Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge received acclaim from critics and audience a like and released on Kontrapunkt 32259. Present CD of Goldberg Variations was recorded live in concert in Rome with the superb arrangement by Italy’s foremost arranger/composer Francesco Frederico Venerucci. repertoire a few years ago. Their rendition of Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge received acclaim from critics and audience a like and released on Kontrapunkt 32259.
Present CD of Goldberg Variations was recorded live in concert in Rome with the superb arrangement by Italy’s foremost arranger/composer Francesco Frederico Venerucci.
Bach's Coffeehouse brings together a selection of Apollo's Fire recordings - old and new alike - featuring repertoire that is believed to have been performed at Cafe Zimmerman in Leipzig, the city where Johann Sebastian Bach served as Cantor. Coffee houses were all the rage at the time, centres for socialising and musical soirees. Bach would have found respite from his formal duties as Cantor, by curating informal concerts at the thriving coffee emporium. Bach's Coffeehouse features new recordings of Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 with virtuoso soloists Alan Choo, the Singaporean violinist and Assistant Artistic Director of Apollo's Fire, and recorder player Daphna Mohr; the Double Concerto for Oboe and Violin with Debra Nagy and violinist Johanna Novom; and "Air on a G String" from Orchestral Suite No. 3. Rounding out the album, Apollo's Fire brings back catalogue favourites by two of Bach's contemporaries: Telemann's swaggering Don Quixote Suite, and Vivaldi's fiery "La folia", featuring Alan Choo and Spanish violinist Francisco Fullana.
Voyage - Chopin: Sonata No. 3 and other Music for Solo Piano / Avdeeva
PENTATONE
CD
$19.99Sep 27, 2024
Fourteen years after her victory at the XVI International Chopin Piano Competition, Yulianna Avdeeva documents her journey with the music of Frederic Chopin. Voyage focuses on his late works, all composed while surrounded by nature, and Avdeeva has recorded them at the rustic Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana, against the serene backdrop of the Beartooth Mountains. A pianist of fiery temperament and virtuosity, Avdeeva plays with power, conviction, and sensibility, having won over audiences all over the world. She returns to PENTA-TONE after her acclaimed label debut with Resilience (2023).
Under the motto "Dancing Organ," Czech organist Michael Bartek has compiled a varied program of dance pieces from different eras, including original compositions and some virtuoso transcriptions. In addition to popular works, there are also a few surprises to discover. This is performed on "his" Kuhn organ in the Richterswil Church near Zurich. For this SACD, the sound has been optimally captured in stereo and 5.1 surround sound. Unter dem Motto "Dancing Organ" hat der tchechische Organist Michael Bartek ein vielseitiges Programm von Tanzstucken verschiedener Epochen - Originalkompositionen und teils virtuose Transkriptionen - zusammengestellt. Neben popularen Werken gibt es auch so manche uberraschung zu entdecken. Als Instrument dient ihm "seine" Kuhn-Orgel in der Richterswiler Kirche, nahe Zurich. Fur diese SACD wurde der Klang optimal als Stereo- und auch als 5.1 Surround-Aufnahme eingefangen.
Bach, Granados, Tournier et al: Durezza e Ligatura - Harp Music / Thalheimer
Haenssler Classic
CD
$15.99$20.99Save 25%Jul 07, 2023
The three main works on the CD are favourite pieces of mine that I often listened to as a student. One is the Suite No. 1 in E minor, BWV 996, by Johann Sebastian Bach. Another piece that I have always liked immensely, and which I thought that I will one day learn is the "Valses Poeticos" by Enrique Granados, and in the same way, I had started the "Sonatine pour harpe" op. 30 by Marcel Tournier, but never finished it. I then developed a plan to make a CD in order to create an additional project for myself using these three pieces as a basis.
I combined the three great works by Bach, Granados and Tournier so that they became ‘pathfinders’, so to speak, with the Renaissance pieces by Mayone connecting these three longer pieces with one another. This has the effect of creating a larger whole that can be experienced as a single concept. -- Markus Folker Thalheimer
Early Romantic Piano Quartets by Hummel, Ries & Schubert
Brilliant Classics
CD
$12.99Jan 30, 2026
Romanticism had many faces. Mozart's spirit still floated through musical life, and Beethoven's mighty music set the benchmark for every Romantic composer. Mozart's legacy was carried forward by two great pianists: Hummel, a pupil of Mozart, and Ries, a pupil of Beethoven. They each steered Romanticism in a different direction. Newspapers across Europe wrote of the 'wild Romanticism' of the bohemian Ries, now seen as a forerunner of Schumann. Meanwhile, the virtuoso Hummel enchanted and astonished his audiences. Around 1815, at the time of the Congress of Vienna, he was the most famous pianist in the world, and Liszt was crazy about his music. Schubert, by contrast, was the creator and embodiment of personal expressiveness in the Romantic era. He performed only in private circles and had no interest in empty virtuosity, even though he was a superb pianist whose instrument, according to contemporaries, would sing under his hands. This new recording presents the Piano Quartet in G major by Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837), the Piano Quartet in F minor by Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), and the Adagio & Rondo Concertante by Franz Schubert (1797-1828).
The viola da gamba is not dead, despite a claim to the contrary in the Dictionary of Musicians by German composer, organist and cellist Ernst Ludwig Gerber (1746-1819). From the 16th century to the end of the 18th, the viola da gamba experienced a true apotheosis, becoming the favoured instrument for bourgeois entertainment, particularly in Germany, France, Italy and England, even if the instrument's origins lie in the Spanish Renaissance. Because of these associations with the aristocracy, but also because of advances in musical style that demanded more from the role of the lower member of the string family, the gamba lost ground to the newer cello during the French Revolution. Limited interest in the instrument persisted through the 19th century, until a rebirth occurred thanks to German cellists Christian Dobereiner (1874-1961) and Paul Grummer (1879-1965), and later the Austrian Karl Maria Schwamberger (1905-1967) and Swiss cellist August Wenzinger (1905-1996), a pupil of Grummer's and a founder, in 1925, of one of Germany's first early music ensembles. Wenzinger was appointed cello and viola da gamba teacher at Basle's new Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where Giacomo Nones (1929-2017) and Jordi Savall (b.1941) would become his pupils. Dobereiner was one of the most important pioneers at the dawn of modern research into historical performance practice, considered to have revived both the viola da gamba and the baryton from obscurity. From his Sarabande, in Handelian style, only the solo part has survived, and the basso continuo has been reconstructed by Matteo Malagoli. Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977) was an important Russian pianist and composer. He invented his own harmonic language, combining major and minor hexachords in a pentatonic scale that blended old Russian patterns and Georgian (Caucasian) harmonies. During a stay in France he became friends with Paul Grummer and in 1969 published a lovely Sonata da chiesa for viola da gamba and organ dedicated to Grummer and his daughter Sylvia. Giuseppe Selmi (1912-1987) was a gifted concert cellist, performing both with orchestra and piano. As a composer, he wrote several works for solo cello, with piano and with harp (he played in a duo with his wife Maria Dongellini). Following the gift of a viola da gamba (built by Paolo Leonori in 1952) from his wife in the 1970s, he became a passionate advocate for the instrument, writing works for it with harp or solo. Giacomo Nones (1929-2017) dedicated himself from a young age to classical music and the popular music from his native Trentino, studying violin, organ and viola da gamba, as well as musicology and organology. He has edited transcriptions and publications of Renaissance and Baroque music and has collaborated with various early music ensembles. Passionate about contemporary music, in particular 'computer music', he wrote his 10 small Algorithms for two viols with the use of a computer according to theories by the Russian mathematician Rudolf Zaripov. His only other viola da gamba works are the very different Partitas on the Lutheran chorale Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan for gamba and organ, and the Fantasia for solo viol on the Kyrie of the Gregorian 'Orbis factor' Mass. Riccardo Giavina (1937-2019) was a Piedmontese pianist and composer, later a teacher and headmaster at the 'Bonporti' Conservatory of Trento and Riva del Garda. A friend of Giacomo Nones, in April 1977 he dedicated his three short pieces for three viols (soprano, tenor and bass) to the other composer. Written in late Renaissance style, they are aimed at extending the original literature for viola da gamba into the 20th century. - Recorded April 2022 in Silvelle; July, August & December 2023 in Ponte nelle Alpi; and January 2024 in Trento (Italy) - Booklet in English contains liner notes and a profile of each of the composers - Matteo Malagoli plays a viola da gamba by Marco Salerno (Rome - Barcelona, 2004) - Cristina Centa plays a Salvi harp - Stefano Rattini plays a harpsichord by Fabrizio Acanfora (Naples, 1997) and at the Carlo Vegezzi-Bossi organ (1907; restored Mascioni, 2000) of the Trento Philharmonic Society
Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue) is the fifth album in the Bach series by Jorg Halubek and his ensemble il Gusto Barocco - the think tank for the music baroque master Johann Sebastian Bach. The new recording is led by Jorg Halubek, who plays the historic German Silbermann Organ from 1737. Together with the Early Music ensemble il Gusto Barocco, they present a unique interpretation of the world famous Bach composition "The Art of Fugue".
Prize-winning composer Gregory Fritze has written over a hundred compositions for a variety of forces, and is also a greatly admired teacher. The four works on this album share programmatic perspectives. The city of London is evoked in a celebratory overture full of vitality, diversity, and pageantry; the two symphonies reflect Fritze's immersion in the warmth, landscape, and festive excitement of the city of Valencia; and the overture Waterplace Park, a popular meeting place in Providence, Rhode Island, is a jovial piece that features five unusual instrumental soloists.
The two composers heard on this album, Giovanni Gabrieli (1553-1612) and Giovanni Bonato (born in 1961) have more in common than their first names: both hail from the Veneto in north-east Italy - there is no documentation of Gabrieli's birth, but he was probably Venetian, and Bonato was born in nearby Schio. Their music, too, is conceived in terms of it's sound in space, with Gabrieli using the cori spezzati that sang from the opposing galleries of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, and Bonato employing cori spazzializati to build a spatial dimension into the music itself. Juxtaposed, their styles offer a striking contrast, with Gabrieli's bold declamations set against Bonato's shifting, timeless suspensions.
