George Enescu’s primary instrument was the violin, but he also wrote a substantial body of works for piano, including sonatas, suites, preludes, and other short character pieces. This three-disc Hänssler Classic set of the complete works for piano solo, performed by Romanian pianist Raluca Stirbat, offers valuable insights into Enescu’s evolving methods and artistic development over a period of four decades, from the Suite No. 1 in G minor, Op. 3 (1897) to the Piano Sonata No. 3 in D major (1935). Enescu passed through several phases, starting with a fascination with Baroque forms in his teenage years, and progressing to an enthusiasm for Wagnerian chromaticism and Romanian folk music, which led to a more integrated mature style. Stirbat is an ardent proponent for Enescu’s music, and her album is the first complete set of his piano music on CD. Recorded at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, the sound is crisp and detailed, though the resonance of the performing space is quite pronounced.

– All Music Guide (B. Sanderson)

Valentin Radutiu, born in Munich in 1986, received his first cello lessons from his father at the age of six. While still attending school, he studied at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg under Clemens Hagen from 2001 to 2005. After high school he became a student of Heinrich Schiff in Vienna. Since 2007 he has been a member of David Geringas' cello studio at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin.

Valentin Radutiu is the current winner of the competition "Sound and Explanation - Conveying Works in Music and Word« of the Cultural Committee of German Business." The Music Prize of German Business is one of the most important awards for young musicians in Germany. - Artist's website

This 26-CD set containing CPE Bach’s complete solo piano works represents a landmark of the highest importance and, more significantly, listening pleasure. Ana-Marija Markovina has made a specialty of playing these works. She previously recorded the Prussian and Württemburg sonatas (for Genuin), but it is difficult to overstate the richness and variety found on these discs, or Markovina’s consistent success in rendering it all with such freshness, excitement, intensity, and charm. CPE Bach’s keyboard output consists primarily of sonatas, dozens of them, ranging over the entire course of his career, roughly from the 1740s through the 1780s. Most are three-movement pieces in fast-slow-fast form, but there are also rondos, fantasias, variations, character pieces, teaching pieces, arrangements of concertos and other orchestral works, dances, and everything from the very simple to the exceptionally complex, both technically and expressively—an entire world. More astonishingly, the quality of this music is almost uniformly high. Bach was a true craftsman, and while everyone will have their favorite works–and it’s pointless to say that it’s all equally good–you can sample just about anything on any of these discs and you will find plenty to enjoy and captivate your attention.

Markovina plays this music on the modern piano, the instrument that comes closest to any available in Bach’s day to realizing his clearly notated intentions. For example, he almost always asks for a full range of dynamics, from pp to ff, and his writings make clear that he valued above all a beautifully sustained, singing tone. The clavichord offered him the most possibilities in this regard at the start of his career, while in his last years his clear preference was for the piano (even though he had expressed reservations about early versions of the instrument in his 1750s Essay on the True Art of Playing the Keyboard). Markovina exploits the piano’s full dynamic range, as well as its ability to vary articulation, sustain the melodic line, and add muscle to Bach’s emphatic and often syncopated rhythmic schemes. In this respect she is far bolder than, say, Danny Driver’s genteel, almost effeminate CPE Bach recordings on Hyperion.

However, the most telling comparison has to be made with Miklós Spányi’s ongoing series of the complete keyboard works for BIS. Spányi uses period instruments, which have some advantages (the clavichord’s vibrato, for example), but also all of their inadequacies, including a lack of sustaining power and often a great deal of mechanical noise. On the piano, Bach’s music sounds modern; on early instruments, it sounds old. This contrast is exacerbated by Spányi’s inability to play a true allegro at speed. Consider, for example, the marvelous Sonata in B minor Wq. 65/13, which dates from the 1740s. The finale is marked “Allegro molto”. Spányi takes about six minutes (on the clavichord), Markovina slightly more than three. The difference in both sonority and expressive intensity is shocking, with Markovina infinitely more powerful and exciting.

CPE Bach’s modern reputation rests largely on his music in the “empfindsamer Stil”, with its highly expressive, emotionally eruptive, and constantly surprising writing; but a little-known aspect of this style was also the attempt to imbue music with a genuine sense of humor. Haydn, for example, learned a great deal from Bach’s pregnant use of silence. So rather than offer the usual examples of minor-key pathos, I offer as a listening sample the start of “L’Aly Rupalich”, a character piece also provisionally entitled “La Bach”, and possibly intended as a self-portrait of the composer. CPE Bach scholar Paul Corneilson describes the work as “a disco piece”, and how right he is.

Corneilson is also the Managing Editor of the Packard Humanities Institute’s ongoing CPE Bach Complete Edition, and it is largely thanks to that organization that this set of recordings has been made possible. CPE Bach fans, then, should be delighted to know that Corneilson has assembled an absolutely splendid volume of scores under the title The Essential C.P.E. Bach, containing 25 “greatest hits” from the composer’s keyboard, chamber, orchestral, and vocal music. Retailing for only $50, this beautifully printed, 350-page volume also contains excellent introductions to the composer as well as all of the music contained therein, a bibliography, a select discography, and a concordance that helps to locate each work by Wotquenne and Helm numbers.

Highlights include not only “L’Aly Rupalich”, a selection of sonatas, and the wonderful Rondo in E minor subtitled “Farewell to My Silberman Clavichord”, but also the Sonata for Unaccompanied Flute, the programmatic Sonata in C minor for Two Violins and Bass, and the amazingly dark Fantasia in F-sharp minor for Violin and Keyboard “CPE Bach’s Emotions”. There are also two complete symphonies, two complete concertos, and among the vocal pieces a bit of the celebrated Magnificat and the extraordinary Heilig for double chorus and double orchestra, a masterwork that everyone who loves Bach (Sr.) and Handel really must hear (there’s a fabulous performance on Harmonia Mundi).

You can order the score directly here, and I can’t recommend this elegant and smartly assembled volume highly enough. The same holds true of Markovina’s big box of Bach. I know, 26 CDs is a lot, and you’re not going to be playing them every day, but the important thing to remember is that you could, and you’d never be bored.

David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The Te Deum is a Latin Christian hymn that dates to the third centuries A.D. Its name is derived from its incipit, Te Deum laudamus, Latin for “Thee, O God, we praise.” Originally ascribed to Saint Ambrose or Saint Augustine, the hymn has been transcribed hundreds of times over by composers throughout history. The present release is a collection of some of the most popular Te Deum compositions from the last several hundred years, from Baroque to Contemporary, with works by Braunfels, Berlioz, Dvorák, Bruckner, Naumann, Händel and Bizet in reference recordings of leading orchestras and soloists, including the Staatskapelle Dresden, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, and Gächinger Kantorei.

Bach’s partitas BWV 825-830 are a set of six harpsichord suites that became well-known as “Clavier-Übung I”, published in 1731. They are the last set of suites that Bach composed, and the most demanding, compared with the French and the English Suites. Trevor Pinnock, born in 1946, is a famous British harpsichordist and conductor. He is one of the pioneers of the modern revival of early music performance, founding The English Concert in 1972 and the European Brandenburg Ensemble in 2006. He appears as a guest conductor with many of the world's leading symphony orchestras as well as giving solo harpsichord and chamber music recitals worldwide. Apart from his concert activities he is now focusing on teaching and giving masterclasses.

In celebration of Ludwig van Beethoven's anniversary year, Helmuth Rilling, alongside the Gachinger Kantorei Stuttgart and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, present these brilliant recordings of the composer's sacred works- the Missa Solemnis, the Mass in C major, and the Christus am Olberge op. 85. The recordings are some of Rilling's finest interpretations, recorded during the 1990s in Liederhalle Stuttgart, one of the most acoustically pleasing venues in Europe. These individual releases garnered worldwide acclaim and are now available in this special-issue triple album set. Helmuth Rilling, born in 1933 in Stuttgart, is a conductor, teacher and ambassador for Bach's music throughout the world. In 1954 Helmuth Rilling founded the Gächinger Kantorei, followed in 1965 by the Bach Collegium Stuttgart as it's instrumental partner. His intensive study of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach dates from this period. He has also contributed to the rediscovery of Romantic choral music and promotes contemporary music by regularly commissioning compositions.

Jan Dismas Zelenka was born in Launowitz, Bohemia, in 1679 and died in Dresden in 1745. He had been a member of the court orchestra there since 1710, one of the best ensembles at the time, first as a double bassist and then as a church composer. From the 1720s, he stood in for the ailing court conductor Johann David Heinichen, who was then succeeded by the world-famous opera composer Johann Adolf Hasse. Zelenka's oeuvre - around 150 compositions have survived - includes symphonies, suites, overtures and, above all, sacred vocal music in addition to trio sonatas (which were written after studies with Johann Josef Fux in Vienna). Catholic church music in Dresden, with Zelenka as one of it's main representatives, is once again enjoying greater attention.

Frank Peter Zimmermann is widely regarded as one of the foremost violinists of his generation. He has been performing with all major orchestras in the world, among which the Berliner Philharmoniker with whom he made his debut in 1985 with Daniel Barenboim; the Wiener Philharmoniker with whom he played a first time in 1983 with Lorin Maazel in Salzburg; the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, all London orchestras, as well as all big American orchestras. Frank Peter Zimmermann is a regular guest at all major music festivals of among others Salzburg, Edinburgh and Lucerne. Over the years Frank Peter Zimmermann has built up an impressive discography: He has recorded virtually all major concerto repertoire, ranging from Bach to Ligeti, Dean and Pintscher; the six solo sonatas of Ysaÿe; the 24 Caprices of Paganini and the complete Violin Sonatas of J.S. Bach and Mozart. Born in 1965 in Duisburg, Germany, he started learning playing the violin with his mother when he was 5 years old. He studied with Valery Gradov, Saschko Gawriloff and Herman Krebbers. He plays on the 1711 Antonius Stradivari violin "Lady Inchiquin", which is kindly provided by the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, "Kunst i'm Landesbesitz".

Vol. 2 of the portrait of the exceptional cellist who died far too young. Francoise Groben's fascinating dedication to music, her large number of international concerts and her encounters with the most prominent artists of her time - that is what this collection shows par excellence.