For their first collaboration on harmonia mundi, Pablo Heras-Casado and Anima Eterna explore the world of Bruckner. The first instalment in this series is his tremendous Symphony No.4. An apotheosis of architectural rigour and poetry, this cathedral in sound, thanks to the unique sonorities of the period instruments played by the Bruges orchestra, regains it's lightness and elegance in dazzling orchestral colors!

With this delightful program of lullabies and a few gentle serenades, Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel explore the deepest sources of musical emotion: melodies that touch, console, comfort and soothe. These little pieces, brimful of tenderness and love, are at once a marvelous entry point to listening to music for the very young, and a treat for experienced music lovers.

After being subjected to public attacks by the Soviet regime in the mid-1930s, Shostakovich sought new avenues of self-expression by turning to chamber music, and the string quartet became for him the perfect medium for private confession. To launch their complete Shostakovich cycle, members of the Cuarteto Casals offer deeply insightful readings of the first five quartets-works that are pivotal in the composer's oeuvre.

For the second volume in this series devoted to each new stage in Bach's life, Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants show us how the composer appropriated the usages of the church cantata to his own ends. Borrowing from the French style and reinterpreting the Italian concerto, he left a lasting mark on the genre and blazed a new trail for it.

In this highly original program, Julien Libeer and his partners bring us the smile and the light of Mozart via an absolutely radiant sonata for solo piano, a sonata for violin and piano in which joy triumphs over anxiety, a flamboyant trio from the time of Le nozze di Figaro, to say nothing of the Piano Quartet K478, a rare combination that allows the composer to play around on the frontiers of the concerto and chamber music. All of this in a surprising dramatic progression.

Pursuing the 'new practice' introduced by Monteverdi, seventeenth and eighteenth-century composers in the Italian tradition explored a myriad of human emotions, all the more eagerly because lovers generally come in pairs. From Monteverdi to Handel and Vivaldi, Carlo Vistoli and Hugh Cutting vie with each other in virtuosity throughout a program tailor-made for them by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.

“This first volume in the complete cycle must already be given pride of place in the discography,” declared Classica Magazine upon the release of Prokofiev’s Sonatas nos. 2, 6, and 8 (awarded a ‘Choc’ in 2016).

With this new volume, Alexandre Melnikov has chosen to delve into three distinct periods of the composer’s career, ranging from the dazzling though seldom-heard No. 4 to the magisterial No. 9.

In between those two, the sonata no. 7 once again evokes the troubled atmosphere characteristic of the three so-called ‘war sonatas’. Sviatoslav Richter claimed to have learned the piece in a mere four days.

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REVIEW:

The second instalment of Melnikov’s Prokofiev sonatas covers a kaleidoscope of temperaments. For all its vacillations, something in Melnikov’s choice of colours conveys an overall feeling of austerity and looming danger that is not quite like anyone else’s vision.Few pianists have come this close to Richter in making such a strong case for Nos. 4 & 9.

– Gramophone

Only now have I learnt how to write quartets properly." So wrote Beethoven in 1801, having just finished his first set of string quartets at the surprisingly advanced age of 30. The competition of Haydn and Mozart must have been intimidating for the young composer. Performed here by the Jerusalem Quartet, these six String Quartets Op.18 already display much boldness and originality, from the dramatic echoes of Romeo & Juliet in No.1, to the astonishing programmatic finale of No.6, "La Malinconia.

Bruno Philippe conceives Bach's Suites for solo cello as a veritable existential journey, from life to death and resurrection. Forgoing metal strings for their historical gut equivalents, the young French artist offers us an inward, deeply moving reading of this monument of instrumental music.

KRISTIAN BEZUIDENHOUT - BEETHOVEN: PIANO CONCERTOS NOS. 1 & 3 Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado and the Freiburger Barockorchester close their Beethoven trilogy with the classical, yet eminently personal, Concerto No.1, and that masterpiece of intensity and drama, Concerto No.3. Once again, period instruments and historically informed performance practice reveal the astonishing modernity that early listeners found in these works.

After Rachmaninoff, Scriabin and Prokofiev, Vadym Kholodenko continues his exploration of the Russian repertory with a pair of rarely recorded works: Tchaikovsky's two solo piano sonatas. Imaginative, colorful and dreamy, capable of an infinite range of emotions, he reveals both the masterly architecture and the subtleties of the writing that are often sacrificed to mere demonstration of virtuosity.

One of the world's most sought after and in demand mezzo sopranos, Jennifer Johnston's career takes her to the world's greatest opera houses working with some of the greatest conductors and singers or our time. Featuring the iTunes No.1 hit single "You'll Never Walk Alone," this album is a deeply personal and affectional musical love-letter to her native Liverpool.

After two albums devoted to Ireland and Scotland, Alix Boivert and The Curious Bards cross the North Sea to Sweden and Norway. Rejecting the artificial distinction between 'art' and 'folk' music, they give us a chance to hear the colorful and varied world of eighteenth-century Scandinavian songs and dances.

For their liturgical debuts in London and Leipzig respectively, Handel and Bach played the card of vocal and orchestral splendor. Whether celebrating the Peace of Utrecht (Handel's Te Deum) or the Nativity (Bach's Magnificat, performed here in it's original version), the RIAS Kammerchor offers us a flamboyant interpretation of these seminal works.

If the Piano Concertos Nos.19 and 23 are among the most famous in the corpus, it is of course because of their sublime middle movements, but also because they reach the very heights of Mozartian subtlety in terms of orchestration, thematic development and dramatic instinct. The historically informed performances from Kristian Bezuidenhout and Freiburger Barockorchester take the same interpretative approach as earlier volumes in the series, underpinned by an utterly luminous musical discourse.

What can our ears really perceive when music deviates from a norm whose codes are no longer our own? Geoffroy Jourdain explores the 'strange harmonies' characteristic of the late Renaissance, as in the microtonal pieces of Nicola Vicentino (which divides the octave into 31 notes in a nod to Ancient Greek music). In her new work VicentinoOo, Francesca Verunelli pays tribute to him by following his example.

The orchestra of Le Consort, in the course of it's exploration of Vivaldi, reveals the many facets of this inexhaustible cycle. To achieve this, Theotime Langlois de Swarte has held up a subtle mirror to other works by the 'red-haired priest'. All of them perpetuate the seasons in their own way, through shared memories and impressions; in the background Lambranzi's Venetian dances complement this musical picture awash with colors.