The harpsichord concertos of J.S. Bach form the origins of the keyboard concerto genre that was to continue to flourish through the music of his sons, C.P.E. Bach and J.C. Bach, and onwards. Here, celebrated keyboardist Steven Devine is joined by members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in this recording that features the Concerto in D minor, BWV 1052, Concerto in A major BWV 1055, and the Concerto in D major BWV1054, together with a new reconstruction by Steven Devine of the Concerto in D minor BWV 1059.

Bach’s four Lutheran Masses feature almost no Lutheran material at all. Sometimes called ‘Missa brevis’, musically they are almost entirely made up of movements borrowed from Bach’s Cantatas. While often overshadowed by the more famous Mass in B minor, the beauty of these short Masses is that they represent Bach’s own choice of his finest Cantata movements. Despite their exquisite beauty, featuring splendid choruses and deeply moving arias, there are relatively few recordings of the Masses. This collection combines The Sixteen’s recordings into one collection. Just eight singers join The Sixteen’s orchestra to perform the Masses, allowing the beauty of the virtuosic vocal lines to be heard with absolute clarity.

First released in 2005, Julia Fischer’s multiple award-winning recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas & Partitas has proven to be an evergreen. In 2017, it was re-released as a lavish 3LP boxset, as well as a re-designed 2SACD edition. This legendary recording now returns in a more affordable Stereo version. This album is a RE-RELEASED VERSION of PTC5186095 (first released in 2005).

Bach’s remarkable Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin are revered for their boundless inventiveness, technical ingenuity and emotional depth. With their brilliant preludes, stately dances and complex four-part fugues, the demands on the performer are enormous – from rapid scale passages, double stopping and arpeggios, to the skill and concentration required to create the illusion of separately moving and interweaving voices. The set is full of surprises. Sonata No. 3 contains a colossal fugue of increasing complexity and difficulty (and at over 350 bars, one of his longest). Partita No. 3 is one of Bach’s sunniest works, with the virtuoso Prelude and the charming Gavotte being regularly performed as encore pieces. Most famous of all is the legendary Chaconne from Partita No. 2, a kaleidoscopic series of variations as deeply felt and cathartic as anything Bach wrote and an incontestable milestone in classical music.

Julia Fischer’s recording for PENTATONE was showered with praise upon its first release in 2005. “Classic accounts by Milstein and Grumiaux have been usurped by this extraordinarily gifted newcomer” enthused BBC Music Magazine. “Her mastery is beyond question,” affirmed Gramophone magazine “her ability to trace a smooth, even line a source of pleasure itself.” It also achieved the rare distinction of garnering three of France’s most prestigious awards: the Diapason d’Or from Diapason; the CHOC from Le Monde de la Musique; and the highest rating from Classica-Repertoire.

Argentine violinist Tomás Cotik now resides in the U.S. He is a professor of violin at Portland State University. Here, he performs his own arrangements for violin of the J.S. Bach Six Cello Suites. This is, of course, some of the greatest of all of the solo cello literature, beautifully arranged for and performed on violin.

This album was released in the summer of 2023; it may not have been intended as a Christmas album, but it would make a wonderful purchase at that time.

The fourth volume of Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach works for organ series features one of the most important surviving instruments of Bach’s time, made by the German organ builder Christoph Treutmann the Elder. Widely known for its extraordinary tonal quality, the instrument was built between 1734 and 1737. A recent general restoration preserved all essential structural elements or renewed them, remaining faithful to the originals, making it an ideal instrument for Bach interpreters who wish to come close to the sound ideas of the Leipzig Thomaskantor.

Suzuki now takes up the Orgel-Büchlein (literally, ‘little organ book’), a collection of 45 short chorale preludes on melodies from the Lutheran hymn book, a project that came into being in connection with Bach’s appointment as organist and chamber musician at the Duke’s court in Weimar in 1708. Presenting chorales for different periods of the church year, this collection serves as a general guide to text-based composition focusing on specific word-sound relationships and content-specific musical expression. Two Preludes and Fugues complete the first volume dedicated to the Orgel-Büchlein, illustrating the principle of variety and structure historically practised by concert organists in order to demonstrate the tone colours and expressive possibilities of their instrument.

REVIEW:

The great Masaaki Suzuki’s traversal of Bach’s keyboard music is well underway, and several attractions have become clear. In general, he is a bit less concerned with a pearly surface and a bit more with direct expression. In works for organ, he has shown a willingness to delve into period instruments, and the one here is a real find. Suzuki is willing to take a bit of time to bring out its colors; there is nothing too radical, but there are subtle adjustments to the tempo throughout that define the profile of each little ornamented chorale, and all the performances are vivid. This album was released in the summer of 2023; it may not have been intended as a Christmas album, but it would make a wonderful purchase at that time.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Alon Sariel makes his PENTATONE debut with Plucked Bach, a program exploring Bach’s cello suites performed on different mandolins, lutes, baroque guitar and oud, concluding with Sariel’s own Bach-inspired Mandolin Partita. Bach’s suites are often considered to be “the cellist’s Bible”, but the transferability of his music between instruments – a practice to which the composer himself also contributed frequently – seems to justify this fresh approach. Sariel aims to realize the timeless and universal character of Bach’s music in a multifarious sound world of plucked instruments, through a program that employs an interplay of light and dark, embodied by the first and second suites respectively.

Another objective has been to bring out the youthful élan of this music, composed years before Bach’s Passions. Altogether, this album presents Bach’s music in a new, enticing light. Alon Sariel is one of the most versatile performers of his generation, whose guiding principle is a changing perspective; giving new life to existing material, as well as creating completely new works.

REVIEWS:

It’s a pleasure to hear Israeli lutenist Alon Sariel once again...Sariel’s artistic insight is just as keen as I remembered it. Here, he plays several mandolins and lutes, baroque guitar, and oud, all of which are displayed on the album cover and all are performed with his usual class and style.

The program of Sariel’s arrangements of various Bach cello suites begins with the Prelude from Suite No. 5 in C Minor, arranged for mandolin, an instrument whose classical voice is usually heard, if at all, in song accompaniments. Here, Sariel makes a fine impression for it as a plaintive, searching voice. Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, heard in Sariel’s arrangement for lute, establishes the instrument’s authentic voice right off in an urgently strummed 2-part setting. Gavottes I and II from Suite No. 6 in D Major make a nice encore, clarified in thought and feeling. Suite No. 2 in D Minor, if anything, makes an even finer impression as a lute arrangement, beginning with a slow, contemplative Prelude with a haunting echo. As an encore, the Sarabande from this suite is performed once again, this time in Sariel’s arrangement for the Oud, an instrument of North African or Arabic origin without frets and with a short neck and, most importantly, a distinctively low, passionate voice that makes for a fine arrangement in this instance.

Sariel concludes the program with his own Mandolin Partita for what would appear to be a round-backed Neapolitan model. It is in six movements: a mystery-laden Prelude, intriguing Allemande, florid Courante with cascading notes, gently poignant Sarabande, Minuets I & 2 characterized by lively syncopations, and a Gigue handsomely decorated with grace notes. All of which reveal his knowing grasp of the Baroque style.

-- Audio Video Club of Atlanta

This 7-SACD collection includes recordings made by Brazilian-born conductor John Neschling of the orchestral works of Ottorino Respighi, alongside Puccini the best-known Italian composer of the first half of the twentieth century. Widely praised by the press, including BBC Music Magazine, which described them as ‘the finest-ever survey of the composer’s orchestral output undertaken by a single conductor’, these recordings reveal Respighi’s extraordinary range.

His transcriptions of works from the baroque period bear witness to his great musical refinement and are an example of the way in which people dared to adapt to current tastes at the beginning of the 20th century. His original compositions, whether symphonic poems, ballets or symphonic works, often call for a large orchestra, sometimes with the addition of numerous percussion instruments, piano, organ and even, in Pines of Rome, a phonograph, present a synthesis of the musical traditions of his native Italy and contemporary romantic, impressionist and neo-classical trends while remaining resolutely closed to modernist developments and atonality. Respighi’s lavish sound palette and the spirit that fills his scores were to find an echo in Hollywood film music, and John Williams considers him to be one of his most important influences.

Past praise of the previously released recordings included in this set:

Respighi: The Birds; Ancient Airs & Dances

These performances are uncommonly airy. Much of this music is suffused with an autumnal melancholy, and Neschling and his orchestra capture that very well.

-- Fanfare

Respighi: Metamorphoseon, etc.

All of the performances here are expert, but conductor John Neschling deserves particular credit for keeping things movement purposefully forward in the first two long, and mostly slowish, movements of the Belkis suite. The same work’s vulgar (let’s not kid ourselves) concluding Danza orgiastica also sounds more musical than usual–less like a back-alley gang bang–but with no loss of energy. The Liège orchestra plays with great bravura, and BIS’s SACD sonics, typically, are just terrific. In short, a very worthy entry in this ongoing series.

-- ClassicsToday.com

Respighi: Roman Trilogy / Neschling, Sao Paulo Symphony

The São Paulo Symphony Orchestra is a superb ensemble by any standards, and displays their virtuosity in the three Respighi symphonic poems.

-- SA-CD.net

Francesco Corti and il pomo d’oro continue their acclaimed series of Bach harpsichord concertos, now moving to the works for two harpsichords, BWV 1060-1062, together with Andrea Buccarella. Compared to the previous two instalments, the accompanying ensemble is small, allowing for maximal transparency and focus on the soloists. The greatest discographic asset of this album is Corti’s arrangement of Bach’s unfinished concerto for harpsichord, oboe and strings in D Minor, BWV 1059. In his extensive contribution to the booklet, Corti explains why and how he used parts of Cantata BWV 35 to complete the score. Emmanuel Laporte performs the solo oboe. Francesco Corti belongs to the most established harpsichordists of his generation, and releases his third PENTATONE Bach harpsichord concertos album, after releases in 2020 and 2021. He works together with the multi-award-winning ensemble il pomo d’oro, who also recorded three vocal recital albums with PENTATONE: Carnevale 1729 with Ann Hallenberg (2017), Prologue with Francesca Aspromonte (2018) and Handel – Apollo e Dafne & Armida abbandonata (2021). Andrea Buccarella and Emmanuel Laporte both make their PENTATONE debut.

This album is the story of a dialogue between two voices: the singing voice and the voice of the cello, which has always been considered the instrument closest to the human voice. It is also the story of two worlds and the meeting of two cultures, East and West. The East we encounter here is Armenia, its thousand-year-old culture, its music and its songs, which resonate with the compositions of Bach, Kodály and Ligeti.

For the cellist Astrig Siranossian, vocal melody and the sound of the cello are two voices that she has always combined in her concerts, coupling a dance from a solo cello suite by Bach with an Armenian song that she performs with great sensitivity. East and West, Armenia and Europe: it is her roots and her emotions that the young cellist shares with us here. This recording was made on two different cellos, according to the repertory: an instrument by Francesco Ruggieri dating from 1676 and the famous Giovanni Gagliano of 1756 known as the ‘Sir John Barbirolli’.

One of the most fascinating challenges that any violinist can face is the repertoire for solo violin. In this genre of music, both the musician and the listener can encounter polyphonic masterpieces performed with minimal means - with only four strings. These pieces often carry as much emotional and musical meaning as works composed for a large orchestra. This rarely represented category in musical literature has always excited the artist Agata-Maria Raatz. She wondered how Bach managed to create such a remarkably complex and demanding harmonic as well as formal structure in his sonatas and partitas for solo violin, which are considered timeless masterpieces of extraordinary brilliance in every detail. Where did he draw his inspiration from? What music did he listen to? And who was he as a person? Bach was not only a genius, but also a human being. Monuments created to honour personalities of genius often obscure their humanity, which encompasses not only the outstanding and special, but also the mundane and prosaic of life.

The album "Echo of BACH" is her personal exploration through the history of solo music for violin, tracing its origins from the early Baroque period to the present. It is a musical journey centred on J. S. Bach, an inspiration to many generations of composers. On this unique path, the great master not only inspires, but is also influenced by the works of other musicians. Among them is a composer who might have been a guidepost for Bach on his musical path. It is the composer and violinist Jean Paul von Westhoff. Bach was 18 years old at the time, while Westhoff died only two years later at the age of 49. The probability is high that they met at that time and the young Bach became familiar with Westhoff's work. For her album she has chosen the Suite No. 5 in D minor. In addition to a piece composed by the artist especially for this CD under the pseudonym Clara Jaz, we also find the work "Cette âme a six ailes tout comme les Séraphins" (This soul has six wings like the Seraphim) composed by the Swiss composer Xavier Dayer especially for Agata-Maria Raatz.