Here is all the chamber music composed by Gabriel Fauré between 1875 and 1924. These recordings, now viewed as benchmark versions, feature some of the finest artists on the French and international scene: violinist Daishin Kashimoto, cellist François Salque, violist Lise Berthaud, pianist Alexandre Tharaud, flautist Emmanuel Pahud, clarinettist Paul Meyer and the Quatuor Ébène. An exceptional project initiated by the pianist Éric Le Sage, whose 2019 recording of the thirteen Nocturnes completes the anthology.

Channel Classics reissues the 8-CD box-set of Mozart’s complete Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin. Rachel Podger and Gary Cooper make this difficult music sound effortless, witty and elegant on the first-ever recording of the complete sonatas on historical instruments. The inclusion of early, middle and late sonatas in this set conveys a balanced survey of Mozart's music for violin and keyboard. Each sonata stands out in its own right, revealing a snapshot in time of his developing personality. Of the original releases, Gramophone Magazine said that "it's impossible to ignore the individuality, vitality and commitment of their performances", while BBC Music Magazine noted that these are "characteristically intelligent and insightful performances".

This is an invitation to stand with kings in battle, to fall in love, to witness the brutal machinations of politics, and to laugh with rogues in this 27-disc collection.

Shakespeare’s Globe, the reconstruction of his most famous London theatre, is at the centre of the astonishing global fascination with Britain’s greatest playwright. Completed in 1997, it is a living theatrical experiment that has allowed audiences to experience the impact of Shakespeare’s stories in the architecture for which he wrote; the result has been a rediscovery of the plays in all their human richness. This collection brings together 26 Globe Theatre productions from 2009 to 2018, featuring the finest actors and leading directors in a project committed to creating ever wider access to this rich cultural heritage. Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies contain dazzling poetry, romance, epic power struggles, human suffering and ingenious, raucous humour. These films capture the unique atmosphere and theatrical space of the Globe Theatre, with the exhilarating sense of interaction in live performances between the audience and the actors on stage exquisitely maintained on screen.

Cast including: Stephen Fry, Malvolio (Twelfth Night); Mark Rylance, Olivia (Twelfth Night); Roger Allam, Falstaff (Henry IV) & Prospero (The Tempest); Jamie Parker, Hal (Henry IV), Henry V & Oliver (As You Like It); Samantha Spiro, Katherina (The Taming of the Shrew) & Lady Macbeth; Catherine Bailey, Portia (Julius Caesar); Eve Best, Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing) & Cleopatra (Anthony and Cleopatra); Jessie Buckley, Miranda (The Tempest).

Selected reviews of previously issued recordings:

...it is difficult to imagine that Twelfth Night could be performed more effectively than it currently is at the Globe theatre..."

-- The Guardian

Dromgoole is blessed with a smashing pair of young lovers. Adetomiwa Edun's Romeo is fresh, cheeky, light on his feet and full of the ebullience of young love...

-- The Daily Telegraph

Eve Best's directorial debut is a cracking - at times, terrifying - production of Macbeth. --- The Daily Telegraph

Henry IV is the Shakespeare play that's perfectly suited to the Globe.

-- The Guardian

All Mozart String Quartets complete. The Armida Quartett is seen today as one of the best quartets coping with the giant W.A. Mozart. Rave reviews from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. The Box has been recorded and released in close cooperation with the famous Henle publisher.

Essentially, in the incredible ease and naturalness of his pianism, in the unassuming simplicity and absorption of the man, Backhaus was much the same artist and personality then. And he was far from unknown. Even before he won the Rubinstein Prize in 1905, Backhaus was internationally celebrated as a prodigious virtuoso. Backhaus never failed to win a succès d'estime among professional musicians. They always knew his qualities, always marveled at his instrumental perfection, his titanic mastery that scorned every complexity, his unsurpassed freedom and endurance. There was never a time when Backhaus could not toss off any or all of the Chopin études or the Brahms-Paganini variations with an imperturbable calm, an implacable security that left one open-mouthed. Not everyone, for only the pianists really knew what was happening before their eyes and ears, knew how to measure such achievement. There they all sat, in breathless astonishment and envy and despair. Backhaus was a shy, unaffected, recessive personality whose sensational capacities were so unsensationally projected that lay audiences remained totally unconscious of his fabulous accomplishments. (Gerhard Melchert)

The Hungarian violinist Johanna Martzy was born in Temesvár, then in Hungary, today in Romania, on October 26, 1924, and was hailed as a wunderkind. At the age of seven, she became the last pupil to be taken under the wing of the great violin teacher Jenö Hubay, who had enabled artists like Joseph Szigeti and Sándor Végh to fly high. Ferenc Gabriel continued the girl's training after Hubay's death, helping her to win first prize at the Hubay Competition when she was seventeen. She took up studies at the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy in Budapest the following year and made her orchestral debut with the Tchaikovsky Concerto under the baton of Willem Mengelberg a year later. When Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in 1944, Johanna Martzy and her husband Béla Szillery fled via Austria and France to Switzerland. There she won the Concours International d'Exécution Musicale in Geneva in 1947, and her international career gradually gained momentum. She began making gramophone records in 1950; Ferenc Fricsay's recording of the Dvorák concerto for Deutsche Grammophon of 1953 is notable for its rousing intensity and still enjoys benchmark status. In 1954 and 1955 EMI's legendary record producer Walter Legge made the recording of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin presented here.

In spite of a successful concert comeback in the 1960s, she was no longer in the top flight. It seems symbolical that it was in Budapest that she discovered she had hepatitis in 1969. Johanna Martzy steadily grew weaker and died in Switzerland on August 13, 1979, a year after the death of her husband. The present recordings remain a rare attestation of the brilliance of Johanna Martzy's playing, and it ensures her everlasting fame, at least among connoisseurs.

REVIEW:

The Hungarian violinist Johanna Martzy, who died in Zurich in 1979 at the age of only 54, experienced a short, steep international career at the beginning of the 1950s. She has remained an icon for insiders to this day and is considered the last great representative of the Hungarian violin school.

Profil has now refreshed the majority of their EMI recordings plus two Yellow Label concertos produced in 1952 and 1953 by Mozart (KV 218) under Jochum and the legendary Dvořák concerto under Fricsay and packed them into a 6-CD box set. The EMI bundle includes the two concertos by Brahms (1954) and Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1955) recorded with Paul Kletzki, which are still among the most expressive interpretations of the entire discography, as well as Schubert's (almost) complete works for violin and piano, and then also her legendary Abbey Road recordings of Bach's solo sonatas and partitas.

Martzy embodies the romantic Bach conception of the time, which aims for intensity, expressiveness, and flowing legato, and an aesthetic that wants to overwhelm the listener with beauty and dramatic stringency. At the same time, on her full-bodied, almost viola-like sonorous Bergonzi violin from 1733, she ignites such an inner fervor and draws such arcs of suspense that one cannot evade her infinitely spun, plastic lines. Every single tone is suggestively shaped and part of the flowing universe: drama and logic in one. And with the changing keys it also changes the respective basic color of its tone, i.e. from the darkened sonority of the D minor partita to the radiantly bright E major of the third partita. You can feel the objective and subjective power of this music at every moment: they are monologues of harrowing beauty.

Her interpretations of the concertos by Mozart, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Brahms and Dvořák, glowing with intensity, shine as flawlessly clean, full-bodied and sonorous and at the same time as inwardly lively, as passionately urgent and lyrically shaped - she practices a kind of musical perfection that everyone Leaving virtuosity behind, proclaimed as a means to penetrate to the true inner, to the glowing human message, to enchant and shake us with pure, flowing heart energy. It's no wonder that Johanna Martzy enjoys iconic status in professional circles and that the few original LPs that have survived are sold at top prices.

-- Rondo (Germany, Attila Csampai)

Hugo Alfvén’s music has always been close to the hearts of the Swedish people, and ranks among some of the most significant and representative of the spirit of the country. Alfvén is known as a cheerful entertainer in compositions such as Den forlorade sonen (‘The Prodigal Son’), but his symphonies reveal a different, more elegiac and often more dramatic side. The success of Alfvén’s symphonies fundamentally changed Sweden’s musical climate and, with a substantial collection of further orchestral music representing his gloriously rich and varied style, these recordings sweep us into the remarkable world of Scandinavian landscape and culture.

Past praise for previously released volumes included in this set:

Symphony No. 5; Andante Religioso / Willén, Norrköping Symphony

The Norrköping Symphony plays with confidence and fervor. Alfvén was nothing if not expansive, and if his formal touch was never all that deft, he did know how to fill up time with arresting ideas, glowingly scored. A serenely lovely Andante religioso makes a perfect encore, one that puts the finale of the symphony’s straining for heroic effect in its proper perspective in the gentlest and most affecting way. Naxos’ sonics for this production are also excellent. Very enjoyable indeed.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

The Prodigal Son, Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 11 / Willén, Ireland NSO

Listen as Niklas Willén teases the skittish polka from “The Prodigal Son” ballet suite, or steers his players through the vehement fugue that rounds out his Symphony No. 2, and you’ll appreciate why this release commands unreserved praise. These works come to life in Willén’s hands.

Willén’s reading of the Symphony's Andante conjures a huge range of textures and sonorities, with the dark-hued horns and sombre lower winds particularly impressive. The players give all they have in music that’s probably new to them, and that extra effort is just one of the factors that makes these performances so compelling.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

Symphony No. 3; Skerries; Dalecarlien Rhapsody / Willén, RNSO

If you haven’t heard these charming, folk-music-inspired gems of late Romantic music, then here’s an excellent place to start. The Symphony also sounds consistently fresh and lively, though it’s hard to shake the impression that the composer was happier writing programmatic works in free form than in indulging the more intellectual rigors of symphonic development. In Willén’s sympathetic hands, however, none of its four movements outstays its welcome. In any event, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra plays with confidence and evident enjoyment, and the recorded sound is very good.

-- ClassicsToday.com

For over 60 years, repeated efforts have been made to capture on recording Robert Schumann’s Complete Works for Piano solo, a fascinatingly broad and varied spectrum ranging from highly virtuosic pieces for the concert hall and valuable literature for teaching purposes. This attractive and yet challenging assignment was not always approached with the necessary intellectual rigor, quite apart from any purely artistic shortcomings, and so none of these sets can justly be deemed “complete”. Schumann had published a string of works in two more or less divergent versions, so that it is highly questionable whether an edition can be labelled “Complete Recordings” if it only contains one of those versions or worse still, makes a misguided attempt to combine two of them. Meanwhile, works that were published at remote locations or remained unpublished have hitherto been taken into account only in exceptional cases.

The first true complete recording of Robert Schumann’s works for piano solo on 17 albums (in 15 volumes), played by Florian Uhlig, seeks for the first time to offer imaginative compilations containing all original works for pianoforte written between 1830 (Abegg Variations op. 1) and 1854 (Ghost Variations) according to the newest critical editions and/or first editions. Several of these albums also contain premiere recordings, often of fragments that were amenable to completion. After the project was completed in 2021, it was evident from a further critical inspection of the five Studien- und Skizzenbücher held in the University and State Library in Bonn, and from the volumes of the complete piano works for two hands that have so far appeared in this comprehensive and groundbreaking edition, that there is a string of either very short complete or longer fragmentary pieces dating from about 1830 to 1837 that are worthy of attention.

Previously unreleased recordings by one of the great conductors of the 20th century.

Karel Ančerl. One of the most important conductors of post-war Europe. A man who survived the Nazi concentration camps and the avowed anti-Semitism of communist Czechoslovakia. An artist who, through enormous patience and dedication, built the Czech Philharmonic into a world-class orchestra and introduced it successfully at the most important concert halls.

From 2002 to 2008, Supraphon issued the highly acclaimed Ančerl Gold Edition with the bulk of his artistic legacy, containing nearly his complete studio recordings with the Czech Philharmonic on 48 albums. But that was far from everything. Hidden in the archive of Czech Radio, there is a wealth of concert recordings that gives us a more complete picture of this conductor. From that treasury, on 15 albums, Supraphon has selected repertoire of which studio recordings were not made; that repertoire covers a broad range from Mozart to works by Ančerl’s contemporaries.

The recordings include masterpieces by Dvořák (Symphonies Nos. 7 and 8, Biblical Songs) and Suk (Asrael, Ripening), music by composers admired and promoted by Ančerl (Martinu Symphony No. 1 and Kabelác Symphony No. 5), and major works of the worldwide 20th-century repertoire (Debussy, Ravel, Strauss, Prokofiev, etc.). The only exception of a “duplication” of a studio recording is Smetana’s Má vlast. This taping of a Prague Spring Festival concert in May 1968 was one of the last recordings Ančerl made before his definitive departure for Toronto. The concert recordings from the years 1949-1968 document the maturing of this remarkable artist perhaps even more clearly than his studio legacy.

REVIEW:

-- Gramophone (Rob Cowan)

The history of Scriabin’s piano music is like a condensed history of piano music, for his style changed perhaps more than any other composer during his life. It has been said that young Scriabin kept Chopin’s music under his pillow, and the early Preludes and Mazurkas certainly breathe the same heightened air of ardour and yearning. His journey from the traditional tonal harmony of these Chopinesque beginnings to his atonal ‘Mystic chord’ (based on fourths) is, however, a masterfully smooth one, best appreciated when taking the sum of his work into account. Born in 1947, long resident in London as a professor at the Royal College of Music,

Dmitri Alexeev entered the Moscow Conservatory at six years of age. A string of EMI recordings in the 80s established his reputation worldwide, but they included scant representation of one of his most ardent passions, the music of Scriabin, beyond the concertante Prometheus conducted by Riccardo Muti. Alexeev’s touch emulates the contemporary accounts of Scriabin’s own playing, which did not rely on power because of his slight build. Rather, he ‘captivated the listener through his ability to enhance his sound with an extraordinary range and gradation of color…his fingers seemingly plucked the sound from the piano keys…as if his hands flew over the keyboard barely touching it.’ Made between 2008 and 2019 in London and in the purpose-built Music Room at Champs Hill, home to many superlative modern chamber-music albums, these recordings won broad critical acclaim on their original publication. Their reissue at super-budget price makes an obvious first port of call for any listener looking to immerse themselves in the rich, heady world of Scriabin’s piano writing.

REVIEW:

Single-artist sets such as this are rarely satisfactory with their inevitable troughs and peaks. Here, for two reasons, is an exception: first, for any pianist to play the complete solo piano works of Scriabin (except for works without opus numbers) is a tremendously challenging undertaking; second, the pianist in question is one of today’s keyboard giants. Dmitri Alexeev must rank as one of the most under-the-radar great pianists currently active. Having won the Leeds Competition in 1975 (the first Russian to do so, beating Schiff and Uchida in the process) and enjoyed a high-profile international career for the following decades, Alexeev devotes much of his time to teaching (at the Royal College of Music) and sitting on competition juries. But great pianist he remains.

-- Gramophone

Arvo Pärt (born 1935) is without doubt one of the best-known and -loved composers of today. His highly personal style, influenced by Gregorian Chant, is based on slowly shifting patterns, tintinnabuli (little bells), creating a meditative and hallucinatory effect, a visionary world of spiritual contemplation. Pärt’s sacred choral works enjoy a huge popularity with both the traditional classical audience as well as an open-minded new generation. This substantial collection brings together Pärt’s best-known and loved works, both instrumental and vocal: Spiegel im Spiegel, Für Alina, Tabula Rasa, Fratres, Magnificat, Berliner Messe, St. John Passion, as well as organ works and the complete piano works. Excellent performances by Le Nuove Musiche/Krijn Koetsveld, Leeds Cathedral Choir, Ulster Orchestra, Jeroen van Veen and many others. The booklet contains extensive liner notes on the composer and his works.

The piano works by Isaac Albéniz range from indisputable masterpieces to ravishing salon music, the composer painting with bright Spanish colors as well as the hues of Classicism and Romanticism. On nine discs, originally released between 1998 and 2017 and gathered here, Miguel Baselga guides listeners through the music of his compatriot, earning acclaim from reviewers worldwide: ‘pianism of the highest order’ (MusicWeb-International); ‘berauschend agil und rhytmisch spannungsgeladen’ (PIANONews); ‘un pianista elegante y refinado’ (CD Compact). Composed between December 1905 and January 1908, only a year before the death of Albéniz, Iberia is the crowning achievement of the composer’s genius. Marking a high point of the post-romantic piano literature, this collection of ‘12 nouvelles impressions’ was to serve as an endless source of inspiration for other composers throughout the twentieth century, admired by Debussy and Messiaen, who called it 'the marvel of the piano'. Baselga’s exhaustive series places Iberia in its proper context, and with the assistance of Albéniz scholar Jacinto Torres, he has been able to access original editions and scores, including rarities such as the Marcha militar by a nine-year-old Albéniz and the composer's two scores for piano and orchestra. We are also given the opportunity to hear three improvisations, transcribed from a phonograph recording made by the composer in 1903.

REVIEW:

Miguel Baselga was the first and (I believe) only pianist to have recorded Albéniz’s complete solo piano works, a project encompassing nine CDs. The cycle has been reissued in a boxed set, together with each individual release’s original booklet. It remains a significant catalog milestone.

As a stylist, Albéniz covered all bases, from unabashedly salon-like trifles and flashy neo-Lisztian fare to the Iberia Suite’s astonishing originality and labyrinthine complexities. Since Baselga wanted each disc to represent different aspects of Albéniz’s musical personality, he cunningly divided Iberia’s four parts across the first four volumes, aiming to give lesser-known masterpieces like the wild and woolly La Vega and tender Barcarola Op. 202 their due.

The two concerted works (the Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rapsodia Espanola) also receive impressively fresh and well-balanced readings. And for those who can’t get past the faded sound of Albéniz’s three 1903 improvisations preserved on private cylinders, Milton Laufer’s painstakingly notated editions will be revelations, especially in Baselga’s inspired hands.

In all, Baselga’s combination of technical brilliance, exuberant temperament, and tonal imagination yields consistently idiomatic and enjoyable results. A must-have for serious aficionados of Spanish piano music.

– ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Osmo Vänskä has been described as ‘our greatest living Sibelian’ (The Sunday Times, UK), a reputation which is founded not least on his two symphony cycles on disc, both released by BIS. The first one was recorded in 1996-97 with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, and firmly established Vänskä as a force to be reckoned with. 14 years later he returned to the studio for a second cycle, now with the Minnesota Orchestra, of which he has been music director since 2003.

The Minnesota recordings were released on three discs during the years 2012 – 2016 to critical acclaim: besides top marks from reviewers around the world, the series garnered distinctions such as Editor’s Choice (Gramophone), Orchestral Choice (BBC Music Magazine) and Recording of the month (MusicWeb International). The disc of Symphonies Nos 2 and 5 was included on the New York Times list of the Best Classical Music Recordings of 2012 and nominated to a Grammy for Best Orchestral Recording, an award which its sequel (Nos 1 & 4) received the following year. Recommended by the German web site Klassik.com upon its release, the final album, with Symphonies Nos 3, 6 and 7, was recently included on Gramophone’s list of ‘Top 10 Sibelius recordings’. The three releases have now been gathered into a box set, with the addition of the same team’s 2016 recording of Kullervo, Sibelius’s first large-scale orchestral work and sometimes called his ‘choral symphony’.

Past praise for previously released volumes included in this set:

Sibelius: Symphonies No 1 & 4 / Vanska, Minnesota:

The passion and sweep of the First is even more electric than in the Lahti First. The Fourth emerges equally well as a hugely powerful utterance. With superb sound as always from BIS, this new disc has set the bar for all to follow and past ones to be measured against.

– Gramophone

Sibelius: Symphonies No 2 & 5 / Vanska, Minnesota:

These fearless, magnificently played performances, recorded in astonishing detail by the BIS engineers, and accompanied by an authoritative note by Robert Layton, join a very exclusive and elevated class of the finest recordings of these works.

– MusicWeb International