Surely, no map could chart the fantastic voyage presented in this release. For while this odyssey takes us around a large part of the globe, via the music of Ireland and the British Isles, Germany, France, Spain and Italy, North Africa, Turkey, the Balkans, and Asia, it is largely an imaginary voyage, an interior journey made by the performers, inspired by their travel experiences and their passion for a geographical or temporal ‘elsewhere’. Music has the power of transporting us, in both senses; it can open the ear – and the mind – to other worlds, other cultures and customs; and it can exhilarate and transcend the senses. Here are recordings by iconic artists of the Alpha label such as le Poème Harmonique, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, and Cappella Mediterranea – all represented in this release.

Highlights include:

Traditional songs & dances of Naples, Ireland, The Balkans, The British Isles & North Africa on baroque instruments | Le poème harmonique plays music of French traditions | Cappella Mediterranea performs music from Spain, 16th-20th centuries | Doulce Mémoire performs music from the meeting points of Western and Middle Eastern cultures in the Renaissance | Andreas Staier leads performances of Bach cantatas

Past praise for previously released volumes included in this set:

Aux Marches du Palais / Le Poème Harmonique

The infectious La molièra qu’a nau escus, the rhythmic zest and mellow harmonies of the largely homophonic Le 31 du mois d’août, the pastoral delicacy of Réveillez-vous, belle endormie, are only a few of the standouts that required frequent use of the repeat button on my CD player. As for the 11 musicians who make up Le Poème Harmonique, they are vastly skilled, rhythmically disciplined, and theatrically vivid where required, as in the galvanizing a capella tarantelle, Sarremilhòque. (The music may be from France, but various patois are employed, as well.) This group is far from the “churchly” type that usually brings great delicacy and little passion to such music. One hopes we’ll hear more from them in the future.

-- Fanfare

Brilliant Classics proudly presents the 5-album sets series: QUINTESSENCE, attractively priced compact box sets containing essential core classical repertoire in outstanding performances. Aimed at attracting both the discerning classical connoisseur and the classical newcomer it presents the pillars of classical music freshly packaged with eye-catching colorful and booklets containing liner notes in English. A new series at an unbeatable price!

The present installment features Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, performed by pianist Klara Würtz.

Excerpt from a review of a previously released edition of this set:

The Hungarian pianist Klára Würtz's Mozart performances here are, in a word, miraculous. Listening to this set left me almost speechless. By the time I finished auditioning just the first six sonatas, I knew that Würtz’s Mozart was something special. Highest recommendation.

-- Jeffrey J. Lipscomb, FANFARE

REVIEWS:

It's very nice to see Christina Ortiz back in the saddle for a major recording. As you may recall, she recorded a lot of stuff, mostly very good, for EMI, and also did the complete Villa-Lobos piano concertos for Decca. She probably knows the style and the music as well or better than anyone alive, and her playing here has real sweep and bravura, particularly in the quick outer sections of what is basically a three-movements-in-one sort of structure. The work is one of the composer's major masterpieces, and with brilliant sonics, you'd have to be crazy not to buy this disc if you have even a shred of interest in Villa-Lobos... Choros No. 5, subtitled "Brazilian Soul", is a five-minute piano solo that not surprisingly sounds like an extended cadenza from No. 11. Ortiz plays it with unaffected gusto and a powerful lyrical impulse. Choros No. 7 is scored for an exotic assortment of strings, winds (including saxophone), and offstage tam-tam... It's hugely fun and full of timbres and textures that you'll find nowhere else. If this disc signals the start of a complete Choros series with these forces on BIS, we're in for a real treat.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

While Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras series may be better known or more popular (at least in part), his Choros pieces are just as fine... It's high time that a label decided to record the entire sequence, and if you've been following these releases you already know just how exceptional the results are likely to be... This newcomer certainly doesn't disappoint. John Neschling leads his São Paulo forces in performances that offer the last word in glittering color and rhythmic exuberance, engineered with maximum realism and impact. The shorter, more intimate pieces are strategically placed in between the big orchestral works, making the entire disc a fabulously varied program that offers eloquent proof of Villa-Lobos' range and originality. Kudos also go to guitarist Fabio Zanon for his soulful reading of Choros No. 1, and to the various brass players for their vibrant reading of the quirkily scored No. 4. You're going to love this!

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com [reviewing the original release of Choros Vol. 2]

There is nothing to criticize here: it's all wonderful. This final volume in BIS's survey of the extant Choros pieces by Villa-Lobos (Nos. 13 and 14 are lost) offers in some ways the most interesting and varied assortment of the bunch. Introduction to the Choros features orchestra plus solo guitar, the latter splendidly played by Fabio Zanon. It's a soulful, evocative piece full of good tunes and colorful scoring, and you'll probably grow old and die before your local orchestra plays it live. Two Choros (Bis), a coda to the larger series of 12 numbered works, is a substantial pair of duets for violin and cello.

Choros No. 2 is another duet, this time for flute and clarinet; No. 3 is a brief chorus for male voices, winds, and percussion; No. 10 is a vibrant, primal piece for orchestra and mixed choir, while No. 12 is one of the composer's grandest and most successful large works for orchestra (it lasts more than half an hour). As already suggested, the performances are all splendid, the sonics terrific. I've already listened to this disc a dozen times, and look forward to the next dozen. Don't miss it. [11/20/2008]

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com [reviewing the original release of Choros Vol. 3]

The primary novelty here is the piano-solo original version of Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4, an interesting alternative to the more familiar setting for orchestra... Jean-Louis Steuerman [gives] a fine performance... Both wind players sound terrific in the brief and quirky Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6, and soprano Donna Brown sings (and hums) really beautifully in the popular No. 5. I was particularly taken with her clarity of diction and accuracy of intonation in the rapid-fire second movement. Here, and in Bachianas Brasileiras No. 1, the cello section of the São Paulo Symphony plays magnificently, with incisive rhythms (check out the first movement of No. 1) and a big, rich tone. As usual, BIS's engineering is excellent... It looks to be the Bachianas Brasileiras cycle of choice, assuming standards remain this high.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com [reviewing the original release of Bachianas Brasilieras 1, 4 (piano), 5 and 6]

This new installment of what looks to be the complete orchestral Bachianas Brasileiras is as fine as the previous one. Lest this be taken for granted, bear in mind that the worst complete set of the "BB" came from Brazil. The music needs more than just a feel for the idiom: it needs to be splendidly played and recorded, which fortunately is the case here. Both Nos. 7 and 8 take a four-movement form best summed up as "prelude, aria/dance, toccata, and fugue". Under Robert Minczuk, the orchestra plays with real panache in the toccatas, but also with powerful lyrical impetus in No. 7's opening movement, which rises to a climax of positively Tchaikovskian emotion. BIS also offers a special bonus in letting us hear both versions of BB No. 9, for wordless chorus and for string orchestra. The former is all but unknown, and if the choral singing is sometimes a bit rough and ready (the parts are atrociously difficult), just having the vocal version readily available at last represents a unique treat. The engineering is typically excellent. For fans of the composer, this is self-recommending.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com [reviewing the original release of Bachianas Brasilieras 7-9]

These performances of Bachianas Brasileiras Nos. 2 and 4 easily are the finest available. The São Paulo Symphony Orchestra certainly ought to know how to play this music, and do they ever! You'll be amazed at how effortlessly the strings articulate the hellish motor-rhythms in the finale of No. 4, or how the players differentiate the percussion timbres in the "train" movement of No. 2. Even if you know these works well, it's like hearing them for the first time. In No. 3 for piano and orchestra, not one of the best pieces in the series, conductor Roberto Minczuk shapes a performance quite similar to that on the composer's own EMI recording, albeit with infinitely greater sound and much, much better playing.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com [reviewing the original release of Bachianas Brasilieras 2, 3 and 4 (orchestral)]

REVIEW:

Niels Gade was a musical conservative, very much of the Mendelssohn school, but he had a distinctive personality and...he knew how to make his music move. These symphonies have good tunes, almost no dead spots, and the Fifth, which has an important concertante part for solo piano, really is an entertaining and original piece by any standard.

At five discs for the price of two, this set is a steal. Neeme Järvi's versions of the eight symphonies are as fine as any available, certainly as good as Hogwood's excellent Chandos set which now costs several times as much. Niels Gade was a musical conservative, very much of the Mendelssohn school, but he had a distinctive personality and, more to the point, he knew how to make his music move. These symphonies have good tunes, almost no dead spots, and the Fifth, which has an important concertante part for solo piano, really is an entertaining and original piece by any standard. Järvi secures crisp, lively playing from the Stockholm Sinfonietta; there isn't a weak performance in the lot.

The Violin Concerto is also a fine, unaccountably neglected piece, very well played by Anton Kontra (of the eponymous quartet fame). Its central Andantino espressive really is a gem, but then the entire piece has a formal compactness and confidence typical of Gade. The Crusaders (featuring the Aarhus Symphony under Frans Rasmussen) is an hour-long cantata for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, and it makes a considerable bonus. Of course in today's world it's kind of hard to sympathize with the crusades, or with any piece in which Peter the Hermit is the good guy, but give Gade credit: he gets through the entire Armida/Rinaldo love story in 23 minutes, and it's the best part of the work. Enough talk: just get this box, and your Gade collection will be pretty much complete.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Schubert set the verse of more than 115 poets to music, producing around 650 songs. He selected biblical texts and poetry from classical Greece, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the early Romantic era, the poets including Goethe, Schiller, Shakespeare, Petrarca and Heine as well as his Austrian contemporaries and friends. The Complete Lieder includes all the solo songs and part songs with piano, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. Ulrich Eisenlohr, pianist and artistic director of the edition, selected native German singers and used Bärenreiter’s Neue Schubert-Ausgabe as a basis for the recordings, producing a stirring cycle of particular integrity. All the sung texts are included online with English translations.

Performed for the first time in its original uncut version, this production of Guillaume Tell was the jewel in the crown of the 25-year history of the ‘Rossini in Wildbad’ opera festival. Rossini’s final, great, operatic masterpiece is a story of liberation, the oppressed Swiss attaining their ideal of emancipation by hounding the tyrannical Habsburgs out of their country. Although it was composed for the complex demands of the Paris Opéra, numerous dances, choruses and arias were dropped for reasons of practicality. These are restored in the present recording which also includes the stunning finale of the shorter 1831 version of the opera.

Benjamin Carr (1768-1831) was born in London. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1793. Carr was prolific as a composer, writing operas, pantomimes, masses, sacred hymns and anthems, many songs, and a prodigious amount of music for organ and pianoforte. Kirsten Johnson is a pianist, composer and recording artist of international acclaim. She has recorded 18 albums of solo piano music with Centaur, Nimbus, Delos and Guild. This includes the complete piano music of Arthur Foote, James Hewitt and Amy Beach, and world premiere recordings of Albanian piano music and Dmitri Kabalevskys op. 1. Kirstens compositions have been played around the world. Brno, for cello and piano, was performed at the Festival OSMOSE in Brussels, Belgium. Flute Vibes was premiered at Exeter College, Oxford, U.K. The premiere of Remembrance, Journey and Dance (in a version for clarinet, bassoon and piano) was given in New York City by Vent Nouveau. Dr. Johnson received her Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, conducting much of her research in Albania and in the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

Classical hits from one of the world’s great orchestras: a fabulous introduction to the world of music at a super-budget price. Zadok the Priest was written in 1727 for the Coronation of King George II, but it’s now more familiar to millions of football fans as the anthem for the Champions League. You may never have listened to a Wagner opera, but if you’ve seen Apocalypse Now, you’ll know The Ride of the Valkyries. Composing a slow movement for a string quartet, Samuel Barber could hardly have imagined that his Adagio would tap so deeply into universal feelings of grief and reflection once it had become known as his Adagio for strings and used in countless TV programmes and film soundtracks. Classical music is everywhere, and on this 4-album set you can enjoy more than 40 of the most thrilling and powerful pieces ever written. The music in this collection is full of stories. A misty sea voyage off the coast of Scotland (The Hebrides, by Mendelssohn); a dazzling Russian coronation scene (The Great Gate of Kiev, by Mussorgsky); a young woman comforting her old father (O mio babbino caro, by Puccini); a dawn over Egypt (Morning Mood, by Grieg) as well as a display of the Egyptian empire in all its glory (Triumphal March, by Verdi) and all its brutality (Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, also by Verdi). Great music transcends place and time.

Germany’s oldest Mozart festival celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021. The present jubilee boxed set presents previously unpublished treasures from the archive of the Bavarian Broadcasting. All live recordings from the Baroque Imperial Hall at Würzburg Residence are digital remasters.

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the first release of Alexander Brailowsky’s complete RCA Victor recordings, many of them never before available in the digital medium.

Born in 1896 in Kiev, Brailowsky studied at the conservatory in his native city, then part of the Russian empire. In 1911, he went to Vienna to become a pupil of the legendary Theodor Leschetizky, who taught many of the 20th century’s outstanding pianists. During World War I Brailowsky also studied with Busoni in Switzerland, and in 1919 made his debut in Paris. Five years later came his first appearance in New York where he settled, then making regular coast-to-coast tours of North America while continuing to visit Europe.

There was one composer with whom Alexander Brailowsky was associated throughout his career – and has remained associated through recordings since his death in 1976: Frederic Chopin. Brailowsky was the first pianist to present Chopin’s entire 169 solo works as a cycle, performing this feat before capacity audiences in New York, Brussels, Zurich, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Paris. At the end of his 1938 Chopin series in New York, one reviewer noted that “there are few enough pianists who have the prodigious memory, the physical strength, the comprehensive technique required for such an undertaking; there are far fewer who have – plus all these – the requisite musicianship. Mr. Brailowsky is one of these latter few.”

Not surprisingly, Sony Classical’s new comprehensive reissue of Brailowsky’s RCA albums largely comprises music by Chopin. Both piano concertos are included – No. 1 with William Steinberg conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra in 1949 and No. 2 with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1954. High Fidelity later wrote of these two performances: “Brailowsky’s energetically contoured, sharply etched clarity represents an emerging modernity of outlook that points to present-day Chopin players.” The set also features Brailowsky’s two traversals of the Waltzes, as well as his complete recordings of the Etudes, Preludes, and Nocturnes, plus Sonatas Nos. 2 and 3, the Ecossaises, and Berceuse. Of Brailowsky’s Nocturnes recording, Gramophone’s reviewer wrote: “He could sing beautifully at the keyboard. His nocturnes as a whole have a touching humanity and simplicity … The mono RCA sound is quite velvety.”