This recording is an invitation to immerse ourselves in the musical inner circle of the Bach family. We are familiar with Johann Sebastian Bach as a composer of genius, but we know little about his family life, with the exception of the famous Clavierbuchlein (Little keyboard book) that the forty-year-old composer gave as a present in 1725 to his second wife Anna Magdalena, his junior by sixteen years. This manuscript is a unique document of the music the family played together. It provides us with a point of reference for the ‘programmes’ of these domestic concerts: it contains short keyboard pieces and songs alongside extended arias taken from the church cantatas, as well as chamber music. Bach and his two eldest sons were not only virtuoso harpsichordists but also excellent violinists, while the composer’s son-in-law Bach, J. C. Altnickol, played the cello and was an outstanding double bass player. Anna Magdalena Bach and her oldest stepdaughter both contributed as singers. And the still young children of the second marriage participated by playing easy pieces on their father’s various keyboard instruments. The musicians and singers on this recording, all eminentexponents of Bach and of Baroque music in general, have come together here to bring these exceptional moments back to life.

Classical Music

The Voce Quartet's first two recordings, devoted to Schubert and then Beethoven, were released to praise from critics such as Telerama and The Strad. This eclectic, innovative quartet is now celebrating it's tenth anniversary by tackling string quintets of Mozart and Brahms. The Brahms quintet, both brilliant and highly moving, recalls some of the composer's best-known themes. Violist Lise Berthaud is called upon to round out the quintet.

Is the imitation of rolling thunder, howling winds and bleating sheep a form of musical composition worthy of the name? Can we take seriously a composer who boasts of being able to 'set a restaurant menu to music, if need be'? These were the kinds of questions that Richard Strauss, one of the most virtuosic composers of the so-called 'programme music', had to ask himself. His answer: 'I am a musician from head to toe; for me, all "programmes" are merely incentives to invent new forms, nothing else.' The NDR Orchestra, conducted by Krzysztof Urbanski, has chosen to devote it's sixth Alpha Classics recording to three of Richard Strauss's most famous symphonic poems: Also sprach Zarathustra op. 30, Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche op. 28 and Don Juan op. 20.

Eric Montalbetti has had a long and fulfilling music career, though not necessarily in the field of composition. He is most known for his 18 year tenure as Artistic director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. However, he began composing as a young child and has continued throughout his whole life. Montalbetti writes of this project: “Today, I am most happy to see my scores taking life thanks to wonderful conductors and soloists, and to develop new composition projects for the future.” In this music one can hear all of our most varied emotions- energy, mourning, hope, love, rage, and gratitude. Notable works on this release include “Trois etudes pares Kandinsky” for piano, and “Esprit tendre,” for oboe, which is a tribute to Helen and Elliott Carter. These works are performed by some of the best soloists in the current French music scene.

The young tenor Reinoud Van Mechelen, whose career is currently in full flower, appears as a guest soloist with today’s leading conductors of Baroque music. He has decided to devote his first solo album to a composer whom he interprets with elegance and contagious joy: Johann Sebastian Bach. The title ‘Erbarme dich’ naturally evokes for music lovers the celebrated alto aria from the St Matthew Passion; but it is also the incipit of a sorrowful, sensuous aria for tenor and flute from the Cantata BWV 55. In fact, a substantial corpus of cantatas written by the Kantor in Leipzig between 1724 and 1726 feature a close dialogue between tenor voice and flute. Bach excels in this art of discourse and enjoys underlining or contradicting the text by sketching with the flute lines full of exacerbated vocality. This art of interweaving voices attracted Reinoud Van Mechelen and the flautist Anna Besson, who have chosen, along with the organist and harpsichordist Benjamin Alard, to structure their programme around Bach arias featuring obbligato organ and traverso. This album marks the birth of the ensemble founded by Reinoud Van Mechelen, A Nocte Temporis, and the start of his collaboration with Alpha, which will extend over several years.

After the success of the Red, Yellow, Blue and Pink collections (a total of 56 reissues), which brought the pearls from the Baroque catalogues of the house labels back into the spotlight, here are fourteen new titles offering a chance to rediscover more Baroque treasures and rarities. Like the last series, this fifth installment also opens up to the Classical (Mozart) or Renaissance (Dufay) repertories - recordings that are an integral part of Alpha's identity and history. This series' reissues are performed by the finest musicians in the field; most of these recordings received one or more awards on their first release. The albums come with proper booklets, including notes in three languages (French, English, German). Photographers from many different backgrounds illustrate the covers of the series with their works: this time the main theme is the color white. The present album features Francis Couperin's Pieces for Harpsichord performed by Blandine Rannou.

'I want to move and be moved. Everything about music is moving'; these are the words in which Wolfgang Rihm once stated his musical credo. His chamber opera Jakob Lenz has in the meantime become one of the most frequently performed works in the 20thcentury German opera repertoire. Based on Georg B�chner's novella about the poet Jakob Lenz's unavoidable decline into madness, Wolfgang Rihm builds a highly charged atmosphere that leads us compellingly to a dramatic denouement. As a result of the wealth of musical styles - ranging from spoken text through Sprechgesang and recitative to fully elaborated coloratura - and of harmonic techniques - atonality, widened tonality and pure tonality - this work is sometimes compared to Berg's Wozzeck. After K�t'a Kabanov� and La Traviata, Andrea Breth is returning to La Monnaie for a radical interpretation of this deeply moving work. After a first recording published by Alpha, dedicated to the Bach family, Georg Nigl is amazing in the main role.

Four musicians among the most talented of their generation join forces to play unknown manuscripts containing unpublished sonatas by Young, Abell and anonymous composers-all this plus the complicity of Thomas Dunford and Jerome van Waerbeke.

The discography of trio of Guillaume de Chassy, Arnault Cuisinier and Thomas Savy treads a path that skirts and blends the edges of jazz improvisation and classical repertoire. With their second release, "Bridges" adds baritone opera star Laurent Naouri in an intriguing collection comprised of Hanns Eisler's Hollywood Songbook, composed in 1943 with texts by his Los Angeles companion-in-exile, Bertolt Brecht with songs filled with nostalgia and suggested a Hollywood far outside the limelight shot through with an expatriate's sorrow. Completing the collection are bold improvisations based on de Chassy's transcriptions of Sergei Prokofiev pieces with added texts by Russian poets including Pushkin, Lermontov, Tsvetaeva among others. Recorded with pristine results in the 13th century Noirlac Abbey.

Jan Van Hoecke presents these transcriptions for recorder and harpsichord, or fortepiano on this new release of J.S. Bach's Trio Sonatas for organ, including BWV 525 and 527-530. With extreme precision and lyricism, Van Hoecke and Jovanka Marville serve Bach's music masterfully. They invite listeners on a capitvating journey, shedding new light on these classics.

Fascinated by the viola, which he chose at the age of eleven after learning the violin for six years, Amihai loves the sound of his instrument, which is so close to the human voice. He also likes the ambivalence of it's timbre, midway between the violin and the cello, which in a sense reflects his own musical education in Israel, with it's combination of Mediterranean influences and Russian and Germanic traditions. Initially a quartet musician and founding member of the famous Jerusalem Quartet, Amihai Grosz now pursues a solo career while holding the post of principal viola of the Berliner Philharmoniker. For this first solo album, he joins forces with pianist Sunwook Kim, the first Asian to win the Leeds International Piano Competition. Together they present a programme coupling Schubert, with the famous Arpeggione Sonata- named after the quickly obsolescent instrument for which it was written, a cross between the guitar and the cello; Shostakovich, with the Viola Sonata op. 147, completed in 1975, only a few weeks before the Russian composer's death; and Yizkor (In memoriam) by the Hungarian-Israeli composer Odon Partos (1907-77).

For it's eighth volume, Haydn2032 invites us on a musical journey that takes the Balkan route. Of all the 'Viennese Classical School', Joseph Haydn is certainly the composer closest to folk music, first because he spent his early years in the countryside and also because, unlike his colleagues who worked in the urban centres of the Habsburg monarchy, Haydn was in contact with Croats, Roma and Hungarians throughout his life. These influences were omnipresent in his music, to the delight of Prince Nikolaus I Esterh�zy and his guests, but by some accounts were not to the taste of many music theorists in Germany. Haydn gave his Symphony no.63 in C major the title of 'La Roxolana', from the famous sixteenth-century sultana who was the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent after having been his slave. As usual, Giovanni Antonini, who is reunited here with Il Giardino Armonico, juxtaposes Haydn's music with that of another composer. The natural choice here was B�la Bart�k, who is represented by his Romanian Folk Dances, composed in 1917.

This Mozart flute quartets recording is the result of a fruitful encounter between the great flautist Juliette Hurel and the Voce Quartet, named Rising Stars for the 2013-14 season by the European Chamber Hall Organization (ECHO). • Composed in Mannheim in the late 1770s, K285/285a are steeped in the concertante, galant style characteristic of the tastes of the Mannheim court at the time. • Some of the quartets would be composed later, in Munich in 1781 (K285b) and Vienna in 1786-7 (the jovial K298), a work in which each movement takes up a familiar tune, which Mozart then either varies or parodies.

Alexander Lonquich performs worldwide in Japan, United States, Australia as well as at the most important European music centers. He is regular guest of prestigious Festivals, such as Salzburg Festival, "Mozartwoche Salzburg", Piano-Festival Ruhr, Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and Lucerne Festival. Alexander Lonquich's performances as soloist & conductor are hailed by the international media and audiences. He regularly appears with the Camerata Salzburg, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova, M�nchener Kammerorchester, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Stuttgart Chamber, the Symphony Orchestra Frankfurt and others. He is also profoundly committed to chamber music. His recordings with oeuvres of Mozart and Schubert for EMI received outstanding reviews and were awarded with prizes, such as "Diapason d'Or" in France, "Premio Abbiati" in Italy and "Premio Edison" in Holland. For this release with Alpha he has chosen works by Schubert, a composer with whom he is extraordinarily comfortable.