BIS Records - Spring 2025
Over 300 titles from BIS Records are on sale now!
Founded in 1973, BIS Records is one of the most highly respected classical labels in the world, praised for the sound quality of its recordings and for the versatility and variety of its catalogue, which to date includes more than 1700 titles.
BIS Records has established themselves as one of today’s leading independent classical labels, with a strong focus on Scandinavian and Baltic composers and landmark projects including the complete works of Sibelius and the Suzuki Bach cantata series.
Shop the sale before it ends at 9:00am ET on Tuesday, June 24, 2025.
362 products
J.S. Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2
Seicento Stravagante - Violino over cornetto
Souvenirs
Torroba: La Voz de la Guitarra
Futrell: Stabat Mater
J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations (arr. Robin O'Neill)
Arnold, Horovitz, Stanford & Finzi
Ridderstolpe: Untold Tales
Hosokawa: Awakening
Sorabji: Vocal & Chamber Works
Beethoven: Piano Trios, Vol. 3 / Sitkovetsky Trio
Liszt: Faust Symphony / Madaras, Liège RPO
Rautavaara & Aho: Joy & Asymmetry / Schweckendiek, Helsinki Chamber Choir
Elgar: Mot d’Amour
Mahler: Symphony No. 3 / Johnston, Vänskä, Minnesota Orchestra
Stravinsky: Symphonies, Vol. 1 / Slobodeniouk, Galicia Symphony
Poltera Plays Prokofiev
Brahms: String Quintets / Maijala, Gringolts Quartet
Johannes Brahms's soul shines through in his chamber music. Following in the footsteps of Mozart and Schubert, Brahms wrote two string quintets that rank among his greatest chamber music masterpieces. He took up this genre rather late in life, but in it he was able to express both the joy and the nostalgia he carried with him into his maturity. The Quintet in F major, Op. 88, held a special place in the composer's heart, and he considered it to be his finest work. A bucolic spirit and a gentle joie de vivre pervade the work, sometimes referred to as the 'spring quintet'. A majestic, pastoral first movement testifies to this cheerfulness, followed by a melancholy movement before the spirited finale. The Quintet in G major, Op. 111, also radiates vigour, expressing the composer's strength, nostalgia and exuberance. With echoes of Viennese folk music, the piece has been referred to as the 'Prater quintet', a reference to the famous Viennese park.
These two deep and melancholic works are played by the Gringolts Quartet, whose previous recordings for BIS, particularly those devoted to Arnold Schoenberg's quartets, have won high praise, and who are joined by sought-after Finnish violist Lilli Maijala.
REVIEWS:
There’s a wealth of characterization within this richly unified, bronze-dark ensemble. A deep-dug, chunky tone, often quite rugged, is offset by moments of intense sweetness, as well as great delicacy and refinement.
— BBC Music Magazine
The players adapt effortlessly to the disparate range of styles Brahms melds into a coherent unity.
— MusicWeb International
Henselt & Bronsart: Piano Concertos / Paul Wee, Collins, Swedish Chamber Orchestra
After three solo recordings, virtuoso pianist Paul Wee brings us two forgotten concertos from the Romantic period with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Michael Collins.
Premièred by Clara Schumann under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn, Adolph von Henselt’s Concerto in F minor was eventually performed by the greatest virtuosos of the 19th and 20th centuries. It has, however, inexplicably disappeared from the repertoire despite its obvious qualities: soaring melodies and tender lyricism, colorful orchestration, dramatic intensity across its three movements and piano writing of astounding inventiveness and brilliance.
The familiarity between Henselt’s concerto and some of Sergei Rachmaninoff's works can be explained by the profound influence that the German composer exerted on the Russian. Hans von Bronsart’s Concerto in F sharp minor did not enjoy the same public acclaim, although it is rousing, intimate and electrifying in turns. The richness of its orchestration is matched by an uncommonly brilliant piano part that is a model of practical virtuosity. Breathing late-Romanticism, it requires a soloist to embrace its superheated Romantic language unashamedly if its passions are to take flight.
REVIEWS:
Paul Wee’s fingers dance with clarity and delight around the keyboard. He and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Michael Collins, have an excellent rapport.
— BBC Music Magazine
There is no question that Wee and his cohorts do a tremendous job in bringing these works to life. Wee has warmth and a Romantic stain that encompasses steel along with the requisite limpid lyricism and sparkling decoration. In short, Wee is a pianist you need to hear, whatever the context.
— Limelight
Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 34-36 / Collins, Philharmonia Orchestra
Although Mozart composed them in his early twenties, the three symphonies presented here can in no way be regarded as early works. Written around the time of his departure from Salzburg for Vienna, these symphonies show that Mozart could deliver attractive, varied, orchestrally colourful and characterful music to suit a variety of public tastes. They also show a young and ambitious composer seeking to forge an impregnable reputation in Europe’s musical capital city. These symphonies truly opened a new chapter in Mozart’s symphonic output, as he demonstrated his absolute mastery of orchestral writing. In addition to the three symphonies as we know them, this recording also includes a minuet that may have been intended to form part of Symphony No. 34.
These three symphonies are performed here by the Philharmonia Orchestra, an ensemble that has performed them with the greatest conductors throughout its almost 80-year history. Here the conductor is the eminent Mozartian Michael Collins, whose recordings, notably that devoted to the Austrian composer’s clarinet concerto and quintet, have earned him the highest praise.
REVIEWS:
As a poetic exponent of Mozart’s music for clarinet, Michael Collins, unsurprisingly, shapes all three slow movements with a natural feeling for Mozartian line. His flowing tempos sound spot on.
— GramophoneThere is always room in the Mozart discography for new recordings of this stature.
— BBC Music Magazine
Visée: Theorbo Solo / Jakob Lindberg
12 years after his album entitled ‘Italian Virtuosi of the Chitarrone’ (BIS-1899), Jakob Lindberg returns to his magnificent theorbo, specially built for him by the luthier Michael Lowe, based on an instrument preserved in the Musée de la Musique in Paris.
One of the most spectacular instruments of the early baroque owing to its length and great number of strings, the theorbo was originally designed to accompany the voice but is also ideally suited to solo performance.
For this disc, Lindberg has chosen pieces by Robert de Visée, one of the great French masters of the lute, theorbo, and guitar repertoire and a favorite of Louis XIV. The recording features dances as well as character pieces, including a moving ‘Plainte’ in memory of his two deceased daughters. It also includes de Visée’s arrangements of compositions by Lully, Couperin, and Purcell as well as his own version of Les Folies d’Espagne, a very popular chord progression that inspired so many composers of his time.
Jakob Lindberg writes: ‘I can’t help but be seduced by the grace of the instrument’s lines, the resonance of its sonorities, and by the unmistakably French elegance of this remarkable composer.’
Schubert + Krenek / Çakmur
For his series called Schubert+, pianist Can Çakmur juxtaposes the complete major piano solo compositions by the Viennese composer with works by others who were inspired by his music, thus providing the opportunity to see these works in a new light. While making up a near complete anthology of Schubert’s completed major piano music, each disc is also intended as a self-contained recital.
In this third instalment, Çakmur presents not only a work by the 20th-century composer Ernst Krenek but also Krenek’s completion of an unfinished sonata by Schubert. In the process, Krenek assimilated the Schubertian language so well that the result is astonishing. As Çakmur says, ‘I would find it difficult to spot where Schubert ends and Krenek begins if it wasn’t specified in the score.’ Krenek, whose career spanned more than seven decades, was a prolific composer who embraced a host of styles. For his Second Piano Sonata, composed in the 1920s, he pays homage to Schubert by adopting some of his techniques, though the music owes much more to early 20th-century Paris than to 19th-century Vienna. A fascinating and neglected work to be discovered through the prism of Schubert.
Pickard: Symphonies 2 & 6; Verlaine Songs / Brabbins, BBC NoW
John Pickard is best known for his powerful orchestral and instrumental works, and his music has been widely praised for its large-scale sense of architecture and bold handling of an extended tonal idiom.
This recording brings together three works composed over a period of almost forty years, providing a glimpse of the composer's creative range.
The Second Symphony, completed when Pickard was 23, is an extremely impressive and concentrated work. Its starting point was John Hersey’s book Hiroshima, which describes how vegetation quickly reasserted its presence amid the city’s ashes.
The Verlaine Songs feature six poems by the French poet Paul Verlaine. Chosen for their broad range of expression, the poems were grouped in an order that provides dramatic contrast and an overall progression of mood. The cycle was composed for the soprano Emma Tring, with her particular vocal characteristics very much in Pickard’s mind.
The Sixth Symphony, which completes this recording, was composed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and is dedicated to Robert von Bahr, founder of BIS Records. After a first movement dominated by a feeling of unease, the second offers relief from the darkness. This recording was the work’s first performance.
C.P. E. Bach: Instrumental Theatre of Affects / Świątkiewicz, Arte Dei Suonatori
Following their critically acclaimed recording of Johann Gottfried Müthel’s keyboard concertos (BIS-2179), the Polish ensemble Arte dei Suonatori and Marcin Świątkiewicz, who conducts from his instrument, present the six Hamburg symphonies by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, interspersed with solo fantasias for keyboard.
C.P.E. Bach's music has always captivated listeners with its diverse atmospheres, captivating melodies, irresistible contrasts, surprising interweaving of voices, eccentric harmonies, and extreme dynamic transitions. These six symphonies showcased here are no exception, demonstrating a truly 'subversive' musical style characterized by extreme contrasts. Due to the richness of their ideas, the virtuosity, and the meticulous compositional work, these works are considered the pinnacle of C.P.E. Bach’s oeuvre.
As these symphonies can be viewed as intimate chamber music, they are performed here by a compact ensemble where each musician participates in the interpretation on an equal footing, ensuring that everyone is heard. Through historically oriented performance practices, the Hamburg symphonies and fantasias of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach regain the impact they originally had, inspiring awe and moving hearts.
Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 / Masato Suzuki
Described as the ‘Pianists’ Old Testament’, The Well-Tempered Clavier is a collection of pieces of exceptional artistic quality. No other work from the baroque period has been as valued, performed and studied as this collection whose objectives were musical, theoretical and didactic.
Both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier feature a prelude and fugue in each of the 12 semitones of the chromatic scale, covering each of the 24 major and minor modes – a unique body of works. No two preludes or fugues are alike; they display the full range of contrapuntal devices, while the preludes offer an infinite variety of melodic, rhythmic and constructional possibilities. Each of these pieces demonstrates a mastery of counterpoint that never takes precedence over emotion, beauty and aesthetics. With the two books of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Bach established himself as the unrivalled master of the fugue genre.
Following his recordings of Bach’s concertos for one and two harpsichords (BIS-2041, BIS 2051 and BIS-2481), which reviewers have praised for his unaffected playing and acute musicianship, Masato Suzuki now offers us his take on this Bach monument.
