Hailed by the international music press and highly praised by music connoisseurs, the recordings of Bach’s entire body of vocal music made by the Bach Collegium Japan (BCJ), its conductor Masaaki Suzuki, and numerous prestigious soloists, many of whom have remained remarkably loyal to the undertaking from the outset, are here brought together to form the only complete set of these works in Hybrid SACD format.

Suzuki’s aim with these works is to deliver ‘a message which can touch the human heart, regardless of nationality or cultural tradition’. Thus, he delivers performances characterized by particular attention to natural phrasing and timbral homogeneity in the service of transparency, finely articulated expression without affectation, and a balanced dialogue between voices and instruments.

In addition to its 78 discs, which include sacred and secular cantatas, the two Passions, the Christmas, Easter, and Ascension Oratorios, the Mass in B minor, the motets, the Magnificat, the Lutheran Masses, as well as songs and alternative movements, this box set includes four booklets providing essays about the music (in English, German, and French) by world-renowned experts on the music, as well as all the sung texts (in German and English translation).

After two albums devoted to Italian music from the 17th and 18th centuries (BIS-2585 and BIS-2645), male soprano Nicolo Balducci now offers us a recital devoted to the greatest representatives of Viennese Classicism - Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven - in the company of the fortepianist Anna Paradiso, whom we recently heard in a recording devoted to the work of Caroline Ridderstolpe together with mezzo-soprano Kristina Hammarstrom (BIS-2675). The vocal compositions gathered here, which include such rarities as two songs in French by Beethoven, are performed by a male soprano - in many cases the first time they have been recorded by this voice type. This original approach by the two performers makes it possible 'to explore unusual nuances, both in the interpretation and in the "soundscape" of this music, and to find new angles of inspiration in our interpretations' (Balducci). The combination of high voice and fortepiano emphasises the link between sound and words, with a dimension closer to chamber music, inspired by the specific timbre of the instruments. 'One of the fascinating aspects of the pieces on this recording is the power of their rhetorical expression', writes Paradiso. Balducci and Paradiso invite us here to be entertained and moved and to discover 'glimpses of intimate connections and shared secrets'.

Bach's music has always attracted arrangers and orchestrators - such as Stokowski, Elgar and Busoni, to name just three. Regardless of it's original version, Bach's music has an expressive power, drama and architectural logic that lend themselves well to expanded orchestral sonorities. Bassoonist and conductor Robin O'Neill buried his head in the Goldberg Variations, which he had discovered through Glenn Gould's recordings, during the first months of the Covid lockdown. Soon after that, the idea of making an arrangement for orchestra began to obsess him as he began hearing instrumental and orchestral sonorities in the keyboard work. Since the main challenge was to reclothe the music without damaging the subtle intricacy of the piece, and after much thought and experimentation, O'Neill chose instruments that Bach himself would have recognized for the solo parts. His reinterpretation of the Goldberg Variations offers a mixture of full orchestral variations interspersed with concertante ones involving two, three or four solo instruments, at times close to St Matthew Passion-style writing. Completed during a difficult period, this arrangement was made, in the words of O'Neill, in the hope that it expresses the joy and solace that Bach's music gives both performer and listener.

After tackling Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Schoenberg and Hindemith, Ulf Wallin and Roland Pontinen now focus their attention to the late-romantic English composer Edward Elgar. 'Mot d'amour', which takes it's title from one of his early compositions for violin, presents a substantial part of Elgar's output for violin and piano, which spans his entire career. Best known for his symphonic and choral works, Elgar is also the composer of chamber works that, although few in number, attain a high standard. The Violin Sonata, a mature composition contemporary with his two other major chamber pieces, is regarded by Elgar connoisseurs as one of his masterpieces. Inspired by Brahms's sonatas, Elgar's own, composed in the peaceful surroundings of his rented cottage in the countryside, is a work of wide expressive range and emotional impact in which every superfluous note has been eliminated from the overall design. As for the other pieces that appear here, they show a lighter side to the composer, sometimes playful, sometimes melancholy. Unashamedly belonging to the genre of salon music, these works testify to Elgar's versatility as well as to his melodic gift and his ability to turn a seemingly light genre into a vehicle for secret emotion, often charming but always devoid of sentimentality.

Originally from northern California, Tyler Futrell is an eclectic Oslo-based composer. His music attempts to synthesise almost contradictory historical branches yet his goal remains to write coherent music combining intellectual interest and perceptual fascination. His influences include musique concrete instrumentale, sacred minimalism, late romanticism, spectral music, formalism, and contemporary choreography and theatre. Tyler Futrell's Stabat Mater immerses us in the rich history of this religious text. Preserving the melancholic beauty of the Stabat Mater settings composed over the last 600 years, Futrell exposes aspects that have previously been obscured and incorporates the concept of the glorification of suffering more generally, alluding to Samuel Barber's Adagio. A modern take on a sacred text, and music that raises such questions as 'why so beautiful?' and 'can we tolerate this beauty?' Two other works by Futrell are also included. Vuggesang - 'lullaby' in Norwegian - is a meditative piece directly linked to a quotation from Brahms's famous piece in the Stabat Mater. Brittle Fluid is also thematically and causally linked to the Stabat Mater. The title evokes a frozen waterfall, and the composer wanted to represent something both static and dynamic in which death is also present, inspired by Tarjei Vesaas's novel The Ice Palace.

After his latest recording, devoted to Bach's Sonatas and Partitas in his own arrangement, Franz Halasz returns to Spanish music with this recital devoted to Federico Moreno Torroba. The composer of many of the best-known zarzuelas, Moreno Torroba did not initially seem destined to specialise in guitar music. It was his symphonic poems that caught the attention of the legendary guitarist Andres Segovia, who commissioned Moreno Torroba's first compositions for guitar despite the composer's unfamiliarity with the instrument. The compositions gathered here showcase a composer who, although deeply rooted in the Spanish musical tradition, was attuned to what was being done elsewhere, including the music of Claude Debussy and Igor Stravinsky, and who created a personal language marked by impressionism that would later influence guitar music throughout the twentieth century, from Heitor Villa-Lobos to Leo Brouwer. The winner of a Latin Grammy, Franz Halasz is a highly acclaimed guitarist who has himself contributed to the repertoire of his instrument by making arrangements of Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albeniz. On a guitar built in 1936 by the legendary luthier Hermann Hauser, Halasz turns the instrument into a multi-faceted prism through which the musician can 'break the light of music' into orchestral sound, in the words of Segovia.

After Alec Frank-Gemmill's critically acclaimed recordings of nineteenth-century works for horn and piano (BIS-2228), chamber music by Brahms (BIS-2478) and pre-Mozart horn concertos (BIS-2315), a version of Mozart's famous horn concertos from him has been eagerly awaited. As on his disc of concertante works, he is accompanied here by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra conducted by an expert in 18th-century style, Nicholas McGegan. Mozart's relationship with the Viennese horn player Joseph Leutgeb was both a friendly and a musical one, and most of the works here were written especially for him. Spanning some ten years, from 1781 to the composer's death, the four standard concertos and other fragments follow Mozart's stylistic development, and are thus contemporary with the operatic trilogy with libretti by Da Ponte, the final symphonies and the last piano concertos. Elegant, refined and suave, the horn concertos take advantage of the unique colours of this instrument and do not shy away from the it's traditional associations with the postal service and hunting. In addition to Mozart's four 'official' concertos, this recording also includes movements left in draft form, completed and restored by the composer and horn-player Stephen Roberts, giving us a further work here named 'Concerto No. 0'.

Starring The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Solveig Kringelborn, Swedish Radio Choir.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

In this final volume of Mozart's complete piano concertos, Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie, listeners are treated to Mozart's very earliest attempts in the genre. In these works, young Mozart expands his existing sonata movements into proper concertos, many believe this was a task given to him by his father, Leopold. After a few years, Mozart adopted a more mature approach to the concertos but still used arrangements of sonatas as inspiration. "An ideal mixture of clarity and stylish effervescene" - International Record Review

Classical Music

The lute by Sixtus Rauwolf heard on this recording was probably built in the last decade of the sixteenth century. Some hundred years later, in 1715, it was converted to suit the musical tastes and demands of the baroque period. For this disc, Jakob Lindberg has chosen works that could have formed part of the repertory of the presumably German owner of the instrument at around the time of its final conversion. For German lutenists from about the middle of the seventeenth century, it was France that provided the aesthetic and musical model, and towards the end of the century, when the lute rather suddenly and inexplicably dropped out of fashion in Paris certain French luthistes travelled abroad and met with great success in German-speaking lands. With them, they took their music and special traditions of lute-playing, evidence of which can be seen in the music of several of the German composers included here. The release closes with a suite of pieces by Silvius Leopold Weiss, the most famous lutenist of the baroque era.

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REVIEWS:

He is stately and expressive in Reusner’s Padoana while seizing upon the extravagant trills and strums evoked by the Dufault and the elegant deportment of the Mouton. Lindberg similarly relishes the toccata-like textures, bittersweet harmonies and melodic attractiveness of Kellner.

– Gramophone

The Rauwolf highlights the variegated colours of the music (far more than a modern lute could), and its lower courses have a plangent resonance…Given pride of place at the end of this parade is Silvius Leopold Weiss, whose music Bach admired and arranged. Lindberg luxuriates in Weiss’s rich and varied style…The recording – like the instrument itself – is velvety and intimate.

– BBC Music Magazine

This is a Super Audio CD playable only on Super Audio CD players.

Includes cto(s) for hpsch by Carl Philipp Emman. Bach. Ensemble: Concerto Armonico. Conductor: Miklós Spányi. Soloist: Miklós Spányi.

The works gathered here hail from two different sets of string quartets: the four so-called Solo Quartets by Franz Anton Hoffmeister and Gioachino Rossini’s six String Sonatas. Both sets differ from the ‘normal’ configuration in that they allow a double bass to take part, albeit in different ways. Rossini, who composed his sonatas at the age of 12, left out the viola and gave the double bass a more or less conventional bass role – albeit with occasional virtuosic outbursts. The sonatas were first published in an arrangement for traditional string quartet and are often heard performed by string orchestras. In Vienna, where he was active as a composer and music publisher, Hoffmeister chose a different solution than Rossini and gave his double bass player a leading role in the ensemble, letting it replace the first violin. It was no coincidence that this happened in Vienna – considering the amount of solo works for the double bass composed there, the standard of playing must have been exceptional. On the present recording, it is the Dutch player Niek de Groot who takes up Hoffmeister’s challenge in the company of a Finnish trio consisting of Minna Pensola, Antti Tikkanen and Tuomas Lehto. Niek de Groot has also edited the score of the first of the Hoffmeister quartets, which is here recorded for the first time.