The most complete collection ever issued of the Dutch Minimalist master, including the famous Canto Ostinato but also many previously unreleased recordings, all made by a pianist with an international reputation in the field of Minimalism. ‘Given his music’s virtuoso demands, and its spirituality, it is tempting to call him the Franz Liszt of minimalism.’ This assessment of Simeon Ten Holt by an American reviewer points to Ten Holt’s originality, his industry and his influence over modern Minimalism in the generations after its 1960s birth in America.

As with Liszt in Weimar during the 1850s and 60s, many paths have led to and from Ten Holt’s music. It has long been recognised that with Canto Ostinato, his flexible sequence of 92 variations on a simple bass-line, Ten Holt built a masterpiece to stand alongside the likes of In C by Terry Riley, and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. However, this box-set shows how much more there is to Ten Holt.

The boy Simeon was introduced to the world of music by hearing his father play the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata one night, and from then on he was entranced by the possibilities of stretching time through patterns. Late in life, he remarked: ‘I am the time, and I have the time.’ This box traces his development as has never been possible before, from the early untitled Compositions, comparable to the Abstract Expressionist canvases of the time, through miniatures such as sets of Epigrams and Aphorisms, to the triumph of Canto Ostinato, and then far beyond, to the mystical cycles of Lemniscaat, Horizon and finally the renewed vigour of Eadem Sed Aliter (‘The Same but Different’), a late piece which, as the composer remarked, ‘takes away the limits of the concepts of ‘beginning’ and ‘ending’, ‘before’ and ‘after’.’

As he explains in a personal introduction, Jeroen van Veen first encountered the music of Ten Holt as a child, listening to the radio to (as he discovered much later) the premiere of Horizon: ‘the notes melted together to create such a rich tapestry of colour.’ He has since performed Canto Ostinato and the rest of Van Veen’s music many times and in many countries, and in 2001 he became the founder chair of the Simeon Ten Holt Foundation. His performances, as recognised by critics in publications worldwide, are beautifully recorded and bear the stamp of complete authority in this music.

Brilliant Classics have celebrated the 150th Anniversary of Reger’s birth last year by expanding their Reger Collection of a decade ago from 11 to 18 CDs. Added to the original set, which presented Reger’s best known works – the glorious orchestral Böcklin Suite, the Mozart, Beethoven and Hiller Variations, the mighty piano and violin concertos, the beautiful clarinet quintet (not in the least inferior to Brahms’ masterpiece), the complete Chorale Fantasias for organ (Reger, an organist himself, wrote extensively and superbly for his instrument) and a fine selection of choral music – is a new set of chamber music including the Piano Trio, Flute-Violin-Viola Serenades, Clarinet–Piano Sonatas and other works, and Reger’s compositions for solo viola and for solo cello. The transparency of the chamber music genre particularly highlights the composer’s absolute mastery of counterpoint. Also new is an expanded keyboard section, with more works for the organ – so associated with Reger – including the Sonatas and Fantasy–Fugues, and a new solo piano CD recorded in 2023 by Eden Walker featuring Dreams by the Fireside and the Bach Variations and Fugue.

During his lifetime, Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) was best known as an organ composer. He wrote more than two hundred pieces for the instrument, both liturgical and secular, and explored most of the genres that existed at the time. He is considered to be the apex of the 17th century’s south German organ school and generally one of the most important composers of the middle Baroque. His sphere of activity included central and southern Germany (modern Bavaria, Thuringia and Stuttgart), as well as important formative years in Vienna in his early 20s, during which he absorbed the Habsburg Empire’s dominant Italian and south German influences. The southern organ-builders’ emphasis on manual divisions is also apparent in much of Pachelbel’s liturgical organ music, which is relatively simple and written for manuals only. With this 13-disc set covering Pachelbel’s pivotal contributions to the chorale prelude, fugue and variation forms, internationally acclaimed organist Simone Stella adds another milestone to his already prolific discography of baroque keyboard music surveys on Brilliant Classics.

REVIEW:

The organ used here has much greater possibilities in variety of tonal colors, and Stella uses it to fine effect in the many fugues and chorale variations – and, it must be said, the music is in need of it. Pachelbel’s technique for toccatas is also consistent; based on pedal notes, the keyboard figurations of parallel 3rds, 6ths and 10ths predominate. Although not difficult to improvise, Pachelbel is always surprising in his modulatory shifts and textural changes.

-- Choir & Organ

Born around 1570, Christian Erbach apparently pursued the career of a musician from his earliest years. By his early 30s he had taken over organist positions in Augsburg previously held by the better known Hans Leo Hassler (the subject of another unrivaled compendium by Manuel Tomadin on Brilliant Classics, 95331). Like Hassler, Erbach was evidently influenced as a composer by Italian and in particular Venetian flavors of polychoral and effervescent writing even in his instrumental output. The predominant forms in this set are toccatas, canzonas and ricercars, as well as instrumental ‘settings’ of the Magnificat and the Ordinary of the Mass for liturgical use. Erlebach himself must have been an organist of tremendous flourish and with an ear for liturgical theatre, to judge from the colorful array of textures he demands in his music. Both his music and his renown as a teacher exercised a formative influence over the next two generations of German organ music – from which eventually emerged its own dominant figure, Johann Sebastian Bach (who also looked over to the other side of the Alps for stylistic inspiration).

In an extensive booklet introduction to Erlebach’s life and works, the organist Manuel Tomadin makes available much research otherwise unavailable in English. He has chosen to make this comprehensive set on a selection of organs in northern Italy and Austria, all of them equipped with the registral possibilities to make the composer’s music sing in its own language, and several of them dating from Erlebach’s own time, based in Bologna, Mantova, Pistoia and farther afield. All the instruments are illustrated in the booklet with color photographs and a detailed registration plan, making the set invaluable for both organ buffs and any listener with a broader interest in the German Baroque.

Definitive recordings by the leading Frescobaldi performer of our time, now more conveniently packaged than ever.

In 2007, Roberto Loreggian embarked on a project that would see him record every published work by Girolamo Frescobaldi. Issued as a box in 2011, the Frescobaldi Edition was widely recognised as establishing a new standard of textual authority and interpretative understanding for a composer whose own works have never been as appreciated as much as their influence on his successors. Then, in 2022, came a new set which committed to disc for the first time all the surviving unpublished music composed by Frescobaldi and recovered from obscure sources by Etienne Darbellay and Costanze Frey. All these recordings are now coupled with the keyboard collections from the earlier set, to present the most complete collection ever issued of Frescobaldi’s works for harpsichord and organ, both sacred and secular.

This CD set presents the complete organ works and complete harpsichord works by Frescobaldi, an immense collection of Ricercars, Toccatas, Canzoni, Fantasias and Capriccios, played on historic instruments or copies of these.

Played by the eminent Italian Roberto Loreggian, an Early Music specialist with an impressive discography to his name. The recordings in this set were previously issued separately.

Jeroen van Veen has won international success with albums of Satie, Part, Glass and Riley. These are only some of the most significant composers whose work he has recorded for Brilliant Classics in building a library on record of minimalist piano music. Simplicity, repetition and appealing melody are the qualities shared by all the composers who subscribe to this aesthetic, and they underlie van Veen’s own compositions. Although subtitled Volume 2, this is the third album to focus exclusively on the pianist as composer. Books 1 and 2 of his Minimal Piano Preludes were reissued in 2016, and won high praise from MusicWeb International. Further preludes feature in a release of his piano music, and this sequel takes us up to Minimal Prelude No.60, a ‘tango for organ’. “All my music is about time and space,” says van Veen. “The duration of music is an essential part of the concept in my music. The concept of music, specifically my minimal oriented music, only can exist in time. The slow progression, building of the material, the motifs and the search for new sounds is audible in this [album].” All the works featured here were composed between 2010 and 2018. Continuum is a concertante work for piano and flute octet. Incanto is another album-length piece, entirely composed in an unusual 11/8 time signature. Ripalmania is written for six pianos, a scoring which creates an entrancing effect. In Velvet Piano van Veen explores the timbral possibilities of pianos prepared with objects after the style of John Cage, though without the American composer’s aim of disconcerting the listener. The final portion of the release is a celebration of minimalist jazz, in which the border between composition and improvisation almost vanishes.

What would it mean to 'compose like a woman'? The present collection answers the question, in a literal sense, while undoing the premise on which the question was asked in the first place. In social and historical terms, it means enjoying privileges of upbringing, education, and/or wealth that were historically denied to the vast majority of women. It means, on the part of the women represented here, a single-minded determination in pursuit of their vocation, helping them to overcome prejudice and sexism in a cultural, social and political milieu that has consistently denied women the opportunity to find and express their own voice in music. Only with movements of emancipation in the last century, and much more rapidly in the last 50 years, has this situation begun to be addressed and corrected. What composing like a woman does not mean - as the music in this collection makes clear - is a definable set of qualities or characteristics to the music itself which would distinguish the work of female composers from the music composed by men.

This remarkable set gathers many individual recordings of music by women composers, which Brilliant Classics has quietly yet actively championed in their catalogue for decades, uniting it with exciting new outings, so that a comprehensive historical picture of the highly varied struggles and successes of women composers through the ages to our present time are chronicled and celebrated.

Other information:

- Recordings date from 1994-2024

- Booklet in English contains liner notes by Peter Quantrill

- The revival of interest in female classical composers reflects a growing recognition of their overlooked contributions to music history.

For centuries, women composers were marginalized, their works overshadowed by their male counterparts. However, recent efforts by musicians, scholars, and institutions have brought these composers into the spotlight, highlighting the richness and diversity of their compositions.

- This renewed focus stems from a broader movement toward inclusivity in the arts, challenging traditional narratives that have historically excluded women. The rise of feminist musicology has also played a key role, offering fresh perspectives on these composers' lives and works.

- This comprehensive box set offers a wide spectrum of works by female composers, from the Medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179), through the Renaissance Isabella Leonarda (baptized 1620-1704), Francesca Caccini (1587-1640) und Barbara Strozzi (baptized 1619-1677), traversing the Baroque and Classical eras, and arriving in the contemporary field, with composers such as Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) and Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969).

- A long due homage to the art and voice of female composers, spanning nearly a thousand years!

This is the most comprehensive collection ever released of Giuseppe Martucci’s music, in stylish modern recordings by native Italian musicians.

An Italian Brahms is an unlikely idea, but it encapsulates a superficial acquaintance with the music of Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909). Any listener curious to take a deeper dive into the richly Romantic melodies and impassioned large-scale structures of Martucci will find no better place to start than this survey of his major works in every instrumental genre.

Martucci was an accomplished pianist, received with great enthusiasm on tours of France, Germany, and England, and the tremendous sweep of his Piano Concerto loses nothing by comparison with far more familiar examples. Brought to life here by Alberto Miodini, the piano music, too, is intensely wrought, but it never loses a preeminence of melody which was Martucci’s heritage.

In 1888 he conducted the Italian premiere of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; his song-cycle La canzone dei Ricordi, written a year earlier, is the closest he came to translating the opera’s chromatic eroticism into his own music, and this box affords the opportunity to hear the piece in both its orchestral and piano versions; no less enlightening than (for example) the distinct versions of the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss.

Disc 10 collects Martucci’s other songs for soprano, such as the remarkable Pagine sparse of 1888. Other highlights of the set include Martucci’s deep investment in chamber music, resulting in piano trios, violin and cello sonatas, and a magnificently brooding Piano Quintet, again in the Brahmsian mold.

Giovanni Battista Martini (1706-1784) was born in Bologna, in that era part of the Papal States. His father, Antonio Maria Martini, a violinist, taught him the elements of music and the violin and he later learned singing and harpsichord playing and the art of counterpoint from Giacomo Antonio Perti. Having received his education in classics from the priests of the "Congregation of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri”, he became a priest himself in 1722. In 1725, though only nineteen years old, he received the appointment of chapel-master at the Basilica of San Francesco in Bologna, where his compositions attracted attention. At the invitation of amateurs and professional friends he opened a school of composition at which several celebrated musicians were trained; as a teacher he consistently declared his preference for the traditions of the old Roman school of composition. Martini was a zealous collector of musical literature, and possessed an extensive musical library, estimated at 17,000 volumes. Among his many students was…Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who held him in high regard and always spoke fondly of him. “Padre” Martini, as he was called, wrote an immense oeuvre of more than 2500 works, many of them sacred vocal works. His keyboard works include more than 100 sonatas.

This new recording presents the complete organ works of Martini, consisting mainly of Sonatas, but also shorter pieces like fugues, toccatas and preludes. In his earlier works Martini adopted the style of his illustrious predecessors, the masters of Baroque counterpoint, later he wrote in a less learned, more elegant and “pleasant” style, according to the demands of his audience. Played on a variety of historic Italian organs from the 18th century by Manuel Tomadin, one of the foremost Italian organists of today, a scholar and passionate musician, with an impressive discography to his name.

REVIEW:

Scholar, bibliophile, musicologist, teacher, composer: the life of Giovanni Battista Martini was divided between faith and scores. After brilliant studies, he was admitted to orders at the Monastery of San Francesco in his native Bologna. He became chapel master at just nineteen years old. It was from there that he corresponded with luminaries of the time, where he taught for five decades without asking for remuneration, to students from all over Europe. A certain W.A. Mozart took lessons (a CD by Stefano Molardi from Divox paid tribute to this meeting). A selfless, affable, modest person - revered as such. And prolific: sacred music of course, but also symphonies, and numerous keyboard pages.

Until now, however, the discography had not panicked around the organ work of Padre Martini, sporadically included in the 18th century anthologies of gallant style. Few albums are entirely dedicated to him...As in his box sets covering works by Johann Ludwig Krebs, Hans Leo Hassler and Christian Erbach on the same label, Manuel Tomadin sees broad and dares long-distance running, total immersion: nothing less than an announced complete works edition, here a dozen hours on the clock; a treasure hunt. We do not know according to what criteria the works were distributed over the nine discs, but the fact remains that the allocation optimizes the timings (78'47, 75'15, 77'42, 79'32, 77'41 , 79'09, 75'23, 78'36, 75'41).

The two large collections of sonatas [Op. 2 and Op. 3] are there, except that the fifth of opus 3, dedicated to the harpsichord, does not appear...The rest provides a harvest of sweet Sonata sui flauti, Toccatas, Elevazioni, (simili) solemn Pieni, but also liturgical contributions...

...the exhaustive discovery turns out to be addictive...The recipes never tire (we salute here a certain genius for loquacity), the delicacies are renewed, especially as Manuel Tomadin chooses the registrations masterfully. Another incentive for immoderation in listening: the box set alternates locations from one disc to another. No less than nine historic organs from Northern Italy, including five by Gabriel Callido, all built at the end of the settecento except that of Val di Zoldo (1812, the last of this maker), and the Pescetti of Polcenigo, a bit earlier (1732). The distinguished plenitude of the Principals, the enchanting Flutes, the luscious basses, the verbose reeds which take us to the theater: we swoon, especially when the sound recordings flatter the ear like this.

...the desire for completeness did not compromise the care of the production, carried out over only sixteen months. Manuel Tomadin, who is known to be an expert in the less luminous and more austere regions of Northern Germany, here demonstrates a sonic imagination and a Latin volubility which do more than convince...his marathon approach does not prevent perfectionism or preciousness. In this regard, note that the last page of the booklet details the temperature and humidity of each session.

For this great euphonious work and its lively and colorful interpretation, this inexhaustible candy box erects a powerful bulwark against all gloom.

-- Crescendo

The journey towards simplicity so comprehensively charted by Jeroen van Veen’s discography over the past decade begins chronologically with the unique world of Erik Satie. In the quietly unique music of this ever-underrated pioneer lies the seeds of so much that was to come to fruition in the latter half of the last turbulent century. Satie belonged neither to the Impressionists nor the Modernists nor any other school, and it took John Cage and the New York modernists of the 1950s to rediscover him as more than a provocateur or a purveyor of salon trifles. Yet, at much the same time on the other side of the Iron Curtain, Soviet-era composers were starting to chafe against both the tenets of serialism and also the requirements of the State for neo-Romantic hymns to labour and triumph. Arvo Pärt was reaching for the same destination as the American triumvirate of Adams, Glass and Reich, only from the other end of the stylistic spectrum. The English critic and composer Michael Nyman first used the term ‘Minimalism’ in print, and it stuck. The last 40 years have witnessed an explosion of popularity and wider interest in a world of music that transcends the four-bar sequences and relentless rhythms of pop, while forsaking the ivory tower of modernism, to offer music that speaks to listeners in search of quiet and stillness, music to meditate by as well as music to stir the blood. And for the last 15 years Jeroen van Veen has recorded much of it in his home studio in the Netherlands, as well as achieving great popular success with performances much farther afield. His recordings have been acclaimed for their nuances of touch as well as their technical command of music demanding formidable reserves of precision and patience.

In 2012-14, these six albums were issued as individual books, in which format they attracted praise both for the depth of their insights and the excellence of the performances: ‘”Elegant” is the word for this production, equally worthy to give or to keep’ Fanfare (Volume 1). This box makes them available once again at a superbudget price, with a new introductory essay by Peter Quantrill in the booklet, and all the original essays republished at brilliantclassics.com. The result is a highly attractive box for both Bach collectors and for newcomers to the inexhaustible treasure-trove that is his output of cantatas.

The selection of repertoire ranges chronologically from early masterpieces such as Christ lag in Todesbanden BWV4 and the Passacaglia BWV582 to the long period of his maturity as Cantor in Leipzig, when Bach wrote five cycles of cantatas for each feast-day in the church calendar. An important feature of Bach in Context is the use of the church organ as both a continuo and solo instrument. Each album opens with a piece of organ music (a Toccata or Prelude) and ends with another voluntary such as the corresponding fugue.

The albums explore resonant themes which run through Bach’s music, in several cases linked by the chorale hymns on which he based organ and vocal fantasias in his cantatas and motets. Led by the experienced Bach performer Pieter-Jan Belder, who has recorded all of the composer’s harpsichord music for Brilliant Classics, these performances feature one voice per part in a tightly knit vocal consort, according to the theories outlined by Joshua Rifkin, and which have since won wide acceptance. The singers are led by Harry van der Kamp, who has recorded cantatas with many other distinguished early-music directors such as Gustav Leonhardt and Ton Koopman.

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