The renowned Austrian Ensemble Castor presents the first part of the world premiere recording of Johannes Schenck's complete Op.7. This is the only work�written by Schenck for violin and basso continuo.. Schenck's exciting music is a subtle combination of suites, sonatas, and pieces in the so-called "Stylus phantasicus". The result is�an exquisite blend of elements of the French, Italian, and Dutch style. The pieces show an impressive variety of forms and demand of violin technique and offer a wide range of moods from vivid dances to expressive slow movements. Castor Ensemble is a reknown ensemble that in the past recorded for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi and Pan Classics.

We at Challenge Classics are proud to present the complete edition of Schubert's symphonies in the interpretation offered by Jan Willem de Vriend conducting the Residentie Orkest Den Haag.�-� Even among experts, these symphonies were regarded as second-rate copies of the great Viennese classics. de Vriend's exceptionally fresh and pulsating interpretation, however, decisively corrects the old prejudices and points to Schubert's own emerging symphonic concept (Crescendo - DE - on CC 72739, vol.1 I soon became accustomed to the sheer brio of de Vriend's approach, which included striking variations in volume, decisive accents and many lickety-split finales... combination of delicacy, decisiveness and drive (Fanfare - USA - on CC 72802, vol.2) ... The feeling is of musical values leading at every point. (BBC Music Magazine - UK - on CC 72863, vol.3) The enchanting opening theme of Symphony No. 5 sets what will be the preponderant tone, vigorous and elegant, and that agreeably bracing idiom is maintained throughout both symphonies. (BBC Music Magazine - UK - on CC 72803, vol.4)

For his 80th birthday, Ton Koopman has chosen some of his favourite tracks from the many recordings he has made for Challenge Classics / Antoine Marchand since 2002. This is a celebratory collection in four parts: music for organ, for harpsichord, chamber music and recordings with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir. Ton Koopman: "It was, of course, an almost impossible task to draw up a selection from all of the CDs I have recorded for Challenge Records, but I have tried to choose works that are very close to my heart."

To me, this album is both a personal story and a musical narrative about one of the (piano) composers I find the most fascinating: Frederic Chopin. I chose a dozen works; twelve of his jewels that represent different stages of his life and that each hold a particular significance for me. I open up this album with the First Impromptu, the first of Chopin's works I was to learn as a young teenager. The album closes with the first piece by Chopin that I heard as a toddler: my mother often played the Waltz, opus 64 no. 1, at home on our dark brown Rippen piano. My mother, who was always so closely involved and supportive from the first time I reached up to the piano as a young girl until my last concert before her untimely death last April.

With their long-awaited new album Max Richter Remixed the Trio Fibonacci invites us to rediscover the genius of Max Richter through their own completely new and original transcriptions for piano trio. Following the centuries-old tradition of adapting music for chamber ensembles, the Fibonacci's interpretations renew our listening of these contemporary masterpieces thanks to new instrumental colours, always delivered with their signature passion and elegance.

Accordionist Philippe Thuriot doesn't only play the repertoire that is specifically composed for his instrument. In the past, he has transposed the music of Francois Couperin and Johann Sebastian Bach for his instrument.�Scarlatti's Sonatas are�baroque gems, full of sparkling melodies and Spanish swing. Philippe Thuriot improvises these enchanting sonatas together and breathes new life into them with his accordion.

In Johann Sebastian Bach's six organ sonatas, three independent voices sound interchangeably. The right hand plays the highest voice, the left hand the middle voice and the feet the bass. A true musician wants to play each voice as if for the first time, responding spontaneously to what the others bring up. To bring such a sung conversation to life with hands and feet, he listens with equal attention and love to all the voices simultaneously. It is a miracle that it can be done. When it succeeds, it all seems simple and natural. A world opens up to the listener, in which it is hardly imaginable that there is anything more beautiful than a trio sonata by Bach.

Isidora zebeljan (Belgrade, 1967-2020) was the most outstanding and internationally acclaimed Serbian composer. Here is a hommage and a passionate portrait of her chamber and orchestral output made by some of Challenge best artists gathered on purpose. Isidora zebelian: "My language comes from Balkan music, because that is me - I was raised in the region that borders Rumania, Serbia and Hungary - these particles that were hovering in the air when I was a child, I just grabbed them"

Bernhard Romberg (1767-1841), a German composer much admired by Beethoven, was a great innovator in the cello technique. His Sonatas for harp and cello op.5 are a rare example of music for such combination of instruments. The musical material is distributed evenly between the two instruments. The writing, for its time, is to be considered at the limit of virtuosity.

Geminiani's Sonatas op.5 are particularly significant, marking milestones in my musical journey. What fascinates me about Geminiani is his propensity for unpredictable, asymmetrical and improvisatory style - both as a composer and as a performer. This inspired our own improvisatory approach to ornamentation, continuo realization and timing during the recording session. Geminiani's The Art of Playing the Guitar contains the most comprehensive example of basso continuo realization on the cello, a practice I encouraged in this recording.

As much as the now popular sentence naming Shostakovich "the Beethoven of the 20th Century" is debatable, nobody can deny an amount of contact points between the two composers: above all, the favorite musical mediums and the engagement in historical and political coeval affairs. However, we think that nothing like their Late String Quartets can offer material for a comparative listening and analysis. In both cases we can easily detect what Edward Said defined and discussed as the "Late Style". And in both cases we are in front of a complex and vibrant dialectic between a process of abstraction and a moral imperative to stick to the "hic et nunc". Such an intellectual and existential confrontation is fruitfully without solution and offers a never-ending space to insights and interpretations. Here we propose Alma Quartet's outlook first instalment.

In 1963, Simeon ten Holt wrote in his diary that he had it in mind that a concert should be an ongoing performance, with visitors wandering in and out at will. Ten Holt was also fascinated by social processes during these highly formative years. He became interested in time and space. This theme manifested itself in a piece for four keyboards, at the time still entitled Perpetuum. He embarked on this on 19 January 1973. Perpetuum was completed in 1976 but was revised in the period 1976-79 and was then renamed Canto Ostinato. During rehearsals for the premiere, in April 1979, all of the themes that had been occupying Ten Holt seemed to coalesce: small elements that together made up a larger whole; a different form of concert; social processes arising from the freedom that the players had to decide on the number of repetitions; and time and space. Ten Holt never consciously went searching for this form, but when Canto Ostinato began to conquer the musical world it became clear that his solitary quest had drawn something universal from the mists, something that many listeners and musicians would recognise.

Music in Bali plays a vital role in society and in daily life. Apart from serving art, music is also used to support religious ceremonies. For us as brothers from a Dutch father and Balinese mother, music was also a daily presence in our lives. We grew up in The Netherlands and are trained classical musicians but the Balinese music always served as a great source of inspiration. This album resembles the mutual inspiration from two different cultures that are actually closer that one would think at first hand.

Third volume of Mozart Concertos with Ben Kim and Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra. Concertos No. 11, 12, and 13 were Mozart’s first Concertos written upon moving to Vienna from Salzburg. In a letter addressed to his father Leopold, he described them as “a happy medium between too easy and too difficult; very brilliant, pleasing to the ear, and natural, without being vapid.” Once more Kim gives us a thoroughly personal and deep insight into the famous triptych. Kim stylishly extols the intimate as well as the majestic moments.

In the Upper Austrian Schlagl Abbey there are numerous instrumental instrumental concertos, mostly for solo violin, but often also for harpsichord.�The demands on the violin soloist are enormous. There must have been a very talented violinist on site. Ars Antiqua Austria has brought some of the concertos back to life. An exciting journey into the still unknown past.

This disc couples the last Violin Concerto (1769) by Joseph Haydn with the Double Concerto for Viola and Harpsichord (1762) by his brother Michael: two rarely recorded early Classical gems. This is the debut recording of Pearls in Baroque Chamber Orchestra, composed by some of the best Baroque music players in the Netherlands. The artistic and performance direction is entrusted to two experienced musicians like Ryo Terakado and Noriko Amano.

Second volume of Narratio Quartet complete survey of Beethoven's string quartets. This 2CD set gathers together the three complex Quartets op. 59 and the more accessible Quartet op.74. Early Music Review about CC 72969 (Early String Quartets):�The quartet's name refers to the art of rhetoric, the projection of which is tellingly apparent in these marvellously communicative performances.

Fourth release by Matteo Cicchitti and his Ensemble Elegentia on Challenge Classics. World premiere recording of Triosonatas op.1 by Michele Mascitti. The work was published in Paris in 1704. In his time Mascitti was particularly esteemed and rightly considered a major testimonial of Italian instrumental music in France in the 18th century. In this oeuvre, which is for once a real discovery, Mascitti tries to combine the tradition of the Corellian sonata with the French 'gout' of the dedicatee, the Duke d'Orléans.

I do not believe that there is a 'right' and a 'wrong' instrument on which to perform Beethoven's Sonatas Opus 2. What matters is the musical result. It depends on the alchemy that is created between the performer and the instrument. I extensively tried various modern copies of fortepianos from 1795 - 1800, trying to get closer to the sound and expressive world of early Beethoven. However, with the opportunity of having a Graf fortepiano (No. 429) in my studio, restored in 2023, I was able to prepare this recording on that instrument, playing it regularly for a year and achieving a kind of familiarity with it's action and timbral response that I have grown fond of - Roberto Prosseda.

Max Richter's The Recomposed Four Seasons has become an iconic piece. Richter discarded about three quarters of Vivaldi's original and substituted his own music. The new version sounds a little hipper, lighter on its feet in places, darker and more cinematic in others. Artfully, but faithfully, Richter rearranges the notes on the page, revealing anew the radiant melodies and lush timbres of the music. This new recording enjoys the flamboyant fantasy and the technical prowess of Daniel Rowland as solo violin.

The six trio sonatas recorded on this CD present the largest group of Zelenka's chamber music for a single ensemble. Despite their high quality they were forgotten for centuries; they were only rediscovered a few decades ago.�Our fascination for this rich and profound music has spurred us on to come closer on this CD to the special tonal language, evocative complexity, and audacious invention of Zelenka's music.

Despite the very large number of recordings already made of this musical corpus, Minnaar and de Vriend have proved that they have something new and totally their own to say about this collection of masterpieces. And it is indeed the peculiar blend of sheer energy and esprit de finesse that can be identified as the distinctive brand or these recordings. Gramophone: "a Beethoven cycle [which] is a bold move, but one that pays off in all sorts of ways"

Freedom is a dominant theme in the English oratorios of Georg Friedrich Handel. These grand works are mostly based on biblical stories that deal with resistance, suppression, captivity and, finally, freedom. Debut album by young countertenor Oscar Verhaar. Oscar selected eight arias drawn from Haendel's English oratorios. Diversified moods and atmospheres and the support of La Sfera Armoniosa baroque orchestra make this disc a constant pleasure to listen to.

This disc contains a selection of beautiful and very individual music for violin and harpsichord by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. The performers are two among the most distinguished musicians of the Baroque on HIP (Historical Informed Practice). The music is mostly surprising, as always with CPE Bach. Especially the starting Fantasia is a piece of great freedom that clearly foreshadows the Romanticism. Ryo Terakado and Fabio Bonizzoni already recorded on Challenge Classics the Complete Sonatas for violin and harpsichord by J. S. Bach. Artalinna (FR):�So here we have the new major complete recording of these Sonatas, a landmark achievement because everything about it seems both obvious and moving.

We are proud to present the fifth disc by Nino Gvetadze on Challenge Classics. After Chopin, Scott, Schumann and Beethoven, we get to Brahms. Nino has selected three masterpieces from three different periods of Brahms's life. Schumann's disc (CC 72855): BBC Music Magazine:"This is, quite simply, gorgeous." Gramophone:"Gvetadze's sensitivity to Schumann's vaunted 'inner voices' is unsurpassed"

The year 1860 represented a turning-point in Brahms's life: he issued a 'Manifesto' in which he distanced himself from the Romanticism of the 'New German School' epitomised by Liszt and their association with Wagner's music-dramas. This aesthetic change of heart placed an emphasis on hard work and craftsmanship rather than the more Romantic conception of inspiration, with Brahms taking a particular pride in being both German and a self-made man. This ethos is reflected in the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24. Brahms's two Rhapsodies, Op. 79 were composed in 1879 and were dedicated to his friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg. The title may lull the listener into a false sense of whimsy, when in reality these pieces are founded on clear structural designs. Three Intermezzos Op. 117: Brahms wrote of these three Intermezzos to his friend Rudolf von der Leyen, describing them as 'Wiegenlieder meiner Schmerzen': 'lullabies of my sorrow'. Each has the character of a soliloquy or introspective personal reflection.

Nino Gvetadze about this album:"Throughout his life, Brahms was influenced by those he admired: the musicians he idolized, and the women with whom he formed powerful bonds. Clara Schumann represented both, and Nino Gvetadze explores their fascinating dynamic in The Muse. Brahms's Two Rhapsodies Op. 79 were dedicated to Elisabet von Herzogenberg, whose loss he mourned in the Intermezzos Op. 117; and he was inspired by Handel to write a phenomenal set of Variations dedicated to Clara Schumann – whose Op. 21 Romances date from a time that neither she nor Brahms would ever forget."