Following the success of her albums of Romantic and Late Romantic repertoire, Vilde Frang has recorded Mozart's Concertos Nos. 1 and 5 Turkish and the Sinfonia Concertante K364, enabling music lovers to hear the Norwegian violinist perform Classical repertoire on disc for the first time. The impetus for this album was a 2012 orchestral tour of Asia conducted by Jonathan Cohen in which Vilde performed Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5. The vibrancy of their musical collaboration was something both artists were keen to repeat and commit to disc. Vilde Frang is joined by Jonathan's Cohen's chamber orchestra, Arcangelo, and by violist Maxim Rysanov in the Sinfonia Concertante.

CARMEN FANTASY

HARMONIA MUNDI - Stravinsky: The Soldiers Tale (English Version) - Isabelle Faust / Alexander Melnikov / Dominique Horwitz, Isabelle Faust, Lorenzo Coppola, Javier Zafra, Reinhold Friedrich, J�rgen van Rijen, Wies de Boeve, Raymond Curfs 2021 release.

VERITAS X2 SERIES is the leading range of early music recordings on the market. This new batch of ten essential reissues introduces into the Veritas range, for the first time, key recordings from the historic Erato catalogue. John Eliot Gardiner is at his best in this milestone recording showcasing the full splendor of Handel's music. Among the first historically-informed versions of these beloved choral works, the Dixit Dominus initially sold more than 500,000 copies around the world.

PIETA

This coupling is a popular one, and with good reason. The Sextet marks the beginnings of Dvorák in “Slavonic” mode, with a second movement “Dunka” and a “Furiant” for a scherzo, while the String Quintet comes from his “American” period, with all that this entails as regards melody, harmony, and rhythm. Both works are drop-dead gorgeous, and so beguiling that you’ll never notice the remarkable sophistication and craft that went into their creation.

There have been several excellent releases featuring this music, most notably the Panocha Quartet’s versions on Supraphon, now found in that label’s boxed sets of Dvorák’s complete chamber works. The Jerusalem Quartet and friends doesn’t play with the Panocha’s silky smoothness of timbre, but that’s not a criticism, merely a reflection of a different school of playing and aesthetic sensibility. Their more grainy (but never harsh) sound has its own appeal, especially in the Sextet’s exotic slow movement, its scherzo, and everywhere in those open-air, “hoedown” passages that pepper the Quintet. And in terms of intonation and ensemble balance, these players rank second to none.

Interestingly, both works include sets of variations. In the Sextet it’s the finale, and in the Quintet, the third movement Larghetto. It was Donald Francis Tovey who first pointed out Dvorák’s skill as a writer of variations, calling his movements and larger pieces in the form “perfect.” They are also highlights of these performances, in which the musicians seize with relish every opportunity to display their individual excellence. Their playing offers a very satisfying, wide range of color, combined with the necessary intelligent pacing and attention to long-range coherence. Beautifully engineered to boot, this release stands with the finest. It’s a joy.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Following a Schubertian venture that has revealed, over the past few years, his immense stature as an interpreter of the lied, Matthias Goerne has now selected twenty or so of the little gems lovingly fashioned by Schumann in the year of his marriage (1840) or in the darker Düsseldorf period (1849-52). This anthology proves to be nothing less than a mise en abyme: an entire world seems to creep in between the fragrant flowers of the bouquet of ‘Myrtles’ and the nocturnal atmosphere of the ‘Six Poems and Requiem’. Yes: a whole world!

FUR ELIOT

The London Symphony Orchestra's string sound is world renowned. This recording marks the LSO Live debut of the LSO String Ensemble, directed by the orchestra's leader Roman Simovic. The Serenade is one of Tchaikovsky's most enduringly popular works. Inspired in part by Mozart, it's elegant music blends Russian folk-song with traditional classical forms. The recording's pairing is Bartok's Divertimento, a highly original work in it's own unique idiom, contrasting two buoyant and lighthearted movements with a somber Adagio.

CONCERTI PER FLAUTO

PIANO MUSIC

2016 three CD collection that features beloved arias from Bellini's "Norma;" Puccini's "La Boheme," "Madame Butterfly" and "Gianno Schicchi;" Verdi's "La Traviata" and "Aida;" Bizet's "Carmen" and much more! Opera singers come and go, but just a few - the legends - live on. And Maria Callas was the great-est legend of them all, though not just for the wonder of her voice. She changed the way people thought about opera, but she also became famous as the glamorous celebrity who fell in love with Aristotle Onassis, leaving her elderly husband to live with him on his yacht Christina and enjoy the high life with the international jet set. Of course it ended badly. She lived her life like one of her own tragic heroines who (as women tend to do in opera) sing, suffer and die. And her own death came at just 53, after a dazzling but short career that took in heavy roles alongside decorative, nightingale-like ones - ignoring the established rules of vocal health and probably explaining why her voice finally gave out as it did. But in that time she did extraordinary things, using the muscle of those heavy heroines to em-power the nightingales with strength and depth of feeling nobody had thought to offer them be-fore. She gave them credibility as drama. Her performances were absolute and self-exposing: she held nothing back. And she was even tougher on herself than she could be on others - which is why her voice was never quite the flawless instrument singers are meant to cultivate. Her personality was far too volatile and too self-sacrificing in it's love affair with risk. In the mythology of opera, though, that's what the audience demands. We want the diva to be both a goddess and a slave: to give her life for art. We thrill to the dimension of that sacrifice. And Callas dutifully obliged.

Brian Wilson -"At My Piano" - Genius, icon, and trailblazer Brian Wilson revolutionized music as head of the Beach Boys. Now, he retraces his steps and reimagines the most iconic songs from his back catalog into their purest form, with him alone at the piano. Featuring "God Only Knows," "Wouldn't It Be Nice," "California Girls," "Good Vibrations," and many more on SOLO PIANO.

GLORIA & MAGNIFICAT

Two CDs. Mozart & Flute in Paris brings together nine captivating works, all with their origins in Paris, which feature a solo flute. Emmanuel Pahud is joined by his colleagues from 'wind supergroup' Les Vents Francais - oboist Francois Leleux (here also conducting the Orchestre de chambre de Paris), clarinettist Paul Meyer, bassoonist Gilbert Audin and horn-player Radovan Vlatkovic - and by Belgian harpist Anneleen Lenaerts. "The pieces on this album represent different golden ages of the flute," says Pahud. The earliest, dating from 1778 are two concertante works that Mozart wrote while visiting Paris. The newest, premiered in 2014 by Pahud and the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, is Dreamtime by Philippe Hersant. The intervening period is represented by pieces by Saint-Saens, Faure, Chaminade and Poulenc, composers whose music embodies France's special relationship with the flute.

BERLIOZ: ROMEO ET JULIETTE

The pianist performs works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and Liszt live in 1962 at the Big Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with the Moscow Philharmonic conducted by Kyrill Kondrashin. B&W.

Sergiu Celibidache was without question one of the most important and original conductors in recent memory. He was a perfectionist who disliked what he perceived to be the synthetic sounds created in the modern recording studio, preferring the immediacy of the concert platform and the interaction with a live audience. This Bruckner recording celebrates the extraordinary legacy of his collaboration with the Munchner Philharmoniker, from which he was Musical Director between 1979 and his death in 1996. "One of the greatest Bruckner performances I have ever heard - a truly towering act of the re-creative imagination (...). [This performance] is centred in string playing of astonishing depth, eloquence and homogeneity. As with Giulini, it is the viola and cello sections which seem to harbour the very soul of the music. The viola cantilenas in the slow movement (...) are things of rare beauty." Gramophone

Recorded live at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, London, on 27 November 2013 and 14 October 2015.

“The LPO string-players vividly felt the music’s pain. They don’t write music like that anymore” - Classical Source on Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, 14 October 2015

This is the first release of works by Krzysztof Penderecki on the LPO Label. The Orchestra has had a long relationship with Krzysztof Penderecki as both a composer and a conductor, regularly performing his works at Royal Festival Hall.

The Adagio for Strings and Horn Concerto on this album, both conducted by the composer, are recordings of the UK premiere performances.

Krzysztof Penderecki wrote the Horn Concerto specifically for soloist Radovan Vlatkovic. The Guardian described this performance as impressive, and having a “disquieting, at times savage beauty,” while The Telegraph called it “fantastically fluent” with “genuinely entrancing [moments].”

This is also the first release on the LPO Label featuring conductor Micha? Dworzynski. He is renowned as a great champion of music by Polish composers. His interpretation of the Violin Concerto was praised by The Guardian for capturing “the work’s fraught, tightly bound texture and the imploded lyricism of its constantly evolving melodic material.”

Violinist Barnabás Kelemen’s performance in the Violin Concerto was widely praised. Bachtrack said he “[married] brilliant virtuosity to deep expressiveness. Whether racing through leaping runs or holding eye-wateringly high notes, his tone never faltered.”

The Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima is an iconic work by Penderecki which received the UNESCO Prize in 1961. On its dedication to Hiroshima, Penderecki wrote “May this threnody express my deep belief that the sacrifice of Hiroshima will never be forgotten and lost, and Hiroshima will become a symbol of brotherhood between people of good will.”

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REVIEW:

All the works here, except the First Violin Concerto, are conducted by Penderecki himself, so hearing them with the LPO in the Festival Hall immediately makes this a special document, and it is a fascinating compilation of the orchestra’s performances of his music in recent years. The LPO is consistently excellent throughout.

– Choir & Organ

“made at public concerts, and involves applause between items, and some occasional coughs. The microphone picks up piano action noise, and the tone is not ideally free. BUT none of these faults mask for a moment the art of Richter, who, I am inclined to suspect, is the greatest interpreter of music (piano or otherwise) in the world” “Schubert he plays simply, lyrically, with perfectly judged articulation and rhythm ... Liszt: Valse oubliée: begins with a gentle, very affectionate, whimsical rubato that lifts, but never disturbs, the rhythm; and then suddenly away he goes with the repeated-note theme and you jump out of your skin at the precision and strength and musical control ... warm bass harmonies like the relaxing sun on a Mediterranean beach and the final recitative fades away with almost intolerable pathos. The second Valse oubliée merges into the muffled clatter of a barrel-organ (-a genius made it, and another is turning the handle). ... Transcendental studies: superior performances will only be heard in heaven. In Feux follets, an ethereal sensibility unmatched in my experience.” (Gramophone)

The London Philharmonic Orchestra presents this live recording from 2017 of Mahler's Symphony No. 8, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, with soloists including Sofia Fomina and Matthew Rose, and massed choirs. It's a celebration of the end of Jurowski's 14-year tenure as Principal Conductor.

From it's opening notes, to it's final closing breaths, the spirit of revolution is infused into the fabric of Shostakovich's 11th Symphony. Completed in 1957, it remembers the failed uprising of 1905 and hints at Hungary's anti-Soviet rebellion of 1956. Through his powerful, and at times unsettling music, Shostakovich celebrates the revolutionary spirit and offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of complete power. The London Philharmonic Orchestra harnesses the dark intensity and emotion of his writing in this live performance under Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski.

Recorded live in concert at Royal Festival Hall in 1988 and 1992 under the baton of Zubin Mehta, these recordings of Richard Strauss's Symphonia Domestica and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade are now available from the London Philharmonic Orchestra archives.

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REVIEW:

The key to appreciating the Symphonia Domestica's gentleness and its small details, as American audiences did from early on, is to simply take the work at face value, and this is accomplished admirably here by conductor Zubin Mehta. Even better, is the pairing: Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Op. 35, might seem poles away from the Symphonia Domestica in its contrast of eastern exoticism to Strauss' bourgeois world, but Mehta asks hearers to listen again. Both works are delicately orchestrated, a bit folkish in places, and they alternate action with big melodies in a similar way, and what melodies they are. A fine pairing of favorites from the London Philharmonic's in-house label.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

Mozart was a master at capturing the spirits of the instruments for which he wrote. This skill is perfectly exemplified here in the lighter-than-air Flute Concerto No.2, the sprightly and playful Bassoon Concerto and the interplay of the four soloists in the Sinfonia Concertante. These three exceptional works come to life in this studio recording with featuring soloists of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Conductor Vladimir Jurowski.