Rarely recorded on disc, Johann Sebastian Bach's concertos for three and four harpsichords illustrate the art of writing for keyboard and strings of which the composer was a pioneer. These emblematic works, characterised by a balance between strong themes and abundant internal energy, are performed by virtuoso harpsichordists from the new generation of Baroque musicians: Violaine Cochard, Olivier Fortin, Pierre Gallon, Jean-Luc Ho and, for the first time, the young Croatian harpsichordist Davor Krkljus, accompanied by the strings of Le Caravanserail under the direction of Bertrand Cuiller on harpsichord. The album also includes a previously unreleased transcription for four harpsichords of the famous Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, by Bertrand Cuiller.

The Mexican-American composer, Juan Trigos, has developed the concept of 'abstract folklore', a process by which he assimilates various literary and musical traditions in his method of composition. This first volume of his guitar works shows the process in all it's breadth, not least in the large-scale Twelve Variations and Fugue on the Folia de Espana, where old-world dances meet syncopated new-world rhythms. The Partita, based on the principle of variation, also evokes and alludes to dance, while the virtuosic and expressive Ricercare de Camara VII ingeniously explores the fusion of guitar and percussion.

Fan favorite “Airs & Dances” is finally available physically! Enjoy our Altissimo! compilation featuring traditional Scottish and Irish music by the United States Military bands including the United States Air Force’s premier Celtic and folk ensemble Celtic Aire.

Ever since 1995 at the latest, after the Auryn Quartet and Peter Orth released their highly acclaimed recording of Gabriel Faure's piano quintets for CPO, Primarius Matthias Lingenfelder and Peter had dreamed of recording Faure's works for violin and piano. Many years passed. In 2022, the Auryn Quartet retired from concert life. Before that, I wanted one last recording with them for TACET, no matter what, as a farewell. That didn't materialise. But Matthias still had the desire and energy. And so did Peter! So what could be more obvious than finally realising their long-cherished wish? The result is a serene, mature, virtuoso, sensitive and loving performance of this unconventionally beautiful repertoire.

This disc is a double tribute. The first work, Pictured Within, is a collective effort conceived as a major project to mark the 60th birthday of conductor Martyn Brabbins, whose reputation in new music and British music is beyond reproach.

Following the pattern of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Pictured Within is a series of 14 variations on a theme, each of which takes up the character of the equivalent variation in Elgar’s work, the difference being that here 14 different composers have each contributed a variation in tribute to Brabbins.

Also on the SACD is Jaakko Kuusisto’s Symphony, a fitting tribute to the composer, conductor, and violinist who passed away in 2022. Illness left Jaakko no time to complete his work, so it fell to his brother Pekka – who conducts here – and Jari Eskola to finish it. The result is a powerful piece, full of familiar themes and melodies derived from Jaakko’s existing compositions, to which are added autobiographical extra-musical elements. The moving conclusion is a collage of fragmented phrases inspired by the signals emitted by lighthouses and ships, as if Kuusisto’s spirit had been sent out to sea.

Fanny Mendelssohn composed a diverse oeuvre that includes organ, piano and vocal works. Her organ pieces reflect the Protestant tradition and demonstrate her contrapuntal mastery. The piano works are lyrical, technically demanding and often designed as character pieces. Her vocal works are particularly numerous, including over 250 songs, which are characterized by fine word-sound combinations and romantic expressiveness. This 6 CD box allows an insight into the composer's creativity.

If music be the food of love, play on we read in Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night. Play on - but what music should we play? No playwright in world literature has inspired more musical settings by important composers over the centuries than Shakespeare. It is clear that music's role in Shakespeare's plays can hardly be overestimated. His stage directions call not only for song but also for instrumental sennets and tuckets - sonatas and toccatas. In this recording, Hannah Morrison, Marnix de Cat and the Hathor Consort bring to life a wealth of sensual Renaissance sounds from the time of Elizabeth I in pieces that could well have been performed at the Globe Theatre.

The Bevan Family Consort return with a selection of choral works celebrating the season of lent and passiontide, including a world premiere recording of of the six-voice Lamentations by Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder. The programme follows the liturgy from the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday to the darkness of Holy Saturday. For each day of Tenebrae, they've included a setting of a Lamentation. "Recording an album with the family is always moving, but this one was especially so because of the theme of the music... Like previous albums, this one contains well-worn family favourites beside newly-discovered or un-recorded rarities, thanks to our in-house editor and arch-polyphony enthusiast, Francis... We hope you enjoy our selection and that it can be a prayerful accompaniment to the Lenten season." - Michael Bevan

Prior to the turn of the 20th century, Camille Saint-Saëns enriched the cello repertoire with two important compositions: his Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor (Op.33 ) and his Cello Sonata No.1 in C minor (Op.32). The first Cello Sonata was composed in the autumn of 1872, and its first public performance – with J. Reuschel on cello and the composer at the piano – was given on 26 March 1873 at the Salle Érard in Paris. The work is divided into three movements: the first and third have a tragic character, while the second offers an oasis of quiet serenity. The work opens with a dramatic Allegro in sonata form. The second movement stems from an organ improvisation performed by Saint-Saëns at Saint-Augustin. The final movement takes up the tumultuous and agitated character of the first and ends in an unrelenting race. Some 30 years separate the Cello Sonata No.2 in F (Op.123) from its predecessor. The fruit of laborious work, it was completed in early 1905. The Sonata is structured in four movements, the first in sonata form with contrasting heroic and lyrical characters throughout. The second movement is a Scherzo with eight variations, each with its own identity while maintaining a link to the theme, one of them in the form of a fugue. The third movement is, in Saint-Saëns’ words, ‘a romance that will delight cellists’, and he wrote of its concluding section, ‘the Adagio will bring tears to sensitive souls’. The sonata ends with a playful, light Rondo in which both piano and cello engage in technical virtuosity and imitative games.

Rheinberger's chamber music work bears witness to his deep roots in the classical tradition, particularly in composers such as Mendelssohn and Brahms. His compositions are characterised by clear formal structures, melodic elegance and harmonic richness.

Born in Shanghai in 1955, Xiaogang Ye is regarded as one of China’s leading contemporary composers. He has written music in a variety of genres, including symphonic and chamber works as well as scores for the stage. Ye has also composed music for films and the two works recorded here are both examples of this. Sichuan Image consists of 29 brief and atmospheric pieces composed to accompany a filmed travelogue of the scenic province in Western China. In preparation for the work, the composer visited mountains, river, villages and ancient historical sites in Sichuan. Lending further color to the large symphony orchestra, four Chinese musicians perform on traditional instruments. The album closes with Concerto of Life, a suite in five movements for piano and orchestra with Noriko Ogawa taking on the solo part. The work is based on the score for a feature film of the same name telling the story of a piano teacher and his students. Ogawa has also appeared on a previous album of Ye’s music alongside the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and conductor José Serebrier – a release named Editor's Choice in the Gramophone, whose reviewer described the performances as 'superb' and Ye's scores as possessing ‘lyrical elegance, searching drama and depth of color…’

Niklas Jahn, winner of the 9th International Organ Competition Musashino-Tokyo in 2023, was appointed organist at the Frauenkirche in Dresden in December 2024, the site of an acclaimed concert by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1736. This album features two works by Bach, including the monumental Toccata and Fugue in F major, as well as Toshio Hosokawa's celestial Cloudscape, and the ultravirtuosic Feuertaufe by Zsigmond Szathmary. French repertoire by Messiaen and Vierne can also be heard alongside Brahms whose Chorale Preludes are among the last pieces he composed.

Legnani: Complete Music for Guitar Solo

The piano works by Isaac Albéniz range from indisputable masterpieces to ravishing salon music, the composer painting with bright Spanish colors as well as the hues of Classicism and Romanticism. On nine discs, originally released between 1998 and 2017 and gathered here, Miguel Baselga guides listeners through the music of his compatriot, earning acclaim from reviewers worldwide: ‘pianism of the highest order’ (MusicWeb-International); ‘berauschend agil und rhytmisch spannungsgeladen’ (PIANONews); ‘un pianista elegante y refinado’ (CD Compact). Composed between December 1905 and January 1908, only a year before the death of Albéniz, Iberia is the crowning achievement of the composer’s genius. Marking a high point of the post-romantic piano literature, this collection of ‘12 nouvelles impressions’ was to serve as an endless source of inspiration for other composers throughout the twentieth century, admired by Debussy and Messiaen, who called it 'the marvel of the piano'. Baselga’s exhaustive series places Iberia in its proper context, and with the assistance of Albéniz scholar Jacinto Torres, he has been able to access original editions and scores, including rarities such as the Marcha militar by a nine-year-old Albéniz and the composer's two scores for piano and orchestra. We are also given the opportunity to hear three improvisations, transcribed from a phonograph recording made by the composer in 1903.

REVIEW:

Miguel Baselga was the first and (I believe) only pianist to have recorded Albéniz’s complete solo piano works, a project encompassing nine CDs. The cycle has been reissued in a boxed set, together with each individual release’s original booklet. It remains a significant catalog milestone.

As a stylist, Albéniz covered all bases, from unabashedly salon-like trifles and flashy neo-Lisztian fare to the Iberia Suite’s astonishing originality and labyrinthine complexities. Since Baselga wanted each disc to represent different aspects of Albéniz’s musical personality, he cunningly divided Iberia’s four parts across the first four volumes, aiming to give lesser-known masterpieces like the wild and woolly La Vega and tender Barcarola Op. 202 their due.

The two concerted works (the Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rapsodia Espanola) also receive impressively fresh and well-balanced readings. And for those who can’t get past the faded sound of Albéniz’s three 1903 improvisations preserved on private cylinders, Milton Laufer’s painstakingly notated editions will be revelations, especially in Baselga’s inspired hands.

In all, Baselga’s combination of technical brilliance, exuberant temperament, and tonal imagination yields consistently idiomatic and enjoyable results. A must-have for serious aficionados of Spanish piano music.

– ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Anyone who entitles an organ piece a Grand Pi�ce Symphonique should not be surprised if this very title one day is used as a benchmark to determine the legitimacy of this claimed attribute. This is exactly what the organist, composer, and pedagogue Zsigmond Szathm�ry did at the behest of his young colleague Christian Schmitt when he examined the orchestral possibilities of C�sar Franck's "great symphonic work". The result of this exploration gives us the world premiere of a concert piece in which the king of instruments and it's personified registers - i.e. The orchestra - form a captivating synthesis. Next to Franck's well-known tone poem Les �olides (The Daughters of Aeolus), the programme includes a rarely recorded work by Charles-Marie Widor - a Walpurgis Night that easily rivals the most famous witches' dances in the Romantic literature.

The Gramophone Award-winning Silesian Quartet present a double-album of the complete works for string quartet by compatriot Henryk Gorecki. All three of his numbered string quartets were written late in life - the first in 1988 - and all three were commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. The First Quartet is a single-movement work, based on a sixteenth-century song by Waclaw of Szamotuly. The Second, double the length of the First, is subtitled 'quasi una fantasia' and follows a classical four-movement form, subtly referencing Beethoven. Gorecki completed the Third Quartet (double the length of the Second!) after the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs had catapulted his music to much wider acclaim. It extends to five movements and is considered by many to be one of his greatest compositions. In the 1980s and 1990s, Gorecki composed several collections of choral songs. Five Kurpian Songs is based on folksongs from Kurpie, a region north-west of Warsaw. The composer himself suggested that these works would be effective when performed by a string quartet, and here the Silesian Quartet gives us the world premiere recording of that version.

William Grant Still (1895-1978) from Little Rock was a pioneer in many ways. He was the first African American to successfully depart from the generally acceptable genres of jazz and pop. He lived to see a symphonic work and an opera of his performed, he conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic and directed an important Southern orchestra. The respect that he acquired is reflected in two Guggenheim fellowships and five honorary doctorates, as well as a growing number of top-quality recordings of his works. This album is dedicated to the composer's impressive art songs. Two dozen works, including simple spirituals, expansive, declamatory and captivating scenes, touching miniatures and provocative challenges paint a portrait of a self-assured man asserting his musical authority.

Inspired by their release earlier this summer of Mozart's 'Gran Partita', performed by a Milanese wind ensemble of principals from La Scala, Brilliant Classics here takes the excellent opportunity to combine that brand new recording of the pinnacle of Mozart's chamber music for winds with all the rest of his music in the genre, recorded for Brilliant back in the spring of 2001 by the wind soloists of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Thus we have the leading players from two renowned orchestras breathing life into the wind music that played such a large role in the career of the Viennese genius. Mozart's chamber music for winds stems from the genre of Harmoniemusik: entertainment music that was in vogue in the second half of the 18th century named for the courtly wind ensemble of pairs of woodwinds plus horns, called Harmonie or Harmonieorchester in German-speaking countries. It's characteristic forms include the Serenades and Divertimenti. This was music that could be performed outdoors (due to the instruments' power of projection) or at informal settings such as meals (where they could be heard over lively conversation) with the musicians entertaining either themselves or an aristocratic dinner party, the so-called Tafelmusik (music for the table). Hence, Mozart was called upon often to write such works, either by wind-player friends (fellow Freemasons) or by his employers for the enrichment of courtly life. Other information: - CDs 1-6 recorded Spring 2001 in Rhoon, Netherlands; CD7 recorded December 2023 in Bernareggio, Italy - Booklet in English contains liner notes by Dr David Doughty - Composed primarily between the late 1770s and early 1780s, Mozart's Serenades and Divertimenti for Wind Instruments were mostly performed for courtly entertainment or social gatherings. In these works Mozart shows a deep understanding of wind timbres and their expressive potential. His ability to create quasi-operatic dialogues between instruments and his sensitivity to sonority make these works timeless treasures. - Among the most famous of these compositions is the Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, K. 361, commonly known as the Gran Partita. This masterpiece, scored for 13 instruments, showcases a remarkable blend of rich harmonies, virtuosic passages, and expressive melodies, particularly in the renowned Adagio movement. The two Serenades KV 375 and 388 are strong, mature masterpieces in their genre. - Performed by the Soloists Delle Scala, and the Rotterdam Wind Players, directed by clarinetist Henk de Graaf.

Albert Lortzing, who did not even reach the age of fifty, composed a towering number of stage works, several of which are regarded as German national treasures even today. Others have proven themselves to have stood the test of time thanks to excellent recordings. Although he became immortal with his Zar und Zimmermann and Undine, his purely orchestral output is quite thin. If it were not for the concert piece for horn and a similar work for trumpet, there would only be a number of overtures and pieces of ballet music available to a symphonic ensemble to produce a colourful portrait. The WDR Funkhausorchester has thus recorded a lively mixture of soloistic brilliance, entertaining dances and "dramatic" overtures whose existence was previously only known to die-hard Lortzing fans.

The grandeur of Mozart's Missa solemnis in C minor 'Waisenhausmesse' caused Viennese scholars to doubt how it could have been composed by a twelve-year old boy. The Mass was written for the consecration of a new Orphanage Church in Vienna with an expanded orchestra, and it's premiere was conducted by Mozart himself 'to the general approbation and admiration of everyone'. Mozart often made use of the purity of C major in his Masses - the Missa brevis is a remarkable model of compactness, while the Missa solemnis is Mozart's last complete Mass.

One of the most sought-after young chamber ensembles of it's type, Trio Gaspard is praised for it's unique and fresh approach to the score, one recent recording prompting The Times to conclude: "Kaleidoscopic textures and sprightly wit, wonderfully conveyed by Trio Gaspard... delightful listening." It was founded in 2010, it's members hailing from Germany, Greece, and the UK. They studied at the European Chamber Music Academy in Vienna. Haydn's music has been of central importance to their programming over the past fifteen years, and it is rare for them to perform a concert without one of his works. Trio Gaspard writes: "Over this series of recordings, we present Haydn's rich output for piano trio neither chronologically nor in the groups in which the works were first published. Instead, just like the preceding discs, Volume 5 is conceived as a programme of contrasting trios that can be heard in a single sitting. We also continue the series of contemporary works which we have commissioned to accompany our Haydn project and are delighted to present the world premi�re recording of Helena Winkelman's Threesome in a High-den."

A late discovery of a most important female composer from France for the musical world. Mélanie Hélène Bonis, known by her artistic pseudonym Mel Bonis (21 January 1858 – 18 March 1937), was a Romantic composer in the late years of the 19 c. and first half of the 20c.. Sheila Arnold and Sandrine Cantoreggi initiated this album and discovered not only a piece - Soir - never played or was registered before, but kept her choice also mainly to their own instruments Violin and Fortepiano (on a Bluethner Fortepiano 1871). Two Trios (one with Cello, the other with flute) embrace the program of small short pieces for Violin and Fortepiano, highlighting in particular the larger Violin Sonata, Op. 112.

I see the future of Baroque orchestral music in the hands of modern ensembles - the fetish of the 'original instrument' has had it's day, but not the profoundly trained professional who guides an orchestra into the deeper dimensions of the composition. For it isn't the instrument that makes the music, but the head! (Reinhard Goebel "the icon of early music" - Suddeutsche Zeitung)

Of Paganini's fifteen quartets with guitar only six were published during his lifetime. They represent his finest body of chamber compositions as can be heard in the three quartets for violin, viola, guitar and cello, Op. 4. Of them, No. 3 in A major is a masterpiece, with French-styled inspiration, rich lyricism and piquant invention, while the virtuosic, almost concerto-like No. 8 in A major embodies his quatuor brillant writing, with it's Rossinian resonances. No. 12 in A minor is the most 'symphonic' of the three, containing formal originality, one of the most moving of Paganini's slow movements, and his most serious-minded finale.

Barry Douglas CBE has established a major international career since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, in Moscow. In demand as a soloist and as a recitalist and chamber musician, he has performed with most of the world's leading orchestras. He celebrates his Irish heritage as Artistic Director of Camerata Ireland, the only all-Ireland orchestra, and of the Clandeboye Festival. Celtic Nocturne combines nocturns by John Field, traditional Irish melodies, and three compositions by Barry Douglas, all of which share the lyrical, melodic nature characteristic of Irish music. Born in Dublin in 1782, John Field moved to London in 1793 and continued his studies with Muzio Clementi. Following an extensive European tour with Clementi in 1802, Field finally settled in Russia. His Nocturnes combine classical structure with romantic expressiveness.