Includes work(s) for piano by Johann Sebastian Bach, Christoph W. Gluck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven. Soloist: Guiomar Novaës.

Piano Sonatas 2,3,7,8 "Pathetique" 11,12 "Funeral March," 24. Brendel's monumental cycle continues with this delightful collection.

Includes work(s) by Franz Schubert.

Classical Music

Piano Sonatas 1,5,6,9,10,13,14 "Moonlight," 15 "Pastoral," 25. Performed by the noted Beethoven interpreter Alfred Brendel.

Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C Minor "Resurrection"

Covent Garden’s 2003 production of The Magic Flute is magnificent from a musical standpoint and more than that, it’s vastly entertaining. Visually, the production is a feast, the video quality here is extraordinary... Simon Keenlyside, Dorothea Roschmann, Will Hartmann, Diana Damrou, Franz-Josef Selig

"...a mellow warmth that was deeply satisfying. Simon Keenlyside triumph as quite the most engaging Papageno I have ever encountered, while the Tamino and Pamina of Will Hartman and Dorothea Roschmann were stylish and musically satisfying. With an exceptional Queen of the Night, Diana Damrou, this is an evening no Mozart lover should miss" David Mellor, The Mail on Sunday

"Sir Colin Davis presides at his most avuncular...he lives every moment of the score and conveys all its profound humanity." - GRAMOPHONE

Region Code 0
Picture format 16:9 Anamorphic
Running time approx 160 minutes DVD 9
Sound format Dolby stereo and 5.1 surround
Menu language English
SUBTITLE LANGUAGES: English/French/Spanish

The internationally renowned Mozart interpreter Sir Colin Davis conducts the chorus and orchestra of the Royal Opera House and a glittering cast in David McVicar's 2003 production of Mozart's last opera recorded, in sumptuous surround sound, live at Covent Garden.

EXTRA FEATURES
* BBC feature looks behind the scenes at this production
* Conductor Sir Colin Davis talks about Die Zauberflote
* Illustrated synopsis of the opera
* Illustrated booklet with biographies in English, French and Spanish

PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 PIANO SO

Quatuor Schumann and Gyula Stuller propose a truly fresh and transparent reading of these two masterpieces of Robert Schumann's literature for piano and strings. Unanimously celebrated by the critics for their first Chausson-Fauré record, published under the Aeon label, this young ensemble of Swiss musicians shows perfect delicacy and clarity, as well as hypersensitive romanticism. Indeed, one can hardly wish for a more appropriate or more complete vision of what constitutes the true spirit of chamber music, where each individual surpasses himself without ever losing the unity of the group.

Also available on Blu-ray

A CONCERT FOR NEW YORK
In Remembrance and Renewal – The Tenth Anniversary of 9/11

On September 10, 2011, The New York Philharmonic presented ‘A Concert for New York,’ a free performance led by Music Director Alan Gilbert of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection. This performance, hailed by the New York Times as “intensely moving,” was given in remembrance and renewal of the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. Telecast in the US on Sunday, September 11, 2011 on PBS’ Great Performances, this musical tribute is now available on DVD and BluRay.

“Mahler’s Second Symphony, Resurrection, powerfully and profoundly explores the range of emotions provoked by the memories of 9/11,” said Alan Gilbert. “This great masterpiece has a very special place in the history and psyche of the New York Philharmonic, but its message of renewal and rebirth is universal. We offer it as a tribute to those lost ten years ago.”

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor, “Resurrection”

Dorothea Röschmann, soprano
Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano
New York Choral Artists
New York Philharmonic Orchestra
Alan Gilbert, conductor

Recorded live at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, New York City, 10 September 2011.

Bonus:
- Interview with Alan Gilbert and Zarin Mehta

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo / Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: German, English, French
Running time: 96 mins (concert) + 14 mins (bonus)
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

Ondine is pleased to announce a long-term recording collaboration with German violinist Christian Tetzlaff, internationally recognized as one of the leading soloists of his generation. The selection of these sonatas for piano and violin by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart demonstrate distinctly the composer's ingeniousness and show a wide range and strong ambiguity of emotions.

For this second collaboration with the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Emmanuel Krivine and Zig-Zag Territoires, two major Russian works were chosen. Both make the orchestra sound sumptuous with the complicity of that fantastic colorist and orchestrator Maurice Ravel, and the skill of a composer nicknamed 'the magician of the orchestra.' Emmanuel Krivine excels in these demanding works that necessitate as much commitment as perspicacity from the conductor, at the service of scores magnifying the fantastic musical instrument that is the modern symphony orchestra.

"These versions of the Brahms symphonies rank with the very finest available. They are stunning, and they established Levine as a true successor to his mentor, George Szell. His Brahms especially has all of Szell’s precision and care for balance and proportion, with none of his occasional stiffness...after experiencing these performances anew we recall what all of the excitement was about. The “buzz” was entirely justified."

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

After having won the Gramophone Award in 2014 for his recording of Prokofiev’s five piano concertos, exclusive Chandos artist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet here explores the complete works for piano and orchestra of Igor Stravinsky. Once again he partners with conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier, winners of the 2011 Gramophone Award – Concerto category, for their last Chandos release together. It starts with the crisp rhythms, polyphony and classical form of the expressive, weighty Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra. The Capriccio is a piece that Stravinsky composed as a repertoire alternative to his concerto; he performed it more than forty times in the first four years after its creation. The anti-tonal, twelve-tone idiom of Movements represents Stravinsky’s experiments in the use of serial techniques. Pétrouchka is a work for piano and orchestra as well, except that the piano here is not a solo instrument but rather part of the orchestral fabric. Mr. Bavouzet himself described blending in with the fortissimos of the orchestra as ‘one of the best musical experiences of my life’.

When Frank Peter Zimmermann says that Mozart has always been easy for him, he needs only to recall his debut concert at the age of ten when he played Mozart’s G major Concerto K. 216; or when as a fresh 20-year-old, he made his first recording of the five concertos for EMI. He’s played these works nearly 300 times in concert, and one can appreciate the intense physical and spiritual experience that Zimmermann brings to these new recordings.

Praised by The New York Times for her ‘clear articulation … unequivocal phrasing … [and] expressivity’, Ingrid Jacoby has established herself as one of her generation’s most poetic and admired pianists.Winner of numerous prizes and competitions, she has, since moving to England, performed with many major orchestras, including the LSO, the LPO and the RPO, as well as the London Mozart Players, and worked with many eminent conductors.Her new recording of Mozart’s Concertos K467 and K488, complete with the Rondo K386, and accompanied by the internationally celebrated ASMF conducted by Sir Neville Marriner, follows on from her acclaimed earlier recording of the Concertos K449 and K595 which received excellent reviews from Int’l Record Review, Gramophone and Fanfare magazines, among others.The accompanying booklet contains notes by Richard Wigmore and personal insights by Ingrid Jacoby on Mozart.

A large measure of Mozart's increasing fascination with the clarinet from the later 1780s was due to his interaction with one of the cutting-edge virtuosi of the day, Anton Stadler, for whom both of the works on this CD were composed as well as the Clarinet Concerto, K. 662. Both works are played here by Australian virtuoso, Owen Watkins on reproductions of period clarinets, including a basset instrument, with extended lower range, for the Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581. Jaap Schröder, an expert in the violin repertoire of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, founded the Skálholt Quartet and lead the Quartetto Esterhazy and Smithson String Quartet, performing and recording classical quartet repertoire for the first time on period instruments. Oboist Owen Watkins has performed and recorded with many premier ensembles in the USA, Europe and Australia, including Boston Baroque, the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Camerata, Washington Bach Consort, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, Pinchgut Opera and Orchestra of the Antipodes, Orchestra 1788 and the Cambini Quintet. A faculty member of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute for twenty-five years, Penelope Crawford is internationally acclaimed as one of America's master performers on historical keyboard instruments. From 1975 to 1990, she was harpsichordist and fortepianist with the Ars Musica Baroque Orchestra, one of the first period instrument ensembles in North America.

Although highly productive and respected in his lifetime as a Lied composer, Robert Franz (1815–92) has since become a peripheral figure in music history. As they began to explore the songs of Franz, Georges Starobinski and baritone Christian Immler were moved by their findings to devise a program including twenty-three of the composer’s often quite brief songs. Using the poet Heinrich Heine as their guiding star, they present these – all Heine settings but from different opus groups – in the form of two ‘imagined’ song cycles, framed by further settings of Heine poems by Schumann and Liszt.

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

It's hard to focus the chaotic discography of Richter, that has not left complete editions of his favorite composers. We got only scattered recordings both studio and live. With this release, Urania wants to collect two composers less frequented by the Russian pianist. Fortunately we have the great piano sonata of Schubert and the extraordinary Wandered Fantasy. Unfortunately there are not organic editions of the piano works of Liszt, but this anthology contains famous compositions - for example the Piano Sonata - and it can give a general idea of Richter's approach to the masterworks of the german repertoire of the XIX Century.

The Elias Quartet has already recorded a complete cycle of Beethoven quartets at Wigmore Hall that was extremely well received by the critics. Now Sara Bitlloch, Donald Grant, Martin Saving and Marie Bitlloch present on Alpha an album devoted to Schumann: ‘We have always had a special affection for Robert Schumann’s Third Quartet. It’s one of the first works we played together. Since then we have often come back to it, as if to a splendid and familiar region that we think we know thoroughly, but which yields up new secrets with each visit. The Second Quartet, on the other hand, was a much later and more complicated discovery for us. The writing is so personal, so unidiomatic for the instruments, so full of nuances, that to begin with we found it hard to come up with a unanimous voice for this work. The enthusiasm of the first movement can easily turn into anxiety if you push it a bit too far. In the slow movement, the texture is sometimes so bare that to convey its tenderness you have to sustain it with great fervour. The capricious Scherzo is bristling with rhythmic pitfalls and requires a diabolical mastery of the instruments, while the Finale is an endless explosion of joy!’

-----

REVIEWS:

The Elias Quartet, whose penetration of Beethoven’s works is second to none, take Schumann’s anxiety fully into account, without in any way trying to make these later works comparable. A pity they couldn’t record all three.

– BBC Music Magazine

It’s not that their performances are so much leisurely as they are elastic. The music breathes in their hands; and even when they stretch a phrase as if to feel its emotional weight, it still sounds natural and right. The A major Quartet is, to my ears, the jewel of the set, and the Elias play it with profound tenderness.

– Gramophone

Exuberant high spirits, pulsating rhythms and breathless virtuosity jostle with urbane sophistication and deeply felt sentiment in these scintillating jazz-inspired concertos by Maurice Ravel and George Gershwin, played with élan by Denis Kozhukhin and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Kazuki Yamada in this new release from Pentatone. A sparkling divertissement with witty orchestration and sizzling virtuosity, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major is and one of his best-loved works thanks to its impeccable style, dashing humor, and its hauntingly beautiful slow movement. In a change of mood, Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major is a darkly hued, powerful work with a heroic grandeur realised in a fearsomely difficult piano part that traverses the keyboard to dazzling effect. And Tin Pan Alley beckons with Gershwin’s breezily confident and polished Piano Concerto in F major. With an inventive score that artfully combines jazz elements, heart on sleeve melodies and brilliant pianistics, the result is irresistible.

Prior to the age of mechanical reproduction, music lovers had two primary ways in which to enjoy music: they could attend concerts, which was fraught with difficulties due to the dilapidated state of the road system and lack of transportation methods, or they could make music themselves, giving rise to the tradition of the house concert during the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. The increase in importance and popularity of Hausmusik was enabled by rapid technical advancements in the development of the piano. Composers and virtuosos created an ever-increasing number of transcriptions and arrangements for piano two or four hands with the intention of making them available to a wider audience. This recording presents a selection of arrangements of orchestral works for piano solo, arranged specifically for this purpose, by composers Bedrich Smetana, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, and Aram Khachaturian. New York-based French-Swiss pianist Francois-Xavier Poizat provides a wealth of tone colors while exploiting the virtuosic capabilities of the piano to its limits.

Stravinsky’s Perséphone (1934) is a dynamic music-theatrical narration of the myth of Persephone’s abduction to the underworld and return to earth. The transparent, sober but evocative music epitomizes Stravinsky’s sensuous take on Neoclassicism, and the piece showcases Stravinsky’s eclectic, original and highly personal approach to music and musical drama through a playful mixture of several genres – melodrama, song, chorus, dance and pantomime. Ultimately, Perséphone offers Stravinsky’s second ode to spring, albeit without the brutal excesses of Le Sacre. This album was recorded live during the Helsinki Festival 2017 with a star cast featuring English tenor Andrew Staples and French actress Pauline Cheviller. They join forces with the Finnish National Opera’s chorus, children’s chorus and orchestra, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, in a breath-taking performance that lifts out the piece’s transformative power.

-----

REVIEW:

Radiant beauty is not a quality that is automatically associated with Stravinsky’s music. But in Perséphone he composed one of the most radiant and lyrically beautiful scores to be found anywhere in 20th-century music. It’s one of his greatest achievements. It's a beautifully modulated performance; nothing is forced, and all the elements, sung, played, and spoken, are well and carefully integrated.

– Guardian (UK)

For this new album, Philippe Sly and the Chimera Project revisit Schubert's ultimate masterpiece, Winterreise, and offer a captivating version of the story of a wanderer who embarks on a journey through a winter landscape. From Schubert's score, only the vocal part remains intact and bass-baritone Philippe Sly's reading of it is touching and impressive. The piano part is replaced by the Chimera Project, an ensemble that comprises of trombone, violin, accordion, clarinet and a hurdy-gurdy. This delightful instrumentation brings this great work into musical territories that are both familiar and foreign. The result is an exceptional album. French-Canadian bass-baritone Philippe Sly is already gaining international notoriety for his "beautiful, blooming tone and magnetic stage presence" (San Francisco Chronicle). Mr. Sly is the first prize winner of the prestigious Concours Musical International de Montréal and a grand prize winner Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions singing the varied repertoire of Mozart, Bach, Handel, Stravinsky and Wagner. Recently, he was awarded Concert of the Year in Romantic, Post-Romantic and Impressionist Music at the 16th annual ceremony of the Prix Opus in Québec.