• These sonatas of Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770), form the most important composition for solo violin after Bach.
• At six hours in duration, it is the largest integrated work for the instrument.
• Peter Sheppard Skærved's discography stretches from Telemann to many of the works written for him. He is the leader of the Kreutzer Quartet and Viotti Lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music, London.
• ‘(an) opportunity to hear all of the sonatas. Recommended.’ Robert Maxham, Fanfare

"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."

--The New York Times on Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022

This is Volume 4 in Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s project to record the complete piano sonatas of Haydn. The last volume in the series was a Critic’s Choice in Gramophone, an Instrumental Choice in BBC Music, Editor’s Choice in Classic FM, and Recording of the Month in MusicWeb International.

In the words of Bavouzet himself: ‘Each volume of this ambitious, extended project will arrive over the years like a postcard, dispatched during my travels with scant respect for chronological considerations, but undertaken with the greatest passion for trying to convey as vividly as possible to twenty-first-century ears the boundless treasures of this sublime music.’

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet received a BBC Music Award in 2012 and a Gramophone Award in 2011 for his recording of works by Debussy and Ravel (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Yan Pascal Tortelier). His recording of Bartók’s Concertos (with Gianandrea Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic) was short-listed for a Gramophone Award, and he has won multiple awards for his recording of the complete works for solo piano by Debussy.

REVIEWS

Bavouzet doesn’t disappoint. He leans towards passion...but melancholy also surfaces through rubato, embellished repeats, control of line, pace and dynamics. This is a performance of stature with not a trace of the slick superficiality that mars matters elsewhere.

--Gramophone

These are marvelous works: every one of them has something inspired to capture your attention. In Sonata No. 38, that would have to be the central Adagio, one of those touchstone classical melodies that seem to sum up all that was most beautiful in 18th century music. Sonata No. 40 has only two movements, an intricate opening Moderato and a charming concluding Minuet.

Like No. 38, Sonata No. 30 is a substantial work in three movements[.] Bavouzet’s aptly spiky articulation of the main theme reminds us that Haydn’s early sonatas were likely composed with the harpsichord in mind, but they lose nothing (and gain much) from being played on a modern piano. This program also includes the moody Variations in F minor. Bavouzet’s interpretation is aptly pre-romantic...Haydn’s original, shorter cadenza/coda, without that astonishing tragic eruption that vaults the music forward into the 19th century...Haydn lovers are in keyboard heaven.

--ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

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Classical Music

The history of musical theatre can be written in many ways. One of them is a perspective of duos, which often constitutes nodal moments in the work's drama. A duo brings either a combination of two elements into one harmonious whole or a collision of opposing forces; as we know, the opposites passionately attract one another. Such a story is sung by two great artists: Katarzyna Oles-Blacha and Monika Korybalska. The soprano and mezzosoprano are in a particular relationship that arises between a master, academic teacher and a young student of vocal art. The perfect agreement between the vocalists can be heard in each episode of the musical performance, which fluently switches between dramatic and funny moods.

For most of the last fifteen years, the destiny of pianist and conductor Christian Zacharias has been linked with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, of which he was Principal Conductor and Artistic Director from 2000-13. His leadership resulted in invitations to prestigious venues and led to numerous recordings. He was named Artist of the Year at Cannes MIDEM, 2007 and in 2010 received the rank of Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters. This 2-DVD Bel-Air release of Beethoven's complete piano concertos presents Mr. Zacharias at the piano as well as conducting the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra.

George Thomson of Edinburgh, a notable promoter of Scottish music, encouraged settings of his nation’s folk songs. In particular, he found a rich source of arrangements in Vienna, where he commissioned first Haydn and then Beethoven to set a large sequence of poems, including those of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. Thomson envisaged simple works, agreeable to amateurs, but Beethoven found it impossible to compose within such limitations and his settings, which include Irish and Welsh songs, with the accompaniment of strings and piano, have proved perennially popular. Pianist Bernadette Bartos is the featured pianist of the Beethoven Liederseries, Vol. 1 (8.574071). Her playing was described as ‘fairly lively and sensitive’ by The Art Music Lounge. Bartos has performed at venues across Europe, including the Wiener Musikverein and the Wiener Konzerthaus. Her debut at Regent Hall, London gained her First Prize in the Beethoven Chamber Music Competition of the Beethoven Piano Society of Europe. German soprano Paula Sophie Bohnetmade her operatic debut in 2013with the role of Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro. She was the recipient of the prestigious Giovanni Omodeo Scholarship and has been awarded several prizes from organizations such as the Österreichischen Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung for her Master’s degree. Austrian tenor Daniel Johannsen studied with Lieder specialists such as Robert Holl, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Christa Ludwig, and thus approaches art song performance with great affection. Along with the great Schubert and Schumann cycles, his repertoire includes more than 300settings, which he has performed with pianists Graham Johnson, Charles Spences and Helmut Deutsch, among others.

As we all know, Walter Gieseking was the first pianist to record the entire piano works of Mozart. This series was produced by the British Columbia and it consisted of no less than 16/20 LPs which have represented a reference point of Mozart’s chamber music discography. From this edition, we have taken all these “minor” but absolutely fundamental pieces (minuets, Variations, Fantasies, Rondos) that today are difficult to find together in one release. French-German pianist Walter Gieseking was largely self-taught. He was born in France and travelled with his family throughout Europe until he enrolled at the Hannover Conservatory where he studied under Karl Leimer until his graduation in 1916. In 1915 he made his debut in Hannover. He was drafted into the German army in 1916, but escaped combat by performing in his regimental band. After the war he undertook the life of a working musician, accompanying singers and instrumentalists, playing in chamber music ensembles, and working as an opera coach.He later became an advocate of new music, performing works by Arnold Schoenberg, Ferruccio Busoni, and Paul Hindemith. One of the most extraordinary pianists of his time, he never practiced, except in his mind. He would study the score, imagine playing it, and then perform it flawlessly.

Following three acclaimed releases for AVIE surveying works by Dvo?ák, Schubert and contemporary Americans, the San Francisco-based Cypress String Quartet turns to the seminal string quartets of Beethoven, performing the five quartets from the composer’s middle period. Formed in 1996, the Cypresses added Beethoven to their repertoire early on. Their signature sound, which is clear and transparent, built up from the bottom register and layered like a pyramid, lends itself beautifully to the Middle String Quartets – the three “Rasumovskys,” the “Harp,” and the “Serioso.” Included in this new box set - released internationally on November 11, 2014 on Avie Records - are original, extensive and insightful program notes written by Nicholas Mathews, professor at UC Berkeley. - Cypress String Quartet

When Lajos Lencsés learned by chance of some of Gluck's oboe quintets, the manuscript of which was in the Este Library in Modena, nothing held him back from looking at them himself as soon as possible. The delightful pieces are successful arrangements of Gluck's operatic melodies, which represent a veritable enrichment of the repertoire.

Lajos Lencses is generally considered one of the most talented oboists in Europe. He has appeared on over 30 recordings and has actively promoted contemporary music for the oboe. Lencses is not only a virtuoso oboist but is equally talented on the oboe d'amore and English horn. While he has attained nearly the level of acclaim of iconic oboist Heinz Holliger, Lencses has chosen to balance his career as a soloist by remaining the first chair oboist in the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra. His repertory is amazingly broad, taking in works by J.S. Bach, Vivaldi, Cimarosa, Handel, Rosetti, Mozart, Dittersdorf, Bellini, Koechlin, Nielsen, Françaix, Martinu, and contemporary Hungarian composers Sandor Balassa, Frigyes Hidas, and Josef Soproni. Stylistically, he is known for his ingratiating tone, lyrical sensibilities, and brilliant technique.

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Classical Music

The combination of Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic playing Mozart and Bruckner drew a “packed and raving audience” according to The Guardian. (ICA Classics)

Brilliant Classics proudly present 5 new albums in this series: QUINTESSENCE, attractively priced compact box sets containing essential core classical repertoire in outstanding performances. Aimed at attracting both the discerning classical connoisseur and the classical newcomer it presents the pillars of classical music: Brahm’s Complete Symphonies & Concertos, Beethoven’s Complete Piano Trios, Mozart’s Music for Violin, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Orchestral Suites & Violin Concertos and Schubert’s Piano Trios, String Quintets and String Quartets. World class performers include Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra with Jaap van Zweden, Hungarian Chamber Orchestra with Kristóf Baráti and conductor Heinz Bongartz as well as the Berliner Sinfonie-Ochester with Günter Herbig.

Although Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s first instrument was the piano, even as a child he revealed himself to be a highly gifted violinist. In this domain too he was encouraged by his father Leopold, well-known violin teacher in his own right and author of a violin method widely respected at the time. Even when Wolfgang was already 21, father Leopold reaffirmed his son’s violinistic talent, on 8 October 1777. ‘You don’t realize how good you are on the violin when you put your mind to it, playing with character, conviction and spirit, just as if you were the best violinist in Europe.’ That letter was written in the period between 1773 and 1779, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed numerous works requiring string soloists. From April to December of 1775 alone, the 19-year-old penned 5 violin concertos, in an unbroken process as it were. At that time Mozart was employed as concertmaster by the archbishop’s court in Salzburg, where instrumental music was highly prized. He had, however, previously got to know the Italian tradition and art of the violin in situ, frequenting students of the famous Giuseppe Tartini there, such as Pietro Nardini and Gaetano Pugnani. On several occasions during his three journeys to Italy, he also met the Bohemian composer Josef Myslivecek, who cultivated the violin concerto genre intensively. Synthesizing the influence of Italian masters with that of Joseph Haydn, Johann Christian Bach and French violinists, Mozart composed his own concertos, which sparkle with vitality but are at the same time both intimate and graceful.

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Breathtaking pianism from Gilels: Tchaikovsky's Concerto No. 2 is titanic and tender by turns, and his opening phrase of Beethoven Four is near-miraculous. - BBC Music (ICA Classics)

“It has been almost 50 years since I met Yo-Yo in the cafeteria at the Juilliard School… We became friends very quickly and a couple of years later played a benefit concert for a children’s orchestra... I believe that in the life and career of a musician, luck plays an enormous role. The great piece of luck in my musical life has been my partnership with Yo-Yo. I learned most of the standard cello repertoire with him, but through our work together I also learned an enormous amount about all the other music that I was playing – and about sharing my love of music with audiences. Our approaches to learning a new work together started at opposite ends quite often. Yo-Yo always saw the big picture, he thought first about the emotional impact. I often started by asking why the third eighth note in bar 2 had a dot, and the fourth one didn’t. Gradually, we met in the middle. For me, it was revelatory to work in his way, and I hope I did not annoy him too much with my persnickety questions!

"Our first recordings were the Beethoven Sonatas. We had played them in concert a number of times and thought that we could do a creditable performance on disc. I remember so well the thrill of seeing those LP covers; the pianist is now a white-haired old gentleman, and the cellist looks as young as ever! I am a great lover of Russian music, but never felt that I could play it properly. The albums of Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev are very special to me as they represent my attempts at music that I adore… When I look at the list of recordings that Yo-Yo and I have done together I feel enormously privileged to have shared in the journey of this unique artist. It was happenstance and great good fortune that gave me this gift, and I am grateful beyond measure for the time we have had together. I hope there are still some years left for me to keep learning from him, and that we continue to have fun exploring together.” (Emanuel Ax)

After his acclaimed interpretation of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux, pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard returns to PENTATONE with a recording of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata and Eroica Variations. The Hammerklavier Sonata is one of the pinnacles of Beethoven’s creative output, and arguably one of the highest mountains to climb for any pianist. To Aimard, it poses one of the most frightening tests of a performer’s life, but one that is as irresistible as it is insurmountable. The dazzling Eroica Variations are nicknamed after Beethoven’s iconoclastic Third Symphony, and employ the melody he would later use as the main theme of the symphony’s finale. Beethoven’s fondness for this melody is evident, as he also used it in his ballet music for The Creatures of Prometheus, as well as in the seventh of his 12 Contredanses. Widely acclaimed as a key figure in the music of our time and as a uniquely significant interpreter of piano repertoire from every age, Pierre-Laurent Aimard enjoys an internationally celebrated career. He started his exclusive engagement to PENTATONE with a complete recording of Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux (2018).

REVIEW:

Having heard Pierre-Laurent Aimard give several intense and impassioned live performances of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata over the past several seasons, his studio recording generally seems reserved and even foursquare by comparison.

To be certain, his exemplary technique allows for no vagaries of voice leading or textural misfires, while Pentatone’s production values do justice to Aimard’s tonal clarity and transparency at quieter dynamic levels. Still, there’s a pre-planned quality about nearly every breath pause, tenuto, caesura, and dynamic hairpin that somewhat dissipates the outer movements’ continuity and momentum. This is not a function of Aimard’s generally conservative tempos, although the fugal finale becomes heavier and less timbrally alluring as the music unfolds (this is true about most performances, to be fair).

Interestingly, in concert Aimard’s outer movements went for broke, while the Adagio sostenuto came off sounding relatively reserved and reticent. Here, however, Aimard’s expressive palette opens up, with a controlled freedom to the rubatos that culminates in a devastating climax. In the rising chain of broken fifths and sixths between hands just before the first-movement recapitulation (measures 224-226), Aimard reads the lower note upbeat as A-natural, rather than the so-called “inspired misprint” A-sharp, vis-à-vis Kempff, Petri, Brendel, and Perahia; I personally prefer A-sharp, as do Schnabel, Solomon, Arrau, and Levit.

Years ago during a public master class I heard Aimard spontaneously launch into a most inspired and unified reading of Beethoven’s 32 Variations in C minor. Similar inspiration and unity abound throughout his Eroica Variations, with more than a few audacious touches.

I like the force of his right-hand triplets in Variation 2, buttoned by brash left-hand accents at phrase endings, as much as No. 5’s ruminative delicacy. In No. 6, Aimard’s suave, effortlessly dispatched broken octaves enable the offbeat accents their due without pressing the point. All the more surprising that No. 13’s triplet chords and witty melodic appogiaturas don’t match the insouciant thrust one hears from Clifford Curzon. Yet the concluding Fugue has the variety of character and articulation that I expected to encounter more consistently throughout Aimard’s Hammerklavier Fugue.

– ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Musical anniversary celebrations have inevitably been curtailed in 2020, and overshadowed by Beethoven, but Giuseppe Tartini was renowned throughout Europe as the pre-eminent genius of the violin – not only as a performer but as a composer of works which demonstrated his extraordinary gifts, and as a teacher who welcomed students from across Europe to his home in the north-Italian city of Padova, where they learnt every sophistication in the art of violin playing; not only virtuoso trickery but the sustaining of a true legato like a great singer. Tartini’s concertos have laid down the gauntlet to great violinists down the ages, even if many of them have been forgotten and only recently revived. Now Giulio Plotino joins their number, selecting three of the best-known concertos to complement what is still Tartini’s best-known work, the ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata whose title and fearsomely intricate figuration was apparently inspired – almost diabolically dictated – by a dream of the composer’s. The concertos chosen for this recording, from among the 125 or so in the Dounias catalogue, conform to the traditional quick-slow-quick construction. In contrast to the Vivaldian template, however, Tartini integrates the material of the opening tutti within the solo passages, and shuns passagework of sequences even in the outer movements, but most particularly in the solemn and tender slow movements, where Tartini the technician gives way to Tartini the singer and the maestro di capella, composing for himself and his ensemble to accompany the liturgy.

Especially in his late sonatas, Leopold Kozeluch’s keyboard music belongs no less to the quickly evolving cultural landscape of late 18th- and early 19th-century Vienna than the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. It can even at times be hard to tell which composer influenced whom; Kozeluch is his own man, not gifted in the final analysis with Beethoven’s feeling for dramatic expression, Mozart’s subtlety of formal innovation or Schubert’s melodic inspiration, but sharing a portion of these qualities while bringing to the table something of his own, not least a mood of deceptive simplicity which belongs to the world of his native Bohemia. Kozeluch (1747-1818) seems to have worked with uncommon ease and fluidity, in command of all the technical possibilities of his instrument, writing in the popular galant style and testing both performer and instrument with moto perpetuo passagework, double trills, sudden contrasts and, in the minor-key sonatas, a brooding chromaticism that belongs to the most powerful expressions of Sturm und Drang. In the hands of Kozeluch, as in those of all fine composers, they produce a musical whole that seems far greater than the sum of its parts; and, as in the creations of all geniuses, there is a profundity that cannot be explained merely by description of the processes at work. Jenny Soonjin Kim is a specialist in performances of Classical-era repertoire on instruments of the period. For this recording she performs on a modern copy of an Anton Walter fortepiano from Vienna in 1795.

Beethoven's oeuvre only comprises a small collection of works for cello and piano, but that the composer was an accomplished writer for this combination of instruments is evident from the fact that Jean-Louis Duport, one of Frederick II's court cellists and one of the most revered musicians of his day, incorporated many of the techniques found in the Op.5 sonatas into his instruction manual for cello. The two works each contain only two movements, and the absence of a slow movement was probably to avoid the problem of dynamic imbalance between the instruments (which would have been accentuated in adagio passages) -- something that is also the case with the Op.68 sonatas, composed in 1807. Only with the second Op.102 sonata does the composer finally replace the slow introduction, as found in No.1 and all of the above works, with a full-scale slow movement, one that precedes the massive fugal finale that was to form such an intrinsic part of Beethoven's late-period works.

Also featured are the three delightful sets of variations for cello and piano, each modelled on a different aria from Handel's opera Judas Maccabeus and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, and each (just like the sonatas) placing the piano on an equal footing with the cello throughout. The works are an engaging addition to a collection that marks the return of Israeli/Dutch cellist Timora Rosler and Hungarian pianist Klára Würtz, whose previous Brilliant Classics release 'Cello Rhapsody' (9157) was released to critical acclaim, and which provides a snapshot of the composer's stylistic development over a period of nearly 20 years.

Other information:
- Filling "only" two CD's, the complete works for cello and piano are quintessential and vintage Beethoven. The two youthful Opus 5 sonatas are written in virtuoso concerto style, with an especially glittering role for the piano (Beethoven was a tremendous pianist in his early years), the sonata Op. 69 is in the expansive, sonorous and deep-feeling tonal language of Beethoven's Middle-Period, whereas the two Late sonatas Op. 102 are marvels of originality, experiment, "quirkiness" and humanity.
- The two musicians Timora Rosler and Klára Würtz have been playing together for more than 15 years, having won several chamber music prizes. They performed the Beethoven cycle several times in concert over the years, and their interpretation has ripened to such an extent that the time came to record it. And here it is: every note alive and vibrant, played with gusto and feeling, alternating melancholy and joy, sadness and sheer fun.
- Contains notes on the music and detailed artist biographies.
- Recorded 19--23 January 2013, Sala congressi del Parco naturalistico di Onara, Padua, Italy.

In 1799, after having made a name for himself with major compositions, but before finishing his first symphony, Beethoven wrote a work for mixed strings and winds. This piece, the Septet op. 20, would become one of his most popular compositions, with a large number of arrangements, including the one for piano trio on this album. The form is clearly related to the divertimenti by Mozart, with six movements that alternate fast and slow tempos. The appearance of the Triple Concerto on the final disc in this series might surprise some listeners, as it is the only work with orchestra, but this composition has more in common with chamber music than with concertos. It was written in 1805, and it's instrumentation is highly exceptional if not unprecedented altogether. In tone, it is rather a stark contrast from Beethoven's other concertos, which generally contain easily recognizable melodies and strikingly rhythmic material, neither of which are found to a great degree here. Furthermore, the opposition of soloist and orchestra, a central aspect of many solo works with orchestra written up until that point that was the engine behind much of the drama, is also absent, with the orchestra taking a largely subservient role to the three soloists. So, although the work was called a 'Grand Concerto Concertant' when it was published, it really has very little in common with other works with a similar title. The question is whether this piece is a concerto at all, or whether it could be more fruitfully played and judged as a different kind of experimental piece in a more collaborative genre. This disc takes the latter approach, and by contextualizing it in a series of piano trios, it presents this work as Beethoven's most richly instrumented chamber music.

After having recorded Mozart’s last three violin concertos in 2014, Arabella Steinbacher, the Festival Strings Lucerne and its leader Daniel Dodds now complete the cycle by presenting Mozart’s less well-known, but equally enchanting Violin Concertos 1 & 2, together with his Adagio in E Major and Rondos in C Major and B-flat Major. Steinbacher plays the cadenzas by Wolfgang Schneiderhan, who co-founded the Festival Strings Lucerne in 1956. Another exciting aspect of this album is that she plays for the first time on the “Ex Benno Walter“ Strad from 1718. Arabella Steinbacher, a multiple award-winner with an extensive PENTATONE discography, is accompanied by the esteemed players of the Festival Strings Lucerne and their leader and artistic director Daniel Dodds.

When deciding on the repertoire for his début disc, James Newby’s first choice fell on An die ferne Geliebte, songs that he had been performing ever since the beginning of his career. But Beethoven’s song cycle – and perhaps even more so the quasi-operatic Adelaide – also sets a tone for the entire disc, that of longing and of wanting to be elsewhere, near the distant beloved. These are emotions that Schubert, perhaps more than any other composer, has plumbed in depth, and Newby went on to select five of his songs that in various ways depict the restlessness and loneliness of the eternal wanderer. Mahler is another composer who knew something about longing – for instance that it can be deadly, which he demonstrated with his Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz, in which a soldier awaits execution after trying to desert to his homeland while the piano imitates the muffled rolling of drums. The military theme continues in the high-strung Revelge, as a young soldier marches towards his death, thinking about his sweetheart with ever-greater desperation. The final song by Mahler, Urlicht, expresses the anguish and pain of earthly life, and the longing for Heaven and, in effect, death. Framing this programme with five folk song arrangements by Benjamin Britten, James Newby and Joseph Middleton explore Man’s never-ending search (geographical or psychological) for that distant object of desire: who, what or wherever it may be.

During a scant ten weeks in the summer of 1788, Mozart wrote three outstanding symphonies, highly innovative in their complexity and length. He was thirty-two and living in Vienna, a city which had offered him numerous opportunities in the past. Musically, it had provided a platform combining excellent musicians and enthusiastic audiences. In more personal terms, it was the place where he had freed himself from the emotional pressure exerted by his father Leopold and his former employer, the Archbishop of Salzburg. However, Viennese audiences were no longer interested in his masterful modernist compositions. When Mozart composed these, his last three symphonies, he was thought of as a ‘dissonance hunter.’ In this symphonic ‘trilogy,’ Mozart illuminates all aspects of human expression, quite independently of his personal situation. Each work presents a different character. No. 39 in E flat major contains numerous elements reminiscent of chamber music, while no. 40 in G minor makes clear references to opera. No. 41 in C major includes formal elements from Baroque music (overture, concerto, fugue). Its synthesis of sonata form and fugue was, and still is, a tour de force that could only have been written by Mozart.

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REVIEW:

These are exciting, distinctive readings that don't make the music into something that it is not. Tempos, while decidedly brisk, do not seem rushed, even in the slow movements. The sense of excitement thus produced feels real, not artificially forced upon the music. The readings are full of ideas that seem inevitable.

– Fanfare

Die Ruinen von Athen (‘The Ruins of Athens’) was composed to celebrate the opening of the new German theatre in Pest in 1812. Designed to accompany the play of that name by August von Kotzebue, its incidental music is substantial enough to form a kind of one-act Singspiel and is full of attractive arias, duets and choruses and includes the famous Turkish March. Though the work’s theme was rooted in Greek mythology, in reality it was explicitly political in nature, celebrating Pest as ‘the new Athens.’ This is the first ever recording of the work with full narration.

Delos International is proud to announce the next release in its outstanding partnership with Dennis Keene and the Voices of Ascension: 'Hear My Prayer'. Voices of Ascension has come to be recognized as one of the world's finest choral ensembles. Its concerts and recordings receive unalloyed critical acclaim. Artistic Director Dennis Keene has assembled a group of New York's finest professional singers and blended them into a richly satisfying ensemble, unqiue in its command of choral music from every period and style. Featuring the renowned soprano soloist Hei-Kyung Hong, 'Hear My Prayer' is perfectly placed for these often difficult times. This timely recording offers the listener an inspiring and soothing collection of sacred works that are appropriate for all audiences. 'Hear My Prayer' covers the choral genre from Mozart to Casals, embracing the traditional and the sublime with singing and direction second to none.

The second volume of Giovanni Bellucci’s Beethoven cycle for Brilliant Classics takes the listener on a journey of six eventful years, from Op.22 of 1800 to the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata of 1806. During that time Beethoven established himself as Vienna’s pre-eminent pianist-composer. He came to regard Op.22 as the best of his ‘early’ sonatas but a sea-change in the deepening of his expression is already evident in the piano-writing of Op.26, with its funeral march ‘in memory of a hero’. There follow the remarkable formal innovations of the Op.27 pair – No.2 immortally inscribed on the popular imagination as the ‘Moonlight’ – and then the smooth, undulating rhythms of the ‘Pastorale’ Op.28. The trio of Op.31 sonatas present a study in contrasts, from the graceful profile of No.1 in G major to the sound and fury of the ‘Tempest’ No.2 and then the hectic momentum of No.3, presaging the concision of works at the end of his ‘middle’ period such as the ‘Serioso’ Quartet and the Eighth Symphony. The proportions of the two-movement Op.54 are even more tautly circumscribed, before the reach of Beethoven’s expressive range for his instrument expands to hitherto undreamt heights in the ‘Waldstein’ Op.53 and the ‘Appassionata’ Op.57. Giovanni Bellucci is among the most strikingly individual of modern pianists. Described by Italian critic Piero Rattalino as ‘a force of nature, vast and palpitating’, he cultivates an old-fashioned richness of piano timbre while still attending to the letter as well as the spirit of Beethoven’s scores. According to Le Monde, ‘he takes us back to the Golden Age of the Piano’. His recordings have been showered with prizes such as Diapason d’Or, Choc, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, CD Maestro etc.