Haydn's Passiontide masterpiece in it's string-quartet version, with the Latin inscriptions to each movement intoned as a liturgical preface. Invited to compose reflections on the Seven Last Words for a Good Friday service to be held in Cadiz in 1787, Haydn originally wrote a cycle of pieces for chamber orchestra. Ever practical, he soon adapted the piece for string quartet, and then as a vocal oratorio, while also authorizing a solo-piano arrangement for publication. Thus widely disseminated, the Seven Last Words soon became widely performed and recognised as Haydn at his most inspired. For all that the form of the work - seven slow movements capped by an Presto evoking the terrible effect of the earthquake which had reduced Cadiz to rubble just a generation earlier, in 1755 - promises more solemnity than variety on paper, Haydn takes his cue from the texts which have come down to us as Christ's final phrases. Thus the melodies for each movement have their own, specifically vocal contour, while the accompaniments graphically evoke the agony, the loneliness but also the peace and serenity which these phrases embody. While quartet performances of the Seven Last Words are probably more frequently encountered than any other version, they lose sight of this specific, spiritual context to Haydn's fervent and devout inspiration. The present, new recording restores that connection between text and music. As an ensemble resident at the Duomo in Milan, this fine quartet of Italian musicians is in any case well practised in striking the balance between solemnity and drama in such music. For the sake of clarity, however, they have made this recording in a modern studio. Away from the cathedral, the musicians of the quartet (violinists Andrea Pecolo and Stefano Lo Re, violist Matteo Amadasi and cellist Alfredo Persichilli) are all permanent members of the Orchestra of La Scala. Bringing both dignity and authority to the inscriptions, Aldo Cazzullo is an experienced Italian reporter and journalist, and current deputy managing director of the Corriere della Sera.

The Handel and Haydn Society celebrates Haydn with a dazzling pairing of two of the composer’s masterpieces. In one of his final performances as Artistic Director of the Society, Harry Christophers leads the ensemble and a stellar cast of soloists in Haydn’s monumental ‘Theresienmesse’ (Mass in B-flat major - Hob.XXII:12) and his Symphony No. 103 in E-flat major (Hob.I:103) the ‘Drumroll’ - one of Haydn’s twelve ‘London’ symphonies composed between 1791 and 1795 when London was the indisputable musical capital of Europe. “This chorus is consistently excellent, but something had lit a special fire under them...Of the “Theresienmesse” the chorus and orchestra made a brilliant tapestry.” (Boston Globe)

According to an old tradition, it is perfectly legitimate to arrange works for one instrument to another, if this does not detract from the substance of the work. This is what the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart likely told himself when he arranged three piano sonatas by his admired role model Johann Christian Bach into small concertos (KV 107) in his early years. This is also what Silke Aichhorn told herself with equal justification when she arranged one of these pieces for the harp alongside concertos by the German Johann Samuel Schroter, who was almost the same age. The pairing is no coincidence. Mozart and his father both admired the works of Schroter, born in Guben, Lusatia, who enjoyed a distinguished career as a pianist. In 1782, he succeeded the "London Bach" as music teacher to Her Majesty Queen Charlotte - unfortunately not for very long. Schroter died three years before Amadeus and at the same age.

The recording of Mozart's Piano Concertos No. 20 and 24 is intended as a contrasting twin project to the first recording of No. 15 and 21 released on the Solo Musica label in 2024. The two recordings are like the "yin" and the "yang," the moon and the sun, demonstrating the multifaceted nature of Mozart's creativity. As a pianist, Zhen Chen wants to demonstrate his ability to develop and perform works of different artistic modes. Furthermore, since the pianist and the orchestra remain the same in the two recordings and only the baton has been changed-from the hand of the Austrian conductor Thomas Rosner to the French conductor Paul Meyer-these two recordings are an interesting pair, allowing listeners to savor the difference in the artistic direction of the two conductors. No. 15 and 21 are, in his opinion, the quintessential Mozart piano concertos in major key. They are gleeful, humorous, and uplifting, while No. 20 and 24 are the rare gems of Mozart's multi-movement piano works in minor keys. Out of a total of 27, he composed only two piano concertos in minor keys. They are among the few works by Mozart dominated by an unsettling and gloomy sense.

Luigi Boccherini composed just a single set of sonatas, Op.5, specifically for violin and piano. However, his commercial celebrity and his artistic reputation at the time, as a composer considered in the same breath as Mozart and Haydn, encouraged publishers to commission arrangements of other works. Such arrangements include this set of Sonatas published in London in 1780, made by Thomas Billington but admitted to the catalogue of Boccherini's works as G34-39. Igor Ruhadze and Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya have made the first ever complete recording of this set as a sequel to their 5CD set of Boccherini sonatas (96612) issued by Brilliant Classics in 2023. 'Looking forward to the sequel!' concluded the review in Diapason of that set, after praising the stylish spirit of musicianship and authenticity in the playing of both artists. Compared to their rivals on record, remarked the reviewer, 'the seduction is more demonstrative, the contrasts more accentuated, the sensuality and the feeling more showy.' Today, as Rudolf Rasch's booklet note remarks, we may prefer original works over arranged works; in the 18th century, such a preference was unknown. No one looked down on them. In fact, they made a composer's music accessible for those who could not perform them in their original format. There was hardly a format more accessible for music-making among friends than the violin sonata, in which the piano would take the lion's share of the harmony from the original work, with the principal melody line assigned to the violin. As well as these violin sonatas, Thomas Billington arranged Corelli's concerti grossi for solo keyboard, and composed a good deal of his own music. In these sonatas, he drew from Boccherini's Trios Op.4 and Op.6, Quartets Op.8 and Quintets Op.10. He was in any case emulating the example of Boccherini himself, who made several such arrangements. As always with Boccherini, there is no shortage of attractive melodies and upbeat, galant invention to contrast with the lyrical beauty of the slow movements. - Luigi Boccherini was born in the Italian city of Lucca in Tuscany, on 19 February 1743, the son of Leopoldo Boccherini, a cellist and double-bass player. The young Luigi received his first music lessons from his father and at the Seminario di San Giovanni in Lucca. The cello was to become his instrument. At the age of ten, he was apparently already so advanced that his father sent him to Rome for further studies at the end of 1753, where he possibly remained until 1756. Apart from a brief period in Vienna around 1760, he was in Lucca until he set out to Paris (perhaps the major musical centre of the time) in the spring of 1768. Later that year he would go to Spain, where he would remain for the rest of his life until his death on 28 May 1805. - This new recording is the second volume of the complete violin sonatas, works in which the pianoforte plays a significant role next to the solo violin. - Critical praise for violinist Igor Ruhadze and pianist Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: 'The early-music world needs more performers like Igor Ruhadze... This is some of the most accomplished historically informed violin playing I have heard in a long time.' Fanfare (Geminiani, 96524). 'Nepomnyashchaya provides a lesson in how one may realize such sonata bass lines. Her accompaniment is varied in texture and detail, balancing right-hand countermelodies with arpeggiated chordal washes of sound and heavy block chords at cadences. Like Ruhadze, she is a consummate specialist in Baroque style and practice.' - 'These musicians make a strong case for the violin-keyboard duo as an artistic medium. 'Strongly recommended for the music itself and for the dedicated, exciting performances.' Fanfare (Locatelli, 94376).

With the three piano trios, Op. 1, Ludwig van Beethoven took a genre still largely associated with salon music and raised it up to rival the string quartet. The works are innovative in form as well as in content. From this collection, the Trio in G major, Op. 1 No. 2, appears as a cheerful and engaging work. While it has been said that one could discern ‘the master’s happy youth […] still unclouded, light and frivolous’, hints of ‘the deep seriousness and tender intimacy that would follow’ can also be found. Knowing very well that well-placed dedications could result in princely rewards, Beethoven dedicated his Piano Trio in B flat major, Op. 97, to the Archduke Rudolph of Austria, hence its nickname, ‘Archduke’ Trio. With this work, Beethoven bade farewell to the genre with arguably his most important contribution, a trio of which a critic wrote that in it ‘genius, art, nature, truth, spirit, originality, invention, execution, taste, power, fire, imagination, loveliness, deep feeling and lively jesting entwine in sisterly harmony’.

After the success of its Ravel and Saint-Saëns trios recording [BIS-2219], the Sitkovetsky Trio presents the eagerly awaited second installment of its series devoted to Beethoven’s piano trios.

REVIEW:

This is a delight: sprightly, well-articulated playing which bounds with vitality. The energy of the performance is driven by the pianist Wu Qian, absolutely attentive to all of Beethoven’s quirky markings and sudden sforzandos; the touches of rhythmic subtlety also come from the piano, just momentary holdings-back to shape a phrase or clarify a structure.

The much earlier Trio Op 1 No 2 in G is more firmly in the Haydn tradition, and has a cheery, rather rustic style; Alexander Sitkovetsky’s violin sings in the Largo, then Beethoven adds a Scherzo, before the uproariously funny repeated-note finale – not rushed here, but delivered with just the right manic wit.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin returns to Pentatone together with soprano Christina Landshamer, presenting La Passione, a collection of dazzling concert arias on love, longing and loss by Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn, paired with the latter’s “La Passione” Symphony. Ranging from pastoral simplicity to exuberant outrage, the program offers some of the finest vocal writing around 1800, including some of Beethoven’s rare and little-known excursions to Italian bravura opera, as well as one of the most dramatic and expressive symphonies of the eighteenth-century.

The Akademie für Alte Musik is generally seen as one of the best period-instruments ensembles of today, and has a substantial Pentatone discography, including CANTATA with Bejun Mehta (2018), Handel’s Concerti grossi op. 6 (released in 2019 and 2020). Telemann’s Miriways (2020), Handel’s Messiah (2020) and Haydn’s L’isola disabitata (2021). Christina Landshamer featured as Marzelline on Beethoven’s Fidelio (2021).

Joseph Haydn must have been curious: Away from the extensive obligations for music at the court of Prince Esterhazy, he found in the string quartet the ideal field for experiments. The quartets from op. 9 contain ideas that would only find expression in symphonies and sonatas much later. The Leipzig String Quartet are starting with Quartets 1 to 3, that sound as fresh and new as if they had just come from the pen. After all, ten years of compositional experience lie between Haydn's first attempts in the genre and the six quartets op. 9. The pieces repeatedly demand ludicrously virtuosic passages from the first violin, and some movements with their bravura cadenzas are even reminiscent of a violin concerto. However, the far advanced balance of the voices is surprising. Far from being simply accompaniment, there are also many demanding details in the lower voices. The slow movements, which always come third in the op. 9 quartets, are grandiose and at the same time touching. Wide melodic arches give the primarius opulent opportunity to indulge and to "speak" in conversation, in order to finally create space for a final movement that is as lively as it is capricious. This is not least due to Italian influence, but Carl Philip Emanuel Bach also leaves his mark alongside Sammartini; the themes seem to be thrown down, gain immense lightness, and the works become increasingly individual. It is not known what Haydn's employer thought of the innovations; with the historically informed Leipzig String Quartet, he must certainly have taken a particular liking to them.

Following his acclaimed first recording for Alpha Classics, Saga, the German baritone Konstantin Krimmel continues to tell us stories, with a program focusing on Zauberoper or ‘magic opera’. Accompanied by the Hofkapelle München orchestra conducted by Rüdiger Lotter, Krimmel explores operas by Mozart, Salieri and Gluck, alongside less well-known titles by Paul Wranitzky and Peter von Winter: spectacular musical comedies from the eighteenth-century Viennese repertory, with their enchanted fairytale universe. Konstantin Krimmel, with German-Romanian roots, first got in touch with music at the St. George's Choir Boys in Ulm and from this moment on, the fascination of music never left him. At the age of 21, he began his vocal studies with Prof. Teru Yoshihara, which the singer completed with distinction in 2020. In the meantime he is being coached by Tobias Truniger in Munich.

Known for his characteristically deep sound and formidable virtuosity, violinist Monte Belknap joins concert pianist Barbara Allen to perform the complete collection of Beethoven's sonatas for piano and violin in this new 4-disc set.

Belknap has numerous film credits, including serval as a soloist. He regularly performs with the Uinta Trio and the Deseret String Quartet. Belknap has been a violin professor at the BYU School of Music since 2003, and his former students concertize and perform with major symphonies around the world.

Allen has concertized widely, playing solo chamber music and concerto repertoire. Also a singer and a conductor, she has been music director of the Utah Lyric Opera and is currently vocal coach for the BYU Opera Theatre.

With this set, Centaur completes its traversal of the complete Beethoven String Quartet cycle, performed by the superb St. Louis based Arianna String Quartet. This is one of the truly great Beethoven String Quartet cycles.

Heinz Holliger, an exceptional oboist, pianist, and composer, did not compose anything for piano for almost 40 years after his 1961 work "Elis - Three Nocturnes". A whole series of musical tributes and birthday greetings composed since the beginning of the 21st century was then published in 2019 under the Schumannesque title "Albumblatter" (Album Leaves) and has now been recorded in it's entirety for the first time by Kirill Zvegintsov. These are typically Holligerian, highly intricate showpieces with many references, which are expertly explained in the album essay. These works are combined with early and late piano works by the Swiss composer and pianist Jurg Wyttenbach, who died in 2021 and had a close musical relationship with Holliger. In the last years of his life, this expert in New Music took on the daring task of completing Beethoven's sketches for an alternative third movement for his Piano Sonata Op. 109 - an undertaking that only such a skilled pianist and composer could attempt. In the last days of his life, Wyttenbach was able to listen to the premiere of this reconstruction by Zvegintsov. The Ukrainian pianist combines and contrasts this experiment with the original modern works in a very stimulating way.

For the fourth volume in this collection dedicated to Mozart concertos by the younger generation of performers, the Orpheum Foundation and Alpha Classics present the Concertos nos. 23 and 24 (K488 & 491) performed by the British pianist Julian Trevelyan, who was awarded three prizes at the Géza Anda Competition in Zurich in 2021 and, at the age of sixteen, became the youngest-ever prizewinner at the Marguerite Long Competition in Paris in 2015. ‘Mozart’s music is full of life, humor and enjoyment. My life wouldn’t feel fulfilled if I didn’t have his music’, says the young musician, who is accompanied here by one of the most eminent Mozartian maestros, Christian Zacharias, conducting the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

The Orpheum Foundation, which has been supporting young musicians for over thirty years, has joined forces with Alpha Classics for a series of recordings devoted to Mozart’s concertos, regardless of instrument. The leading soloists of the young generation have been selected to appear under the artistic direction of Howard Griffiths, a renowned Mozart conductor, who considers that performing his music is like ‘looking in a mirror: you can hear if everything is in place, musicality, intonation, rhythm, phrasing’. These albums will reveal the great virtuosos of tomorrow and immortalize their success in this implacable test. Ludvig Gudim plays the Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218 (with cadenzas by Joachim); Joséphine Olech plays the Flute Concerto No. 1 in G Major, K. 313; and Jeneba Kanneh-Mason plays the Piano Concerto No. 6 in B-Flat Major, K. 238.

Joseph Haydn once remarked: ‘I was not a magician on any instrument, but I knew the power and effect of all of them.’ This knowledge he used to good effect in his cello concertos, composed some twenty years apart for two different cellists in ‘his’ orchestra at the court of Prince Esterhazy. Both works are firmly established in the concert repertoire, but this has not always been the case. Concerto No. 1 in C major was long believed to be lost and it was only in 1961 that a set of parts were discovered in the Prague National Museum. The D major concerto, on the other hand, was never lost, but for a very long time there was doubts concerning its provenance. Only when Haydn's manuscript was found in 1954 could the work’s authorship be clarified beyond doubt.

These two jewels in the cello repertoire are here performed by the acclaimed Swiss cellist Christian Poltéra who also directs the Münchener Kammerorchester. Closing the disc is a work composed some 150 years later: the composer and viola player Paul Hindemith wrote his Trauermusik for himself to perform at a concert commemorating the death of George V of England in 1936. It is here heard in the version for cello and strings.

REVIEW:

Christian Poltéra is front and centre in these vivacious performances of Haydn’s two cello concertos. His ‘Mara’ Stradivari is in fine voice, throaty and gruff in chivvying low-register passages but singing plangently in the high-lying lyrical writing that is such a feature of both works.

-- The Strad

Julien Chauvin meets up with one of the great harpsichordists and fortepianists of our time, Andreas Staier, who is a leading interpreter of the Mozart concertos. He presents us with his vision of the Piano Concerto no.23 and its famous Adagio, ‘one of the most heart-rending slow movements ever written by Mozart. Performers often tend to take it too slowly, certainly thinking that this will accentuate the tragic side, but Julien Chauvin and I spontaneously agreed on a slightly faster tempo, which respects the basic pulse of this movement in Siciliana rhythm. When you start with the right tempo, it’s amazing how the whole discourse comes together perfectly, in a very logical and simple manner’, says Staier, who plays a magnificent instrument by Christoph Kern after a 1790 fortepiano by Anton Walter, the great maker of Mozart’s time. Also on the program is the Symphony no.40, in which, says Julien Chauvin, ‘Mozart explores types of writing that he pushes to their most extreme limits. This is the case in the finale, where we find a succession of dissonant disjunct intervals at the opening of the development which, on closer inspection, present us with the full chromatic scale (except for G natural, the symphony’s tonic). And so the twelve-note series was born!’

For a string player, Beethoven’s 16 quartets are of an importance similar to that of his sonatas to a pianist and for every composer of string quartets they remain a benchmark. The Chiaroscuro Quartet have begun their cycle of these works at the same place as Beethoven did, with the Op. 18 set which occupied him intensively for the best part of two years (1798 – 1800). The effort he put into these quartets was surely due to the fact that he had much to live up to – they would after all be measured against those of Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven was clearly determined that the six quartets of the set should present the widest possible overview of his art.

The Chiaroscuros released the first three in 2021 – a disc which was included among the finest new releases of the year in BBC’s Record Review. The present album opens with the only minor-key quartet of the six, No. 4 in C minor, which in the years that followed became Beethoven’s most popular quartet – to his growing irritation as he felt it overshadowed later works. In No. 5 in A major Beethoven follows closely in the footsteps of Mozart: its third movement and finale are in fact modelled on Mozart’s quartet in the same key (K?464), which Beethoven had copied out before he began work on his own quartet. With No.?6 in B flat major it is rather Haydn that we see hovering in the background: for instance his way of making witty capital out of the most elementary material or the rhythmic games in the third movement Scherzo.

REVIEW:

This is the best recording of any Beethoven Quartets I have heard in a long time, not because it is, unusually, a period performance on gut strings and historical bows, or that it is superbly well recorded in surround, but because these players have dared to completely rethink these well-known pieces and turned them into a series of wonderful surprises.

The set has to be heard no matter how many other recordings one possesses. If it goes on to encompass the whole series - and who knows if it will? - it could become the period performance cycle against which others in the future are measured. Recording, in surround and stereo, notes and presentation are immaculate: an object lesson in how such things ought always to be done.

-- MusicWeb International

Assistant Professor of Double Bass George Speed enjoys a career that combines teaching with solo, chamber, and orchestral performing. He joins the College of Music faculty after 14 years as Associate Professor of Double Bass at Oklahoma State University, where he received the 2009 Wise-Diggs-Berry Award for Teaching Excellence. For the past four summers, Mr. Speed has served on the artist faculty of the Brevard Music Center in Brevard, North Carolina. He joins with pianist Heidi Louise Williams for this new release, showcasing a program of Bass favorites and transcriptions, including works by Beethoven, Boccherini, Dragonetti, and Sperger.

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Inon Barnatan present a complete recording of Beethoven’s cello sonatas. Composed over a span of nearly twenty years, these works not only contain some of the most appealing and lyrical music Beethoven wrote, but also allow the listener to trace his exceptional artistic development. The third sonata, moreover, is a watershed in sonata writing, arguably presenting the cello and piano as fully equal partners for the first time in music history. The richness of these works fully comes to life in the interpretation of Weilerstein and Barnatan, who have – besides glorious solo careers – also proven to be one of the most congenial chamber music tandems of our times. Their wonderful musical partnership and profound friendship shines through in each of these sonatas.

Since signing an exclusive contract with PENTATONE, Alisa Weilerstein has released Transfigured Night (2018) as well as Bach’s Cello Suites (2020), while also featuring on Old Souls (2019) and Inon Barnatan’s Beethoven Piano Concertos Part 1 (2019), on which she performed the composer’s Triple Concerto. This album was part of Inon Barnatan’s complete Beethoven piano concertos recordings on PENTATONE, of which Part 2 appeared in 2020. 2021 saw the release of his solo album Time Traveler’s Suite.

REVIEWS:

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein has recorded major repertory works and seems to be ascending into the top rank of the world's cellists. This set of Beethoven's five cello sonatas should hasten that process. Weilerstein is accompanied here by her usual partner Inon Barnatan, and their long experience as collaborators shows up in the extremely careful balances they achieve in these sonatas and their shifting relationships between the cello and the piano. Yet even more compelling is the sense of musical narrative they create here. A standout reading of these much-recorded works.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

The test piece for anyone sampling these excellent sets is the best known sonata, No 3 in A major Op 69, in which piano and cello find full equality. A peerless technician, Weilerstein embraces both the expansive lyricism and fragile intensity of this work, the singing melodies contrasted with explosive “middle period” drama. She is compelling, too, in the Op 102 sonatas.

-- The Guardian (Fiona Maddocks)

A re-release of Beethoven's Sonatas Nos. 3 & 9 (Kreutzer) from celebrated violinist Viktoria Mullova and her duo partner for this recording, Kristian Bezuidenhout. The pair bring a tension-filled account of these works, displaying their energetic and spontaneous take on what's considered one of Beethoven's most challenging works.

It was Prince Nikolaus of Esterházy's increasing infatuation with the baryton that compelled Haydn, the prince's Kapellmeister, to write an unprecedented body of 125 works for baryton trio. The instrument is more like a viola d'amore than a bass viol and has extra strings behind the neck that provide resonance and opportunities for plucking effects. The six works in this album are intimate expressions of great beauty, with a sustained level of invention, all of which reflect the prince's increasing confidence in the instrument. Volumes 1 and 2 are available on 8.574188 and 8.574504.

The renowned French painter Jean Ingres proclaimed Haydn's music to be the alpha and omega: 'Whoever studies music, let his daily bread be Haydn. The first, who created everything, discovered everything, taught everything to the rest!' Hailed as the father of both the symphony and the string quartet, Haydn was both pioneering and prolific. This box is an update of Brilliant Classics' acclaimed Haydn Edition, with an additional 10 CDs of content including classic performances of the Trumpet and Horn concertos (Philharmonia Orchestra) and the Cello Concertos (Jan Vogler). The set of Haydn's Masses is now complete, with renditions of the 'Nelson', 'Creation' and 'Little Organ' Masses and the Heilig- and Theresienmessen by New York's Trinity Church Choir and Rebel Baroque Orchestra. Also new in this edition is Haydn's final opera, L'anima del filosofo, performed by the Bavarian Radio Choir and Munich Radio Orchestra, along with world-famous sopranos Arleen Auger and Emma Kirkby in Haydn's Songs and Cantatas. The Buchberger String Quartet add to their already monumental catalogue of 'Papa' Haydn's quartets with readings of Op.50/4-6, Op.54 and Op.76/4-6, while Federico Guglielmo, Ginevra Petrucci et al. #contribute new recordings of the duos for violin/viola and 2 flutes. Finally, all 8 of Haydn's ingenious Nocturnes grace this updated box, as performed by the Wiener Concert-Verein. As before, the complete keyboard works (including all sonatas) feature here in vibrant performances on fortepianos, the keyboard instrument of Haydn's day. Reissue of the successful Haydn Edition, the only substantial Edition in the market. Extended version, now 160 CD's, with the addition and completion of the Masses, the String Quartets, the Notturni, and the opera L'Anima del Filosofo. Includes Award winning performances by Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra/Adam Fischer, Buchberger Quartet, Emma Kirkby, Frieder Bernius, Bart van Oort, Haydn Trio Vienna, and many more. The greatest celebration of one of the greatest and not yet fully appreciated composers of all time: craftman and genius, creator of a musical world of wonder, surprise, wit and sentiment, forever to be explored and marveled at.

The figure of Ferdinand Ries (1784–1838) enjoys a peripheral familiarity among music-lovers as the friend and amanuensis of Beethoven. A bond had formed when Ries’s father Franz taught Beethoven in Bonn. While Beethoven doubtless cast his eye over his friend and student’s pieces from time to time, he sent Ries to his own teacher Johann Albrechtsberger for lessons in composition. The Sonata Sentimentale appears to mark the high-point of the composer’s writing for the flute, which extended to several ‘earlier’-sounding sonatas and lighter fantasias as well as flute-centric chamber music such as six quartets for flute and string trio. Here, to a degree unprecedented in the rest of his work, the flautist is the star of the show. The three Sonatas Op.86, on the other hand, are evidently designed for performers of more modest talents: ‘Sonates faciles’ as they were designated on the title page of their first publication in 1839. This set dates with fair certainty from London in 1819, and Ries appears to have composed it with the profitable market of proficient amateurs in mind. According to manuscript dates the Sonatinas Op.5 were the last works on this album to be composed, in London in 1821, published two years later there by Muzio Clementi. The rippling ‘Alberti bass’ sequences in the left hand, the preponderance of moderate tempi and straightforward two- and three-part textures, lying well under the fingers, indicate that Ries had in mind the same public market for these attractively sunny pieces as the Op.86 sonatas.

This album combines Japanese and European art songs - two seemingly distant cultural spheres revealing often impressive affinities, whereby in the direct comparison the respective characteristic profiles of the Western and Far Eastern style traditions are certainly preserved, perhaps even more apparent. All in all, a musical round dance is created through the highs and lows of human emotions and experiences - and regardless of the permanent back and forth between East and West, an invisible bond leads us to the brilliant rising of the Far Eastern sun in the last song of "A magnificent morning" by Yoshinao Nakada. Wonderfully interpreted by Misaki Kobayashi and Matthias Veit.

Their third duo album on Signum Classics, Viktoria Mullova and Alasdair Beatson perform Beethoven's Sonatas 2 and 10. Uniquely for the A Major sonata Op 12 No 2 they use a copy of an 1805 Walter (a Viennese fortepiano), and for Sonata No 10 op. 96 they use a copy of an 1819 graf, both by Paul McNulty. Together with violin strung with gut, these instruments are what Beethoven's music craves, giving a rich texture and distinct colours between the registers. ? "'Optimistic, ebullient and inexhaustibly inventive' is how the pianist Alasdair Beatson describes the three Beethoven sonatas on this disc - and that is exactly how they come across in these performances with the violinist Viktoria Mullova. The sense of rustic abandon they create in this work is infectiously gleeful." - The Guardian ? Recording ? Performance "Their dazzling playing captures all the music's wit and brilliance" - BBC Music Magazine

Mozart may have died heavy in debt, having encountered much fickleness on the part of the Viennese audiences and struggled to find suitable permanent employment for most of his career, but today his music is celebrated the world over; he is considered one of music history's greatest names, the vast majority of his works enjoying regular performances and being constantly reinterpreted by amateurs and top professionals alike. Stretching from his earliest years (Mozart started composing at the age of five) right through to his final days, this wonderful compendium traverses the full gamut of his output, covering the time spent in Salzburg working for his employer, the Archbishop Colloredo, the extensive travel he undertook during the 1760s and 1770s (which was in part to showcase his prodigious talents on the keyboard and violin, together with his talented sister Nannerl), and his later years in Vienna, to which he escaped in 1781 - against his father's wishes - to pursue a freelance career and where he married Constanze Weber the following year. What becomes evident from this set is that Mozart packed a phenomenal amount into his 35 years, a life that was often dominated by obsessive overwork, particularly towards the end. Moreover, there was not a genre akin to the period that he neglected nor did not achieve success in (in this collection the works are ordered as such, traversing orchestral music, chamber music, solo instrumental music, sacred music and vocal music), and in many cases he effected transformation, attaining new artistic levels - this is particularly evident in the piano concertos that begin the compendium, remarkable for their diversity of character, and the concluding mature operas, works that achieved new depths of characterisation. A more varied, colourful output you could not find, one that is enhanced in this release by the multitude of talented performers assembled. At the bargain price of €110, this 170-CD box set is not to be missed, affording hours of pleasurable listening that will satisfy both Mozart aficionado and novice. Other information: 170 CDs representing the entirety of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's oeuvre in historically informed performances. This includes all the concertos, chamber music, divertimenti, sonatas and of course the operas. For reasons of completeness, pure musical enjoyment, scholarly research, attractive, space-saving design and price, you cannot afford to be without Brilliant Classics' improved Complete Mozart Edition. Featuring numerous period-instrument and award-winning recordings. Extensive liner notes and sungs texts available for download, by clicking on 'Download booklet' below the cover.

Rudolf Kempe (1910–1976) was born near Dresden and in 1930 joined the celebrated Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra as first oboe. After his debut as a conductor in 1935, he joined the German army in 1942 but was ‘retired’ the same year and went back to conducting. A large number of engagements followed after the War, at the Saxon State Opera, the Dresden Staatskapelle, and as music director of the Bavarian State Opera (1952–1954). Kempe opened the 1951 season at the Vienna State Opera, and appeared at Covent Garden in 1953 (conducting Strauss with enormous success), and later at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1955.

He declined to become Covent Garden’s director twice but remained a regular and much-admired conductor at Covent Garden and on the concert platform both in London and on the Continent. He became chief conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (1961–1975) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1975 until his untimely death in 1976. In Europe, he became chief conductor of the Zürich Tonhalle Orchestra in 1965 and in 1966, general music director of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ever mindful of the accessibility of his works for amateur musicians, Mozart wrote, in a letter to his father, that his Piano Concertos Nos. 11-14 could be performed 'a quattro', with the accompaniment of string quartet rather than with full orchestra. Ignaz Lachner, a contemporary and associate of Schubert, saw great potential in chamber music arrangements and produced performing versions for piano, string quartet and double bass of many of the Mozart piano concertos. His considerable skill as a composer enabled these concertos, among them Nos. 18 and 22, to flourish in a more intimate setting.

The first part of the Douze Toccates by Hans Georg Nägeli was published in Zurich in 1808; there was no second part. On the title page, the composer conceals himself behind an “éditeur” of the same name. Prominent status, on the other hand, is given to the Répertoire des Clavecinistes, a series that ran from 1803 to 1805 in which Nägeli published a total of 15 volumes with works by Clementi, Steibelt, Dussek, Beethoven and others. The choice of “auteurs”, whose works he included in the Répertoire and to whom he dedicated the Toccates, reveals Nägeli’s view of the latest developments in music for the keyboard. Clementi and Beethoven in particular stand out for him as representatives of an era in which “contrapuntal writing is interwoven with artful display by the pianist”, as he writes in the “Announcement” of the Répertoire in the musical press. It is his aim that the Toccates should be understood as an observation on this turning-point in music history. There are therefore good reasons to combine Nägeli’s Toccates with works by Clementi and Beethoven on this release. Nägeli’s pieces enter into a historical context that is an integral part of the Toccates as aesthetic objects, not mere surroundings to them. We hear Nägeli’s pieces in Nägeli’s musical world and Nägeli’s musical world in the pieces. The musical portfolio of Els Biesemans has many aspects to it. After studying piano, organ and chamber music at the Lemmens-Institut in Leuven, Els Biesemans specialized in the varied keyboard styles of the 18th and 19th centuries at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. With a repertoire ranging from medieval music to the modern era, Els Biesemans is the recipient of numerous international awards.

Violinist by profession, the Japanese-born Viennese musician Tomoko Mayeda also learned to play the piano from the age of four. Her teacher and mentor Paul Badura-Skoda often took the time to teach her at the piano in addition to his support as a pianistic accompanist at countless concerts and a joint album recording. Mayeda had for a long time cherished the wish of being able to accompany herself at the piano, which she was finally able to realize during the pandemic through technical refinements: First, Mayeda recorded the piano part, to which the violin was then recorded in a second recording session. Since the otherwise usual and necessary agreements regarding musical features are omitted the result is Tomoko Mayeda “100%”, an uncompromising interpretation of W. A. Mozart’s late Viennese violin sonatas (B-flat major, K. 454; E-flat major, K. 481; A major, K. 526).