The CD entitled Contrappassi sees the two protagonists, Leonardo Zunica on piano and Leandro Lo Bianco on electric guitar, engaged in compositions by contemporary authors, with pieces that find poetic-musical inspiration in the fascinating and complex world of Dante. A program with broad musical visions that transport you to an unexpected soundscape, with the two performers who give life to moments and atmospheres of surprising suggestion. The CD's lineup opens with the Sonata n. 1 "DANTE SONATA" for piano by the Danish composer Poul Ruders (born in 1949), a work divided into two distinct movements with contrasting characteristics. The roots of the Dante Sonata are not only linked to Dante's canticles but also to the author's admiration for Liszt's Sonata in B minor. Dante, therefore, seen through the eyes of Liszt. The piece by Ruders is followed by MALEBOLGE for electric guitar and piano TRE CANZONI DI FRANCESCO LANDINI for piano with electric guitar ad libitum by the Italian composer Gabrio Taglietti, a journey that leads to the VIII circle of Hell. Taglietti wanted to alternate his three pits with transcriptions for piano, and in the last case for piano and electric guitar, of as many ballads by Francesco Landini, a composer of the fourteenth century, the genre in which Landini excelled. This singular listening journey ends with a piece by Leandro Lo Bianco, here in the role of composer as well as performer: THREE IMPROVISATIONS ON R. RAUSCHENBERG "DANTE'S INFERNO" for solo electric guitar and electronic devices.

Music as a timeless connection-this is the essence of Ground. Tamar Halperin's latest album bridges centuries, blending Baroque masterpieces with contemporary compositions, harpsichord with synthesizers, and tradition with reinvention. Featuring works by Bach, Buxtehude, Francesco Tristano, Michael Wollny, Idan Raichel and more, Ground explores the invisible thread that links musical eras and styles. Through bold reinterpretations and fresh compositions, Halperin transforms historical influences into a deeply personal, yet universally resonant, listening experience. A celebration of music, friendship, and cultural continuity- Ground is where past and present converge in harmony.

On this critically-acclaimed recording, Arabella Steinbacher brings together Bruch’s world famous First Violin Concerto with Chausson’s lush Poème and Korngold’s Violin Concerto, which is gradually gaining ground as a twentieth-century masterpiece. Steinbacher is joined by the Orquestra Gulbenkian under the baton of Lawrence Foster, with whom she has developed a congenial musical partnership over the years. BBC Music Magazine commented that “there is no doubting Steinbacher’s refulgent sound or the flair of her delivery” while MusicWeb International praised “the tingling climax of this Chausson.”

After a temporary absence, this album now returns to the physical market in an affordable Stereo re-issue. Arabella Steinbacher is a multiple award-winner with an extensive Pentatone discography spanning more than a decade. Lawrence Foster and the Orquestra Gulbenkian are also longstanding partners of the label.

Excerpt from review of the original SACD version of this release:

There is no doubting Steinbacher's refulgent sound or the flair of her delivery.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Making and listening to music as an act of resistance against the relentless 24/7 rhythm of our era: with his beautifully clear new recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, released by GENUIN, Milosz Sroczynski offers a deliberate counterbalance to the accelerating pace of modern life. In an accompanying essay, he reflects on music as a response to the late-capitalist demand for constant productivity and endless wakefulness. His interpretation - with which he made a highly acclaimed debut at the Davos Festival 2024 - is shaped by filigree lightness and long, seamlessly flowing musical arcs: transparent, weightless, and deeply focused. A reflective artist at the piano, Sroczynski gives us time to listen - inviting us to immerse ourselves, variation by variation, in this music.

Anna Vinnitskaya celebrates dance, or rather the dances of composers from very different periods and styles: Ravel, Shostakovich and Widmann. ‘In all these works, you can feel in some way transported to the world of childhood. Because I believe the childhoods of each of these three composers are reflected there’, says the pianist. In his Valses nobles et sentimentales, Ravel paid tribute to Schubert. A few years later, he transcribed for solo piano his ballet score La Valse, in which ‘billowing clouds part from time to time, allowing us to glimpse waltzing couples’. Shostakovich’s Dances of the Dolls make me think of the Soviet cartoons of my childhood’, says Anna Vinnitskaya. ‘They also remind me of Mozart: they are as bright as diamonds, sincere and beautiful.’ The Zirkustänze (Circus Dances) composed by Jörg Widmann in 2012, a brilliant kaleidoscope of emotions and parodies, round off the programme.

Freiberg has always been an important cultural location. Already shortly after its foundation in the twelfth century; as the result of important discoveries of silver ore; culture and music were documented and integral parts of urban life. Freiberg was the second Saxon city to have a band of town waits from which various musical groups were later to evolve. The town’s prosperity also made possible the building of large hall churches of which the Cathedral St. Mary numbers even today among the region’s most important cultural monuments.

In the early 1960s Goffredo Petrassi's idiom was almost indistinguishable from that of the Italian avantgarde. Completed in 1964, the Seventh Concerto evolves with mounting tension and a sense of underlying menace. The Eighth Concerto from 1972 was commissioned and premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It is a substantial piece of outright virtuosity, with dissonance, trenchant dialogues and a fraught atmosphere. The much earlier Sonata da camera for harpsichord and ten instruments finds Petrassi poised between neo-Classicism and a more modernist direction. This is the third and final volume of Petrassi's complete Concertos for Orchestra on Naxos (Nos. 1-3 are on 8.573702; Nos. 4-6 are on 8.573703).

Goffredo Petrassi was 28 when his Partita (recorded on Naxos 8.572411) propelled him to European fame. He fused neo-Classicism with more contemporary traits reinforced by his mastery of polyphony, qualities that can be found in his eight Concertos for Orchestra (Nos. 1-3 are available on 8.573702). Concertos Nos. 4-6 were written in the mid-1950s and are striking examples of emotional turbulence and structural compression, fastidiously scored and imaginative in their formal conception. The soloistic writing of Invenzione concertata (Concerto No. 6) adds another layer of sonic complexity to these gripping concertos.

Goffredo Petrassi's reputation was established in 1932 when his Partita (available on Naxos 8.572411) won critical acclaim. Petrassi then composed his Concerto for Orchestra, the first of eight, which, upon it's 1935 premiere, secured his reputation outside of Italy. The Second Concerto from 1951 reveals more avante-garde tendencies, while the Third Concerto from 1952-53 is animated and playful.

Chamber music for violin and harpsichord resp. Harpsichord alone performed in the Bachhaus which now is used as a Bach museum

Mozart always had a special affinity with wind instruments: for him they were essential components of his musical expression, claims French clarinettist Nicolas Baldeyrou, a globally renowned soloist who has performed with some of the greatest conductors and virtuosi: this album is the first volume of a complete set of Mozart's chamber and concertante music involving the clarinet, which he has chosen to record on period instruments, "an authentic and revelatory experience, despite the technical challenges it presents". He has enlisted the help of his musical friends, all of whom are recognised as adept practitioners of modern instruments, but sustain a strong passion for period instruments... The programme of this first release includes the Serenades KV 375 and 388 as well as Mozart's Gran Partita KV 361, a work on an exceptionally grand scale, with it's line-up of thirteen players, it's expansive duration, and it's supreme musical quality, "rising to the level of Mozart's greatest symphonies and operas".

Pianist Yulianna Avdeeva makes her Pentatone debut with Resilience, presenting music by Szpilman, Shostakovich, Weinberg and Prokofiev, composers who – each in their own way – maintained themselves in times of great instability. The focal point of this album is Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who survived World War II thanks to the power of his music, and is widely known as the title hero of Roman Polanski’s award-winning film The Pianist. Incited by the unique opportunity to play on Szpilman’s house piano, this recording project helped Avdeeva to cope with the challenges of our current times, and it may offer fortitude and consolation to listeners as well. A pianist of fiery temperament and virtuosity, Yulianna Avdeeva plays with power, conviction, and sensibility, having won over audiences all over the world.

"Waves and Particles" is Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams’s beautifully shimmery, virtuosic string quartet, performed by the incredible, illustrious JACK Quartet. Adams’s music has been performed by such prominent ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, and the International Contemporary Ensemble. JACK Quartet has been deemed “superheroes of the new music world” (Boston Globe) and “the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity” (The Washington Post).

Ingrid Haebler (born in 1929) belongs to the same generation of Viennese pianists as Badura-Skoda, Brendel, Gulda and Demüs. In 1954 (approx. the period when the recordings on this album took place) she won the ARD competition, then as today a quality seal and a guarantee for a successful career (which she enjoyed). However, considerable disagreement has long surrounded her interpretations: for some she is a model because of her flawless technique and the absolute poise of her music-making; for others, she is virtually a symbol of academic discipline. However, her recordings were considered good enough to be used in the faked recordings of the pianist Joyce Hatto – which, when uncovered, led to one of the big and quite unique scandals in the history of music performance.

This is pianist Nelson Goerner’s twelfth recording for the Alpha Classics label. He devotes his new album to the solo piano works of Franz Liszt, with the famous Sonata in B minor as the centrepiece, nearly twenty years after his first CD of the sonata, he felt the urge to re-record it, following a series of critically acclaimed concerts. His talents as a storyteller and as a virtuoso with an eye for nuance are heard to marvellous effect in this monumental work, a veritable ‘musical action’ that undoubtedly belongs in the pantheon of the finest literature for piano. The programme is completed by excerpts from Liszt’s major cycles, including the Petrarch Sonnets from the Années de pèlerinage and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6, along with the spectacular concert étude La leggierezza.

REVIEWS:

Nelson Goerner made an excellent studio recording of Liszt’s Sonata in B minor that the Cascavelle label first released in 2007. This live all-Liszt recital from 2023 also features the Sonata. Although it benefits from fuller-bodied engineering, the interpretation offers surprisingly little change in regard to overall design, substance, and execution. Goerner’s tempo relationships remain judicious and unified, while themes are characterized with subtle yet telling contrast.

Forced to choose, I’d favor Goerner’s diversified voicings and greater dynamic projection in the remake’s Andante sostenuto. On the other hand, the earlier Allegro Energico fughetta gathers greater spontaneous momentum, followed by a more incisive yet less grand recapitulation. One could argue that there are fewer distinctly individual touches here in comparison with recent reference-worthy interpretations by Marc-André Hamelin, Benjamin Grosvenor, Joseph Moog, or Giovanni Bertolazzi. Yet that hardly matters, given Goerner’s intelligent mastery and total identification with the score.

If anything, Goerner’s readings of Liszt’s three Petrarca Sonetti offer even more fervent and poetic melodic projection, together with mellifluous legato chord voicings and prominent bass lines. If no one alive plays La Leggierzza with the feathery aplomb of Benno Moiseiwitsch’s unrivaled 1941 HMV recording, Goerner’s impassioned mobility comes pretty darn close to that paradigm, although he never plays softly enough when required.

Lightness and insouciance, however abound in the Valse oubliée No. 2. Goerner takes his sweet time over the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6’s introduction, milking the music’s bardic implications without lapsing into vulgarity. Most pianists understandably treat the friska section as a high-wire right hand octave etude: think Horowitz, Cziffra, and Argerich. Goerner nails the notes, of course, yet presents both hands as equal partners, letting you hear a piano composition instead of a piano competition. I have no hesitation recommending such a satisfying and well-rounded Liszt program.

-- MusicWeb International (Jed Distler)

A new album on GENUIN from the internationally performing pianist Sophia Weidemann! A prizewinner at numerous international competitions, she thrilled both critics and audiences with her album of works by Fanny Hensel. Now she follows up with a recording devoted to Bach: the program features the world-famous Goldberg Variations, which show off the phrasing and tonal artistry of this young pianist from Swabia to brilliant effect. She takes her listeners on an exciting and moving journey through the 30 variations - a work in which, for Bach, an entire world is contained. To quote the composer himself: "A most joyful delight for the soul!"

J.S. Bach's first Clavier-ubung - the Partitas - is an important work which holds a particular status: it is the first major publication by a great musician at the height of his maturity - he was 46 - and already a living legend. A large part of the challenge it poses can be found in this contradiction; that a hurdle must give the impression of ease. Art must conceal art itself. My intention was to play them as I would wish to hear them, such as I thought they might be heard: here then is a proposal. And if this proposal incites a desire to delve further, my goal will have been achieved.

Aaron Pilsan completes his recording of the Well-Tempered Clavier, five years after the first volume was praised by critics for it's ardent, accurate and fluid interpretation. Twenty years lie between the two volumes; whilst the first is better known, 'the second book is more playful, but also more accomplished. It goes further harmonically and also demonstrates extraordinary harmonic invention with original and often exotic harmonies. The best example of what differentiates the two books is the fugue in D sharp minor in the second book, a piece whose boldness and harmonic originality never ceases to enthral and astonish me,' says the Austrian pianist, who again demonstrates his fascination for the composer: 'What I love most about Bach's music is that he expresses everything that goes to make up our lives, but in perfect order.'

Vox Luminis has teamed up with the Freiburger Barockorchester again, and together they celebrate music for Ascension Day. This topic inspired great composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, four of whose Ascension cantatas have been preserved. The festive and colourful Cantata BWV 128 was composed towards the end of Bach’s second year in Leipzig. The Ascension Oratorio BWV 11 was written for larger forces and ends with a triumphant chorus. In the case of Georg Philipp Telemann, more than thirty cantatas for Ascension Day alone have survived. The cantata Ich fahre auf zu meinem Vater (I ascend unto my Father) was composed in 1721. Lionel Meunier’s ensemble and the FBO give a fervent rendering of this captivating music with its texts focusing on the afterlife.

Mao Fujita follows up his 'acclaimed' debut album on Sony Classical, the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas, with a similarly ambitious recording project, 'Preludes'; three complete sets of 24 preludes by Chopin, Scriabin, and 20th century Japanese composer Akio Yashiro. This album represents a fascinating exploration of three different but intricately connected worlds, each full of poetic diversity, volcanic energy and atmospheric stillness. Each of these three sets are in perfect symmetry with each other, each containing 24 short preludes, one for each major and minor key. But it is Chopin's preludes that form the axis around which these other two sets of preludes orbit. Chopin's Preludes, Op. 28 (1839) broke all expectations of the term 'prelude', elevating the form from small, often-improvised, introductory pieces to singular works in their own right, and in this Op. 28 set, presented as a spinning constellation of self-contained ideas and emotions, and some of the most enduring and loved piano pieces in the repertoire. Scriabin's Preludes, Op. 11 (1888-96) echo Chopin's set in so many ways - the number of preludes, the ordering of the keys, the concept of the prelude as a short, but significant work - but is certainly no copy, rather more a descendant, an extension, hyper expressive, each prelude an intricate miniature world of it's own. The third set of preludes is perhaps the most intriguing. A world premier recording of the 24 Preludes (1945) by Japanese composer Akio Yashiro. Taking Chopin's model even further, Yashiro creates a highly idiomatic and original work, written when only 15 years old. This is the most personal work on the album for Mao Fujita, with a relationship to the composer's widow, and presenting the work for the first time as a commercial studio recording. Or as Mao puts it, "the Chopin and the Scriabin are the fish and the rice, the base, but the Yashiro is the wasabi, just as vital, and that special kick to create something delicious."

Hardly any other event during Mozart Week has remained so vividly in visitors' memories as the 1994 production of Ombra felice. Mozart's creative excess in the field of opera is evident not only in fragments of stage works such as Zaide KV 344, L'oca del Cairo KV 422 and Lo sposo deluso KV 430, but also in the more than seventy arias and ensembles he composed as individual works. Some of these are abandoned or unfinished drafts, as Mozart's singers (or sometimes Mozart himself) were not entirely satisfied with them, while others were contributions to foreign opera productions, which were often performed in the form of pasticcios at that time. This broad compilation thus provides a good overview of Mozart's aria compositions.

The large-scale Bach Organ Landscapes project featuring J.S. Bach's entire organ oeuvre recorded on a range of instruments aims to provide an overview of organ-playing and organ-building traditions that were key to Bach's composing. With a keen eye to the unique cultural organ legacy of the places associated with Bach, Halubek has placed Bach's original sound at the heart of his project. The recordings are accompanied by digital material that offer an almost tactile access to the great composer's sound universe.

Whereas Prokofiev was captivated by Romeo and Juliet, Ravel had shut himself away a quarter of a century earlier in Levallois Perret to compose Gaspard de la nuit, inspired by Aloysius Bertrand's collection of poems subtitled Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot. In 1973, the Uzbek composer Dilorom Saidaminova paid tribute to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and composed The Walls of Ancient Bukhara, which offers a sonic view of the historic centre of the Central Asian city founded four or five centuries before the common era. Her compatriot Behzod Abduraimov was keen to pay tribute to this little-known composer and record her music, which, like the other two works on this album, is evocative and colourful.

Pianist Francesco Piemontesi presents Franz Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes and Sonata in B Minor, two of the highest mountains to climb within the piano repertoire. The metaphor of climbing a mountain not only applies to the technical demands placed on the player, but also to the sublime nature of these works: colourful, poetic, lyrical, and bold in their construction. Piemontesi has taken his time before embarking on this epic journey, and the recording documents how his interpretation of these legendary works has matured over time.

Unique to this album are the liner notes, written by Nike Wagner, the great-great-granddaughter of Liszt. Francesco Piemontesi is among the most-cherished pianists of our age, and presents the fourth fruit of his exclusive collaboration with Pentatone, having released the acclaimed Schubert – Last Piano Sonatas (2019), Bach Nostalghia (2021) and Schoenberg, Messiaen & Ravel with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and Jonathan Nott (2022).

REVIEW:

It’s been worth the wait. Each piece reflects absolute clarity of intention, even in the case of the longest and most episodic one, ‘Ricordanza’. Piemontesi has a rare ability to let us hear the individual notes in a rapid fortissimo wash of sound, and his variations of touch give free rein to the poetry. ‘Harmonies du soir’ opens with a silky touch, and builds to a majestic climax before dying back to a faint echo of itself. The lyrical ‘Paysage’, too, opens sotto voce, but as the sound palette becomes richer, one has the feeling of watching a series of receding landscapes, as in a Chinese scroll painting. ‘Wilde Jagd’ hurtles headlong, ‘Feux follets’ is gorgeously shaded and the virtuosity of ‘Allegro agitato molto’ is magnificent.

-- BBC Music Magazine

These classic Vox recordings feature two former music directors of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in their prime - Walter Susskind (Smetana) and Jerzy Semkow (Rimsky-Korsakov). Newly remastered from the original tapes.

In a century that saw many illustrious French and German composers write for two flutes, the six sonatas of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach stand out as the most significant, complex and technically demanding of this repertoire. Ever since they were rediscovered and published almost a century ago, they have become a stable part of the flute catalogue, appreciated and performed on both historic and modern instruments. Viewing it as the quintessential work of Friedemann's creative output, the specialist Peter Wollny even sees it as a summa of his entire production, full of quotations and reminiscences of his previous works. After the album devoted to the sonatas of C.P.E. Bach (A 537, Diapason d'or), Manuel Granatiero, accompanied by the Italo-Croatian flautist Eleonora Biscevic, now turns his attention to this masterpiece by Johann Sebastian Bach's eldest son. Arriving some thirty-five years after the first, and only, recorded version on period instruments (by Barthold Kuijken and Marc Hantai), this new recording offers a fresh perspective on music of extraordinary brilliance, passion and virtuosity.

In 1700, Corelli published his 12 violin sonatas, Opus 5, in Rome. A veritable revolution in violin technique, they won the admiration of eminent composers (Bach, Dandrieu, Couperin) and greatly influenced the French (Francoeur, Leclair, Senaillé, Quentin), who were to try their hand at this virtuoso and brilliant Italian style. At the end of the 1730s, the first six sonatas of opus 5 were"adapted to the transverse flute with the bass" by a Parisian publisher. The level of virtuosity they demanded was quite innovative at the time. This display of virtuosity is also to be found in the compositions of Jean-Baptiste Quentin, known as Le Jeune. We have very little biographical information on Quentin himself, but all his work is greatly inspired by Italian music and is heavily influenced by Corelli. Anna Besson has made the world's first recording of his sonatas, with the help of two other eminent performers of the new Baroque generation, Myriam Rignol on viola da gamba and Jean Rondeau on harpsichord…

When film composers turn to classical music, they shed a straitjacket rather than lose a safety net. In his Metamorfosi di Violetta, Ennio Morricone dissects the unravelling of La Traviata's heroine with filmic acuity. Tigran Mansurian's Agnus Dei oscillates between chant and dissonance to evoke unresolved grief. John Corigliano's Soliloquy turns inward even further, transforming private loss into quiet radiance. Bernard Herrmann never sought classical abstraction, yet Hitchcock's musical alter ego-the composer of the Psycho and Vertigo scores-provides this programme's pièce de résistance: Souvenir du voyage, a nostalgic gem with profound cinematic sensibility.

Andras Schiff has been closely associated with Lucerne Festival for 35 years. These live recordings from 1998/99, now released for the first time, present him interpreting two masters of the miniature: Schiff performs the short pieces with a love of risk, a great art of characterisation and a tremendous sense of sound.

Richard Lin, the 2018 winner of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis releases his debut recording. Performed with passion and flare, Lin is joined by renowned pianist Thomas Hoppe in music of Richard Strauss, John Corigliano, Gershwin/Frolov, Vitali, and Debussy.