Classical Music

A towering figure in French music of the later 19th century, C�sar Franck created a distinctive fusion of German Romanticism and French Classicism, enriching the symphonic, chamber, instrumental, vocal and sacred repertoires. As a teacher and mentor he gained admiration for his modesty and generosity while exercising a powerful influence on younger disciples such as Vincent d'Indy, Henri Duparc and Ernest Chausson. The C�sar Franck Edition gathers together all his masterworks - among them the Symphony in D, Violin Sonata, Pr�lude, Fugue et Variation and, of course, 'Panis Angelicus' - in enthralling performances by musicians of the first rank. Running to 16 CDs, the collection includes a CD of transcriptions and arrangements, proving their fascination for a still greater diversity of interpreters than Franck might have imagined. The five CDs of historical recordings - dating back as far as 1907 - testify to the continuing growth of his reputation after his death in 1890, and to the vibrant performing tradition engendered by his genius.

A musician as loved as he was admired, the pianist Nicholas Angelich died in Paris in April 2022 at the age of 51. Angelich was a modest, thoughtful man who brought tremendous integrity, depth and insight to the most demanding repertoire. His association with Warner Classics lasted some 20 years, and the label pays tribute to him with this 7CD collection of previously unreleased recordings of solo, chamber and concerto repertoire. Made either in the concert hall or for radio broadcast between 1999 and 2016, they range wide, including works by Bach, Bart�k, Beethoven Berg, Brahms, Franck, Haydn, Liszt, Mussorgsky, Ravel, Rachmaninov and Zemlinsky. Appearing with Angelich are Martha Argerich, Quatuor Eb�ne, Myung-Whun Chung and the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, and Tugan Sokhiev and the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse.

Lars Vogt (1970-2022) early recordings collected here provide a document of an artist who always remained authentic, both to himself and to music. Lars Vogt never sought absolute truth, but truthfulness instead meant all the more to him. The man and the artist were always very close, never currying favour and never detached from the world. He was, instead, open and natural. "It's incredibly gratifying when you notice that you can perhaps light a little spark, a little flame for music in people, and when music helps you to find the path to your own soul."

Kyung Wha Chung - Beau Soir (Faur�, Franck, Debussy, Elgar, works for violin & piano) The centrepiece of this French-themed recital by Kyung Wha Chung and Kevin Kenner is the splendid violin sonata by C�sar Franck. It is a work long associated with Chung, described by the Financial Times as "one of the greatest violinists of the last half-century". Newer to Chung's repertoire is Faur�'s Sonata No 1. As she told Strings magazine, each of the works constitutes "a whole portrait of life itself," and she drew a comparison with Monet's paintings: "The reflection of light has endless possibility. The same thing applies to the texture and the sound when you're playing. There are millions of sounds."

Almost 50 years after his first DG recording of Franck's symphony with the Orchestre de Paris, Barenboim now presents a new interpretation with the Berliner Philharmoniker. In the outer movements in particular, he focuses on the large, monumental sound that emphasizes the hymnal aspect of Franck's symphony which fuses the spirit of Beethoven with French elegance. CD Digipak.

His exceptional touch and sense of phrasing, his deep and personal understanding of the most varied repertoires, or even the legendary trio he formed together with Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals, made Alfred Cortot the greatest pianist of his time. Master of many disciples, notably the brilliant Dinu Lipatti, Samson François and Clara Haskil, Cortot also had a lasting influence on the Russian piano school through Samuil Feinberg and Heinrich Neuhaus, the latter himself being the revered teacher of Sviatoslav Richter.

All of the recordings in this set had undergone careful sound restoration in 2012, in order to respect as closely as possible the original sound. The remastering was carried out under the expert control of Mr. Guthrie Luke, a former disciple of Alfred Cortot who attended many recording sessions by Cortot. These recordings do not represent a "complete" edition: the many rolls engraved by the artist for Duo-Art, Aeolian and Pleyela labels have not been reproduced here, most of them doubling the 78-RPM repertoire. The first recordings are acoustic; and the ones with an electric microphone appeared as early as 1926.

Jan Von Busch and Johann Blanchard have compiled true highlights from the modest repertoire for the once-so-popular pairing of organ and piano. Recorded exclusively for MDG on the historic W�ldner organ from 1874, the restored instrument harmonises perfectly with the magnificent Bechstein grand piano. The organ's small size creates the possibility of truly balanced music-making with the piano in respect of dynamics, allowing a natural reproduction of French concert halls and salons of the 19th century - a programme of rare value!

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

Though Belgium in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was known above all for it's "school" of violin-playing, represented by figures such as Henry Vieuxtemps and Eugene Ysaye, it was also home to a flourishing piano "school". After independence in 1830, the new nation's conservatoires opened numerous classes, method-books and anthologies proliferated, and piano-makers kept pace with new patents and instruments. This dynamic environment naturally had an effect on composers; everyone who wrote music wrote for this king of instruments, and promoted the results either by performing them themselves or by confiding them to virtuosos to execute in concerts or competitions. The most famous of these, the Eugene Ysaye Competition (since 1951 the Queen Elisabeth International Competition), opened to pianists in 1938, with Emil Gilels emerging victorious. A quarter of a century later, Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden entered this prestigious contest and, at sixteen years of age, came away with a third prize. Trained at the Brussels Conservatoire by Eduardo del Pueyo, he would go on to an international career still active six decades later. The programme of this CD is an homage to this long lineage of teachers and students. It testifies to the practices as well as the networks of friendship that gave this "school", throughout it's various ramifications, a particular character.

Three Violin Sonatas - Medtner, Grieg, Franck

The Wurzburg cathedral organist Stefan Schmidt studied with Daniel Roth and in this previously unpublished recording from 2002 proves himself to be an extremely sensitive yet technically virtuoso interpreter of Cesar Franck's famous Douze Pieces. The organ of St Peter's in Dusseldorf, built in 2001 by the Gockel company, where he worked as organist for several years, was designed without compromise according to the French symphonic model and is therefore ideally suited for this repertoire as one of the few such instruments on the right bank of the Rhine.

Young pianist Ariel Lanyi is already an established figure on the concert stage. After making his recording debut as part of the Royal Academy of Music Bicentenary Series and winning third prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2021, he received the prestigious Prix Serdang in 2023 from Rudolf Buchbinder. In contrast to the intimacy of his Schubert album, Organ Reflections is a project on a more epic scale. Often called the 'King of Instruments', the organ has been a defining presence in classical music, inspiring composers like Bach, Brahms and Messiaen. In this album, Ariel performs works by three virtuoso organists that combine the idiomatic grandeur of the organ and the flexibility of the piano. From Mozart's serene Andante to Franck's lyrical Prelude, Aria et Final and Reger's monumental Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Bach, each piece reflects a unique blend of the sound worlds of both the organ and the piano, showcasing the enduring legacy of this most majestic instrument.

A passionate, superbly paced version of the Franck Symphony plus a highly expressive and atmospheric performance of Saint-Saëns.

It seems questionable to combine a 1946 performance of the Franck Symphony's first movement with a 1940 account of the remaining two, even if this arrangement was approved by the conductor. A passionate, superbly paced version of the score still emerges from the hybrid source, however. Toscanini's performance of the Saint-Saens symphony is highly expressive, full of atmosphere and very exciting.

-- Gramophone [11/1992]

"I had not expected quite such unabashed, rose-tinted lyricism from Anne Akiko Meyers. There’s more to her playing than plushy vibrato and mechanistic brilliance; not that exhilaration or panache are minimised here, in this glowingly Romantic performance. Her Franck, too, ably justifies a more reflective, even cerebral approach, further distinguished by the tonal opulence of the playing. Not a performance to induce surges of adrenalin perhaps, but eminently well conceived and lucid... this remains a splendid performance overall, thanks in no small part to pianist Rohan de Silva." -- Michael Jameson, BBC Music Magazine

In 2022, 19-year-old pianist Roman Borisov became the youngest winner of the prestigious Kissinger KlavierOlymp competition. After taking part in Alpha's 'Next Generation Mozart Soloists' collection (ALPHA991), he now presents his first solo recital in Alpha's ongoing 'Piano Stories' series, which he sees as a 'conversation with the past', featuring composers inspired by earlier styles to create new works. Born in 1870, the brilliant virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowsky composed twenty-four 'free arrangements' of music by masters of the Baroque. Among these, Roman Borisov has selected pieces based on works by Rameau, Corelli, Scarlatti and John Loeillet (whose pieces were originally mis-attributed to Lully)... In 1931, Rachmaninoff composed his last original work for solo piano: a set of variations on 'La Folia', a 15th-century dance theme that Corelli famously used in one of his violin sonatas. The encounter between the Baroque style and the harmonic richness of the Russian composer is fascinating. The superb Prelude, Chorale and Fugue composed by Cesar Franck in 1884, an obvious tribute to J.S. Bach, concludes Roman's pianistic journey through time.

"In the Symphonic Variations, Crossley avoids Lisztian flamboyance and generalized 'romantic' inflexion and yet there is plenty that is individually and imaginatively shaped (not least the finale's 'cadenza'); and both he and Giulini maintain a sense of flow and direction. I particularly liked the way Crossley gently accelerates out of the mists of the last variation into the spirited finale..." -- John Steane, Gramophone [3/1995]

Smetana & Franck: String Quartets

Violin Recital: Ivanov, Yossif - FRANCK, C. / YSAYE, E. / D'

FRANCK: Symphony in D minor / RESPIGHI: Pines of Rome

Classical Music

Given the paucity of C�sar Franck's piano music on disc, Nikolai Lugansky's focus on this composer is to be commended. On his third release for harmonia mundi, the Russian pianist reveals an organ master strongly attached to the musical forms inherited from J.S. Bach: the prelude, the fugue, and the chorale. Translated to the piano keyboard, Franck's music, with it's expansively conceived structures, requires a completely fresh approach that puts the greatest performers to the test: here, Lugansky took on an additional challenge by preparing his own transcription (a brilliant one, at that!) of Franck's celebrated Choral pour grand orgue No.2.

Thomas Jensen is hardly known as a Wagnerian, and yet this complete First Act of Die Walkure - with an all-star Danish cast - is paced and shaped with a keen ear for drama. CD2 continues to expand the Jensen discography with works by two composers intimately associated with Wagner, his father-in-law Liszt and his Belgian disciple Franck. The concert overture Piazza del Popolo is a forgotten showpiece which the Danish composer Walther Schroder drew from his score to a silent movie directed by A.W. Sandberg. All the previous volumes are available and in stock.

Sonatas for Violin And Piano

Sonatas for Violin & Piano