An array of musical stars converges in Leipzig to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach taking up his appointment as Kantor at the city’s iconic Thomaskirche – a post that he occupied for more than a quarter of a century, covering a period in which he created many of his greatest works. On a special open-air stage in the market square of Leipzig the Thomaner Choir and the Gewandhaus Orchestra under their current Thomaskantor Andreas Reize were joined by Lang Lang, Daniel Hope, Albrecht Mayer, Sophie Kauer, Francesca Aspromonte and Cameron Shahbazi. Music includes highlights of Goldberg Variations, Mass in B Minor, Cello Suite No. 1, Double Concerto for Violin, Oboe, Strings, Orchestral Suites, various Arias …

A newly recorded collection of highlights from Bach’s great corpus of instrumental writing; in transcriptions by Luigi Attademo himself. Bach left us a few isolated pieces and suites for the lute; predecessor of the guitar; but guitarists have always found the rest of his music as amenable to adaptation as every other musician. Luigi Attademo recorded all of Bach’s lute music a decade ago on a 2CD Brilliant Classics album (94294) which attracted glowing reviews in the international press for the combined rigour and imagination of his playing. On this new recording he turns to pieces originally conceived for cello (the Preludio of the First Cello Suite); violin (the Chaconne from the D minor Partita); harpsichord (the Aria from the Goldberg Variations) and flute (the Siciliano from the E flat major Sonata) which have gained iconic status in the three centuries since their composition for their surface simplicity and expressive depth. The recital includes several stimulating pairs: the Aria from the Goldbergs with the Air from the Third Orchestral Suite; Gavottes from the Sixth Cello Suite and E major Violin Partita; the Siciliano from the G minor solo sonata for violin preceding the more famous flute example. These pairs only serve to underline the variety of Bach’s response to a particular genre. Grandest and most superficially complex of the works here; the famous D minor Toccata and Fugue proves highly idiomatic on the guitar; relating the virtuosic and extrovert writing back to what we now think must be a lost violin original for the piece (possibly not even by Bach) rather than the form for organ which is now universally known. Attademo contributes a personal introduction to the album which explains his choice of repertoire and interpretative approach; taking inspiration from great Bach players of the past such as Mstislav Rostropovich and Dinu Lipatti.

For nearly 74 years from the death of J.S. Bach in 1750 to Mendelssohn’s fifteenth birthday in 1824 the Matthäus Passion had all but disappeared. Young Mendelssohn’s prized birthday gift - a bespoke copy of the Passion - was to change music history when five years later he mounted its first performance in the nineteenth century in Berlin.

Today it is inconceivable to imagine music without Bach, but in the 1820s his music had been relegated to no more than the exercise-book for students of counterpoint. Turning often to Bach’s music after 1829, Mendelssohn performed the Passion again in Leipzig in 1841. Now in a romantic era with a symphonic sized orchestra and choir, he remodelled both the role of the Evangelist and soloists, compacting the Passion’s length by some 30 percent.

After his death in 1847 Mendelssohn’s ‘edition’ of the Passion lay fallow with his heirs in London, his grandson eventually bequeathing it to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. A first complete reconstruction of Mendelssohn’s material by Malcolm Bruno and Caroline Ritchie is published in December 2023 by Bärenreiter Verlag, and the first recording by the Bach Choir of Bethlehem to be released in March 2024 on the Analekta label.

We are now in the year 2022: as chance would have it, this album’s release coincides with the 300th anniversary of the first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Our lifestyle has changed in many ways over the past three centuries. We travel at much greater speed; we develop an increasing number of technologies and digital means of communication. Trained specialists are responsible for every area of our lives. But have we truly made progress? Excessive global travel, as we know, has an alarming impact on climate. While many areas of our life become digital, communication is made simpler but ultimately only leads to mental lethargy, social isolation, and emotional impoverishment. Specialists turn out to be one-track minds who accumulate isolated bits of knowledge – indeed, as ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus remarked, “knowing many things doesn’t teach insight.” Insight thus not only requires for us to have knowledge, but also for us to broaden our horizons. And that is exactly what is so fascinating about the Well-Tempered Clavier.

BACH reconstructed - Neubrandenburg Concertos based on Bach's originals - On the trail of the wonder of Bach's music: resounding works of art such as the Brandenburg Concertos have awakened the ensemble's spirit of discovery. In order to better understand their inner architecture, their genius, ensemble member Christoph Harer has created baroque transcriptions from Bach's originals in exchange with solos and orchestra and combined them into three "Neubrandenburg Concertos". A harpsichord concerto thus becomes music for three competing string trios. Solo and chamber music are transformed into colorful concerto movements for different instrumentations. And a simple vanitas song is transformed into a dreamy string aria. In the process, la festa musicale reaches top form: solo parts are distributed across the whole orchestra, the concertos are carried by the virtuosity and imagination of many together. The creative play with the originals opens up new, unexpected perspectives on Bach's great music.

The lavishly produced audio biographies in the BR-KLASSIK WISSEN series tell the life stories of famous composers in an entertaining and amusing way. Who were Mozart, Mahler, and Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn? In what period were their works written? And how did their lives influence their music? This box set contains the twelve audio biographies published to date by the music publicist J�rg Handstein. Great actors and actresses bring the past to life: Matthias Brandt, Martina Gedeck, Gert Heidenreich, Brigitte Hobmeier, Cornelius Obonya and many others. As the narrator, Udo Wachtveitl is the main voice of the series. Numerous musical examples as well as several complete works, recorded by leading musicians at an outstanding level, bring the composers' work to life. All quotations are from genuine sources - after all, what really happened is more exciting than all the anecdotes invented later. In this way, and captivatingly, well-founded knowledge becomes listening pleasure.

Vol. 2 of the portrait of the exceptional cellist who died far too young. Francoise Groben's fascinating dedication to music, her large number of international concerts and her encounters with the most prominent artists of her time - that is what this collection shows par excellence.

Lynden Cranham's earliest memories of Bach were overwhelming, sitting in the huge and resonant space of Westminster Cathedral listening to an organ recital. She subsequently became fascinated (as a listener and a player) by the Bach Cello Suites. It was especially poignant for Lynden, as part of the orchestra during John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, not only to play near the font where Bach had been baptized, in the Georgenkirche in Eisenach, but also to play in Köthen, where he probably composed the Cello Suites. The idea of recording the Suites had been at the back of her mind for most of her career, and when playing part of one of them in a chamber-music concert a few years ago she realized that she'd found an ideal venue for doing such a recording: the beautiful small church of St Peter and St Mary in Fishbourne, West Sussex, complete with its warm, intimate acoustic.

As one concert after another was cancelled it gradually became clear to the recording engineer, the producer and Lynden that, dire as this situation was, it provided the perfect opportunity to begin recording the Suites. So, braving the cold (and maintaining strict social distancing), Suites 1 and 2 were recorded in the church in December 2020. Soon after that, in April 2021, Suite No. 5 was recorded in its original scordatura version; this needed to be recorded alone, as in that way Lynden was able to keep the cello with the A string tuned down to G. Those three Suites make an interesting contrast – the first two relatively conventional in sonority, the fifth introducing something entirely different.

There has not been a more important or influential body of cello music written before or since the 6 Bach Cello Suites. Now treated almost reverentially by cellists, for two hundred years they were virtually unknown until a young Catalan cellist, Pablo Casals, discovered them in a little shop and breathed life back into these masterpieces. For some the music is deeply spiritual, for others the pieces are closely connected with nature… or perhaps it is the ingenuity of their structure and symmetry that inspires people to be moved by the Cello Suites. Whatever the reasons, people always come back to Bach. Through, seemingly the most simple means, Bach speaks to the soul and the intellect at once. Like the best fairy tales or myths, his music is layered and can be enjoyed and understood at different levels at different times of our lives. He is everywhere and a deeply rooted part of our lives, from performances in the greatest concert halls to contemporary films, used as music of political statement, as exciting imaginative music to be explored by the greatest jazz musicians, for mothers to soothe their babies, for people to celebrate weddings or deep consolation at funerals. The profound imagination behind the cathartic simplicity of Bach’s Cello Suites makes his music a companion for life for the listener and a mystery to be constantly re-examined and explored by the performer.

Classical Music

Under the title “Into The Light”, this album brings together organ works recorded on all five organs in Bremen Cathedral played by Cathedral Organist Stephan Leuthold. Since 2002, a single-manual instrument with pedal has been available in the cathedral’s high choir for the musical accompaniment of weddings, communion services and concerts, built by the organ builder Kristian Wegscheider from Dresden. The sound is based on the Saxon organ building of the 18th and early 19th century in the tradition of Gottfried Silbermann. In the east crypt, there is now a small organ built in 1991 by Gerrit Klop from Garderen in Holland. This instrument was built as an “organo di legno” (with exclusively wooden pipes) in the Italian Renaissance style. Bremen Cathedral obtained its first “Bach organ”, as it is known, in 1939. During the war and in the post-war years, the instrument was badly damaged and was replaced in 1966 by a new organ from the firm Gebr. Van Vulpen (Utrecht). This organ stands in a massive oak case on the east wall of the north nave. The Silbermann organ was probably built in the winter of 1732/33. It was already standing in the village church in Etzdorf / Saxony in 1734. The Bremen Cathedral cantor Richard Liesche, born near Dresden, bought the instrument for Bremen Cathedral. Restoration by Kristian Wegscheider, Dresden began in 1993. Today, almost 75 % of the pipe material originating from Silbermann can be found in the organ.

18 years and 55 discs later, a great adventure is brought to a close. The chronological approach adopted by Suzuki means that the three works included here are the last extant cantatas by Bach’s hand.

This series has been a landmark recording project for BIS and is released to coincide with the label's 40th anniversary.

Throughout the series, individual volumes have regularly picked up "choice" awards from the major music magazines as well as numerous appearances in the UK classical chart.

The lute, one of the instruments listed among those left by Bach when he died, which he presumably played, is an important vehicle for transcriptions of his music for violin and cello. For Bach and his contemporaries the lute was the ideal translator of violinistic pieces thanks to its combination of complete polyphonic range and unique melodic purity.

Lutenist José Miguel Moreno has striven to achieve this ideal,presenting us with his original, painstakingly produced versions of the Sonata BWV 1001 and the Partita BWV 1004, fundamentally faithful to Bach’s own manuscript, to which he has sparingly added just those elements that bring his instrument, the lute, to the foreground and make his version as natural and idiomatic as Bach’s original.

This is no deception - right from the first work of this recording, a concerto from the rich oeuvre of Bach's contemporary Johann Friedrich Fasch, a 'Brandenburg' mood is set and this becomes increasingly tangible as the music unfolds. After virtuoso pieces by Johann David Heinichen, Gottfried Heinrich Stolzel and Melchior Hoffmann, the Leipzig St. Thomas Cantor himself ultimately surprises us with the Sinfonia to his Cantata 174, a splendid, lavishly-scored variant of the first movement from the third Brandenburg Concerto. This is a great challenge for the two main protagonists, who perform true marvels on their natural horns and trumpets together with the inspiring ensemble L'arpa festante.

This recording features a work with a strange coincidence in it's compositional process and an astonishing dual authorship. Remarkably, Silvius Leopold Weiss's Lute Suite SW47 (which he named Suonata) also comes with a violin part that can be played over the top of it, composed by none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. A recent comparison of sources revealed that the harpsichord part in Bach's Suite for Violin & Harpsichord BWV1025, long considered to be of doubtful attribution, perfectly matches Weiss's suite. The violin part, meanwhile, was indeed composed entirely by Bach and is an additional melody independent of Weiss's musical material. It feels almost like a 'free improvisation' above the suite and recalls a similar process carried out by Charles Gounod in 1859: his Ave Maria fits over the first Prelude from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier BWV846. The sole exception is the Fantasia movement in Bach's piece, which is not derived from Weiss's suite, meaning both the violin and harpsichord parts in it are unique to Bach. This recording presents Weiss's suite on it's own and with the addition of Bach's violin part, both versions arranged by guitarist Alberto La Rocca for his instrument in place of the lute or harpsichord. (The all-Bach Fantasia is not included in the version without violin.) Weiss's Suite (Suonata) is a high-quality work composed for a 13-course Baroque lute. It is rarely, if ever, performed by either lute or guitar players, yet it contains all the best features of the great German lutenist's oeuvre: a refined and elegant compositional style and a varied range of expression. Bach's 'added melody', composed with his usual superhuman ability, shines a new light on the original suite, as if dressing it up in extraordinarily elegant attire. The violin part comments on the original lute texture without suffocating it, almost like a free improvisation above it. It plays with the various elements of Weiss's music, extrapolating ideas for themes, imitating them or simply wandering freely. Bach's part is also highly imaginative and varied in it's expression, frequently adding complex rhythmic dovetailing and significant virtuosity while always staying true to the emotions of Weiss's movements. Bach and Weiss were friends and met on several occasions. Johann Friedrich Reichardt even describes them challenging each other to an improvisation competition: 'Anyone who understands the challenge of playing harmonic modulations and decent counterpoint on the lute will be surprised and amazed to hear an eyewitness say that Weiss, the great lutenist, competed with J.S. Bach, the great harpsichordist and organist, in playing fantasies and fugues.' While the origins of his 'transcription with accompaniment' of Weiss's Suite SW47 are still a mystery, the fact remains that we can now enjoy a unique and unusual masterpiece, which these two brilliant composers had a hand in writing.