Performances originally recorded 2002-2010. Recordings originally released 2007-2011. - ArkivMusic

An outstanding collection of J.S. Bach’s greatest large scale works are presented on this 10-CD set. Conductor Jos van Veldhoven and the Netherlands Bach Society perform the St. Matthew Passion, St. John Passion, Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio and the Mass in B Minor. Jos van Veldhoven was the artistic director of the Netherlands Bach Society from 1983 until 2018. The recordings of the present box set were originally released separately on Channel Classics Records between 2007 and 2011. Each release received rave reviews, celebrating both the performances and recording quality. International Record Review praised their St. Matthew Passion for being “An absolute must-have for lovers of this music (…) as a glorious, life-affirming and utterly irresistible piece of music-making, this is in a league of its own. If any recording warrants the 'Outstanding' tag, this does.”

Camille El Bacha is a pianist, composer and improviser. His father is the pianist Abdel Rahman El Bacha, and they often perform together as a duo, but Camille charts his own path between classical, film and electronic music, with his group Leone Jadis. He launches our ‘Piano Stories’ series with a programme entitled ‘Lumen’, which he presents as a ‘constellation of preludes and improvisations’. His own compositions resonate with the preludes of Bach and Chopin, taken from the two books of The Well-tempered Clavier and the Twenty-four Preludes op. 28 respectively. Camille El Bacha invites us on a journey where styles and periods merge into a single artistic impulse: ‘At the piano, I move almost unconsciously from interpretation to composition or improvisation. A Chopin prelude can inspire me to improvise, which can then lead to a new written piece.’

With this CD begins the publication of the complete Bach's organ works by the Italian organist Massimiliano Sanca. The compositions that have been selected for this first CD are pieces of different character: austere and severe nature works – and works that describe the serenity and peace. The Prelude and Fugue BWV 546, Fantasy and Fugue BWV 537, Prelude and Fugue BWV 549, Chorale BWV 658,“represent”, through the music, suffering, pain and difficulties of humanity in a cosmic sense; on the other hand, the Chorales BWV 676 in the Trio and BWV 676 Manualiter, Chorale BWV 668, Fugue on the Magnificat BWV 733 are works that describe the serenity and peace of God’s kingdom with Mary, his mother, and the angels, as expressed in the Holy Scriptures.

As a result in this recording everything converges, once again with the Bach music, into a profound union between human and divine nature, and in fact between Heaven and Earth. Massimiliano Sanca plays on the beautiful organ made by Ilic Colzani in 2007 for of the Sanctuary of the "Madonna of Mangher" in Vallio Terme (Brescia, Italy).

Cellist Adam Mital is a prizewinner of numerous competitions, including the Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, Germany, and the International Adam Cello Competition in Christchurch, New Zealand. He has now poured his experience as a soloist and chamber musician into a CD released by GENUIN, which brings together three of Johann Sebastian Bach's brilliant suites for solo cello. With a wink of his eye, the brilliant musician Adam Mital gives us another highly virtuosic composition of his own for solo cello. In doing so, he follows the established, centuries-old tradition of the composer being inseparable from the performer: a highly inspiring musical unity!

Bach’s St John Passion is like an eternal cry into the void, carrying the essence of western, protestant answers to the fundamental questions in life in music. Our wrongdoings on Earth contrasted with higher moral principles. Nowhere else does it crystallize into music more profoundly and beautifully than in this immortal manifestation of Bach’s genius.

1723 marked the beginning of a new era: Johann Sebastian Bach was appointed Thomaskantor in Leipzig and was about to leave his mark on German music history like hardly any other composer. But first, Georg Philipp Telemann, the actual preferred candidate, needed to withdraw from his appointment in favor of Hamburg. Christoph Graupner, the jury's next choice, was unable to take up the post because he didn't receive approval from his employer in Darmstadt. It's hard to believe that Bach was only the third choice!

Immerse yourself in the fascinating application process and slip into the role of the jury!
The OPUS-KLASSIK award-winning ensemble Ælbgut presents an exciting compilation of the three composers' specially prepared trial cantatas. For this, they are working together for the first time with the young baroque specialists from Capella Jenensis.

Listen to the premiere recording of Graupner's "Lobet den Herrn" as well as Telemann's previously unpublished cantata "Ich muß auf den Bergen weinen und heulen" – a true rediscovery. Which candidate would you have chosen?

Jan Schulmeister is young and promising pianist. He has been playing piano since the age of five. To this day, he has over 30 victories and special awards from national and international competitions. He also regularly performs solo concerts in both Czech and foreign countries. Now he presents his new CD with recordings of compositions by Robert Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach and other great composers.

He said about this CD: "I see this audio recording as a kind of transition from my "junior" recordings to future ones. I am sixteen years old, and in these years my sort of imaginary journey associated with courage to join my older, already mature colleagues, the masters of black and white keys, begins."

SOMM Recordings announces a double-disc set of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord brilliantly performed by two virtuosos of their instruments, Adrian Butterfield (violin) and Silas Wollston (harpsichord).

The selection of eight sonatas includes six works for violin and obbligato harpsichord (BWV 1014-1019), likely composed between 1720 and 1723 during Bach’s final years in Cöthen, and the later Violin Sonatas in G major (BWV 1021) from 1732, and early (though belatedly catalogued) E minor (BWV 1023) from around 1709. Bonus tracks include three alternative movements composed for the BWV 1019 Sonata in G major that illustrate the development of Bach’s thinking in relation to sonata form and intimate musical expression. These intricately designed sonatas also serve to reveal Bach’s innovative way of employing the harpsichord’s singing voice as an equal to the violin and are surely precursors to the rich sonata tradition that emerged in the 19th century.

Butterfield and Wollston’s erudite booklet notes place the sonatas within the context of Bach’s own musical inheritance and influences while arguing for their abiding appeal: “More than 300 years after their composition, they still sound excellent, give much joy and continue to tug at the listener’s heartstrings”.

Making his SOMM debut, Silas Wollston is partnered by Adrian Butterfield, whose previous releases for the label feature him alongside London Handel Players colleagues in Handel’s Complete Sonatas & Works for Violin and Continuo with Katherine Sharman (cello) and Laurence Cummings (harpsichord), described by Early Music Review as “required listening” (SOMMCD 068); the Seven Trio Sonatas, Op.5, judged “assured and surprisingly lyrical” by Gramophone (SOMMCD 044); and Geminiani’s Complete Sonatas, Op.1 (SOMMCD 248-2), featuring performances that International Record Review declared “want for nothing in terms of technical brilliance and musical integrity”.

Superstar violinist Anne Akiko Meyers’ imagination and ingenuity knows no bounds. Her idea to persuade leading living composer Morten Lauridsen to transform his choral masterpiece, O Magnum Mysterium, into a work for violin and choir is a masterstroke. Teaming up with conductor Grant Gershon – who first collaborated with Anne as chamber musicians over 40 years ago – and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, for whom Lauridsen was their first Composer in Residence, Anne rounds out this 4-track EP with three other arrangements for violin and chorus of ever-popular works by J.S. Bach.

Reference Recordings is proud to present a very special new release! Entitled Le Dolce Sirene to represent the all-women force of Bach Aria Soloists, this exciting new album includes works by Monteverdi, Handel, Mendelssohn and Bach, alongside a new transcription by BAS of Cecilia McDowall’s song cycle Four Shakespeare Songs. Hailed for producing “the most surprising and brilliantly innovative collaborations in Kansas City,” Bach Aria Soloists delivers each year their acclaimed concert series presenting the genius and relevance of Johann Sebastian Bach, his contemporaries, and those he inspired.

REVIEWS:

The Kansas City-based Bach Aria Soloists make their recording debut on Reference Recordings with a lovely album of Monteverdi, Bach, Handel and Mendelssohn, complemented by Cecilia McDowall and concluding with their own improvisation on La folia. Recorded with the label’s trademark sweet and clear perfection, ‘Le dolce sirene’ achieves that audiophile miracle, sounding even better on speakers than on headphones.

Most of the music is rich in conventional beauty, from Sarah Tannehill Anderson, luscious in Monteverdi and resplendent in Handel’s ‘Rejoice greatly’, to Elizabeth Suh Lane and her continuo mates illuminating Bach’s G major Violin Sonata from 1734. By contrast McDowall’s Four Shakespeare Songs use intriguingly skewed, modern notions of romantic beauty and sudden sweeps of song perfectly timed, voiced and sung to explore different aspects of love. ‘First Rehearse’ on its own, Titania’s blessing of the lovers, is a magical tour de force.

As Steven Ledbetter’s notes explain, the performers adopted the same practice for their La folia as those from about 1700, ornamenting and elaborating a basic framework that ‘appears constantly renewed’. According to founding artistic director Lane, the group’s name is a nod to the famed Bach Aria Group and in fact, she assured me, the Group’s last violinist Daniel Phillips gave ‘his full blessing, really excited that we were starting such an organisation!’

The album was recorded at Village Presbyterian Church in a suburb of Kansas City, where Elisa Williams Bickers proved with the Allegro con brio from Mendelssohn’s Fourth Organ Sonata how powerfully and inspirationally the Richards, Fowkes & Co three-manual mechanical action instrument installed in 2016 could speak.

-- Gramophone

"Keyboard exercises, consisting of an ARIA with diverse variations, for two-manual harpsichord. Prepared for the enjoyment of music lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach, composer for the Royal court of Poland and the Electoral court of Saxony, Kapellmeister and Director of Choral Music in Leipzig." These are the words which can be read on the title page of Bach’s one and only large variation work which was published in Nuremberg in 1741.

In Johann Nikolaus Forkel’s Bach biography, published in 1802, we find the anecdote which led to the name “Goldberg Variations” under which this work is still known today: “Once, the Count [Hermann Carl von Keyserlingk] expressed to Bach that he would like to have some keyboard pieces for his [private musician Johann Gottlieb] Goldberg, which would be of such a gentle and lively character that he would be cheered up a little in his sleepless nights. Bach believed that he could best fulfill this wish by writing variations, which he had hitherto considered a thankless task because the basic harmony was always the same. But, in the same way all of his works were already artistic models at this time, these variations also turned into such under his hand. Yet, he only produced one single model of this kind. The Count subsequently called them his variations. He never tired of them, and for a long time, whenever he had sleepless nights, he would say: Dear Goldberg, play me one of my variations.”

Mechthild Winter, specialist for Early Music and living in “Bach City” Leipzig, has chosen this large variation work for her second solo CD and plays with her usual mastery. She uses a copy of a Ruckers harpsichord built in 1624 and enlarged in 1720.

Holland Baroque presents Bachs Königin, an album full of masterful organ works by J.S. Bach, transcribed for the orchestra by Judith and Tineke Steenbrink.

These creative interpretations add unique colours and a fresh spirit to baroque monuments. Here is yet another chance to enjoy Bach’s genius. Holland Baroque is an original and innovative baroque orchestra that approaches baroque repertoire through a fresh and contemporary approach, with a focus on improvisation and collaborations with outstanding artists from different traditions. Minne is their fifth Pentatone album, after having released Minne (2022) Brabant 1653, Polonoise (both 2021) and Silk Baroque (2019) with the label.

This is the third and final installment of the Well-Tempered Consort series (5 Diapasons, Gramophone Editor’s Choice, BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice). In this program devised by its director Laurence Dreyfus, the viol consort Phantasm continues to shine new light on the fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier interspersed with some of the composer’s most harmonically adventurous experiments from the Clavierübung III. This polyphonic feast also includes two works from the Inventions and Sinfonias as well as the Fantasia in G major BWV 572, or Pièce d’orgue as it is sometimes called, which boasts an extraordinary closing pedal point. A fitting end to a remarkable journey!

New piano transcriptions by Greek pianist Alexandra Papastefanou of various Cantatas, an Organ Sonata and a Chorale Prelude by J.S. Bach, all recorded here for the first time. The famous Myra Hess transcription of Bach’s cantata Jesus bleibet meine Freude concludes a fascinating new look at some of Bach’s choral and organ works.

In recent decades, Johann Sebastian Bach's works have undergone numerous transcriptions and adaptations. Since the 1960s, the guitar repertoire has seen the addition of several Bach pieces originally intended for the lute, an instrument that is undoubtedly among the most akin to the modern six-string guitar. Following the increasingly in-depth study of Bach's work and the spread of the classical guitar, several harpsichord pieces have also been transcribed and performed. This album magnificently displays these pieces by exploiting the rich dynamics and full polyphonic capacity of the guitar.

The Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and the Clavier-Büchlein vor Anna Magdalena Bach hold an important place, as these collections offer a glimpse into Bach’s familial and didactic spheres of action. Within the Friedemann Bach collection, we find the two Praeambula (BWV 924 & 926), characterised by arpeggiated writing, probably a model for students to create a first simple improvisation. Further on, the Fantasias that appear in the final part of the collection show a wonderful degree of contrapuntal complexity. Although there were 2 versions of the Anna Magdalena collection, the one which has survived almost in its entirety seems to have been intended as a family album, with contributions not only from Anna Magdalena (J.S. Bach’s wife), but also from her son Carl Philipp Emanuel and other composers. The pieces in this collection, including vocal pieces written for Anna (an accomplished singer), are most commonly small dance forms characterised by an essential and refined homophonic-style writing. The Anglaise and Minuet from the French Suite No. 3, as well as the more solemn Allemande from the French Suite No. 4, are clear examples of the gracefulness of these compositions, which show a subtler sound texture than those of other series of Bach suites, as well as a more limited use of counterpoint. Also of exquisite elegance is the Minuet from Partita BWV 825, taken from the first volume of the Clavier-Übung.

This album also includes some famous works, among them the preludes from the French Suite No. 3 and Johann Peter Kellner’s collection. These are rather varied pieces, written for teaching purposes and passed down through written transcriptions from Bach’s pupils. Some are extremely short but show some degree of harmonic density and sometimes a rather chromatic style, while others have a slightly broader structure and a writing more similar to the Inventions, with a systematic use of counterpoint. The album also features works from other prominent composers – George Philipp Telemann and C.P.E. Bach – as well as two lesser-known composers, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel and Christian Petzold.