With�Marimba, David Moliner presents an extraordinary album that places this unique instrument and it's manifold colors and sounds at it's core. Moliner's masterful arrangements and two original works composed specifically for the instrument take listeners on a sonic journey through the centuries, combining both technical skill and creative expression. The album brings together works from various epochs and styles. Particularly notable is his arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites, which he transforms into new, polyphonic textures using his four Marimba mallets. Moliner successfully combines Bach's rhythmic pulse and musical complexity with the Marimba's unique tonal color. In addition to the Baroque works, the album also features pieces by Claude Debussy and Franz Schubert. Moliner brings a new dimension to Debussy's impressionistic�Arabesques, allowing the Marimba to bloom in a delicate, almost pictorial soundscape. Schubert's romantic�Impromptu, transcribed by Moliner for Marimba, unfolds in it's poetic beauty and gains expressive depth through the instrument's distinct timbre. Another highlight is the composition�Jalak Suren�by contemporary composer Alexander Liebermann, inspired by the bird songs of Indonesia. Moliner brings the subtle melodies and rhythmic structures of this music to life, allowing the Marimba to shine as a sensitive storyteller of a musical nature portrait. The album concludes with Moliner's own Marimba composition, making a powerful statement: the Marimba is not just an exotic instrument but a full-fledged member of the classical music scene, capable of interpreting the entire spectrum of the repertoire from Baroque to Modern. A must for lovers of sophisticated percussion and for all those who want to experience classical music in a new, captivating sonic dimension. Recorded at Kloster Lankwitz, Berlin October 2024

After listening for a while (to orchestral music on the radio) Idil would detect the main melody and then play it on the piano with one finger. Afterwards, when she reached the age of four, she would play these with two hands and with the correct harmony. Bach preludes and fugues from the Well Tempered Clavier, for example, which even the talented musicians took considerable time to study and memorise, were mastered by Idil in only a few days after listening once or twice, after which she would play these without a single wrong note. (Leman Biret, 1988)

It is a mammoth project that the Stuttgart International Bach Academy has undertaken: All sixty cantatas from Johann Sebastian Bach's first year in office as St. Thomas Cantor will be performed in a total of 23 concerts and recorded on CDs. Vol. 7 is now available should convince even skeptics. For what Hans-Christoph Rademann, his Gaechinger Cantorey and hand-picked soloists reveal here in terms of vocal-instrumental coordination, tonal differentiation and rhetorically trained creative artistry probably marks the pinnacle of historically informed performance practice at present. The choir presents itself extremely agile in fugal passages, but also with sufficient sonorous warmth in the chorales, and the orchestra with it's excellent soloists (trumpet!) matches this level. We can look forward to further releases in this series.

Elena Denisova is recognised as one of the most charismatic personalities of the international violin elite and sees herself as an ambassador of the magic of sound. She realises this as a passionate motto in all her interpretations of classical and 21st century works. It also applies to Bach's three sonatas for solo violin, which she performs here entirely in this spirit.

After his brilliant take on the Partitas, the renowned Francesco Tristano now tackles Bach's English Suites in a double album that blends baroque mastery with striking modernity.

Rarely recorded on disc, Johann Sebastian Bach's concertos for three and four harpsichords illustrate the art of writing for keyboard and strings of which the composer was a pioneer. These emblematic works, characterised by a balance between strong themes and abundant internal energy, are performed by virtuoso harpsichordists from the new generation of Baroque musicians: Violaine Cochard, Olivier Fortin, Pierre Gallon, Jean-Luc Ho and, for the first time, the young Croatian harpsichordist Davor Krkljus, accompanied by the strings of Le Caravanserail under the direction of Bertrand Cuiller on harpsichord. The album also includes a previously unreleased transcription for four harpsichords of the famous Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, by Bertrand Cuiller.

Two years after her acclaimed complete Mozart Sonatas, Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son immerses herself, alongside the musicians of the Hague Residence Orchestra and their musical director Anja Bihlmaier, in Ravel's two equally dark Concertos. This intimate, personal vision is complemented by four pieces by J. S. Bach, played in very rare arrangements by Paul Wittgenstein, the famous commissioner of the Concerto for the Left Hand.

The harpsichord from 1745 by Joannes Daniel Dulcken bearing the inventory number SAM 726 not only is an instrument with a beautiful and most distinctive sound: it also commands admiration as a visually magnificent exhibition piece. Nothing is known about the original owners, but over the course of a century and a half it found it's way from the production site in Antwerp to Vienna, where it was added to the collection of Historic Musical Instruments at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1921. In the following decades, it's playability was restored in several stages, with it's sound now documented for the first time on this CD. The internationally acclaimed Austrian organist and harpsichordist Stefan Donner presents the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach, one of the most famous variation cycles in music history, which is also an ideal choice of program due to the immediate proximity of it's publication in 1741 to the time of the instrument's creation

Klara Wurtz Celebration

In the 18th century, the term "clavier" was used to refer to almost all keyboard instruments. For this Bach recital, the Austrian harpsichordist Johannes Maria Bogner has taken precisely this into account and uses the harpsichord and the clavichord for his interpretations, whereby he performs the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue BWV 903 here on both the harpsichord and the clavichord for direct comparison.

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.

Bach published during his lifetime four volumes of keyboard pieces under the title Clavierubung which began with a set of six Partitas, published between 1726 and 1731. The first of the set was the Partita No. 1 in B flat major. The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, was apparently written during Bach's time at Cothen, probably about 1720, and revised in Leipzig about 1730. The six English Suites, the 3rd being included here, have nothing particularly English about them, except their title. They were written perhaps in Weimar in about 1715 or possibly during Bach's period at Cothen. Bach brought together a set of five French Suites, of which the 5th is Biret's favourite, later augmented to six and forming part of the Clavierbuchlein for Anna Magdalena, his second wife. The Italian Concerto in F major was published in 1735 in the second volume of the Clavierubungen, with the original title Concerto nach Italienischen Gusto. It reflects the style of the Venetian solo concertos by Vivaldi.

Bach revised his St. John Passion time and again - indeed making it one of his most enigmatic and fascinating compositions. On the 300th anniversary of it's world premiere, MDG is reissuing the highly acclaimed recording for the first time in full three-dimensional sound on Super Audio CD for the PREZIOSA series.

The most comprehensive tribute ever issued on record to the art of the Italian pianist Sergio Fiorentino. Many recordings here newly remastered and receiving their first-ever issue in the digital age. A landmark set for pianophiles. This set has been curated by the collector Ernst Lumpe, who contributes a lengthy appreciation and introduction to the booklet of the set, alongside an essay by Christoph Schluren & Ottavia Maria Maceratini. It was Lumpe who drew the pianist out of retirement during the 1990s, resulting in an 'Indian Summer' of recordings made in Berlin until not long before the pianist's death in 1998. They are reissued here, alongside much less familiar solo and concerto recordings from the 1950s and 60s - 'The Early Recordings' - and separate sections dedicated to Fiorentino's particular, free-wheeling mastery of Chopin and Liszt. Many of the early recordings were made in the UK for the Concert Artist label under the supervision of Willliam Barrington-Coupe, and some of them issued under pseudonyms (though not attributed to his wife Joyce Hatto, at least not at the time). In 1954 he recorded Mozart's Concerto K467 in Naples; the repertoire from those years otherwise focuses on richly sonorous interpretations of German repertoire, from Bach (and Bach/Busoni) onwards, through Beethoven, into fantastically inventive Schumann and Brahms. Around this time too, however, he recorded several major Chopin collections: the Ballades, Etudes, Polonaises, Scherzos and Waltzes. The sources for all these recordings vary between master tapes (occasionally), and more often the best available LP copies, often of releases issued in very limited quantities, and in compromised engineering, but the artistic value of the performances speaks for itself. Lumpe remarks of his as 'a real aristocrat' of the piano and quotes several of his pupils, who recall a musician without ego, demanding and quietly aware of his own abilities but modest and disinclined to self-promotion or fits of artistic temperament. Alongside some revisiting of this repertoire, late in life in Berlin, Fiorentino turned to Russian repertoire: Prokofiev, Scriabin and especially Rachmaninoff, whom he had always venerated as the supreme pianist. If this set bears witness to anything, it is Fiorentino's place in the canon as one of Rachmaninoff's few worthy successors. - "He is the only other pianist", said the legendary Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli of Sergio Fiorentino. How is it that one of the greatest musical geniuses of the 20th century is still so unknown? - Sergio Fiorentino (1927-1998) was a remarkable Italian pianist whose career combined exceptional artistry with a quiet, almost enigmatic presence in the music world. Born in Naples, Fiorentino exhibited prodigious talent from an early age, studying at the prestigious San Pietro a Majella Conservatory under the guidance of Alfredo Casella and Paolo Denza. His early successes included significant competition wins and promising concert debuts, establishing him as a rising star in the mid-20th-century classical music scene. - However, Fiorentino's trajectory took a dramatic turn following a plane crash in 1954, which left him physically and emotionally scarred. While he resumed performing, his public appearances became sporadic, and he withdrew from the international stage. - Fiorentino's recordings, which gained broader recognition later in his life, reveal a pianist of extraordinary depth, technical mastery, and interpretive insight. Known for his affinity for composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff, Fiorentino's playing was marked by it's clarity, emotional intensity, and lack of ostentation. His interpretations were thoughtful, eschewing showmanship in favor of profound musical communication. - In the 1990s, Fiorentino returned to a more active recording schedule, earning belated acclaim as a cult figure among pianophiles. Tragically, his life was cut short in 1998, but his legacy endures through a treasure trove of recordings that continue to inspire listeners, cementing his status as one of the 20th century's most distinctive pianists. - This set brings together the major part of Fiorentino's recordings, spanning from the 1950-ties to the Berlin studio recordings made in the early 1990-ties. Some of the (Live) recordings inevitably show their provenance and technical deficiencies, but everywhere there shines the unbelievable musical force of one of the greatest pianists of the 20-th century.

Second disc of the great accordionist Philippe Thuriot on Challenge Classics. After arrangements of Scarlatti Sonatas (CC 72994), Philippe plunges in a more daring project: improvisations on Bach's music. The result is amazing for the imagination, inventiveness and inspiration - while always remaining in the domain of the respect and love to Bach's music. A disc you listen with constant curiosity, pleasure and interest from start to the end.