Ferruccio Busoni's most significant musical role models include Bach, Mozart, and Liszt. These three muses informed his mature compositional style, which melded Bachian counterpoint, Mozartian clarity, and Lisztian virtuosity alongside Busoni's penchant for experimentation. The music on Jiayan Sun's new album reveals the diverse ways Busoni responded to these muses, ranging from transcription and arrangement to original composition. Pianist Jiayan Sun, was praised by the New York Times for his "revelatory" performances, and by the Toronto Star for his "technically flawless, poetically inspired and immensely assured playing".

Does Florian Noack’s take on transcription smack of forbidden delights? From Bach to the Sherman Brothers, the pianist denies himself nothing, especially not the pleasure of liberally sprinkling his good humour and insolent virtuosity over these pieces of every hue. Here is a delightful album in which repertory masterpieces and unexpected musical universes come together in perfect harmony under his fingers and gain new light and life, joyful, playful, airy and poetic, thanks to the magic of his inspiration. With exquisite taste, Florian Noack's transcriptions and paraphrases take us into a world of freedom and refinement, where novel sounds and subtleties of language are delicacies to be savoured… guilt-free!

American-Australian harpist Emily Granger made an indelible impression with her solo debut recording, In Transit. She follows up with Something Like This, a beautiful collaboration with flautist Sally Walker, featuring original music for flute and harp alongside adaptations and arrangements for the instrumental combination. Woven among classics by J.S. Bach and Mozart are works by living composers including Australians Elena Kats-Chernin, Sally Greenaway, Lachlan Skipworth and Jessica Wells, and indigenous composer Christopher Sainsbury. 20th century works by Jacques Ibert and Witold Lutoslawski are juxtaposed with Erik Satie’s timeless Gymnopédies.

REVIEWS:

Something Like This is a beautifully programmed collection of well-known works performed in sumptuous style and ensemble by Walker and harpist Emily Granger.

In a superbly executed Bach Sonata in G Minor, Granger shines with sprightly and impeccable technique. As well, the slow movement from Mozart’s Concerto for flute and harp does not disappoint as one of the loveliest sounds you’ll hear. That’s until two Gymnopedies by Erik Satie, their simplicity and floaty-ness able to transport us to another realm entirely. 

[In] the fervently dramatic Three Fragments by Witold Lutoslawski. Walker’s tone is rich and indulgent, almost weeping in its expressiveness with Granger’s style full of colorful nuance, just as the music requires—its original intent was to accompany a play. Similarly, Jessica Well’s delightful Sati—Sanskrit for mindfulness—offers the duo room to experiment with shadings of hue, phrasing and musical line, sometimes at peace, other times menacing. Beginning mindfully serene, the piece explodes to an ecstatic reverie of sonorities. 

For just sheer beauty of line and tone, the three short Poems by Sally Greenway are astonishing miniatures. You dare not breathe in order not to miss a thing. The inspiration comes from the poem Roses du Soir by Pierre Louÿs which describes lovers finding a secret spot in the forest where a magical rose bush grows. Walker and Granger create a sound as if one instrument with delicate passion. This sensibility appears again in Christopher Sainsbury’s Djagamara, a work written to honor the life of a young indigenous friend.

-- The Harp Column

In this programme, 'Solomon's Knot' is dedicated to the popular hunting cantata BWV 208. Solomon's horn players are also given plenty to do in the 1st Brandenburg Concerto and the F major Mass - the bridge from the sacred to the secular is easily bridged.

The CD spans an arc from Italy to Central Germany and includes concerti by Vivaldi and Johann Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar, which Bach arranged for organ. The arrangements are thus an encounter between different composers, who here converse with each other and exchange ideas. Johannes Krahl presents them on the historic Silbermann organ of the Katholische Hofkirche Dresden.

In this recording, the expert violists of Phantasm return to the unconventional yet brilliant polyphonist Matthew Locke. Under the guidance of Laurence Dreyfus, Phantasm presents the second half of Locke’s Little Consort, composed for treble, tenor and bass viol, and pairs it with three suites from the Flat Consort for my cousin Kemble whose unusual grouping comprises treble and two bass viols. Both sets are accompanied by a chordal bass instrument, in this instance the leading theorbo player Elizabeth Kenny. Locke’s experimental, not to say libertarian, impulse pervades the works, and yet the composer remains grounded in the traditional ethos of strict counterpoint, standing as one of the last champions of the once treasured great polyphonic tradition. More than 400 years later, his music remains as fresh as ever.

A vocation for experimentation was unquestionably an essential component of Bach's mindset. It was a desire to surpass, in every possible respect, whatever had been achieved up until then in a given genre or musical form, while extending to the utmost the resources and technical capabilities of individual instruments and the human voice (and thus also of individual performers). All of this was to be accomplished in the search for a perfection that is both aesthetic and spiritual. This ceaseless aspiration-cultivated from the beginning to the very end of his life-to go beyond the limits shapes the works selected for the second solo album by harpsichordist Cristiano Gaudio, whose debut recording was awarded a Diapason d'Or and Classica's Choc de l'Ann�e. From the dazzling virtuosity of the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue to the contrapuntal complexity of the Ricercare a 6 from The Musical Offering; from the art of transcription, magnified in the arrangement of the Violin Sonata no. 2, to the "twelve-tone" last fugue of The Well-Tempered Clavier Book I, whose subject exceptionally includes all the notes of the chromatic scale-all these works embody that bold erosion of limits that Bach's music pursued as it's true mission. They give both performers and listeners, for over three centuries, the thrill of an intellectual adventure-indeed even a physical experience-that is constantly on the edge.

Curiosa is conceived as a personal "cabinet of curiosities" by violinist Jorge Jim�nez, bringing together music that entered his life through years of travel, collaboration, and discovery. The album spans laments, dances, preludes, fugues, and songs from both renowned and anonymous sources, ranging from the Middle Ages to the Baroque and beyond. Each piece is selected for it's emotional depth, strangeness, and expressive power, forming a living repertoire shaped in rehearsals, late-night conversations, concerts, and recording sessions. Central to the project is Jim�nez's fascination with unaccompanied music and historical instruments, particularly the baroque violin and vielle, whose raw and earthy sound transports the listener into earlier sound worlds. Throughout Curiosa, Jim�nez weaves together personal heritage, musical memory, and imaginative storytelling. His own arrangements connect Bach, Dowland, Strozzi, Gaspar Sanz, and traditional tunes with vivid images. Joined by Joy Smith on early harps and Daniel Garay on historical percussion, and performing with his ensemble Tercia Realidad, Jim�nez blends historical insight with spontaneity and improvisation. The result is an album that feels both intimate and expansive-music passed "between hands, ears, and hearts," constantly transforming while remaining deeply rooted in shared curiosity and human connection. Jorge Jim�nez: "These pieces entered my life through the extraordinary musicians and ensembles I've been fortunate to work with across Europe. They form a living repertoire shaped in rehearsal rooms, late-night conversations, recording sessions, and concerts."

Dr. Jerzy Kosmala, internationally acclaimed as a concert violist and pedagogue, has concertized throughout Europe, the former Soviet Union, Canada, North and South America, Asia, and South Africa, and has recordings on several record labels. He is a frequent guest artist and performer at the world's foremost festivals, International Viola Congresses, universities, and academies, and is a permanent jury member of virtually all of the most prestigious international competitions, including the Lionel Tertis, Geneva, Munich, Markneukirchen, Trapani, Primrose Viola Competition, Brahms Viola Competition, and the Concert Artist Guild International Competition in New York City.

Zhu Xiao-Mei is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of our time and one of the foremost interpreters of J.S. Bach's music. The Goldberg Variations marked the beginning of her international career and remain, for her, the "greatest musical encounter" of her life. She was the first artist ever to perform the iconic cycle at Bach's final resting place in St Thomas Church, Leipzig. This unforgettable concert is captured in a critically acclaimed and award-winning live recording.

Bach: Sonaten Und Partiten (2015) - Itzhak Perlman - A supreme violinist performs the supreme works for unaccompanied violin. In preparing the Bach Sonatas and Partitas, Perlman sought authenticity through the score itself, not through musicological research: "Music is a language, and, performed responsively, with musical logic as guide, it will make sense."

For her second Warner Classics release, young Italian pianist Beatrice Rana turns to a pinnacle of the solo keyboard repertoire and a composer she has described as "my first love": Johann Sebastian Bach. Her interpretation of his epic Goldberg Variations bears out Le Monde's judgement that "Beatrice Rana certainly has nothing left to prove when it comes to technique, but what makes an impression are her calm maturity and her sense of architecture," and Gramophone's that she is "a fully developed artist of a stature that belies her tender years." Bach was the composer who most obsessed Beatrice Rana as a child, and in a recent interview with Pianist magazine, she confessed that it would be his music, and above all the Goldberg Variations, that she would choose if she had to devote her life to a single composer. As she said: "I'm very happy to be going back to Bach... It's best to avoid Bach in competitions... you can't expose yourself to be totally killed by the jury! But Bach is my first love; now I am allowed to play it in public and I'm really looking forward to that."

Johann Sebastian Bach composed six cantatas for the Christmas holidays in 1734, to have one performed for each particular holiday during services in the main churches of Leipzig, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas. Both the narrative march of the Gospel and the tonality in which the musical framework was composed, give the cantatas a character of an autonomous cycle that Jordi Savall and his groups face for the first time

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Piotr Anderszewski takes a characteristically creative approach to Bach's Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well-tempered Clavier). Rather than recording all 48 of it's prelude-and-fugue pairings, he has focused on 12 pairings from Book Two. "I decided to put the pieces together in a sequence of my own subjective choosing, based sometimes on key relationships, at other times on contrasts. The idea behind this specific order is to create a sense of drama that suggests a cycle: 12 characters conversing with one another, mirroring each other." Anderszewski's last Erato album of Bach prompted BBC Music Magazine to write: "For anyone who loves Bach (or the piano)... this life-enhancing disc is required listening."

Classical Music

Intense, emotional and pure is how Pavel Kolesnikov describes the experience of making this recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. It is the fruit of a collaboration between the pianist and choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. The spirit of the dance, so fundamental to Bach, is never far away in this compelling new account.

Bach wrote three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord. Scholars estimate they were composed in the early 1740s, possibly for Carl Fredrich Abel, son of Bach's colleague Christian Ferdinand Abel. They are paired here with Scarlatti's Gamba Sonata and a Violin Sonata by Handel. These works are performed by violinist Robin Michael, cellist Steven Isserlis and harpsichordist Richard Egarr in a program of haunting tranquility.

Goldberg Variations

Classical Music

Harpsichord Music

Die Kunst der Fuge

V 19: CANTATAS (BWV 58/59/60/6

Classical Music

David Shifrin leads the nation's most acclaimed ensemble, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, through Bach's famed Brandenburg Concertos. This double-CD set was recorded in Delos' acclaimed VR2 Dolby Surround process and packaged in a space-saving slimline case.

Classical Music

V 4: CANTATAS (BWV 10,12,13)

Tacet is one of the handful of companies that seem quite competent at delivering superb ambience and acoustical cues from just a couple of well-placed microphones. Very highly recommended - this disc is such a delight to listen to that it's more than generous 75-minute playing time passes all too quickly! (Audiophile Audition) Your J. S. Bach Partitas CD is safely esconced in my Top Ten: I keep my collection down to a maximum of ten CDs, in other words, each time a better one comes along I throw out one that isn't as good. (customer's letter)