This album from Laurence Equilbey and the Insula Orchestra features a clever and popular Mozart program, including hit tracks from Magic Flute, Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Entf�hrhrung aus dem Serail. It also features French singers, excellent Mozart interpreters: Sandrine Piau, Jodie Devos, Lea Desandre, Lo�c F�lix, Florian Sempey, Stanislas de Barbeyrac.

Beethoven's 16 string quartets occupy a place of honor in the chamber repertoire. 2020 marks the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth, and Quatuor �b�ne is recognizing this with an extensive tour, entitled Beethoven Around the World. Over that period the French ensemble will give over 120 concerts in a total of 21 countries on six continents, focusing on complete cycles of the quartets from February 2020. Beethoven Around the World encompasses live recordings for Erato, building a complete cycle, made in seven of the world's great cities: Vienna (at the Konzerthaus); Philadelphia (Kimmel Center); Tokyo (Suntory Hall); S�o Paulo (Sala S�o Paulo); Melbourne (Melbourne Recital Centre); Nairobi, and, with the support of UNESCO, Paris (Philharmonie de Paris).

This album brings together world premiere recordings of three aesthetically diverse piano concertos that were written for Alexandre Tharaud. They are Left, alone by the Dane Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952), Future is a faded song by the Frenchman G�rard Pesson (b.1958) and Kuleshov by the Argentian-born Frenchman Oscar Strasnoy (b.1970). Strasnoy has said that his concerto was "inspired by Alexandre Tharaud's unique and inimitable phrasing and clarity of playing." No doubt those words could apply to all three works on the album.

The young French cellist Edgar Moreau, an established Erato artist, is joined by his siblings - the violinists Rapha�lle and David and the pianist J�r�mie - for Dvor�k's five Bagatelles op 47 and Korngold's Suite op 23. As David points out, works for the combination of two violins, cello and piano are unusual: "These are wonderful pieces that are rarely played, so this is an opportunity to shine a spotlight on them." When it comes to playing as a family, Edgar feels that "There's something that works almost instinctively," while Rapha�lle explains that "We don't need to look at each other, and we breathe together in a certain way. There's something very strong about it." Completing the programme are transcriptions of much-loved operatic arias from Dvor�k's Rusalka and Korngold's Die tote Stadt, performed by Edgar and J�r�mie

An album of opera arias and symphonies by Francesco Cavalli, the prolific 17th century Venetian composer with 41 operas to his name, who was Handel's predecessor in Hannover.

Nigel Rogers began singing at an early age as a boy treble and later became a choral scholar at King's College, Cambridge. After graduating he went first to Italy and then to Germany, where he studied at Munich's Hochschule f�r Musik. During the early 1960s he toured all over the world before returning to England, where he began to take a greater interest in Baroque music. He is accompanied here by first-class musicians: lutenists Anthony Bailes and Paul O'Dette, gambist Jordi Savall.

2020 release. "An outstanding album", was Gramophone magazine's verdict on the Arod Quartet's last release, a programme of Schoenberg, Zemlinsky and Webern. Remaining in Vienna, the young French quartet goes back to the time of Schubert. "We wanted to explore several stylistic phases in Schubert's life," they explain. The centrepiece is his gripping Quartet No 14 ('Der Tod und das M�dchen'/'Death and the Maiden'), written in the final years of his short life and complemented here by the Quartets No 4 and No 12 ('Quartettsatz').

Beauty's final aria (sung by Natalie Dessay) is unconventionally slow and intensely moving, accompanied by obbligato violin possibly intended for Corelli who may have led the first performance. Ha�m is generally more elegant, though no less exciting, while the... sound is excellent. Technically superb, reassuringly stylish, this is an outstanding performance of Handel at the height of his powers. - BBC Music Magazine

Antonio Vivaldi and Claudio Scimone, two names forever bound to each other in a quest for originality and beauty. The one as a baroque genius to be rediscovered after two centuries of neglect, the other as a resolutely modern conductor and Vivaldi's foremost rediscoverer as from the '60s.

Classical Music

Philippe Jaroussky, one of the foremost countertenor opera singers today, has a passion for enlightening neglected composers. This is masterfully exemplified by his first recital, 'Un concert pour Mazarin', and the best-seller album 'Caldara Arias' gathered here.

Limited 27 CD box set. Luminosity, clarity and depth of colour characterise the playing of �ric Heidsieck, born in Reims in 1936. A student of French masters Marcel Ciampi and Alfred Cortot, he went to Wilhelm Kempff to further his exploration of Beethoven. Heidsieck's career, encompassing more than 2000 concerts around the world and duo partnerships with his pianist wife Tania and cellist Paul Tortelier, has brought him particular fame in Japan. His distinguished interpretations of Beethoven's complete piano sonatas, recorded in the years around 1970, are complemented here by a previously unreleased 1958 version of the 'Hammerklavier' Sonata. A substantial proportion of the box (eight of the 27 CDs) comprises CD premieres - performances of Beethoven, Handel, Hindemith, Couperin, Debussy, Roussel and Ravel.

Limited box containing 54 CDs plus DVD. Samson Fran�ois was a true poet of the piano. A brilliant, inspired pianist especially identified with the music of Chopin, Debussy and Ravel, he played with both the proverbial clarity of the French school and a visceral immediacy and spontaneity. Charismatic, sometimes provocative, and numbering jazz among his passions, he achieved celebrity status - notably in France and Japan. The works of Chopin are prominent in this collection - melodic contours were always a priority for Fran�ois - but the complete list of composers is richly diverse. Three major new bonuses are the long-awaited world premiere release of Fran�ois' penultimate live recital, recorded at the Nohant Festival in France in June 1970, just four months before his death at the age of 46; a recital recorded in Tokyo in 1969, and a DVD documentary, written by his son, Maximilien Fran�ois. This new edition places all recordings in the context of their original couplings and the CD wallets carry the original artwork.

Elgar's violin concerto - distinctively passionate and nostalgic - is one of the great late-Romantic concertos. "It is a huge piece," says Renaud Capu�on "both in terms of it's length and it's romantic and noble nature." This is Capu�on's first recording with Sir Simon Rattle, here conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. When Rattle chose Elgar's Enigma Variations for his inaugural concert as the LSO's music director in 2017, he was celebrating the close historic links between the composer and the orchestra. Not only did the LSO accompany Fritz Kreisler in the premiere of the violin concerto in 1910, Elgar became it's Principal Conductor the following year. Paired with the concerto on this album is his violin sonata, first performed in 1919. Renaud Capu�on, who calls the sonata "a work of nobility and tenderness", is joined by one of the leading British pianists of today, Stephen Hough.

World famous mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and conductor-pianist Yannick N�zet-S�guin join forces to take on one of the most brilliant song cycles ever written: Schubert's Winterreise (Winter Journey). DiDonato, however, casts a different light on this beloved cycle of 24 songs in telling their story from the perspective of the woman, the lost love. Nancy Plum, Town Topics writes: "The question of what happened to the woman who sent the narrator on a tortuous journey was not answered in the Wilhelm M�ller poetry from which Schubert drew the text, but DiDonato created a scenario onstage of being that woman, reading from the narrator's journal and responding to the inherent despair." "What stood out was the heavy emotion that came through in her singing, as she lingered on a syllable here, pressed her tone there. She created vivid feelings with her contrasts" wrote New York Classical Review about Joyce Didonato's interpretation.