The Violin Sonatas of Johannes Brahms were the product of much self-critical reflection, and the three surviving works are from a composer mature in years. Composed around the same time as the Violin Concerto (No 1), the C minor Piano Trio and the Second Cello Sonata (Nos 2 and 3), they also echo some of his songs, such as those written to poems by Klaus Groth. Into this Romantic atmosphere come new performances of the three works on Glossa, played by violinist Leila Schayegh (particularly fêted for her recordings of Bach, Caldara and Benda), teaming up here with pianist Jan Schultsz. Schayegh plays a copy of a period violin, whilst Schultsz uses an original 1879 Streicherinstrument. The two players aim to recapture the performing tradition as the composer would have known it, and within which he would have intended his pieces to have been played. Schayegh and Schultsz worked with Clive Brown and Neal Peres Da Costa in their efforts to aim for “the spirit rather than the dead letter of the score” and they pay admirable notice of important interpretative questions for music of this time – and they provide an intuitive musical and emotional response to the lyricism of the first two sonatas and the darker-hued tones of the third, investing these late-nineteenth-century works.

Different stages in the life of Luigi Boccherini are clearly mapped out in th emusic he wrote. None more so than the 6 String Trios, Op. 34, written around 1781 - at the time of the Stabat mater - during the nine-year period when teh composer forsook the precariousness of life within the hustle and bustle of Madrid for the tranquility of Arenas de San Pedro, nearer Avila, as he followed his patron, the Infante Luis de Borbon, in the latter's banishment from the Spanish court, In conditions of comfort for himself and his young family Boccherini prospered on the artistic level as well: some 80 compositions emerged, many for the regular chamber music performances called for by the Enlightened pricne, the maecenas also for painters such as Goya, Flipart and Paret. In a pair of its earlier recordings, newly remastered and now appearing on Glossa, La Ritirata demonstrates complete sympathy with the Classical-era intentions of a composer in full maturity: no surprise when the three players are of the calibre of violinists Hiro Kurosaki and Lina Tur Bonet and cellist Josetxu Obregon. In this string trio configuration, Boccherini demanded great technical skill from the musicians, notably from the cello part and requiring it to take on much of the role assumed by the viola in a quartet. Pervading all is the composer's melodic invention, his preference for the galant style and the harmonic boldness which together assured his popularity throughout Europe at the time.

Classical Music

This is one of the greatest recordings Glossa ever produced, as well as being the only recorded occasion in which the two co-founding brothers of the label – guitarist José Miguel and violinist Emilio Moreno – have taken part together. In the hands of these specialists, accompanied by a tiple treble guitar and castanets in the famous Fandango, two of Luigi Boccherini’s guitar quintets resound here with unparalleled intensity and brightness.

Whatever composer, period or style Christophe Coin turns his attention to, it is certain to be full of interest and musicality. Such is the case with a new recording from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis - where Coin teaches - whose focus is one of the founding fathers of modern cello playing, the Frenchman active in the middle of the 18th century, Martin Berteau. Known both for training many of the important cellists from later in that century and for introducing technical innovations which extended the instrument's range and expressiveness, Berteau's composing voice has been very little known (some of his compositions also being confused with those by others). An ideal candidate, therefore, for a thorough-going reappraisal from a musician as talented as Christophe Coin, with the help of two of his own former cello students in Petr Skalka and Felix Knecht. Cello Sonatas and Airs make up this programme - including one sonata in which all three cellists take part. The three of them play on instruments from the epoch, whilst Markus Hünninger provides harpsichord accompaniment. In the accompanying booklet essay for this new release, Thomas Drescher traces the lifespan of Martin Berteau, an overlooked compositional figure who leads us back to the roots of an important instrument of our musical culture.

The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century continues along its vibrant music-making journey, very much in the spirit of its founder Frans Brüggen, but now with invited conductors. In order to tackle the mighty Missa Solemnis by Beethoven, the orchestra has gone into partnership with the highly-regarded Daniel Reuss, who has recorded a sizeable number of critically-acclaimed choral masterpieces, many of them with Cappella Amsterdam. This fine example of a Dutch chorus is possessed of all the right skills needed for climbing this glorious mountain of a work, notably vocal agility and stamina. The chorus is joined by an outstanding quartet of soloists in Carolyn Sampson, Marianne Beate Kielland, Thomas Walker and David Wilson-Johnson. The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century has had much experience already performing the music of Beethoven with period instruments (and its current concert schedule embraces symphonies, piano concertos and Fidelio), all the more necessary with a work as demanding as the Missa Solemnis (a composition dating from 1819-23).

Wilbert Hazelzet's legendary poetry on the flute has been one of Glossa's trademarks for many years. With this double reissue of his j.S. Bach recordings, the label recovers Hazelzet at his best: on the one hand, he reimagines what Bach's output for the solo flute could have been, by combining the Flute Partita with his own transcriptions of three Cello suites, and on the other, he teams up with his year-long artistic partner Jacques Ogg to give us yet more transcriptions of Bach's everlasting output. Here's a double recording for eternity.

With a new album given over to three cantatas for bass by JS Bach, Christian Senn gives valid voice to that ever-continuing need of bringing the Kantor’s scores alive in fresh recordings. The career of the Chilean- born baritone Senn currently sees him having a strong – and much-applauded – affinity for music of the Baroque, be it in Vivaldi operas, or the Passions and other choral masterpieces by Bach; this is in addition to him impressing greatly in bel canto repertory – notably in Mozart. On this new release from Glossa (where Senn is operating with a rich and deep bass-baritone coloring to his voice) there are not just the two principal Bach cantatas for solo bass – Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56 and Ich habe genug, BWV 82 – but also the third and more rarely aired work, Der Friede sei mit dir, BWV 158, in which the soloist is joined by a chorus of sopranos. In his exploration of the mystery of these sacred cantatas, Senn is beautifully supported by Ruben Jais and his Milan-based laBarocca.

Classical Music

With his London album for Glossa, Florentine countertenor Filippo Mineccia has constructed a compelling survey of arias written for the European stage by the colorful and much-travelled Attilio Ariosti. Mineccia has quickly become one of the exciting young talents revelling in the vocal demands called for from opera seria, whether in live performance - he has been much in demand for roles in Handel; or on record - he appeared as Tamerlano on the recent Gasparini Bajazet on Glossa release and has also recorded with the likes of Antonio Florio and Alan Curtis. For a composer who has received little attention on record, Ariosti was remarkably successful in his own time: whether as a composer, a performer or a diplomat (and he was a monk too) he was sought after in the courts of Mantua, Berlin, Vienna and Paris before he made his way to London in 1716. There he wrote for singers such as Senesino and Cuzzoni and went on to become one of the three leading composers at the Royal Academy alongside Handel and Giovanni Bononcini. Filippo Mineccia's recital includes arias written for divos such as Senesino taken from drammi per musica - such as the highly successful Caio Marzio Coriolano, Vespasiano and Tito Manlio which are strongly represented on this recording. Although formed as recently as 2010 Andrea Friggi's Ensemble Odyssee has also quickly established itself with it's dynamic interpretations of Italian music from across the eighteenth century. Friggi also provides us, in the booklet essay, with an insight into the chequered life and compositional variety of Attilio Ariosti.

Fêted by critics when it was first issued, but for some time now unavailable, this recording is reissued on Glossa as a testament to the unique contribution that Paolo Pandolfo continues to make to the art of music-making. Pandolfo has always manifested a modern human streak in his playing of the viola da gamba, demonstrating how an instrument which was born in the 16th century can still speak directly and eloquently to us today. This was vividly encapsulated on an inspirational recording on Glossa which came out back in 1998, bearing the title 'A solo' which proclaims both the personal touch, but also the exposed presence of one performer playing alone. Pandolfo takes the listener on a journey across European gamba music from its beginnings in the 16th century in Italy and Spain, including music by Diego Ortiz, its adoption into the Stuart psyche in the British Isles through Tobias Hume, William Corkine and Richard Sumarte, onto its age of supreme elegance with Marin Marais and M. de Machy in the times of Louis XIV in France, and thence to the 18th-century German Courts, nourished by French and Italian influences, and expressed in a wholly original way by JS Bach (Pandolfo’s transcription of his fourth Cello Suite) and by the “swansong” style of CF Abel. Topped and tailed by Pandolfo’s own, heartfelt, contributions to the instrument’s repertory, 'A solo' harnesses virtuosity worn lightly with the power of a stringed instrument to “sing” and to make harmony.

Classical Music

Recapturing the impact made by the colorful figure of the castrato Luigi Marchesi at the turbulent and revolutionary end of the eighteenth century has been a project embracing an exhibition, symposia, the publication of scores associated with the divo and this fabulous recording performed by Ann Hallenberg, Stile Galante and conductor Stefano Aresi.

It has been possible, through painstaking work, to identify not just the principal operatic arias composed with Marchesi in mind, but also his special and astonishing brand of ornamentation and worked-out cadenzas, developed in the course of a career spanning five decades. Possessed of a vast vocal range – some three octaves – Marchesi, called the “Apollo of his times”, was courted all over Europe, from St Petersburg to Vienna, London to Milan, Munich, Naples and Warsaw. He even rebuffed Napoleon Bonaparte’s entreaties to hear him sing in 1796.

The Swedish mezzo Ann Hallenberg ventures wholeheartedly into the musical mind of this extraordinary star of late opera seria in a vivid recreation backed not just by a meticulous attention to the original instruments and the ensemble configurations as used by orchestras in accompanying Marchesi, but by access to some two hundred contemporary accounts of the singer’s music-making.

Another Antonio Florio-directed recording from Glossa, once more focusing on a famous Italian singer from the Baroque era, again features the gorgeous vocal qualities of a modern-day Italian interpreter of such music, Roberta Invernizzi. This new and glorious succession of virtuoso arias had captivated audiences in the newly-reopened Roman theatres through the vocal chords of one eminent singer from 1718 onwards...

Arias for Domenico Gizzi traces the spectacular career of an artist whose importance lay not just in his voice, but his skill in being engaged to sing in operas which served the political needs of the powerful early 18th-century patrons: from Queen Christina of Sweden and James Stuart, “The Old Pretender” to Roman cardinals. Roberta Invernizzi’s choice of arias from across Gizzi’s years of glory, typically representing heroic male characters, draws on operas by Alessandro Scarlatti, Leonardo Vinci, Domenico Sarro, Francesco Feo, Giovanni Battista Costanzi, Giovanni Bononcini and Nicola Porpora.

As ever, Antonio Florio leads a zestful I Turchini for this new recording, whilst Giulia Veneziano, in her booklet essay, opens up what, for many, will be a previously uncharted voyage into the history of singing in its own right.

In 'A piacere' Fahmi Alqhai demonstrates once again what an expressive musician he has become, and with the viola da gamba as his “Wondrous Muse”, he recreates for CD a concert programme which he has been touring and refining over recent years. Following his ensemble album 'Rediscovering Spain' (performed with Accademia del Piacere) this new release from Glossa has a distinctively soloistic feel and approach to it, with Alqhai relishing the different moods and musical directions that his chosen musical “voice” permits him to take. Considering the instrument as so much more than a relic from the decaying aristocratic age of Louis XV in France, Alqhai demonstrates – by his choice of programme and his playing – the viol’s versatility, flexibility and depth of emotional response: music from Spanish, German and French Baroque masters of the instrument are joined by Alqhai’s own version of Joe Satriani's 'Always with me, always with you' rock number. Notably in his Satriani adaptation (but also in an old Spanish popular melody featuring the cantaor Arcángel, as well as elsewhere) Alqhai receives support from musician friends gathered at sessions in Seville, all helping to create – in marvellous sound – a new demonstration of the creative freedom that old music can allow in the right hands.