In this superb program structured around major pieces composed in the last ten years of Mozart's life, Anna Prohaska and Riccardo Minasi sweep away the image of the well-mannered figure that tradition has tended to impose. They paint a bracingly complex portrait of the Salzburger after his move to Vienna, subtly blending the maestro's historical expertize with the vigor and freshness of Resonanz, here in electrifying form.

It was love at first sight when Mathilde Vialle and Thibaut Roussel first encountered the English bass viol and Venetian archlute preserved at Paris's Museum of Music. Both instruments are heard in this program of English music from the second half of the seventeenth century, much of it never recorded before. The exceptional sonorities of their two period instruments are complemented by the virginal of Ronan Khalil and the tenor voice of Zachary Wilder for an album as subtle as it is sublime.

The Trio Wanderer pays tribute to Dvorak and his last two trios. Alongside the somber interiority and fiery intensity of the Trio No.3 in F minor, this program presents a new version of the famous Dumky Trio, to which the Wanderers owe their first great success on record. Passionate and melancholy by turns, it is also the most innovative and the freest of Dvorak's trios. A fine symbol for the Trio Wanderer, which has just reached it's thirtieth year of existence without ever ceasing to surprise and touch us.

London, 1760. Handel had just died and George III acceded to the throne. During the reign of this monarch and his queen Charlotte, both discerning musicians, musical life in the British capital was to enjoy an exceptional revival. Virtuosos and composers from all over Europe flocked there, vying with each other in originality and modernity. La Reveuse offers us a chance to sample the heady climate of the age.

A visionary composer, Domenico Scarlatti pushed beyond the frontiers of keyboard writing, fusing radiant melodies with spirited rhythms and daring technical feats. In this compendium of his most attractive sonatas, Javier Perianes employs his consummate virtuosity with audible enjoyment, revealing all the richness and inventiveness of his adoptive compatriot's musical language.

Seven years after their album, Debussy et le jazz, the artists of the Quatuor Debussy have conceived the idea of celebrating Ravel in three quite different ways. They have recorded a transcription by Alain Brunier of the French composer's famous Quartet, Ma mere l'Oye (the Mother Goose suite), as well as inviting vibraphone virtuoso Franck Tortiller to join in the fun by combining the original score of Le Tombeau de Couperin with jazz improvisations - an approach that Ravel, from all we know of him, would have greatly relished.

For their very first album with harmonia mundi, Robin Pharo and his ensemble Pres de votre oreille explore the highly poetical and personal world of William Lawes, the brilliant heir to Byrd and Gibbons. The gifted Lawes carried the instrumental arts and vocal music to an incredible height of perfection. This is a rediscovery to make the heart rejoice.

Forbidden love, the extremes of passion, and a soaring lyricism are all on display in Piramo e Tisbe. One of Hasse's very last operas, he broke the rules of opera seria and created a masterpiece. With a prestigious team of soloists, the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin restores it to life in all it's vivid colors, this work of astonishing modernity that was greatly admired by Mozart.

From the moving gentleness of a farewell to the world of childhood (Ma mere l'Oye) to the savage power of rituals from pre-Christian Russia (The Rite of Spring), Ravel and Stravinsky explore musical horizons of incredible modernity. The Kolesnikov-Tsoy duo offer a powerful yet poetic interpretation of these two masterpieces.

For their first harmonic mundi album, Florent Albrecht and his Ensemble L'Encyclopedie explore the mischievous world of the Mozarts, father and son. Whether in the well-known Toy Symphony, the tinkling bells of Leopold's A Musical Sleigh Ride or the 'How to compose all wrong' tutorial of Wolfgang's A Musical Joke, joy and fantasy are mixed with a portion of subtle wit - qualities shared by the polished stylistic approach of the performers.

Completely contrary to the usual image of J.S. Bach as a recluse in his ivory tower, Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti reveal his lively admiration for the Italian music of his time, particularly that of Vivaldi and the brothers Marcello. Here Bach discovered sunlight and luminous colours that never ceased to nourish and inspire his musical imagination.

Two German Romanticism enthusiasts, Raphael Severe and Adam Laloum, have planned a trip for us on the wings of song. Transcribing for clarinet and piano some of the most beautiful lieder of Schumann, Wagner, and Brahms, without the help of words they have unveiled all their poetry and their indescribable colors.

A world removed from the grand and awesome visions of the Last Judgement that so often characterize settings of the Mass for the Dead, Brahms conceived a work of 'consolation for those who are suffering'. Having spent more than ten years absorbing this German 'humanist' requiem, this album's performers have meticulously shaped every bar of this compact work, achieving a form of polyphonic transparency that confounds the senses and transcends the universality of it's message.

I want these two CDs to represent a tour - one as adventure-packed as possible - of Satie's piano and chamber music, covering the whole period of his life. More than fifteen years ago, Alexandre Tharaud gathered together several like-minded celebrity artists to paint a sensitive and subtle portrait of the Master of Arcueil. This re-release revives that double album, one that has since become a benchmark of Satie discography, with more than 150 million streams! Here is a poetic voyage through the singular world of a composer who remains unclassifiable.

Ultra-sensitive poet of the keyboard Adam Laloum immerses us in the kaleidoscopic world of Schumann: the famous Kreisleriana and their outbursts of passion and reverie heard alongside the rather rarer Novelletten, a theatre of the intimate and fantastic. Everywhere Laloum revels in the emotional riches of a piano indwelt by the inner voice of romanticism.

This is not Julien Libeer's first Ravel recording, but for a long time he has wanted to explore the whole of Ravel's piano works, even a little more. For only the complete works, or nearly, are essential in order to square the circle. "And yet, we keep studying them with 'all we can bring as an offering', as Lipatti used to say. His music - lucid, ardent - wakes you up, keeps you on the edge. In passing, it seems to make amends for all that's imperfect about the world."

The fruit of a long-standing collaboration between Jean-Guihen Queyras and choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker (whose acclaimed production Mitten wir i'm Leben sind has had over 100 performances worldwide), this new recording of Bach's Cello Suites arrives 17 years after his first reading that quickly set the standard. Profoundly influenced by his close connection to dance, the cellist has drawn fresh inspiration from the source. Today, he is ready to offer his latest look at the iconic cycle.

A memory of family evenings, this album created with the renowned musician and producer Rob Mounsey goes far beyond a simple recital: it is an intimate gathering, at the crossroads of ancestral recollection and musical imagination. Yiddish song, Romantic lied, opera arias, jazz, and Broadway musicals: a tenor already well-versed in early music ventures here across continents, generations, and repertoires. Each piece becomes the echo of a story shared between nostalgia, invention, and transmission.

This third and final album of the impressive complete set from the Cuarteto Casals immerses us in the twilight world of Shostakovitch's last three quartets. Legacy works of the years 1970-74, movingly marked by signs of his illness and acute awareness of approaching death, they strike the ear with their condensed formal daring and raw emotion.

The music for Assassin's Creed is here re-invented for piano, with the inspired playing of Nicolas Horvath. Recorded on a historic piano that formerly belonged to Nadia Boulanger, this album presents the iconic themes of the saga in a new artistic dimension, while totally respecting the milieu of the game. A landmark event, uniting musical demands with the culture of the video game.

Brigitte Engerer recorded several albums for harmonia mundi that stand as benchmarks today. This box set brings together her complete recordings for solo piano - and what a pleasure it is to listen once again to these performances - so powerful, so colorful, and so absolutely right. From Beethoven to Mussorgsky via Schumann, and including her unmissable Chopin Nocturnes, this is a tremendous panorama of the artistry of this great pianist, lost to us far too soon.

For this, the eleventh volume of his complete edition, Benjamin Alard has assembled all the keyboard masterpieces that Bach published under the heading Clavier-Ubungen I and II - the six Partitas, the Italian Concerto and Overture in the French Style, supplemented here by the brilliant Duetti from Clavier-Ubung III. Two remarkable harpsichords lend their voices to these expert readings: the sumptuous Hass of 1740, and for the first time in this recording venture, an English Kirkman built in 1757.

For their first CD exploring the world of Bach, Sebastien Dauce and his Ensemble Correspondances give new life to the young composer's first sacred cantatas - BWV 4, 106 and 131 - written in Muhlhausen. Combining the Lutheran tradition with a faint breeze from Italy, these works already reveal the dramatic invention and formal rigour of a fully functioning creative mind.

Between the passing flirtations of an evening and solemn oaths of eternal love, Gwendoline Blondeel and Quito Gato invite us on a piquant sentimental journey, to the sounds of the theorbo, the baroque guitar and the vihuela, the lute's Aragonese cousin. From Spain to Italy, via France, they animate the map of love with villanelles, madrigals and other love songs of the early Baroque.

Soprano Giulia Semenzato and guitarist Jadran Duncumb team up for this passionate and poetic program, from Schubert and Rossini to the even more private songs of Giuliani, Sor and Doisy. Far more than just a recital, here is a probing exploration of wide-ranging emotions, seen through the prism of an amorous interplay between voice and guitar - and a vibrant encounter between bel canto and the beginnings of Romanticism.

In a program teeming with contrasts and discoveries, the Trio Wanderer explores the many different faces of French chamber music around the year 1900. From the ardent lyricism of Lalo to the shimmering refinement of Ravel, via the freshness of the young Debussy and the poetry of Mel Bonis, each work reveals some unusual facet of this golden age, creating a wondrous panorama that combines neglected treasures with pillars of the repertoire.

The time of eternity The Kanon Pokajanen (Canon of Repentance), premiered in March 1998, is Arvo Part's most monumental composition. It's prolonged genesis, a meticulous process of assimilation of the text in Church Slavonic, the austerity and subtlety of it's style embody the same sincerity, the same spiritual and contemplative radiance as icon painting. It is a dialogue with the Sacred in which time stands still.

As a tribute to the artistry of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (1954-2006), this retrospective gathers together many of the finest recordings of arias and duets made during her acclaimed association with harmonia mundi. "A riveting singer known for her fearsome vocal and dramatic power, whether in opera or the cantatas of Bach." (The Los Angeles Times)

In this third volume, Cedric Tiberghien completes his tour of the art of variation in Beethoven and his later avatars. Taking in the experimental daring of Ligeti (Musica ricercata) and the poetic games of Kurtag (Jatekok), this sweeping survey is completed with the Diabelli Variations, the absolute peak of Beethoven's piano music.

On the border between genres, Das Lied von der Erde celebrates the intoxication of life as well as the serenity of renunciation - a far cry from Mahler's early 'Wunderhorn' period. This later Mahler is portrayed by Francois-Xavier Roth and Les Siecles, following their critically acclaimed First and Fourth Symphonies released over the past few years. They approach this visionary work with their usual stylistic elegance, with two superlative singers - and as usual, with carefully chosen Viennese instruments of the period.