A composition as brilliant as it is protean, the Mass in B minor occupied Bach until the end of his life. The earliest sections date back to 1724, others were written in 1733 in the hope of obtaining a post in Dresden. The work, which is more ecumenical than strictly Catholic, offers a digest of his art at it's expressive peak as a world in itself. Ren� Jacobs, Akademie f�r Alte Musik and RIAS Kammerchor were eager to revisit it, following their acclaimed interpretations of the two Passions and the Christmas Oratorio.

Unanimously hailed by the critics ever since their release in 2000, these recordings offer a chance to follow Schubert's development in the field of the piano trio, from the youthful Sonatensatz (1812) to the immense masterpieces of his maturity. The Sunday Times wrote, "The Wanderers take us on an exhilarating emotional rollercoaster ride, with a wonderful sense of conversational repartee in the fast outer movements and rapt expressions of wonderment in Schubert's sublime, songful slow movements."

Each of the eleven albums in this set of recordings was designed as an individual program, a poetic voyage through the vast corpus of Schubert's lieder. Matthias Goerne made his personal selection from the songs, in which the three great cycles sit alongside many masterpieces like Des Fischers Liebesglück, an interpretation which in itself would be enough to justify this magnificent undertaking." At his finest, here and elsewhere, Goerne touches greatness as a Schubertian." (Gramophone)

Locatelli was one of the most impressive violin virtuosos of the first half of the eighteenth century. Considered today as a sort of Baroque Paganini, he left picturesque, colorful, strikingly modern pieces for his instrument. A few years after a Mozart collaboration that earned them worldwide acclaim, Isabelle Faust and the musicians of Il Giardino Armonico bring out the full narrative intensity of these concertos, worthy of the operatic stage.

Francisco Goya's paintings have left a powerful imprint on the European imagination. It was undoubtedly Granados who best translated into music, with nobility and humor, this colorful universe where majos and majas dance to love and death in the twilight glow of a dying Ancien R�gime.

From the overt Romanticism of Saint-Sa�ns to the nostalgia-laden modernity of Poulenc, Bruno Philippe takes us on a journey through (almost) a century of French cello music. Alongside Tanguy de Williencourt, he also performs the cello version of Franck's famous Violin Sonata, one of the absolute peaks of nineteenth-century chamber music.

Lionel Tertis (1876-1975), a great genius of the viola, is little known to today's public. Timothy Ridout pays tribute to this key figure in his instrument's history with a flamboyant program featuring music by Tertis's friends, teachers and students alongside some of his own original works and transcriptions. A marvelous musical journey, rich in discoveries.

At once poet and virtuoso, Paul Lewis has rapidly established himself as one of the leading Schubertians of his generation. This boxed set assembling the Viennese composer's major mature works for solo piano - Piano Sonatas, Wanderer Fantasie, Moments Musicaux, Impromptus and Drei Klavierst�cke - is sure to become one of the milestones of the modern discography.

After a recording of Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier that earned unanimous acclaim from the press, Andreas Staier now gives us an equally poetic and flamboyant interpretation of the first book. At once architect and colorist, he constantly varies the atmospheres, unfolding an infinite palette of musical landscapes. Under his fingers, this immense cathedral in sound is revealed in all it's thrilling diversity.

Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia - patron of the arts, collector, woman of letters and composer - was an extraordinary personality. The flautist Jean Br�gnac pays her vibrant homage with a program featuring works by her prot�g�s Carl Philipp Emanuel and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, her mentor Johann Philipp Kirnberger, and the princess herself.

The genre of the mélodie accompanied Fauré like a kind of personal journal. This music voluptuously - and sometimes vehemently - encompasses the meanderings of the soul: dreams, nostalgia, reflections or mirages. Stéphane Degout and Alain Planès take advantage of the iridescent tones of an 1892 Pleyel in their interpretation of some of his finest song cycles, including the testamentary, L'Horizon chimérique.

In this new series, Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants invite us to follow the creative itinerary of J. S. Bach through the times and cities in which he lived. The first instalment introduces us to a young master who remained faithful to the north German tradition of the sacred concerto, but already displayed an intensely personal invention.

Pierre Gallon and Matthieu Boutineau offer us an opportunity to rediscover Couperin's Concerts Royaux in a version for two harpsichords, a rare combination, yet one of which the composer to the Sun King was especially fond. Here is an interpretation at once brilliant and moving of these works full of tenderness, gaiety and invention, a veritable stylistic turning point between the twilight of the Grand Si�cle and the dawn of the Enlightenment.

Wagner's genius is often associated with his unique feeling for orchestration. Yet the transcriptions and paraphrases for piano solo recorded here lay bare the beauty and boldness of his harmonic language, with an evocative power unrivalled at the time. Nikolai Lugansky, at once narrator and virtuoso, immerses us in a world where the heroes of legend tell us - and with what loftiness of spirit! - of the torments and aspirations of humanity.

This first release in an exclusive recital collaboration with harmonia mundi presents Julian Prégardien's reading of a cycle that explores quintessentially Schubertian themes: nature, love, solitude, death. Taking full advantage of the unique timbres of a Graf-style fortepiano, the young German tenor and Kristian Bezuidenhout create an expressive palette of exceptional variety, full of striking contrasts.

The Nocturnes and Barcarolles are key works in Fauré's output for solo piano that reflect his stylistic evolution. From his early efforts, still close to Chopin and Schumann, to the final pieces with their heady yet elusive harmonies, Aline Piboule invites us to rediscover a whole world of sound on a sublime Gaveau instrument of 1929.

On this new album, Florence Bolton and Benjamin Perrot revisit the composer who gave their ensemble it's delightful name, La Rêveuse. Drawing on his heritage (Sainte-Colombe), his friendships (Robert de Visée) and his own visionary genius, Marin Marais blazed new trails for his instrument in his second book of viol pieces (1701). Alongside the customary dances and sets of variations, he invented the 'character pieces' that were to become so popular in the eighteenth century.

The three works on this album evoke the worlds of commedia dell'arte (Pulcinella), Don Quixote (El retablo de maese Pedro) and picaresque Spain (the Harpsichord Concerto). Telling their stories with color, rhythm and humor, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Pablo Heras-Casado and Benjamin Alard (playing a sumptuous Pleyel harpsichord) invite us to an exhilarating fireworks display.

These albums left their mark on the Schumann discography: performing the works on period instruments, the artists suddenly revealed unexpected textures and sonorities. This boxed set assembles the three discs for the first time, with a bonus Blu-ray of the three concertos and the Overture, Scherzo and Finale in concert at the Berlin Philharmonie.

After Stravaganza d'amore, their superb album of late sixteenth-century Florentine music, Raphaël Pichon and Pygmalion returned to Italy, this time to Mantua. Here they offer us their reading of one of the peaks of sacred music from this period: Monteverdi's Vespers. Revealing like no other interpreters the poignant interiority of these pieces, they bring out to the full their inherent sense of theatre for an overwhelming experience.

An outlier in the French harpsichord world, Gaspard Le Roux composed music of unique inventiveness and richness at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. Juxtaposing his pieces with others by Lully, Marais and Fran�ois Couperin, William Christie and Justin Taylor have found the ideal alchemy to do full justice to the myriad colors of these Suites, as virtuosic as they are rich in new emotions.

For their very first recording with harmonia mundi, the duo formed by Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy offers us three closely related works: Schubert's celebrated Fantasy, his Divertissement à la hongroise, full of contrasts between bursts of energy and enigmatic mists, and Leonid Desyatnikov's Trompe-l'œil, written specifically 'to echo' the Fantasy. This porgram is an intriguing hall of mirrors.

Icelandic music of the last half century is the focus of this recording by the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, led by it's conductor, Graham Ross. Born from his close collaboration with the native composers of the 'Land of Fire and Ice', this program sets out to explore and highlight their hypnotic soundworld, instinctively leaning towards contemplation. A prime example is the touchingly beautiful Requiem by Sigur�ur S�varsson, which here receives it's world premiere recording.

In these love songs in waltz style for chorus or solo voices accompanied by piano four hands, Brahms freely indulged his taste for Viennese folk music. The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin instills a wonderful inner life in these musical landscapes, sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, punctuated here by a selection from the Hungarian Dances - also eminently popular in their inspiration.

The narrative of the last hours of Christ's life by the German poet Barthold Brockes inspired Telemann to write one of the most powerful Passion settings of the early eighteenth century. In 2009, Ren� Jacobs revealed this somewhat neglected masterpiece in all it's splendor, arousing justified enthusiasm from press and music-lovers alike. This is now a benchmark version.