Bizet: The Piano Works ROBERTO PROSSEDA - Marking 150 years since the death of Georges Bizet, composer of 'Carmen,' this recording from Roberto Prosseda

One of the world's leading pianists, Angela Hewitt appears in recitals and with major orchestras throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia. She is especially renowned for her recordings of all the major keyboard works of Bach, described as "one of the record glories of our age." In 2020, she was presented with the City of Leipzig Bach Medal, a huge honor that for the first time in it's seventeen-year history was awarded to a woman. Angela was awarded an OBE in the 2006 Queen's Birthday Honors and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 2015. In 2018, Canada further honored her with the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement. From 2016 until 2020, Angela Hewitt presented the 'Bach Odyssey,' an ambitious and exciting overview of the complete keyboard works of J.S. Bach in twelve recitals over four years, in venues worldwide including London's Wigmore Hall, Tokyo's Kioi Hall and New York's 92nd Street Y. Pressed on 180g vinyl.

A performer of near-superhuman technical prowess (The New York Times), pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin is known worldwide for his unrivalled blend of consummate musicianship and brilliant technique in the great works of the established repertoire, as well as for his intrepid exploration of the rarities of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries - in concert and on recordings - earning his place as a true icon of the piano. In 2023, the label released Hamelin's recording of Faure's Nocturnes & Barcarolles plus the four-hand Dolly suite, played with his wife Cathy Fuller. In 2022, Hyperion released a double album of C.P.E. Bach's Sonatas & Rondos, which received wide critical acclaim and chart success. Featuring nine original pieces, Hamelin's 2024 album, New Piano Works, is a survey of some of his own recent works, exhibiting his formidable skill as a composer-pianist whose music imaginatively taps into his musical forebears. Pressed on 180g vinyl.

Steven Isserlis -"Schumann & Moscheles: 1851 Cello Sonatas" "Prepare to be seduced," (Gramophone). Steven Isserlis's latest album takes inspiration from a single year: 1851, a year of invention, exhibition and creativity. Sonatas by Moscheles and Schumann (Violin Sonata No 2, specially arranged for cello by Isserlis) both date from that year. Also featuring four miniatures, including a Schumann song transcription and the famous Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria." The album centers around an 1851 Erard piano (played by Connie Shih) which won a Prize Medal at that year's Great Exhibition in London. The piano recorded here may well be one of the very instruments first showcased at the Great Exhibition Winner of 2 Gramophone Awards. Steven Isserlis CBE enjoys a global career as a cellist, author and broadcaster.

GARRO: MASSES O QUAM PULCHRA ES & CANTATE DOMINO

Classical Music

A celebration from The Orlando Consort of the musical and literary worlds of Florence's golden age under the Medici, in a selection of works which includes a number of first recordings.

Schubert: Piano Sonatas D664 769a & 894 - Stephen Hough - The late G major sonata followed such landmarks as the 'Great' C major symphony and Schubert's last string quartet, and explores similarly expansive terrain; the A major is an earlier, genial work. These frame the brief D769a fragment, which adds to the uniqueness of Stephen Hough's marvellous recital.

2023 two CD set.

Garrick Ohlssohn delivers an inspired pairing of Schubert's first completed piano sonata with one of the sublimely expansive masterpieces from his final year.

Two opulent choral masterpieces by Richard Strauss frame an eclectic program from one of Europe's most highly acclaimed choirs. The name of the young Slovenian composer Matej Kastelic may still be relatively little known, but the title track "Credo / I believe" is simply extraordinary, and demands to be heard.

REVIEW

The Latvians are ravishing in Strauss’s formidable "Deutsche Motette," which is essentially a concerto for choir, the composer treating the ensemble in the same way as a vast orchestra. The impressively vibrant choral sound and emotional ebb and flow ensure this recording encourages repeated listening.

— BBC Music Magazine

Andrey Gugnin presents a wonderful all-Grieg recital. The elegant neo-classicism of From Holberg's time (a rare and welcome opportunity to hear the original version for solo piano) contrasting with the brooding magnificence of the Ballade. Two complete sets of Lyric Pieces- those most perfect of piano miniatures-are also included.

One of the leading mezzos of our day, Alice Coote delivers a Schubert recital which offers seventy minutes of pure pleasure. The twenty-one songs recorded here are among Schubert's finest, from "Erlk�nig" (written in the composer's annus mirabilis of 1815) to "Leise flehen" (which dates from his final summer).

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: ON WENLOCK EDGE & OTHER SONGS

The expressive extremity of the music and the notoriety of the life seem inextricably bound together where Gesualdo is concerned. Here, his Maundy Thursday Tenebrae Responsories provide the climax of a program which opens with an astonishingly fine rendition of the Tallis Lamentations.

Mendelssohn may have published only one violin sonata (the early Op.4), but that does not signify any lack of inspiration in the others - left in manuscript. The F major sonata which, opens this program from Alina Ibragimova and C�dric Tiberghien is a particularly substantial and ambitious work.

Bach's Cantatas Nos.35 and 169 may have been written for an outstandingly gifted boy alto in Bach's Leipzig, but listening to these peerless accounts from countertenor Iestyn Davies, it's impossible to believe he could have approached the flawless technique and profound interpretative insight.

A diverse selection of works, many written to commemorate state occasions in Westminster Abbey itself, by three composers who demonstrate a particular affinity for choral music.

A sequence for the souls of the departed, to be heard by those who remember them is how Owain Park characterizes this latest release from The Gesualdo Six. As always with this remarkable group, performances are equally outstanding whether of Tallis or Tavener.

The music of C.P.E Bach makes complex stylistic demands of the performer like little else of it's time, the extraordinary drama and intensity tempered by Enlightenment elegance and the influence of the Baroque. Marc-Andr� Hamelin's performances set new standards in this endlessly absorbing repertoire.

Howard Shelley's survey of the piano music is an undoubted highlight of the Mendelssohn revival. In this, the final instalment of the series, he focuses on late works and posthumous publications.

The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs awarded a rosette to Stephen Hough’s earlier Gramophone Award-winning Hyperion recording of Mompou, and this successor is equally fine. Música callada comprises twenty-eight exquisite miniatures, brief in duration yet rich in allusion: music which makes its mark with subtlety, understatement and a unique economy of means.

REVIEW:

Hough is the ideal guide to the music of Mompou. He wholly inhabits the music’s mystical atmosphere, its holy simplicity. Exquisite sensitivity is matched by a steely strength. Sounds coalesce and insist on their presence, before disappearing into the ether. Austerity blends with warmth.

— BBC Music Magazine

Two CD set.

The 'Missa Faulte d'argent emerges as a major work in this, it's first complete recording. With the inclusion of a selection of motets (also in first recordings), the present program marks an important addition to our understanding and appreciation of this prolific figure.

This latest instalment of Angela Hewitt's Beethoven is bookended by the great 'Tempest' and Op 109 sonatas. The performances-incentive enough to acquire this release-are as usual complemented by Angela's own booklet notes which provide real insight into how she approaches these masterworks