... Storace gave a quartet party to his friends. The players were tolerable, not one of them excelled on the instrument he played; but there was a little science among them, which I dare say will be acknowledged when I name them: First violin Haydn, second violin Baron Dittersdorf, violoncello Vanhal, viola Mozart... The tenor Michael Kelly's recollection of that musical evening in 1784 in Vienna has been the source of much speculation by musicologists, and it is also one of the things that inspired this recording. The four composers, all highly acclaimed in their day, met in multiethnic Vienna, and they shared the bond of friendship. While Mozart behaved towards Haydn with respect like that of a pupil towards a master and dedicated a series of six string quartets to him (including the "Dissonant Quartet" in C major), Haydn told Mozart's father that his son was "the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name." Dittersdorf was likewise unsparing with superlatives in his autobiography: "He is undoubtedly one of the greatest original geniuses, and I have never before known any composer with such an amazing wealth of ideas." The names of Dittersdorf and Vanhal are familiar to some, but few have encountered their music. This recording offers an opportunity to discover those nearly forgotten masters' works superbly interpreted by the Bennewitz Quartet. The enthusiastic acclaim of international critics for their previous Haydn album is affirmation of their extraordinary quality in this repertoire. More remarkable discoveries from the hand of the Bennewitz Quartet

A close contemporary of Buxtehude, Johann Pachelbel was, by all accounts, an outstanding keyboard player himself, and his compositions provide a fascinating stylistic bridge between early-Baroque composers such as Frescobaldi and Froberger (both of whom influenced him) and the later music of J.S. Bach and his contemporaries. Organist Matthew Owens continues his major exploration of the many extant organ works of Pachelbel with this third volume, recorded on the Flentrop organ of Dunblane Cathedral, Scotland. This album explores Johann Pachelbel's improvisational techniques and compositions, highlighting his use of variation, counterpoint, and chorale preludes. It features preludes, fugues, ricercars, and variations that showcase his mastery and educational methods.

On She / Her, South African clarinetist Maria du Toit and Dutch pianist Vera Kooper explore music from around the world, exclusively written by women. The pieces performed here are rarely played, and for about half of them this is the world-premiere recording. Although some of these composers enjoyed popularity during their lifetimes, such as Ivy Priaulx Rainier, with the passage of time, their music vanished into near oblivion. Rainer's exhilarating and at times meditative Suite is the centre of this album. With compositions ranging from 19th-century France to present day Nigeria, the exploration of this obscure repertoire became a mission - to celebrate and appreciate the music of talented and neglected female composers and bring these wonderful pieces to life again.

I think of fantasy as a creative force that has united composers across the centuries, to which each composer has miraculously had access, then transposed it over time. In each composer we find characteristics typical of the time in which he lived, others typical of the composer, and sometimes phrases, ideas, fragments, which seem to come out of time and space, into another dimension compared to everyday life. Here is where the genius lives, where the connection with the devine, through the creative force of fantasy, allowed the composers to go beyond their human nature." Margherita Santi

Barry Douglas's acclaimed survey of Schubert's piano sonatas continues with this programme pairing the Sonata in E flat major, D 568 with the Sonata in G major, D 894. Published posthumously, the E flat major Sonata is a revision and completion of the D flat major Sonata, D 567. The original was written in June 1817, the revision soon afterwards. This sonata stands out in the canon for it's light-hearted, easy-going character in contrast to the more serious nature of the other sonatas. The G major Sonata, the last to be published in Schubert's lifetime, was completed in 1826. The work holds a special place for many pianists, including Imogen Cooper, Sviatoslav Richter, and Paul Lewis; the latter two have declared it their favourite, whilst Robert Schumann described it as 'the most perfect in form and conception' of any of Schubert's sonatas. Douglas completes his programme with two Liszt transcriptions of Schubert songs: 'Gretchen am Spinnrade', and 'Wohin?' (from Die schone Mullerin).

Vlastimir Trajkovic (1947-2017) studied with Olivier Messiaen and was the first Serbian composer to - from the early 70s - structurally apply elements of minimalism to what was a primarily impressionistic harmonic idiom in his music. His 10 Preludes for guitar is a work of refined melodies and subtle harmonies containing the composer's musical reminiscences of Serbian, Brazilian and Spanish traditional music, as well as jazz. Isidora �ebeljan (1967-2020) possesses a musical originality that is the product of an exceptionally authentic capability to organically fuse musical elements from various spheres of influence (from old Balkan folk traditions to rock and pop music) into new, as yet unknown sonic contexts. Her 3 Pieces for guitar are tender and filigreed, like a children's guide through a world of fairy tales, with delicious echoes of the Balkan and Mediterranean. The Intimate Letter from Judean Desert, with it's lonely, distant and almost endless melody, was written as chorale for any combination of instruments or voices. Dusan Radic (1929-2010) studied with both Milhaud and Messiaen and created an authentic integration of musical elements from folk and popular music, together with modal chant and jazz. His joyful Vignettes are derived from his earlier choral music, reusing some old, funny, almost childish folk tunes. Veljko Nenadic (b.1998) is the recipient of multiple international awards. He studied composition as a child prodigy with Isidora �ebeljan and writes music characterised by powerful energy, surprise, humour and emotional delicacy. His Festa na lua (Portuguese for 'Party on the Moon') pays homage to Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal and the generations of musicians who created post-bossa nova Brazilian jazz. Dragana Jovanovic (b.1963) composes in an eclectic, postmodern idiom, often with baroque motoric rhythms and virtuosic display. Pushc y Me ('Let me go') is her arrangement for double bass and guitar of an old traditional song from North Macedonia. Her composition Pure Energy evokes the energy in tenderness, slightly coloured by elements of blues. Dusan Bogdanovic (b.1955 has developed a personal style combining classical music, folk musical traditions, Byzantine chants and jazz. For his Preamble and Ricercare for violin and guitar he opted for the musical ambiance of the early baroque and renaissance music for lute, with it's delicate modal harmonies. Vuk Kulenovic (1946-2017) combines Balkan folk musical elements with minimalism, as well as the Byzantine modes which he also placed into the minimalistic musical context. His energetic, moving music uses the Balkans' aksak (irregular, additive) rhythms combined with repetition. Toccatina is a virtuosic miniature with a motoric and restless musical flow.

Ferruccio Busoni's most significant musical role models include Bach, Mozart, and Liszt. These three muses informed his mature compositional style, which melded Bachian counterpoint, Mozartian clarity, and Lisztian virtuosity alongside Busoni's penchant for experimentation. The music on Jiayan Sun's new album reveals the diverse ways Busoni responded to these muses, ranging from transcription and arrangement to original composition. Pianist Jiayan Sun, was praised by the New York Times for his "revelatory" performances, and by the Toronto Star for his "technically flawless, poetically inspired and immensely assured playing".

10 years after Seong-Jin Cho's first prize victory in the 2015 Warsaw Chopin Competition, during which the young Korean pianist ascended into stardom with a Deutsche Grammophon discography that includes Liszt, Brahms and Debussy, he prepares a monumental body of work for the 150th birthday anniversary of Maurice Ravel. 2 CD Digipak set.

In December 2017, in Fribourg, mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti met lutenist Vincent Fluckiger and multi-instrumentalist, engineer and producer Fred Chappuis. Under the guidance of director Wouter Van Looy, they created a fascinating show for performances at the Lucerne Theatre the following spring, which mixed the melancholic songs of John Dowland (1563-1626) with the sounds of electronic music. All three originally came from rock/metal/punk, and Wouter Van Looy would rekindle in each of them a profound desire to explore new horizons. Following the success of the Lucerne evenings, the mezzo-soprano engaged her two colleagues, now friends, a few months later in the pursuit of a common adventure, which was sealed in the idea of Melankh�lia: Dowland's captivating songs would now be joined by well-known pop songs rearranged in the same spirit, where the archlute or the modern electric guitar coexist with a Moog, percussion or a mellotron, enveloping the voice. Two eras speak to each other, and finally merge into each other. Several themes structure this intensely lyrical journey, carried by the lascivious voice of Marina Viotti: love and it's illusions, evoked in One by U2 as well as in Fairwell, Too Fair by Dowland, hopes (Die Not Before Thy Day by Dowland or Joga by Bjork) as well as death (Born to Die by Lana Del Rey preceded by In Darkness Let Me Dwell by Dowland) or redemption (Flow My Tears by Dowland). By infusing the spirit of her youth, these early years when she wrote texts and songs for her metal band, in her present, which sees her defending the most beautiful roles of the great lyric repertoire, Marina Viotti reveals a very intimate part of herself. More than a journey across the genres and over the centuries, "In Darkness Through the Light" is in fact the story of a life journey, a fight for life and against darkness. In the spring of 2019, the mezzo-soprano was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, of which she recovered completely. The shadows gone, Marina Viotti was able to confide her secret, with total openness. It is therefore this experience that informs "In Darkness Through the Light", a project that accompanied her healing process, and which became the album of her liberation.

The emerging quartet Gaman Ensemble shows in this album the evolution and cross-influences of that strong Spanish presence in the French capital over the last century. It's four members (Jesus Reneses -soprano saxophone-, Carlos Zaragoza -alto saxophone-, Daniel Sanchez-Manjavacas -tenor saxophone- and Luis Maria Gonzalez -baritone saxophone-) have studied in Paris, allowing themselves to be nourished musically and intellectually by the cultural life of the city. So did the five composers who make up the disc: Joaquin Nin, Jesus Guridi, Enrique Granados, Eduard Toldr� and Felix Ibarrondo. Gaman Ensemble records for the first time their own versions for saxophone quartet of the pieces by Nin and Guridi, originals for piano or string quartet, as well as the arrangement of the dance by Granados and the work commissioned by themselves to Ibarrondo. From these five scores, the versatile and rigorous Gaman Ensemble aims to illustrate the fruitful and long-lived sound encounter between Spain and France without losing sight of the musical regionalisms that were forged in the final stages of Romanticism. Basque, Andalusian and Catalan popular references emerge more or less explicitly in the languages of the five composers. On the other hand, as well as showing it's commitment to contemporary creation through Ibarrondo's work, Gaman Ensemble wants to contribute to the revaluation of the production and legacy of composers not yet sufficiently recognised, such as Nin or Guridi. And all this, through the original and suggestive formation of the saxophone quartet, a mirror of contemporaneity.

Sometimes, dreams come true. For Francesco Tristano, the dream was twofold: first a desire to project his art in the future by devoting himself to one of the most incontestably timeless figures in the history of music, Johann Sebastian Bach. This profound desire fuelled the creation of intothefuture, Francesco Tristano's very personal line of recordings, where sounds morph into an abstract and subtly poetic photographic imagery, which is found in the booklets. This first of these recordings, dedicated to the six Partitas (BWV 825 to BWV 830) is a perfect illustration of this concept. For this pianist from Luxembourg, this collection constituted the starting point of his patient exploration of Bach's work. In fact, it also represents the composer's supreme achievement in the genre of the keyboard dance suite. Also known as the "German suites", to differentiate them from the two collections of "English" (BWV 806 to BWV 811) and "French" (BWV 812 to BWV 817) suites, the 6 Partitas belong to the rare compositions that Bach had published during his lifetime, as the first part of the Clavier-ubung - from 1726 to 1730, then all six in 1731. Composed separately, probably one after the other, these six suites, an infinite kaleidoscope of moods, were to embody his plural and abundant art, in a supreme synthesis of the tastes of the time. With their lively tempos (Partita III, Fantasia; Partita I, Allemande; Partita V, Tempo di Minuetto; Partita VI, Corrente), their very lively phrasing (Partita I, Gigue; Partita II, Capriccio; Partita VI, Toccata; Partita II, Courante), the six Partitas according to Francesco Tristano, a musician with an inexhaustible vivacity of mind, celebrate life everywhere. This impression of a whirlwind, this sense of movement are irresistible! Once again, Francesco Tristano is here in a class of his own. 24 SEPTEMBRE 2024

A new recording of Paganini's eccentric 'diary of invention' for guitar by a young Italian musician with a fast-growing reputation in both rock and classical genres. Giacomo Carletti took up the guitar at the age of 13, initially playing electric. Impressed by his talent, the composer Edoardo Catemario encouraged Carletti to take up the classical guitar. He now makes his career as a busy recitalist with the classical instrument while keeping up his pop and rock connections by playing electric guitar in several bands. As Carletti remarks in his booklet essay for his debut album on Brilliant Classics, the 43 Ghiribizzi by Paganini stand as a testament to his musical ingenuity and sense of fun. They present a showcase for his technical prowess but also reveal a lighter side to the virtuoso often caricatured as a dark and forbidding figure. The term Ghiribizzo is defined in Italian as an 'Idea bizzarra, capriccio improvviso'. Many less than a minute long, the 43 sketches sometimes start and stop abruptly; some are hardly more than tunes, others are eccentric fantasies. Many of them are based on existing material - not only the Mozart aria 'La ci darem la mano' from Don Giovanni, which Paganini acknowledges in the score, but other tunes he picked up on the way, popular and folkloristic, often anonymous in origin. No.37 of the collection has an esspecially rich back-story: a fond musical memory of Paganini's meeting with Rossini in Naples, in 1820. The piece, divided into two parts, bears Rossini's name at the bottom of the first 16 bars, and Paganini's at the bottom of the next 16, perhaps as a recollection of a game where they improvised together. 'in recording the Ghiribizzi,' says Carletti, 'I wanted to bring out the eccentric and eclectic character of the composer. I try to imagine Paganini as a rock virtuoso of nowadays and treat his music accordingly.' - Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840) is perhaps best known for his 24 Caprices for Solo Violin which granted him the fame as the diabolical virtuoso of his age. However, his contributions to the guitar world are equally fascinating, particularly his 43 Ghiribizzi. - In the dictionary of the Italian language the word Ghiribizzo is described as follows: "Idea bizzarra, capriccio improvviso" (bizarre idea, capricious improvisation). The artist Giacomo Carletti about the recording: "Bearing this precise and unequivocal definition in mind, in recording the 43 Ghiribizzi for guitar I wanted to bring out the eccentric and eclectic character of the composer. I try to imagine Paganini as a present day rock virtuoso and treat his music accordingly. Every rhythmical variation, every single notation has been studied, evaluated and decided in the awareness of wanting to make this integral as realistic as possible to what could have been a performance by Paganini himself. On this album you can hear hilarious tunes alternating, even in the same piece, with thoughtful, profound parts. Although there is no evidence of concerts held by the Italian maestro with the guitar, it is well known that Paganini studied and knew how to play the guitar with great mastery." - Giacomo Carletti plays in a wide variety of genres and styles, alternating performances in rock and pop bands with classical guitar solo and chamber concerts.

After A Soprano's Schubertiade (BIS-2343) and Elysium (BIS-2573), Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton present a new recital devoted to Schubert's songs on the theme of the changing seasons. While there have also been other successful celebrations of the four seasons in music, Franz Schubert, a lover of nature, here evokes them in his lieder. Winter, imbued with nostalgia, is represented here by three songs in which the Schubertian hero sings of lost love. But gloomy thoughts soon give way to spring, synonymous with optimism and hope as nature returns to life: 'Welcome, with your happy swarm of newly awakened creatures around me.' If life is in full swing during the summer, the hero now seems uncertain about the happy outcome of his quest for love. In autumn, evoked here by six songs, the hero can only acknowledge his failure, reflected by nature preparing for a months-long sleep: 'Ah, as the stars disappear in the sky, so does life's hope fade away.' Clarinettist Michael Collins joins the duo for one song, 'Der Hirt auf dem Felsen', Schubert's penultimate composition. Inspired by yodelling, this extended lied ends with the hope of a better life, with spring just around the corner and the prophetic words of 'now I shall prepare/to go a-wandering' heralding the composer's approaching death.

Sonya Yoncheva has long been fascinated by George Sand. Writer, dramaturg, and literary critic, a journalist and an intellectual, the lover of Alfred de Musset and then of Frederic Chopin as well as being a friend of Franz Liszt, Pauline Viardot and Marie Dorval, and beyond her remarkable destiny as a woman blessed with the "glorious and complete independence" which in her age was reserved solely for men, Sand embodies the entire spirit, the essence even, of the 19th century. It is in the first place her boldness, approaching the intrepid, which appeals to the Bulgarian soprano. Sand showed daring for all of her life, and what a fount of inspiration her writings are, on all kinds of topics. Whether political, social, cultural, artistic, how pertinent they are, and how their vibrant, trenchant language dazzles! George Sand loved the arts unconditionally. And so this programme opens the doors to us, revealing her artistic universe and bringing her passions to life. Her house, her kitchen, her salon stir into action again, in this soiree in the company of her friends, these artists to whom she was so close and who, respectfully and with tender affection, listened to each other, conversed, laughed, and celebrated in music and poetry. Here, George Sand do not sing, nor do she play an instrument. So Sonya Yoncheva portrays her by reading some of her words. They bear witness to the sparkling, glittering nature of the "Lady of Nohant". What surprises there are throughout this recital! If the passionate urges of Alfred de Musset, fervent or, as so often, disappointed, nourish this journey equally, so the sumptuous Nuit de decembre by Ruggero Leoncavallo, the more hedonistic examples of Pauline Viardot, these two Mazurkas by Chopin transformed into melodies with Louis Pomey's slightly schoolboyish texts, or more obscurely the "medley" of Les Bohemiennes, marrying diverse motifs, of Brahms's Hungarian Dances, also delight heart and mind - a beautiful homage to the innate music that derives from folk and popular traditions, something that George Sands so frequently and tenderly extolled.

This new album by the award-winning Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Klava - recently hailed by the New York Times as 'astonishing', 'superlative' by the BBC Music Magazine, and 'perhaps the finest chorus singing today' by NPR - is focused on the sacred choral works by one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). This recording of the Psalms also includes the world premiere recording of Ehre sei dem Vater published by Carus Verlag in 1997.