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Of Paganini's fifteen quartets with guitar only six were published during his lifetime. They represent his finest body of chamber compositions as can be heard in the three quartets for violin, viola, guitar and cello, Op. 4. Of them, No. 3 in A major is a masterpiece, with French-styled inspiration, rich lyricism and piquant invention, while the virtuosic, almost concerto-like No. 8 in A major embodies his quatuor brillant writing, with it's Rossinian resonances. No. 12 in A minor is the most 'symphonic' of the three, containing formal originality, one of the most moving of Paganini's slow movements, and his most serious-minded finale.

Take time in the summer to think about the winter, country folk would say. That is just as true of CD albums compiled to celebrate the happiest days of the year. In this record-breaking sultry summer, Ludwig Guttler has been giving some thought to how to celebrate the 200th anniversary in 2018 of this global song appropriately. "It is one of the first carols I learned to play on the accordion, a present I was given for Christmas after my fifth birthday," recalls Ludwig Guttler, who remembers that when he was a child, everybody sang along. In fact it took him a long time to understand how anybody sitting in church could stay still to the sound of "Stille Nacht". In addition to the best recordings from his gigantic catalogue, there are also recordings that have not yet been publihed: Guttler has arranged "Silent Night, Holy Night!" for his brass ensemble, clad each of the six verses in an instrumental garb of it's own and recorded it in the summer in Zwettl in Austria.

At the heart of this album from the Gould Piano Trio is Schubert's Piano Trio in E-flat major, D. 929, a late masterpiece of emotional depth and formal ingenuity. Heard here in it's complete version, the finale restores the haunting B minor passage, it's circling piano figures echoing Der Leiermann, while the Andante's cello theme weaves through the work like a recurring memory. Alongside it is the youthful Piano Trio in B-flat major, D. 28 - fresh, lyrical, and full of promise, whilst Schubert Dances - a charming new suite of waltzes, Landler and Deutscher arranged for piano trio by Brian Newbould, completes the programme and showcases Schubert's lighter side. Together, these works chart a compelling path from teenage inspiration to late-style mastery.

Alessandro Scarlatti's Il trionfo dell'onore (The Triumph of Honour) - his only comic opera - was first performed in Naples in 1718. With it's distinctive recitatives and expressive arias, and a cast including four pairs of lovers, it can be considered one of the forerunners of opera buffa. The central character is the unrepentant seducer Riccardo Albenori, a Don Giovanni-like figure though without the villainous aura. In this opera, Scarlatti ensures not only perceptive psychology but a rich variety of arias, duets and quartets that generate the work's pathos as well as it's humour and eroticism.

The currently hottest German brass ensemble with great concept albums presents Christmas classics in completely new arrangements for the first time?. All-time classics like "Driving Home for Christmas", "It's beginning to look like Christmas", "Santa Claus is coming to town", "All I want for Christmas", "Let it snow", "White Christmas", "Frosty the Snowman" give this Christmas album a unique sound?

While the three composers featured on this recording are not, in the public perception and sometimes even in that of the performers, among the most significant exponents of Viennese music in the first half of the twentieth century, their remarkably expressive and virtuoso writing is deeply rooted in fin-de-siècle Vienna. They were banned by the dictatorships of the 1930s and then blacklisted in the aftermath of the Second World War by the young European avant-garde, and it is only in recent years that the beauty and opulence of their works have been rediscovered. Vienna-born conductor Sascha Goetzel writes about the works performed here with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire: 'With Korngold, Schreker and Krenek, we're not just hearing music - we're entering a dialogue between past and present, tradition and rebellion, myth and modernity [...] Korngold embodies the emotional sincerity and creative ambition of the late Romantic tradition. Schreker immerses us in the subconscious - mythical, unstable, and rich in feeling. Krenek breaks through the facade, injecting irony, jazz and fragmentation into the orchestral form [...] In their own ways, each composer pushes back against inherited conventions to discover new languages of sound.'

Adalbert Gyrowetz, born precisely between Mozart and Beethoven, was among those who witnessed the upheaval of changing times in especially drastic fashion. When he died in 1850, Schumann was 40, Liszt 39-and Chopin, who had debuted in Warsaw in 1818 with a piano concerto by the Bohemian, had already been dead for six months. Gyrowetz's instrumental music had once been widely celebrated: published in large numbers, frequently performed, and eventually forgotten. The composer turned to the stage, wrote sacred music, and created a late period for himself in which he may have looked back with melancholy on earlier works, pieces sometimes thought to rival Haydn at his best. This sampling from the "good old days", compiled by tireless rediscoverer Howard Griffiths, shows how such impressions came about. The orchestra is no coincidence: Gyrowetz once enjoyed high esteem even on the Thames. Now he is back.

An award-winning English composer of international standing, and one of the leading composers of his generation, whose music has been performed, recorded, and broadcast in many countries, Edward Gregson celebrates his eightieth birthday in 2025. He continues to compose and perform as actively as ever. This album presents three major concertos, interspersed with two shorter works for piano and orchestra. A Song for Bram was written in memory of his great friend and advocate, the conductor Bramwell Tovey. A Song for Sue, re-working the central Nocturne from his Concertante for Piano and Brass Band (1966), is a 2024 tribute to his wife. One of the most performed of all his works, the Tuba Concerto was written for John Fletcher, who gave the first performance in 1977. Gregson's Concerto for Viola and String Orchestra 'Three Goddesses' was given it's first performance in 2023 by Rachel Roberts. The goddesses depicted in the three movements are Morrigan (Celtic warrior queen and earth mother), Aphrodite (Greek goddess of love and beauty), and Diana (Roman goddess of the hunt). First performed by these forces in 2020, the Oboe Concerto 'A Vision in a Dream' is inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan. In following the narrative, Gregson comes closest in his series of concertos to producing a descriptive symphonic poem.

This is the definitive collection of Charles Mackerras's Mozart recordings for Linn, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Comprising nine symphonies plus the Requiem, this boxed set exemplifies why Mackerras was acclaimed as one of the world's greatest Mozartians and the SCO is internationally recognised as one of the world's finest chamber orchestras. Mackerras's recording of Mozart's four late symphonies (Nos. 38-41) won multiple awards: the 2009 Classical BRITs Critics' Award and the 2009 BBC Music Magazine Disc of the Year and Orchestral Awards, whilst his recording of symphonies Nos. 29, 31 ('Paris'), 32, 35 ('Haffner') & 36 ('Linz') was named Symphonic Recording of the Year at the 2011 ECHO Klassik Awards. Completing the collection is Mackerras's recording of the Mozart Requiem, boasting stellar soloists led by soprano Susan Gritton and mezzo Catherine Wyn-Rogers. The score, prepared by the renowned American academic Robert Levin, aims for a more historically authentic performance of the choral masterpiece. It was named a benchmark recording by BBC Music Magazine amongst other accolades.

In 1725, Jose de Torres crafts the narrative of the royal funerals of Spain's first Bourbon monarchs. At the heart of this tribute, the Misa de difuntos para Luis I, the first Bourbon born on Iberian soil, blends with exquisite finesse the echoes of Versailles with the exuberant splendour of Spanish Baroque. The offering is here completed by the monumental Dies Irae by Francisco Corselli, a Franco-Italian composer, to the glory of Philip V. Alberto Miguelez Rouco revives these rare works, bringing the music of the Real Capilla de Madrid to life in the Royal Chapel of Versailles!

Francesco Almasio (Milan, 21 April 1802 - Milan, 14 November 1871) was one of the protagonists of the musical life of Milan during the nineteenth century, and is considered the father of the reformation of sacred music in Italy. He was Kapellmeister and organist in several Milanese churches, and the very first teacher in the organ course at the Conservatory of Milan: the few surviving manuscripts of sacred music compositions of his, and the printed corpus of his organ pieces, reveal the everyday life of his liturgical and teaching activities. Francesco Almasio was born in Milan to Pietro Almasio (1780-1846), from Legnano, who also was a Kapellmeister and organist, and Maria Porri; his father made him study the piano, the organ and composition. Organist Fabio Nava uses the historic Bossi-Urbani organ from 1886 in the Prepositurale Church of Leffe (Bergamo) to best render this recording of Francesco Almasio's organ works. In addition to the original compositions, the organ transcriptions by the Milanese composer are particularly interesting. In addition to famous pieces such as Eja Mater from Rossini's Stabat Mater and the symphony from Giuseppe Verdi's La Forza del Destino, true musts of the era, he surprisingly adapts two movements from Beethoven's Septet for organ, enriching the sacred and liturgical repertoire of his time with chamber music genre.

A unique recital on record of complementary bagatelles and sonatas from two distinct periods in Beethoven's life, in a new recording by a modern master pianist. Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy is 'a storyteller', remarked Jeremy Nicholas in his Gramophone review of the Chopin sonatas on Piano Classics. He went on to praise 'nigh-on ideal' playing in the Second Sonata: 'unforced, rhythmically buoyant [and] texturally translucent'. The German pianist now illuminates four works of Beethoven with the same qualities. The Sonata Op.31 No.3 and Bagatelles Op.33 both date from what would prove to be a transitional point in Beethoven's career, around the year 1802, as he was stretching his wings and his capabilities. They achieve striking and often sudden contrasts of expression within both expansive sonata-form structures and the miniature sketch-form of the bagatelle, which Beethoven effectively invented from scratch with this set. 'Schmitt-Leonardy's superb technical and musical command holds unflagging interest' through the variation sets of Brahms, according to Jed Distler in another Gramophone review. Such command is a prerequisite for addressing the late masterpieces of Beethoven, so often recorded, and to which Wolfram Schmitt-Leonardy brings his own, individual musical intelligence. Twenty years elapsed between those earlier pieces and the Sonata Op.110, during which time Beethoven's thinking inevitably underwent a sea-change. By this point he was striving ever more keenly to achieve the expression of transcendence in music, and the Sonata's ineffable opening phrase seems to distil that search into an unforgettable gesture. The Sonata is also marked by the composer's intensifying preoccupation with Baroque-era counterpoint, which gives the most haunting life to the finale's semi-autobiographical narrative of vitality lost and regained. The Bagatelles Op.126 are trifles in name only, contemporary with the Ninth Symphony, sharing the Olympian humour of it's Scherzo and the span of the Diabelli Variations. Each one captures a mood as intense as it is fleeting. They are perhaps comparable in this way with the sonatas of Scarlatti, such as those played by Schmitt-Leonardy on another Piano Classics album: 'one the most intelligently programmed and distinctively played Scarlatti collections to cross my reviewer's desk in years.' (Gramophone)

A rarely heard, fascinating solo instrument and an internationally multi-award-winning performer: on the new GENUIN album "From Keys to Strings", we are presented with an exciting combination! For her prizewinner production from the 2023 ARD Music Competition, harpist Tjasha Gafner has put together an unusual program in which she arranged works for her instrument. These are pieces that Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart originally wrote for keyboard - or, in the case of Johann Sebastian Bach, for lute (or a lute-harpsichord?). The clarity and transparency of both transcription and interpretation by this outstanding young harpist provide surprising insights and new listening experiences!

Paavo Jarvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich present the second volume of their complete Mahler Symphonies, with his First Symphony, known as the "Titan" in reference to the eponymous novel by the poet Jean-Paul that Mahler greatly admired. Although he abandoned this title three years after the symphony's premiere in 1893, the symphony has, like many of Mahler's works, "a clearly programmatic character" according to Paavo Jarvi: "Mahler was a composer who was truly able to explore the inner world of human beings and to question what goes on inside us."

Rossini's Adina is a one-act farsa sentimentale or semiseria set in a seraglio in Baghdad where we find the Caliph determined to marry Adina who is also loved by Selimo. To this standard story Rossini brought an unexpected psychological depth, augmented by coloratura arias and male choruses of richness and daring. However, for unknown reasons he omitted a vital Terzetto, which has made the work problematic to fully realise in performance. This recording employs the Terzetto from Giovanni Pacini's opera La schiava in Bagdad, a solution first proposed in 1861, much to the benefit of the opera's pacing.

Under the motto "Dancing Organ," Czech organist Michael Bartek has compiled a varied program of dance pieces from different eras, including original compositions and some virtuoso transcriptions. In addition to popular works, there are also a few surprises to discover. This is performed on "his" Kuhn organ in the Richterswil Church near Zurich. For this SACD, the sound has been optimally captured in stereo and 5.1 surround sound. Unter dem Motto "Dancing Organ" hat der tchechische Organist Michael Bartek ein vielseitiges Programm von Tanzstucken verschiedener Epochen - Originalkompositionen und teils virtuose Transkriptionen - zusammengestellt. Neben popularen Werken gibt es auch so manche uberraschung zu entdecken. Als Instrument dient ihm "seine" Kuhn-Orgel in der Richterswiler Kirche, nahe Zurich. Fur diese SACD wurde der Klang optimal als Stereo- und auch als 5.1 Surround-Aufnahme eingefangen.

Hyung-Ki Joo is a pianist, composer, and musical entertainer. Born in England in 1973 to South Korean parents, he is a remarkable musician whose artistry spans piano performance, composition, and whimsical stagecraft. A graduate of the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Manhattan School of Music, Joo has studied under notable mentors and cultivated a deep versatility in both solo and chamber music forms. Collaborative ventures lie at the heart of Joo's approach. As one half of the celebrated musical comedy duo Igudesman & Joo-alongside violinist Aleksey Igudesman-he fuses top-tier classical performance with sharp humor and theatrical flair. But Joo is more than a performer-he's a champion for music's accessibility. His compositions have been commissioned and performed by world-class orchestras and soloists, and his music is published by reputable houses like Universal Edition and Modern Works. This new album contains original piano works by Hyung-Ki Joo: Childhood (an album of 10 pieces), Chandeliers, and Funk Yeah, for piano 4-hands. This recording also contain the Joo's arrangements of Billy Joel's Fantasies and Delusions, as well as Soliloquy Op.1. Played by Sun-Hee You. Born in South-Korea, she moved to Italy, graduating with honors from the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in Rome. She continued her studies with the legendary Lazar Berman and Valentina Berman, and refined her artistry under the guidance of Bruno Canino, Oxana Yablonskaya, Boris Petrushansky, and Paul Badura-Skoda. She recorded for Piano Classics piano works by Kapustin.

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) was an Italian composer and pianist, widely admired for his melodic gift, refined craftsmanship, and versatility across genres. Although best known for his large output for guitar, his works for solo piano reveal a distinct and highly personal voice that bridges tradition and modernity. Castelnuovo-Tedesco studied composition with Ildebrando Pizzetti and was influenced both by his Italian heritage and by the French Impressionists, particularly Ravel and Debussy, whose colors and textures often echo in his keyboard writing. His style is influenced by Neo-Classicism, vivid, brilliant, with the occasional odd dissonance, strongly rhythmical and full of catchy melodies. He fled Anti-semitism before WWII and settled in Hollywood where he successfully composed film music for more than 200 films. Apart from his importance as a guitar composer Castelnuovo-Tedesco created a small but appealing oeuvre for piano solo. This new recording presents a selection of these evocative and tuneful works, which deserve to be played more often in the concert halls. Excellent performance by young Italian pianist Adriano Murgia. He has participated in masterclasses with internationally renowned pianists, including Aldo Ciccolini, Maurizio Baglini, Artur Pizarro, Boris Petrushansky, Boris Berman, and Roberto Prosseda, with whom he earned his Master's Degree in Piano Performance at the Venezze Conservatory in Rovigo.

Eleanor Alberga is always at pains to tell her listeners that her pieces can be enjoyed as pure music, without narrative and associations. So, the three pieces in this album evoke countless varieties of moods, textures, relationships and energies that will speak uniquely to the ear of each individual listener. But Eleanor's ever-curious, inventive and fertile sensibility means there is almost always an intriguing subtext of her own to everything she writes. And this is always worth exploring. Dancing with the Shadow was written in 1990 and is scored for six solo instrumentalists. Eleanor conceived the piece as an evocation of the individual's attempts to explore their darker side, the "shadow" of the title. She describes the piece as, "consistently dealing with the negative and positive sides of the human psyche and charting the way an individual comes to terms with and even embraces the riches of their shadow." The journey therefore is not one fraught with drama and crisis but is more of a playful dialogue - by turns dreamy, animated, reflective and humorous. Each movement is scored for a different combination of instruments, and each successive movement adds an extra player. Ten years after Dancing with the Shadow, Eleanor created another scintillating work, On a Bat's Back I do Fly, inspired this time by a song from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the way Eleanor has kindled this mysterious and unusual sonic world is her use of tuned percussion, which draws the listener gently into Ariel's playful miniature kingdom - a backlit world, as Eleanor describes it, that is both, "bright, yet nocturnal and other-worldly." Langvad was composed six years after 'On a Bat's Back I do Fly' for a summer chamber music festival run by Eleanor's husband, the violinist Thomas Bowes. Langvad is made of one movement, within which there are a variety of different moods.

Singaporean composer and conductor, Darius Lim, incorporates theatrical elements into his choral compositions, taking audiences on an emotional journey. The 14 works in this album attest to his belief in the passion, joy and transcendence of the human spirit, whether as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, or to the beauties of nature and imaginary fantasy worlds. Lim's music embraces the mystical, the magical and the ethereal in ways that stir the imagination and touch the heart.

Ben van Oosten is the superstar of symphonic organ music. His multiple award-winning recordings of almost the entire French Romantic organ repertoire are highly acclaimed worldwide. With this dedication to the German Romantic repertoire with masterpieces spanning from Mendelssohn to Reger, van Oosten takes listeners on a sonorous journey through a century of music history that is inspiring in every way.

The troubled life of English composer Ernest John Moeran (1894 - 1950) ended 75 years ago, when he fell into the water at Kenmare in Ireland, and his death was officially recorded as a cerebral haemorrhage. To honour the life of E J Moeran, SOMM Recordings is releasing broadcasts that were privately recorded by Lionel Hill, author of Lonely Waters - the diary of a friendship with E J Moeran. This commemorative release, with outstanding audio restoration by Lani Spahr, includes Moeran's Symphony in G minor conducted by Sir Adrian Boult and his Violin Concerto with the incomparable Albert Sammons as soloist. Additionally, Moeran's Cello Concerto, written for his wife Peers Coetmore, is available as a download. E J Moeran was born to an Irish Protestant priest and a Norfolk-born mother, and the duality of his nationality finds expression in his music. He wrote of his Symphony in G minor that it "may be said to owe it's inspiration to the natural surroundings in which it was planned and written. The greater part of the work was carried out among the mountains and seaboard of Co. Kerry, but the material of the second movement was conceived around the sand-dunes and marshes of East Norfolk." On 9 February, 1949, Moeran and his friend Lionel Hill attended a performance of the symphony at the Royal Albert Hall, with Adrian Boult conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. That is the performance heard on this CD. The first movement of Moeran's Violin Concerto, written in Co. Kerry, was similarly inspired by the calm of Kenmare Bay in fine weather, while the Lento last movement reflected a period of seasonal colour and beauty along the Kenmare River. The second movement Rondo is unmistakably imbued with the spirit of Kerry fairs and Irish fiddlers. Moeran wrote that "Albert Sammons is the only living violinist I would like to have interpret it." This recording, a BBC Home Service broadcast from Norfolk on 28 April 1946, is Sammons' last public concerto performance. One cannot overemphasise the importance of this recording; it is, as far as we know, Sammons' only known live recording. In December 1943, eighteen months before their marriage, Moeran wrote to the Irish cellist Peers Coetmore, "Please write and tell me you would like me to write a concerto especially for you, and I give you my promise that I will put my whole heart into it." The result is a work of considerable beauty, especially memorable for the typically Irish tune that introduces the slow movement. Following the premiere in Dublin, Coetmore gave it's first London performance in April 1946-available here as a download-with Adrian Boult conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

A famous Beethoven work and a Reicha premiere in the hands of exceptional performers. Just like the well-known drama of Beethoven's life, the biography of Anton Reicha would also make an exciting film, but this recording mainly shows us the friendship of the two great composers at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. They were born the same year, and from their first encounter as 15-year-olds in the Bonn court orchestra, they became close friends. They studied together at the university in Bonn, and they both became friends of Haydn. Their music also shared similarities mainly during Reicha's period in Vienna. It was while Reicha was in Vienna that he wrote his only piano concerto and that Beethoven wrote his fifth and most famous work in the genre. Both concertos are in the "heroic" key of E flat major. While Beethoven's "Emperor Concerto" is a mainstay of the piano literature, this is the first complete recording of Reicha's concerto. Missing pages from the solo part were first discovered in 2018. Jan Bartos is a highly acclaimed interpreter of Beethoven, and here he is following in the tradition of his teachers Ivan Moravec and Alfred Brendl. The wonderful playing of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, which has Beethoven's blood in it's veins, gives the live recording from the Prague Spring Festival the hallmark of authenticity. Playing the meticulously detailed accompaniment in the studio recording of Reicha's concerto is the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. Bartos's partner at the helm of both orchestras is Petr Popelka, today undisputedly a world-class conductor who has the rare ability to breathe meaning and life into every note. The friends Beethoven and Reicha are symbolically reunited after more than two centuries on a single album in special musical company.

Anyone who entitles an organ piece a Grand Pièce Symphonique should not be surprised if this very title one day is used as a benchmark to determine the legitimacy of this claimed attribute. This is exactly what the organist, composer, and pedagogue Zsigmond Szathmáry did at the behest of his young colleague Christian Schmitt when he examined the orchestral possibilities of César Franck's "great symphonic work". The result of this exploration gives us the world premiere of a concert piece in which the king of instruments and it's personified registers - i.e. The orchestra - form a captivating synthesis. Next to Franck's well-known tone poem Les Éolides (The Daughters of Aeolus), the programme includes a rarely recorded work by Charles-Marie Widor - a Walpurgis Night that easily rivals the most famous witches' dances in the Romantic literature.