With the release of The Queen's Favourites in 2021, La Petite Ecurie provided listeners insight into the original repertoire for the Oboe Band, which was very much in vogue at the time of Queen Anne (c. 1700). The debut album received five Diapasons in the renowned French magazine and numerous positive reviews. The International Double Reed Society described their "beautiful tone, precise intonation, rhythmic vigor, and wonderful sense of style." The inspiration for the latest album by La Petite Ecurie, No Strings Attached, originates from the preface of Johann Christian Schieferdecker's thirteen Musikalische Concerte, in which he expressed that: "They were composed with such care that, in the absence of the necessary people, they could also be performed with only 4 voices, namely 3 Hautbois and 1 Bassoon". With this sentence, Schieferdecker encapsulates the fundamental idea that strings are sometimes redundant! No Strings Attached presents music by composers from Germany (Schieferdecker & Keiser), France (Boismortier & Dornel), Italy (Vivaldi) and England (Handel & Purcell), whose compositions showcase the endless virtuosic capabilities of the Oboe Band.

SOMM Recordings continues it's six-volume Bruckner from the Archives series in celebration of the bicentennial of Anton Bruckner with the penultimate Volume 5, featuring his Sixth and Seventh Symphonies and the Te Deum. The series owes it's unprecedented success to SOMM Executive Producer and Audio Restoration Engineer, Lani Spahr. He conceived and designed the series in collaboration with Professor Ben Korstvedt, author of the authoritative notes, and John F. Berky, Executive Secretary of the Bruckner Society of America and Series Consultant. Bruckner thought of his Symphony No. 6 in A major (1881) as his boldest, his "sauciest," symphony. Sadly, it was not published during his lifetime, and he heard only the Adagio and Scherzo performed. When the first full performance was given by Gustav Mahler in 1899 and published that same year, it was with cuts and edits. The original version of Bruckner's score was not published until 1935, and this version is performed here in a 1961 recording with Christoph von Dohnanyi conducting the North German Radio Symphony Orchestra. The Symphony No. 7 in E major (1885) provided Bruckner with his public breakthrough. The first performance in Leipzig came just over a year after it's completion, and the second performance the following year was even more warmly received by Munich's music lovers. The Bavarian King, Ludwig II, was so impressed with the symphony that he financed it's immediate publication. By the late 1880s, Bruckner's Seventh was being widely performed, from Amsterdam and Berlin to New York and Chicago. The performance of the symphony included here is a 1955 recording by what was then the South German Radio Symphony (now the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra) led by their long-time music director, Hans Muller-Kray. Anton Bruckner was a devoutly religious man, and he composed his Te Deum (1884) "out of gratitude to God." The work being contemporaneous with his Seventh Symphony, elements of Bruckner's mature symphonic style find their way into this sacred text. It received it's first full performance at the Vienna Musikverein in 1886, and the recording on this release was made in that same hall in 1962, during a concert celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of�the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. The performance features Herbert von Karajan conducting the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna Singverein.

Good things always come in threes. There was once the Concerto in Italian style, BWV 971, reconfigured according to the by then modern disposition advocated in Italy at the beginning of the 18th century (anthology "Concerti italiani", 2004, OP30301). More recently, the Goldberg Variations, reimagined for a small string ensemble, crowned a fabulous apotheosis in the land of the variation ("Variations on Variations", OP30575). Here are now three completely original orchestral suites by Bach, a new fool's game organised by a tongue in the cheek Rinaldo Alessandrini, once again surrounded by his dear friends from the Concerto Italiano.

French music specialist Jean-Luc Tingaud conducts the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in this album of favourites and rarities by Faure. Includes the first movement of the unfinished Violin Concerto, the prelude to the opera Penelope, Henri Rabaud's orchestration of the popular Dolly suite, and more.

Like so many important Austrian musicians forced into American exile by the Nazis, Richard Stohr (1874-1967) suddenly found himself cast from celebrity into obscurity, The optimism and energy, even defiance, of these three works from 1942 suggest that he took it on the chin, with his musical language retaining it's Viennese accent in an individual amalgam of Bruckner, Mahler, Schmidt and Korngold. Indeed, the echoes of Mahler in Stohr's Second Symphony may be a deliberate homage if, as seems possible, this 1942 version is a revision of a now-lost work first composed shortly after Mahler's death.

Ukrainian Preludes Some years ago, I received a mail from Russia sent by a music-lover as yet unknown to me. His name was Alexander Plekhanov. He knew me from my CDs of works by persecuted composers and and wanted to draw my attention to a Ukrainian Jewish composer whom I had never heard of - Matvey Gozenpud. Attached to the email were a few of his compositions. I was busy on other projects at the time and neglected to answer him. In fact some time went by before I remembered the email with the scores and played them through at the piano - and was delighted. I was particularly taken by Gozenpud's cycle of 12 Preludes. I contacted Alexander Plekhanov, who I'm glad to say was not put out by my long silence. On the contrary: he was very pleased to learn I was interested and sent me many more scores in the following weeks and months by various Soviet composers of that period. Plekhanov is still a young man and he sees it as his mission to bring back to life music that has fallen into undeserved oblivion. He spends his spare time in Moscow's large music libraries in search of interesting compositions and has a strong commitment to composers from Ukraine. He publishes many of these rediscovered works in his online library and apart from that, he seeks to approach musicians directly and enlist their support for his discoveries. This CD, which brings together music by three composers from Ukraine, is thus our joint project, although we have yet to meet in real life. (Jascha Nemtsov)

A veteran Bach specialist continues his Bach odyssey on Brilliant Classics with a new recording of the English Suites. Previous volumes in this series have met with wide critical acclaim. Of the French Suites, Jed Distler wrote in Classics Today: 'a splendid new recording... these lovely performances memorably showcase Rubsam's sensitive and poetic side.' While Rubsam has been playing and recording Bach's music for over half a century, he brings a fresh perspective, both to the works themselves and his approach to them, by performing on a lute-harpsichord, known in German as a lautenwerk. Of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, the Gramophone reviewer remarked: 'Like his other Bach recordings using the Lautenwerk, including the French Suites, the so-called Lute Suites and beautiful arrangements of the Cello Suites and Violin Sonatas and Partitas, these are revelatory... one thing's for certain: you'll never listen to any of Bach's music in the same way again.' Bach himself owned a pair of Lautenwerk, and so Rubsam is returning this music to the scale on which it was conceived: more intimate than nearly all the competition on record, perfectly suited to close studio recording and domestic listening. The Suites themselves are hardly English in character (Bach probably wrote them for an English patron) but rather French, more developed in scale and expression than the earlier French Suites, especially in the Third and Sixth of the set. Movements such as the Overture to No.2 and the Sarabande of No.3 have inspired some of the greatest keyboard musicians - on various instruments - to sound the depths of their artistry. Wolfgang Rubsam does so here, yet with a humility that draws the ear back to Bach himself, to the wondrous intricacy of his polyphony, and his particular genius for embodying the character of a dance through the natural shape of his melodies. - The complete 6 English Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), played on the lute-harpsichord by Wolfgang Rubsam. - There is little "English" about these suites. Their name might have been given as a tribute to Charles Diepart, whose 6 English Suites were very popular at the time. Bach's English Suites follow the traditional sequence of dance movements of the Suite. The writing is mature and technically demanding. The English Suites, along with the French Suites and Partitas, are part of the standard keyboard repertoire. - Wolfgang Rubsam is internationally known as an authoritative Bach interpreter, from recordings of the organ and harpsichord on several different labels. This new recording is played on a lute-harpsichord, an instrument that Bach would have had at home for both music-making in the family and for teaching. The touch required and the sonority produced is delicate, subtly shaded and closely related in it's effect to the music of Bach's French contemporaries, whose music he knew well, such as Francois Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau and Louis Marchand. The sound is warmer, as it has gut strings and no dampers.

This is an album of great temporary organ music, based on biblical themes.

Clara Schumann was one of the most famous of all 19th-century piano virtuosos, admired by contemporaries such as Liszt and Thalberg. Her piano works never succumb to stereotype and the Romances anticipate the sonority of Brahms' late music for piano. Her Variations, Op. 20 entwines Robert Schumann's themes with her own in music of touching intimacy. The Preludes and Fugues reflect Clara's love of Bach. This first volume of her complete music for solo piano is performed by the distinguished French pianist, Jean-Pierre Armengaud, who has written about Robert and Clara Schumann as well as having organised a symposium devoted to them.

Finnish composer Kalevi Aho has produced a considerable and varied body of work that continues to grow rapidly. Aho first tackled the genre of string quartet at the very beginning of his composing career, more than fifty years ago, and has only recently returned to it. Aho was only 18 when he completed his String Quartet No. 1 in 1967. Self-taught at the time, Aho took his inspiration from the essentially tonal music he played on the violin or heard on the radio. The Second Quartet was composed in 1970, during his second year of studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki with Einojuhani Rautavaara and uses fugue technique in each of it's movements. The first performance of the quartet received excellent reviews and marked a minor breakthrough for Aho as a composer. The Third Quartet dates from the following year and marks the end of Aho's studies with Rautavaara. In this work Aho's personal language begins to emerge, although the influence of Shostakovich can also be heard. The work was a great success and has been performed more often than any of his other chamber compositions. The three string quartets are performed here by the Stenhammar Quartet, one of Scandinavia's leading string quartets, whose extensive repertoire gives prominence to contemporary music from the Nordic countries.

Between Lise de la Salle and Franz Liszt, is an affinity, one could say a love story, that has lasted for more than twenty years. For her second album, recorded in 2005 when she was only seventeen, she had him paired with Bach (V5006). Six years later (V5267, 2011), she recorded her first all-Liszt album, a rather dark disc, where the tragic and relentless Funerailles and Apres une lecture du Dante rubbed shoulders with the heartbreaking nudity of Nuages gris and Lacrymosa. Unrolling this Ariadne's thread once again, the French pianist now defends two of the greatest masterpieces, surprisingly complementary, of the most cosmopolitan composer of European Romanticism. A summing up of Lisztian art, the Sonata in B minor, reserved for pianists with wrists of steel and hearts of gold, shines with a particular glow in the piano repertoire of the 19th century. Sensitive to the myriad nuances of this splendid fresco structured as an uninterrupted movement, Lise de la Salle balances here with astonishing ease the dramatic impact of Goethe's Faust and the contemplative lyricism present in the tonal landscapes of the Annees de pelerinage. The assiduous frequentation of the Lisztian universe will have facilitated the in-depth analysis of the Sonata, which quickly became for the pianist an integral part of her artistic persona?and yet, what a maelstrom of sounds! The final part of the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses, the Cantique d'amour, played here as an escape towards the light, introduces the Reminiscences de Don Juan, a fantasy in the form of variations which, through it's overwhelming emotional power, works as an answer to the Sonata. A great admirer of Mozart's Don Giovanni, Lise de la Salle restores the nobility of this now rarely performed work. Liszt takes up famous motifs from Mozart's opera, in an aesthetic full of passion, in which he magnifies his striking art of contrasts and his dazzling virtuoso writing. By placing these Reminiscences as a mirror of the Sonata, Lise de la Salle gets as close as possible to Lisztian genius at the same time as she refines her art of dark atmospheres.

On this double album, acclaimed violinist James Ehnes joins forces with Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra, an ensemble he's had a friendship and artistic partnership with for more than three decades, to fulfil his longtime goal of recording Johann Sebastian Bach's complete violin concertos. Bach's masterful writing for violin is highlighted through several styles and instrumental combinations. This landmark recording showcases James Ehnes's affinity for Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra and his deep connection to Bach's legacy.

Following his exploration of Spain with the music of Federico Moreno Torroba (BIS-2725), Franz Halasz now takes us to Brazil with the complete works for solo guitar by Heitor Villa-Lobos. The music of this extremely prolific composer often combines the influences of European classical music with the popular and traditional music of his homeland, which he played from an early age. The twelve etudes, thoroughly modern, are to the guitar what Chopin's etudes are to the piano. Andres Segovia put it perfectly: 'They present, at the same time, formulas of an amazing efficiency for the development of two-handed technique, and disinterested musical beauty.' In contrast, the Suite populaire bresilienne and Choros No. 1 reflect the composer's youthful experiences as a 'choro' musician playing Brazilian street music, and offer a fusion of the characteristics of traditional music. Finally, the five Preludes return to Brazilian folklore, of which they offer a synthesis in the form of five tableaux inspired by the popular repertoire. This recording also features two rarities: the recently discovered Valse-Choro and the unfinished Valsa Concerto No. 2, completed by Debora Halasz. An evocative blend of syncopated rhythms, exotic harmonies, sensual melodies... and guitaristic flamboyance!

Fazil Say's gifts as a ground-breaking pianist are allied to the breadth of his compositions. The Violin Concerto No. 2 was composed in the midst of the Covid-19 lockdown during which Say was enchanted by the colours and textures of sunrises while walking on the beach, inspiring this atmospheric work. Leopards is a vivid piece for string sextet that utilises Say's unique melodies and rhythms. The Sonata for Solo Violin is an expressive tribute to the noted Turkish violist, Rusen Gunes, while String Quartet 'Divorce' relates the experience of separation and the failure of a relationship with the language of music.

Before conquering concert halls with his symphonies, Johannes Brahms made a name for himself as a choral conductor. He led vocal ensembles in his hometown of Hamburg, in Detmold and Vienna, enriching the repertoire with his own music. Composed between 1865 and 1868, Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) is his most extensive choral work and a milestone in his artistic development. In this work, Brahms combined text passages from the Old and New Testaments in an unconventional way: the 'target' of the text and music is no longer the deceased, for whose salvation we pray, but the survivor, who is to be consoled. He thus turned away from ecclesiastical conventions and created a very atypical requiem which has nothing to do with the Catholic Church's often-set Latin requiem mass. Instead, it was conceived from the outset for the concert hall or church concerts. Musically the Requiem draws from earlier traditions in a highly personal way while remaining firmly in a Romantic choral idiom, at times embedded in lush orchestral textures. After countless acclaimed recordings devoted to the religious music of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan now present their unique vision of Brahms's masterpiece.