The present recording includes items from a Collezione Di Canzonette probably published during the 1820s and containing five solo songs, three duets and an unaccompanied quintet. 'Giuro d'amore' [Track 9], a simple heart-felt avowal of love, is remarkable in making a perfectly rounded musical statement with no element of thematic recurrence. 'Su l'onda tremola' [7], an invitation to the hesitant beloved to take a trip on the Venetian lagoon, is laid out as a rondo, each reprise varied with light touches of fioritura. 'Le cr�puscule' [12] is taken from Nuits d'�t� � Posillipo, this last a resort north of Naples, famous for it's hot springs (1836). Described as a 'romanza', it is in fact an 'aubade', the twilight being that of morning. Hugo's three verses are set to different melodic ideas, each of which returns quite naturally to the same refrain for the lover who 'sings and weeps'. Of the three 'ariette' from Soir�es D'Automne � L'Infrascati (now a Neapolitan suburb) 'Amore e morte' [1] sustains an elegiac mood throughout with only the faintest hint of consolation in it's major-key conclusion; 'La Lontananza' [13] allows cheerfulness to break in towards the end; 'Amor Marinaro' [5] is one of those joyous ditties in Neapolitan dialect in which Donizetti excelled - so much so that he was for a long time wrongly credited with the once popular favorite, 'Te Voglio Bene Assje', still occasionally heard today. From Inspirations Viennoises (1842), 'Il sospiro' [10] bears witness to the composer's enduring capacity for long-breathed cantilena in the Italian Romantic manner; while '� morta' [6] inscribed to Z�lie de Coussy (future dedicatee of Don Pasquale and thought to have been more than a mere friend) features a highly original distribution of minor and major modes. For her too Donizetti wrote, to a French text, the most poignant of all his salon pieces 'La m�re et l'enfant' [4] which remains centred in a minor key throughout.

This disc of highlights from Verdi's epic opera 'Don Carlos' is taken from a complete set recorded live at the Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm. When the complete recording was released in 2003, BBC Music Magazine commented, "It is masterfully driven by Alberto Hold-Garrido, whose full-blooded, immaculately detailed account of the score is it's strongest suit. The Swedish Opera Orchestra is superlative. And there are some distinguished voices... best of all, Ingrid Tobiasson's thrilling, bravura Eboli."

Between 1841 and 1843 Schumann wrote some of his greatest chamber works, among them the Piano Quartet and the Piano Quintet, both in E flat major. Written in an astonishing five-day period, the Quintet displays both the heroic and the lyric impulses in his music, boldness contrasting with songful tenderness, and march themes with lyricism. The Piano Quartet also exudes such qualities, not least in the ravishing slow movement, and the masterful breadth of Schumann's expression. The four Me�rchenerzahlungen are happy, energetic pieces. Winning high praise from the American press, pianist Xiayin Wang has toured with the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra in St Petersburg itself, as well as in the United States. Founded in Chicago in 1946, and based at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1963, the Fine Arts Quartet is one of the elite few to have recorded and toured internationally for over half a century.

Helmut Walcha was one of the most influential organists of the 20th century. His Chorale Preludes are works of considerable expressiveness and polyphonic clarity, which enrich the Lutheran tradition by combining the characteristics of the Baroque masters with highly individual organ colors and sonorities. This is the final volume of this first complete recording of Walcha's organ works.

Music for Flute & Percussion, Volume 1 - Composer(s): Keiko Abe; Anonymous; Fr�d�ric Devreese; Michel Lysight; Astor Piazzolla; Ravi Shankar; Alec Wilder; Karen Young

Max Reger's special position within organ repertoire places him for many as the greatest composer for the instrument since J. S. Bach. Drawing on Lutheran tradition, his Fantasia and Fugue, Op. 29 is in the spirit of Bach, though with a characteristic harmonic language which also infuses the varying complexity in the Monologues, Op. 63. The Sonata No. 1, Op. 33 reflects a connection with Liszt, concluding in an impressive Passacaglia. Award winning German organist Christian Barthen performs on an instrument from Reger's period, the 1911 Steinmeyer Organ in Mannheim which is one of the biggest in Germany.

Japanese violinist Takako Nishizaki (the daughter of the cofounder of the Suzuki Method, we learn) gets top billing on this disc, part of a complete series of Mozart's sonatas for violin and piano. But for much of the disc, American pianist Benjamin Loeb actually has more to do. The Sonata No. 16 for violin and piano, K. 547, is subtitled "a little piano sonata for beginners, with a violin." Written around the same time as the Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545, that most young pianists learn, this work lacks the unity of it's more famous counterpart. By this point in his career, Mozart was writing violin-and-piano sonatas in which the two instruments played equal roles, but the act of writing a student work seems to have made the composer think in the old-fashioned terms of a piano sonata with optional violin. The K. 547 sonata and the 12 Variations in G major on the French song "La berg�re C�lim�ne," K. 359 are rarely heard, and it's useful for violinists to have them on hand. But the rather dry performance by Nishizaki and Loeb doesn't catch their easy charm. On the other hand, the pair delivers a very strong performance of the one real masterwork on the disc, the concluding Sonata No. 15 in A major, K. 526.. Performing on conventional instruments, they sound somewhat like the classic duo of Henryk Szerying and Ingrid Haebler, seeking smoothness and balance in Mozart over sentimental effect. In the dense, difficult A major sonata, their approach is well considered and nicely executed. This would be an odd choice for a single disc of Mozart violin-and-piano sonatas, but as part of a series it scores well with the major work on the program.

Beethoven's String Trios are masterly in form and content and, with Mozart's only string trio, the Divertimento K. 563, are among the most significant works in the entire genre. Beethoven's first, Op.

• Volume 15 of Reger's complete organ works is played on The E. M. Skinner organ in the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, Chicago, considered amongst the finest examples of 20th century romantic organs built in America. Volume 16 follows in September.

Volume 14 of Reger's complete organ works features settings based on Lutheran chorales and traditions. These are not the simple works some of the titles would lead one to expect. + Josef Still enjoys a career as a concert organist and harpsichordist, with broadcasts, television appearances and recordings.

Saint-Saëns holds a vital place in the history of French chamber music. At a time when his compatriots were more devoted to opera and song, Saint-Saëns (who wrote both, too) repeatedly produced chamber music of compelling individuality and lasting significance. The 1875 Piano Quartet in B flat major, Op 41 remains one of the great works in the chamber repertory, a masterful example of the composer’s organisational skill and lyric gifts. The gorgeous Barcarolle is followed by the youthful Piano Quintet in A minor, Op 14, a brilliantly confident work with a concerto-like role for the piano.

This fifth Naxos release of the music of the Franco-Lebanese composer Bechara El-Khoury features three concertos two of which, for wind instruments, are inspired by specific associations with the natural world of the composer’s native Lebanon. The First Violin Concerto contains allusions to Alban Berg, its outer movements divided by a virtuoso cadenza for the soloist. The composer describes his powerful Horn Concerto as ‘mountains at night… reaching up into the sky and melting into mist and space’, and the Clarinet Concerto as ‘impressions and recollections in which poetic colors link together and disappear, like an autumnal cloud’.

Includes work(s) by Thomas Tallis. Ensemble: Oxford Camerata. Conductor: Jeremy Summerly.

Krzysztof Meyer' intensely dramatic and eloquent string quartets stand at the centre of his achievements as a composer. The extremes of mood which characterize the Ninth Quartet contrast with the Eleventh Quartet.

PETITGIRARD: Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man