To celebrate his 100th birthday, Elliott Carter’s Complete String Quartets have been newly recorded by the Pacifica Quartet, Musical America’s 2009 Ensemble of the year.

Lutoslawski: 20 Polish Christmas Carols / Lacrimosa / 5 Song

RAMEAU: Harpsichord Suites / Nouvelles suites

Rodolfo Halffter' music embraces almost every genre but he was primarily an instrumental composer. Born in Spain, and after the civil war resident in Mexico, Halffter became a leading figure in his adopted country.

The demand for piano duet arrangements of concert music during Schumann's lifetime was very considerable. An inveterate piano duettist himself, Schumann supervised the String Quartet arrangements made by the talented young composer Otto Dressel, whose brilliant solutions to formal problems produced these acclaimed adaptations, for use in home or salon. It was another fine arranger and composer, Theodore Kirchner - admired by Clara Schumann and Brahms - who arranged the Studies for the pedal piano, Op.56, in 1888. This is the second of seven volumes to include Schumann's entire orchestral works, and selected chamber ones, arranged for piano duet.

This is the fifth and final volume of Manuel Blancafort�s complete solo piano works, a series which has drawn on many unpublished scores kindly made available to Miquel Villalba by the composer�s family and contributed to the work of recovering, conserving and publicizing the composer�s legacy. From the first two Nocturnes of 1930 and 1931, to the other works composed during or after World War II, we hear the transformation of Blancafort�s music from pieces inspired by his love of nature to works which pay tribute to fellow composers or are lovingly dedicated to his grandchildren.

Born in Spain and raised in Chile, Xavier Benguerel plays an important part in his native country' musical life, his compositions influenced by the work of Bart k, Stravinsky and the Second Viennese School.

Glen Wilson’s liner notes to this album point to the small number of harpsichord pieces composed by Buxtehude, and their burial at the back of organ editions, as reasons for their lack of popularity. Yet, it has to be admitted that the composer didn’t help matters. In 1739, 32 years after Buxtehude’s death, Johann Mattheson praised in print the quality of these works, and complained that Buxtehude never published any of it. Mattheson was certainly one to know; he had visited the older composer in 1703, studied his music repeatedly over the years, and was considered as a possible successor for organist at Lübeck’s celebrated Marienkirche. (He lost interest after being informed by the city council that the position required marrying Buxtehude’s daughter. The custom of marrying the wife or daughter of one’s predecessor was once more common, and an ingeniously humane method of ensuring the well-being of those dearest to the last job-holder.) Some of the music Mattheson mentioned in passing is now lost, but according to the New Grove, a manuscript containing six variation sets and 19 suites survives.

Presumably, this is the source for much of the material Wilson performs, although the origins of the quasi-improvisatory Toccata and a couple of other selections on this release probably lie elsewhere. Some stylistic elements appear to indicate the organ loft as the inspiration; but if the Toccata is a transcription, it is a creative and successful one that draws attention to a witty, inventive, and technically brilliant piece of music. The other work most likely to evoke surprise in listeners unfamiliar with the composer’s harpsichord works is a set of 32 variations subtitled “La capricciosa.” Wilson makes excellent arguments for Bach’s knowledge of the piece, and his Goldberg Variations as a partial tribute. (Among other evidence, Buxtehude’s borrowed theme is in turn one of those Bach borrowed for his famous Quodlibet variation.) Bach would have appreciated the simplicity of the main theme, the all-encompassing emotional and textural variety among the variations, and the cumulative impact of the entire series. The quality of this pair of works is mirrored in the other, mostly shorter selections, evoking speculation about the composer’s motives for never publishing any of it.

Given that I disliked Glen Wilson’s release of harpsichord works by Louis Couperin, I doubted in advance the harpsichordist’s ability to render unto Buxtehude, Buxtehude’s due. I’m glad to write that my expectations weren’t met, and that this album provides a fine showcase both for performer and composer. Where Wilson was overly sober and slow in nearly all of the Couperin (including numerous selections that didn’t warrant this treatment), his tempos are more mercurial on this release. He treats ornamentation with a greater sense of confidence and ease, and demonstrates a naturally theatrical flair in the more dramatic pieces, such as the Toccata and the Praeludium in G Major. His sonorous instrument, a copy of a 1626 Ruckers by Jan van Schevikhoven, is also recorded somewhat closer and with more definition than the harpsichord used on that Couperin album. The result is a sound that still clearly aims to approach the organ in its plangency, but with more definition to Buxtehude’s musical contours. Recommended.

Barry Brenesal

A fascinating pairing of two breakthrough works. Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht was so popular that the composer authorised his former pupil, the pianist Eduard Steuermann, to make the present transcription for piano trio. Korngold's Piano Trio was his first published composition and an amazingly sophisticated work for a boy not yet thirteen.

One of Richard Strauss’s supreme achievements, Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose) is a romantic story of love and intrigue, a miraculous bend of comedy and gentle melancholy set in the time of Mozart. Gerard Schwarz’s Suite captures much of the poignancy and drama of the opera, first performed in 1911. In 1944, during the appalling circumstances of war, Strauss turned to arranging music from his earlier works. His Waltz Sequences bring together the dances which give Der Rosenkavalier so much of its charm.

Although Sibelius wrote around a hundred songs over a period of more than thirty years - mainly settings of Swedish texts, with eight in German and only a handful in Finnish - they have suffered comparative neglect alongside hi.

Vieuxtemps: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 4

Gotterdammerung (Twilight of the Gods) is the epic fourth and final opera of Wagner’s great Ring cycle, with a plot that depicts the fall of heroes, gods, and the entire world. As ever with the Ring, the joys of love are all too fragile and fleeting, and the drama of Gotterdammerung revolves around dark and unsettling reversals of fortune and illusions of hope that synthesize thrilling and powerful grand opera traditions with Wagner’s revolutionary techniques. Containing all of the Ring’s essential elements, Gotterdammerung’s profoundly satisfying sense of inevitability makes it both a towering climax and a unified summation of the Ring’s abundant variety.

Gifted as both a writer and a musician, Arrigo Boito wrote the libretto to his own opera Mefistofele. Based on Goethe' Faust and the eternal struggle between Good and Evil, Mefistofele is the pinnacle of Boito' compositional achievement.

After the success of Aida in December 1871, and despite his enormous popularity, Verdi retired as an operatic composer. + It took the young publisher Giulio Ricordi and composer and librettist Arrigo Boito a number of years to entice him to embark on what was originally called Jago, and only later known as Otello. + Verdi retained a reverence for Shakespeare, and had already composed Macbeth. + With Otello, completed in November 1886, and triumphantly received, he created a masterpiece from a play that, as Bernard Shaw noted, had all the ingredients of an Italian opera.