Haenssler CLASSIC's Ballets Russes series is unrivaled for completeness and will include many works never before recorded. Each booklet includes historic details of the works performance and artwork from the original productions. World-renowned choreographer John Neumeier has overseen the production of the entire series. For 20 years from 1909 to 1929, the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev and his Russian ballet became one of the 20th century's most incredible artistic adventures, redefining theater, music and dance in every performance.

Today, the name of Arnold Mendelssohn scarcely ranks as a footnote in most musical textbooks; however, he played a seminal role in the revival of German church music. His love of polyphony, combined with his characteristic warm, late Romantic harmonic language imbues Mendelssohn's scores with a sense of otherworldly timelessness.

"Over the years, the pianist Jorge Federico Osorio has garnered extraordinary praise. Osorio’s interest in wrongly neglected repertoire continues on [this] recording, which explores salon music written around the beginning of the last century by four Mexican composers: Manuel Ponce, Ricardo Castro, Felipe Villanueva, and José Rolón.

"I suspect that even the purists will be impressed and moved by many of these gentle and quirky works—the four Ponce works, the Castro Mazurka and Barcarolle, and the half-dozen or so Villanueva and Castro waltzes deserve to be singled out.

"I have never heard a Çedille recording that deserved less than a perfect score in the sound engineering department, and this one is no exception. In sum, a delightful recording that confirms Osorio’s outstanding artistry."

--FANFARE (Radu A. Lelutiu)

Perhaps no other musical style has exerted a greater influence on the culture of the first half of the 20th century than Jazz. This utterly American music travelled to every corner of the globe: From Shanghai to St. Petersburg; from New Orleans to New Dehli, from Harlem to well... Haarlem. While classical composers embraced the rhythmic vitality and melodic freedom of their own compositions, others sought to legitimize Jazz in the concert hall including: Debussy, Stravinsky, Hindemith and Shostakovich and of course Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington.

The great bass-baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has been involved with the music of Bach throughout his career. Even as a student, he studied the cantatas and in his first Post-War concert in 1947, he was a soloist in the "St. Matthew Passion." As the singer's career progressed, performances of the music of Bach and his contemporaries became increasingly rare. However, in the 1950s, while at the beginning of his career, Fischer-Dieskau produced a series of radio recordings featuring not only the music of Bach but other Baroque composers such as Schutz, Tunder and St. Elzel.

Roger Norrington and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra SWR continue their survey of the major works of the 19th Century symphonic repertoire with two symphonies by Schubert. Throughout his decade of working with the RSO, Norrington has transformed the sound of a modern symphony orchestra into an ensemble capable of delivering authentic historically informed music making. By employing both the benefits of authentic performance practice and technically superior modern instruments, Norrington has left a legacy that has opened the ears of romantic "purists" as well as delighting devotees of authentic performance practice.

Conducted by Christopher Bell, Chicago’s Grant Park Chorus, “as fine a symphony chorus as any to be found anywhere in the nation” (Chicago Tribune), makes its a cappella CD debut with an all-American program of eight imaginative, moving, and sometimes whimsical works written between 1975 and 25, including four world-premiere recordings. Premieres include Abbie Betinis’s Toward Sunshine, Toward Freedom: Songs of Smaller Creatures. Lee Kesselman’s Buzzings: Three Pieces about Bees offers vignettes based on Emily Dickinson poems. Paul Crabtree’s Five Romantic Miniatures is a set of affectionate tributes to characters from The Simpsons animated TV series. The chorus made its commercial recording debut performing with the Grant Park Orchestra on the 211 Cedille Records release The Pulitzer Project, which attracted international attention. Chicago’s New City said the CD “spectacularly showcased” the chorus’s “remarkable transparency and flexibility.”

In April 2012, the Schwetzingen Festival celebrates its 60th birthday. On this occasion, a very special oratorio recording from the festival's early years has been selected - a vintage performance of Haydn's "The Seasons", featuring the immortal Fritz Wunderlich!

Haydn wrote his oratorio "The Seasons" between the years 1799 and 1800. The work is based on the poem "The Seasons" by James Thomson in the German translation of the Baron van Swieten. The contemporary descriptions of nature and genre scenes are a work of perfection, insuring the composition's enduring popularity.

This early festival recording is a true time-capsule, recorded on May 24th, 1959 featuring in addition to Wunderlich, the vocal artistry of Agnes Giebel, and Kieth Engen, who together bring Haydn's secular oratorio to vivid life.

Baritone Gérard Souzay never had the opportunity to develop a following due to his brief operatic career. Yet experts recognized his innate musicality and his perfect pronunciation of German - his Lieder interpretations are considered legendary. Souzay limited himself to recitals of German Lieder and French mélodies, but what you'll hear provides sheer delight. He still is a singer for aficionados, but this historic recital, recorded in his prime, will surely further this great singer's reputation throughout the world.

The latest release in hänssler CLASSIC's Historical SeriesNicolai Gedda was one of the most famous singers of the 20th centuryA valuable compilation of recordings of the great Nicolai Gedda from the SWR archives

Drama, surprise, humour and still life - with a bubbling undertone of anarchy. Composer Ib Nørholm (b. 1931) presents us with a delightful twist on Danish nocturne and condensed music drama for two in Tavole per Orfeo. This world premiere recording by soprano Else Torp and guitarist Per Pålsson unfolds as a fascinating testimony to an inspired encounter between words and music and a meeting of strong artistic personalities. Else is a core member of Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices, with whom she has performed around the world.

The Italian-born pianist and Leeds competition winner Alessio Bax returns with his third solo recital disc for Signum. His programme surveys a selection of highlights from Brahms' pianistic output, charting his development from the early lyrical collection '4 Ballades' (1854) through to the 'eight perfect gems' that are the 8 Klavierstücke Op.76 (1871-78). Bax also tackles Brahms' fiendish set of 'Variations on a Theme of Pagainini, Op.35', which Bax describes in the programme notes as one of 'the most fearsome works ever written for piano'.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

On a new disc to celebrate the 2012 Diamond Jubilee, the King's Singers present a selection of works from the past 500 years written in honor of the great Monarchs of Britain. Starting with works for (and in some cases by) Henry VIII, the program covers the Elizabethan 'Triumphs of Oriana' by composers such as Gibbons, Mundy and Dowland; a very Victorian selection of dedicatory works by Elgar, Parry and Parratt; choral arrangements from the opera 'Glorianna' by Benjamin Britten; and a new piece by Paul Drayton that comically pens 'A Rough Guide to the Royal Succession'. (Drayton is perhaps best known to fans of the King's Singers as the composer of their much-loved encore work Masterpiece.)

The album also contains additional tracks by Francois Couperin that are identified by generic Baroque era dance titles without specific details: Allemande, Sarabande, Sicilenne, Gavotte.

Orff: Carmina Burana

Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1-4

Lonely Motel: Music from Slide

REVIEW:

Furtwängler famously considered himself a composer who conducted, rather than vice versa, and his most familiar surviving work is without question his Second Symphony. It’s a lovable outpouring composed in the last year of the Second World War but that has both its head and its heart buried among the dying embers of late Romanticism. Bruckner, Strauss, Brahms and Reger are all there in attendance and, although the work is well worth sampling, one laments the fact that, while we have at least four recordings of Furtwängler conducting it, we have none of him conducting the Missa solemnis or Parsifal. The 1954 Stuttgart RSO recording of Furtwänger’s Second, reissued here by Hänssler Classic, comes paired with a typically marmoreal account of Beethoven’s First. Both performances are characteristic...it’s nice to have seven minutes’ worth of Furtwängler in (German) conversation with the conductor Hans Müller-Kray, a privilege included only on the Hänssler Classic set.

-- Gramophone

Elgar: Enigma Variations

Classical Music

Langgaard: Piano Works, Vol. 2

Classical Music