Recording is as necessary to me as the air I breathe. One withdraws from the world for a brief while - an eternity -, examines a piece of music and is cross-examined by it in turn, then gives evidence before the microphones. It's as if I've played out my life through my recordings, each one representing a significant, if not seminal, stage in my development as an artist. Thirty years of recording. A discography built from stones of many different, and sometimes clashing, colours, but a discography with a broad and solid structure, a kind of self-portrait. If a good half of this set is taken from Alexandre Tharaud's published discography, the rest is made up by hitherto unreleased music. Some did not make it on to the album they were originally intended for, while others were recorded for fun at studio sessions over the years. When you're recording," the pianist explains, "you're always looking for the perfect take, where everything flows perfectly. But the pressure of the microphone doesn't help... So sometimes, recording a piece unplanned allows you to rediscover that spontaneity".

Philippe Jaroussky brings his musical and dramatic powers to a programme of music from Italian oratorios of the baroque era, including five arias in world premiere recordings. La vanit� del mondo, takes it's name from an oratorio by Pietro Torri and among the other composers are H�ndel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Hasse, Fago and Caldara. "I think composers of this period often give of their best when setting the great stories of the Old Testament," says Jaroussky. "And if oratorio stories are more static than opera, they allow for deeper reflection on the place of mankind in the universe. I think that resonates with particular intensity in 2020, a year of pandemic."

2020 release. "An outstanding album", was Gramophone magazine's verdict on the Arod Quartet's last release, a programme of Schoenberg, Zemlinsky and Webern. Remaining in Vienna, the young French quartet goes back to the time of Schubert. "We wanted to explore several stylistic phases in Schubert's life," they explain. The centrepiece is his gripping Quartet No 14 ('Der Tod und das M�dchen'/'Death and the Maiden'), written in the final years of his short life and complemented here by the Quartets No 4 and No 12 ('Quartettsatz').

2021 marks 100 years since the death of Camille Saint-Sa�ns, one of the acknowledged masters of French music. Pianist Bertrand Chamayou, violinist Renaud Capu�on and cellist Edgar Moreau salute him with this album of three of his finest chamber works: the Violin Sonata No 1, Cello Sonata No 1 and Piano Trio No 2. "These are splendid works," says Bertrand Chamayou, "but only relatively rarely performed and recorded. This is essential French Romantic chamber music and French performers of our generation have a duty to share it with audiences."

Box set containing 33 CDs and 19 DVDs. Natalie Dessay is a dazzling opera singer. She is also an actress of intensity and magnetism, whether in tragedy or comedy. Her charisma, captured on the stages of the world's great opera houses and in the recording studio, illuminates the complete operas and recitals of arias and scenes in this collection. From Mozart's furious Queen of the Night to Debussy's enigmatic M�lisande... Offenbach's robotic Olympia to Strauss's flirtatious Zerbinetta and Delibes' devoted Lakm�... Handel's mercurial Cleopatra to Donizetti's boisterous Marie and desperate Lucia... Thomas's fragile Oph�lie to Massenet's capricious Manon and Verdi's passionate, tragic Violetta... Natalie Dessay proves irresistible in repertoire that spans four centuries and a wealth of musical and dramatic possibilities.

Opera star Arden Scott returns to her hometown to save the struggling company that launched her career. The opening night performance of the long-lost opera she discovered falls on the same night as the home team's first National Championship game (Go, Grizzlies!). The fate of the company hangs in the balance as Arden discovers that greatness is truly a matter of heart.

Beauty's final aria (sung by Natalie Dessay) is unconventionally slow and intensely moving, accompanied by obbligato violin possibly intended for Corelli who may have led the first performance. Ha�m is generally more elegant, though no less exciting, while the... sound is excellent. Technically superb, reassuringly stylish, this is an outstanding performance of Handel at the height of his powers. - BBC Music Magazine

Philippe Jaroussky, one of the foremost countertenor opera singers today, has a passion for enlightening neglected composers. This is masterfully exemplified by his first recital, 'Un concert pour Mazarin', and the best-seller album 'Caldara Arias' gathered here.

The work of Louis Vierne, organist at Notre-Dame de Paris and master of the symphonic instrument, is reflected here in all it's rich variety: from the poetic 'Pi�ces en style libre' to his final masterpiece, the monumental 'Sixth Symphony', via the virtuosic and world-famous 'Pi�ces de fantaisie'. All are performed here on the little-recorded instrument of the Parisian church of Saint-Fran�ois-Xavier by it's organist Gaston Litaize, who studied with Vierne and went on to become a prolific composer himself. The recordings have been remastered in 24-bit/192kHz sound from the original tapes.

The production takes itself none too seriously, the Baroque absurdities of the plot enhanced by absurd costumes... Fagioli rises to the challenge, as he offsets vocal pyrotehcnics with poignancy... - BBC Music Magazine.

Elgar's violin concerto - distinctively passionate and nostalgic - is one of the great late-Romantic concertos. "It is a huge piece," says Renaud Capu�on "both in terms of it's length and it's romantic and noble nature." This is Capu�on's first recording with Sir Simon Rattle, here conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. When Rattle chose Elgar's Enigma Variations for his inaugural concert as the LSO's music director in 2017, he was celebrating the close historic links between the composer and the orchestra. Not only did the LSO accompany Fritz Kreisler in the premiere of the violin concerto in 1910, Elgar became it's Principal Conductor the following year. Paired with the concerto on this album is his violin sonata, first performed in 1919. Renaud Capu�on, who calls the sonata "a work of nobility and tenderness", is joined by one of the leading British pianists of today, Stephen Hough.

CD + DVD. "Beyond being a masterpiece, Der Freisch�tz marks a starting point as one of the first - if not the first - great German Romantic operas," says Laurence Equilbey. She conducts highlights from Weber's exhilarating, ground-breaking work in both audio and video format, recorded live in Paris. The vivid period instruments of the Insula Orchestra are joined by the Accentus Choir and a cast led with poetry and radiance by tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac and soprano Johanni van Oostrum. The stylish, suitably magical staging is by Cl�ment Debailleul and Rapha�l Navarro of Compagnie 14:20.

Natalie Dessay is a dazzling opera singer. Her charisma, captured on the stages of the world's great opera houses and in the recording studio, illuminates the opera arias and scenes in this collection. From Mozart's furious Queen of the Night or Offenbach's robotic Olympia to Strauss's flirtatious Zerbinetta and Delibes' devoted Lakm�... Handel's mercurial Cleopatra to Donizetti's desperate Lucia... Thomas's fragile Oph�lie to Massenet's capricious Manon and Verdi's passionate, tragic Violetta... Natalie Dessay proves irresistible in repertoire that spans three centuries and a wealth of musical and dramatic possibilities.

In Summer 2020 the Salzburg Festival celebrated it's 100th anniversary with Mozart's Cos� fan tutte in a production entirely conceived under pandemic conditions. Created in a matter of weeks by a team led by award-winning stage director Christoph Loy and conductor Joana Malwitz, it was hailed by the German newspaper Die Welt as "The best Mozart at Salzburg for decades." The three female singers in the cast are all closely linked with the Erato label - soprano Elsa Dreisig and mezzo-sopranos Marianne Crebassa and Lea Desandre. They are joined by tenor Bogdan Volkov and baritones Andr� Schuen and Johannes Martin Kr�nzle in an ensemble that was praised for it's balance, harmony and dramatic credibility. "We are delighted," says the Salzburg Festival's artistic director Markus Hinterh�user, "that this production - which allows audiences to hear and experience the miracle of Mozart in all it's delicacy and grace, and realised with the greatest theatrical and musical intelligence

STANFORD: REQUIEM

With radiant accounts from The Brabant Ensemble of the Mass, a Magnificat and a selection of motets, this album of first recordings is a major addition to Guerrero's still select discography.

Essential listening... "fabulously assured"... "unequivocally excellent", are just a few of the critical superlatives earned by Martyn Brabbins's magnificent Vaughan Williams symphony cycle. In this, the penultimate release of the series, two of the late symphonies are coupled with more rare works.

A third Hyperion release from top-notch Portuguese choir, Cupertinos, maintains the exceptional standards already set by the first two. This collection of sacred music by Pedro de Cristo includes five first recordings and marks animportant addition to the composer's burgeoning discography.

The Larghetto and Allegro in E flat major is mature Mozart - contemporary with Idomeneo and Die Entfu�hrung - but remains incomplete. Tomer Lev has finished the job brilliantly, making it the perfect companion for Mozart's official multipiano concertos.

The London Oratory Schola Cantorum illustrates the Golden Age with this selection of motets from sixteenth-century Spain culminating in Alonso Lobo's great funerary ode for Philip II, Versa est in luctum.

A re-creation of the music combined with a technological reconstruction of the acoustics in Linlithgow Chapel, this project from The Binchois Consort and Andrew Kirkman offers a fascinating perspective on how such repertoire might originally have been heard.

Classical Music

In this wonderfully planned programme the whimsical poetry of York Bowen's Hans Andersen 'fragments'-music for a fully-fledged technique, despite the fairy-tale titles-is pleasingly complemented by the bravura of the studies. Nicolas Namoradze proves more than equal to the demands of both.

Classical Music

Bach wrote three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord. Scholars estimate they were composed in the early 1740s, possibly for Carl Fredrich Abel, son of Bach's colleague Christian Ferdinand Abel. They are paired here with Scarlatti's Gamba Sonata and a Violin Sonata by Handel. These works are performed by violinist Robin Michael, cellist Steven Isserlis and harpsichordist Richard Egarr in a program of haunting tranquility.