Brahms' fascination with music of the 16th to the 18th centuries was nurtured during his appointment in Vienna as conductor of the Singakademie. His own choral compositions had gradually moved from an almost pastiche Renaissance style towards a fully mature, Romantic approach, culminating in his large-scale choral masterpiece Ein deutsches Requiem. This performance is sung in a new English translation prepared by Lara Hoggard that fits the original German declamation and with the piano four-hands accompaniment written by Brahms himself.

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Philharmonia of Russia conducted by Constantine Orbelian. Great scenes from 'Queen of Spades' captures the essence of the opera in a one-CD version with scenes chosen to represent the music, drama and characterization that make the opera memorable. Amelia Haygood, Delos label founder & Executive Producer: "I've loved 'Queen of Spades' for most of my life, and have long thought it should be up there among the all-time favorites. So it's a deep joy for me to present the drama and poignancy of Tchaikovsky's music at the high artistic level our singers, conductor and orchestra have achieved here. Unlike 'highlights' excerpts, or a collection of arias, this 'Great Scenes' version is meant to preserve the flow of the opera's story of love, obsession and madness. "

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Designed to be the follow up to the best-selling 2012 'Ballets for Children' box set, Fairytale Ballets collects performances from the Paris Opera Ballet and Dutch National Ballet troupes of some of the most popular ballets in the repertory: Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, Cinderella and Copp�lia. With a handsomely bound box and individual slipcases for each ballet featuring a specially-commissioned cover illustration from the artist that designs the covers for the top-selling Terry Pratchett fantasy novels. Intended to specifically appeal to the 10-16 age group, but all fans of these immortal ballets will find much to be compelled by with this budget priced box set.

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Aquiles Machdo, Konstantin Gorny, Katharine Goedner, Maria Bayo, Valentina Kutzarova, and Milagros Poblador star in this Bilbao Opera production of the Offenbach opera directed by Giancarlo Del Monaco and conducted by Alain Guingal.

This stellar production features a pair of operatic superstars, namely Grammy-nominated tenor Lawrence Brownlee and soprano supreme Sarah Coburn, who continually appear in the lead roles in top houses worldwide. The remaining characters are beautifully portrayed by distinguished singers from Lithuania and Kazakhstan. Providing brilliant and sensitive choral-orchestral support is the Grammy-nominated Maestro Constantine Orbelian (“the singer’s dream collaborator”) leading the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra and the Kaunas State Choir. In June 2021, Orbelian was named Music Director and Principal Conductor of New York City Opera. Bellini’s I Puritani is considered by many to offer the most beautiful music among some of his best-known operas, several of which are sublime masterpieces of the spectacular bel canto style of singing.

REVIEWS:

Bellini’s last opera, I Puritani, gets an excellent outing in this new recording. Sarah Coburn leads the cast as Elvira, and her voice suits the role perfectly. Her colororatura is perfect, her phrasing immaculate. Constantine Orbelian conducts with great sensitivity and detail. It is an all-round idiomatic and very welcome release.

– Opera Now

This performance of Bellini’s old warhorse bids fair to overtake all previous commercial recordings of it, In part this is due to the perfectly-balanced cast, but also to the energetic approach of all singers concerned, the lean but not irritating orchestra, and the fact that this issue finally restores all cuts to the score.

Some bel canto lovers will dislike Orbelian’s straightahead conducting. He does not linger unnecessarily on certain phrases or high notes, and allows only a bit of rubato in the phrasing of both orchestra and singers. Yes, Brownlee is allowed to linger a bit on his high D-flat in “A te, or cara” and Coburn to hold her high note in “Son vergin vezzosa.” Live with it. (Brownlee also sings the written but often inaccessible high F in “Credeo a misera.”) Otherwise, this is a wonderfully taut reading and, unlike José Lopez-Cobos who also conducts taut performances of bel canto operas, Orbelian injects life and feeling into the orchestra musicians. They do not sound like a bunch of automatons playing on autopilot.

Bottom line, I really enjoyed this recording and consider it the finest overall Puritani on the market.

– The Art Music Lounge

Collectors familiar with Trudelies Leonhardt’s previous Beethoven releases on the Globe and Meridian labels will know what to expect here. As before, she uses a Viennese Benignus Seidner model fortepiano dating from 1815. Its low notes have a warm, slightly nasal timbre, with an attractive singing quality to the middle and high registers that contrasts to the jangly sonorities we sometimes hear from other instruments from that period, such as the Graf fortepiano. Leonhardt’s genial performing style evokes the intimacy and spontaneous inflections typical of Wilhelm Kempff and Wilhelm Backhaus in their later years.

She takes the two Op. 49 sonatas’ modest dimensions on their own terms, projecting the melodies in natural, conversational arcs. Leonhardt’s tempo for the G major Op. 14 No. 1 first movement is more of a Moderato than the Allegro that Beethoven specifies, and we might wish for more rhythmic backbone in the development section, or a brusquer attack to the Andante’s soft staccato chords. By contrast, Leonhardt brings out the Allegro assai finale’s sense of surprise in her sophisticated timing of the ascending scales and rests.

Also note the uncommonly clear left-hand passagework in Leonhardt’s expansive and well-proportioned Op. 110 sonata opening movement. Her little luftpauses at phrase ends disrupt the rhythmic flow of the Allegro molto movement’s main theme. The expressive eloquence informing the third movement’s ”Klagender Gesang” best illustrates Leonhardt’s seasoned musicianship, although she doesn’t match Peter Serkin and Ronald Brautigam for virtuosic momentum in the fugue’s climax. The booklet includes an extensive essay about the Seidner fortepiano and excellent musical annotations.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

First release in a new four-CD series devoted to Schubert's late and greatest chamber music. Performances use period instruments, reconstructing the sound Schubert's own time. Quartet is led by Jaap Schroder, one of the legends of historical performance practice, and one of the greatest violinists of our day. Schubert's G major Quartet, D. 887, represents the high point of quartet-writing of the first three decades of the 19th century. Booklet text in English and Icelandic.

Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) was born in the village of Zelazowa Wola in Mazovia, the son of a French father and a Polish mother. This mixed heritage would weave like a double helix through Chopin's career as a composer-pianist. Following studies at Warsaw Conservatory (1826-29) and 've given concerts in Warsaw and Vienna (1829-30), Chopin settled in Paris in 1831. His most famous romantic liaison was with Aurore Dude Vant (aka novelist George Sand), the years 1838- 1847 coinciding with his most productive period. Their relationship ended shortly after, Chopin visited Britain in 1848, where his already precarious health Deteriorated. Almost 3,000 people attended his funeral the following year at the Madelaine in Paris though he Remained a Polish patriot Throughout his short life, he Became a French citizen. Although educated in the tradition of Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart and Clementi, and a great admirer of Bach, his music includes works based on both French and Polish models, as well as some innovations. Among the former May be Counted his piano sonatas; Bach's counterpoint found it's way (albeit metamorphosed) into his own multilayered music; his many Viennese Waltzes are more Parisian than; Polonaises and Mazurkas raised his thesis Polish dance forms to Unprecedented Heights or artistic achievement. Similarly, he transformed, the Nocturne, Initially popularized by the Irish-born Russian-based John Field, into a form much more Closely associated with himself. His Ballades, Preludes and Etudes were path-breaking and immensely influential. Two piano concertos, some songs and chamber works aside, he composed Exclusively for the solo piano and preferred to perform at salons privately rather than in public concerts.

The desire to explore the innate human drive for communication is the focus of Babel. For this recording the Calidore String Quartet gathered music which transmits ideas by imitating language; its rhythms, cadences and intentions. But it also explores what happens when music substitutes for language. When it fills the void of forbidden speech or even how it carries on when language has been exhausted. The result, a compilation of quartets by Schumann, Shostakovich, and Caroline Shaw, demonstrates the visceral forms of expression that exist at the intersection of music and language. The Calidore String Quartet has been praised by The New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” and the Los Angeles Times for its balance of “intellect and expression.” Recipient of a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists, the Calidore String Quartet first made international headlines as winner of the inaugural $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition. The quartet was the first North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and is currently in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two).

REVIEW:

The Schumann comes across beautifully, with plenty of tender, intimate inner dialogue and a fine feeling for Schumann’s left-field attitude to conventional form. Maybe there could be more subversive humour, but it’s still refreshing to hear this marvellous, still under-appreciated music treated with such understanding and obvious affection.

Like many contemporary pieces, Caroline Shaw’s Three Essays comes with a detailed programme, but it’s perfectly possible to enjoy it just as abstract music: playful, heartfelt, exuberant and always surprising enough to hold the attention. The playing is as strong and persuasive here as in the Schumann.

As for the Shostakovich, the overall conception is very impressive, each of the linked movements growing out of the previous one with a powerful sense of inevitability. The control of the two/three-in-a-bar rhythmic games in the finale is particularly well brought off. Where it’s slightly weaker – strange, given the disc’s declared intentions – is in that urgent, impassioned directness that characterises the finest Shostakovich quartet performances. Expressive and shapely as they are, the solo lines don’t sound as though they’re burning, aching to confide in you.

This is quality quartet playing, sympathetically recorded, but in the Shostakovich it just falls a couple of inches short of excellent.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This Chandos re-issue of Max Bruch’s Violin Concertos Nos. 2 and 3, recorded in 1998 by Lydia Mordkovitch (1944-2014) with Richard Hickox and the LSO is released in tribute to the late Russian-British violinist. • In the Violin Concerto No. 2, “Hickox draws radiant sounds from the LSO, and Ms. Mordkovitch ... plays with rapt dedication [and] breathtaking beauty…” (Guardian) • The third Violin Concerto’s robust, heroic opening concertante movement precedes a slow movement reminiscent of the same in the famous First Concerto and a rondo Finale dominated by a strongly rhythmic perpetuum mobile.

In today's world, one often perceives a division between art and academia, and composers and musicologists generally don't have much to say to one another. But that division has not always existed. Brahms himself was surrounded by a circle of academics who for him were also a source of animated comradeship. With some of them, Brahms would go on long walks outside Vienna and even on summer holidays.+ The men enjoyed long and sometimes loud, discussions about their shared obsessions, discoveries and findings. Brahms had these very discussions to thank for his lifelong interest in "early music". He even collaborated intensively on the critical editions of Couperin, Handel and Bach's sons and received interesting and useful advice form his friends. Since adopting a new artistic profile, The Hague Philharmonic is demonstrating more than ever that symphonic music can still be meaningful to large and diverse audiences in the 21st century. The ensemble performs regularly at various major concert halls around the world. Their ambitions are spreaheaded by a proactive education policy and are the driving force behind music education in the region.

In the history of recording, there have been literally dozens and dozens of recordings of Hector Berlioz's monstrous masterpiece "Symphonie Fantastique", a work that is arguably the first musical masterpiece of terror. Judging by the performance given here on Naxos by Yoav Talmi and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, plenty! With the recording quality as high as it is, and the recording itself very well priced, this version of Berlioz's nightmarish masterpiece has much to show, including the piece de resistance, the "Witches Sabbath" in the fifth movement, with the use of the ancient chant "Dies Irae" ringing out in the trombones (a chant that would find it's way into the music of such chilling movies as A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Poltergeist).

With this recording of chamber music composed by Beethoven at three key moments in his life, Alpha begins a collaboration with the WDR of Cologne and its various ensembles. Here a group of chamber musicians from the symphony orchestra presents the string quintets op.29 (1801) and op.104 (1817), thus linking Beethoven’s exuberant early period with that of the worry, discouragement and anguish caused by the conflict over custody of his nephew Karl. The album comes to a majestic conclusion with the Fugue, op.137 (1817).

That globetrotting composer Camille Saint-Saëns wrote La Princesse jaune in 1872, exemplifying the current craze for all things Japanese. Kornélis, played by the tenor Mathias Vidal, dreams only of the Land of the Rising Sun. Under the influence of a hallucinogenic potion, he becomes infatuated with Ming, a fantasy princess. His cousin Léna – the soprano Judith van Wanroij – despairs of this passion and does not dare to confess her own feelings to Kornélis, who eventually comes to his senses. The running time of this opera enables us to offer a coupling in the shape of a previously unrecorded version of Saint-Saëns’s six Mélodies persanes, thus extending the guiding thread of a yearning for exotic horizons in another direction. Leo Hussain conducts the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse in both works.

REVIEW:

With La Princesse jaune, Saint-Saëns, his librettist Gallet and the co-directors of the Opéra-Comique, who commissioned the opera, were attempting to take advantage of the Parisian vogue for the Orient, in particular Japan and its art and culture (the craze was known as japonisme). Gallet made a rather unlikely choice: he placed the Japanese-themed story in a Dutch town, in a room converted to an artists’ studio. There are just two characters. An overture is followed by arias and duets, all interspersed with spoken dialogue. Spoken word may be off-putting but the little there is – a few minutes all in all – integrates seamlessly with the sung text.

The story concerns Kornélis, a Dutch doctor fascinated with Japanese culture. His young cousin Léna is in love with him. Under the effects of a hallucinogenic drug, the fixated Kornélis falls in love with the subject of a portrait, a Japanese princess named Ming. His perception of reality is profoundly distorted. He believes Léna is Ming inhabiting a fairy-tale land. The potion wears off and Kornélis returns to reality. He yields to the charms of the despairing Léna and takes her in his arms.

Kornélis is sung by lyric tenor Mathias Vidal, who specialises in French and Italian roles. He clearly relishes this repertoire, and is well suited to Kornélis’s arias. He puts his sonorous tone to splendid use, with fine diction, projection and vitality. In the air J’aime, dans son lointain mystère (I love, in its different mystery) with its gently rocking accompaniment, Vidal increases the atmospheric mood as he extols to Léna the glories of Japan, a paradise he dreams of. Another highlight is the solo described as Kornélis’s vision: he drinks the potion and gazes at the portrait of Ming, imploring the image to come to life. At this key moment, Vidal provides all the necessary tenderness and a heartfelt sincerity.

Dutch soprano Judith van Wanroij is a convincing Léna. I have encountered her previously in mainly French Baroque opera including Lemoyne’s Phèdre on Bru Zane (review). She sings with plenty of character the air Outsou Sémisi Kamini when Léna finds a poem that Kornélis wrote to Ming. In her high range, Wanroij’s tone hardens slightly; I generally prefer a warmer soprano tone. In the second air Je faisais un rêve insensé (I was dreaming a foolish dream), there is suitable emotion and a pleasing honesty as Léna realises that Kornélis has fallen in love with a portrait.

Another highlight is the delightful and affecting duet Ah! Quel nuage d’or s’ouvre (Ah! what a golden cloud). Drugged, Kornélis believes that Léna is Ming who has come to life, and expresses his love. An unnamed women’s vocal ensemble adds to the mood: they sing a short passage in Japanese, just once.

The narrator is the soprano, and a French native speaker, Anaïs Constans. (Spoken word has been omitted in the Chandos recording of La Princesse jaune from 1996 at Lugano with soloists Carlo Allemano and Maria Costanza Nocentini and the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana under Francis Travis – review.)

A yearning for oriental and exotic vistas continues in Saint-Saëns’s six Mélodies persanes (Persian Melodies). Late 19th-century Parnassian poet Armand Renaud was attracted to Persian and Japanese verse. His collection of poems Les Nuits persanes (Persian Nights) was published in 1870. It is easy to imagine how Renaud’s verse would have inspired Saint-Saëns; that same year he set six of the poems for voice and piano. In 1891 he orchestrated Mélodies persanes for solo voices, chorus and orchestra. He also took the opportunity to ‘reorganise’ them into a Symphonic Ode or Cantata with the title Nuits persane by connecting the orchestral songs with “orchestral preludes and transitions and added a spoken narration with passages of melodrama”.

Bru Zane presents a new version, which strips away the choral contribution but adds an orchestral prelude and interlude taken from Nuits persane. It has been decided here to allocate a different soloist to each mélodie. I definitely respond to the exotic tone-pictures in this new guise. I savour Renaud’s imaginative if flowery text and the composer’s glorious setting. A stand-out: La Brise (The Breeze) sung by Philippe Estèphe in a hearty, rich-toned baritone; one relishes the exotic rhythms as the girl gives the sultan a special dance watched by the eunuch. Another highlight: the exquisitely beautiful Au cimetière (In the graveyard) sung by Anaïs Constans; she demonstrates her accomplished high register and produces a meaningful expression as the protagonist sitting at the warrior’s grave.

Leo Hussain conducts the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse. They play impressively, with a fine balance between accuracy and expression. There also are a number of outstanding solo contributions. As shown on a promo video clip, the studio sessions at the Halle aux Grains in Toulouse were made under Covid-19 protocols: face masks when appropriate, social distancing and so on. No problems whatsoever with the satisfying recorded studio sound. As one has come to expect from the Bru Zane Opéra français series, the presentation of this CD-book maintains the label’s highest standards. The hardback book in French and English contains the full opera libretto, synopsis and four valuable essays, plus the texts of the Mélodies persanes.

I had been unsure of Louis Gallet’s libretto with just two characters. Yet La Princesse jaune has far exceeded my expectations. In a performance as notable as this, Saint-Saëns’s short opéra-comique is highly recommended, and the glorious Mélodies persanes are a bonus.

-- MusicWeb International

OehmsClassics is delighted to announce the future cooperation with Andres Orozco-Estrada and his Tonkunstler-Orchestra Niederosterreich. This recording of Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14 with the Tonkunstler Orchestra is the first CD being issued.

This 2015 re-issue of romantic chamber music recordings pays tribute to the late violinist Lydia Mordkovitch (1944-2014). • Featuring pieces originally for, or arranged for, violin by Wagner, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, and others, the CD centerpiece is Ernst Chausson’s lush Poème – an original violin work and an apt title for the entire collection. • It is further complemented by Ravel’s early one-movement sonata (Sonate posthume, 1897), his first chamber work and his first attempt at sonata form, and Sospiri, Op. 70, Elgar’s last short piece for violin and piano. Recorded 1989-96.

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This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Mikhail Pletnev is an artist whose genius as pianist, conductor and composer enchants and amazes audiences around the globe. His musicianship encompasses a dazzling technical power and provocative emotional range, and a searching interpretation that fuses instinct with intellect. Under his leadership, in a few short years the Russian National Orchestra achieved towering stature among the world's orchestras. They now present Tchaikovsky's stunning Symphony No. 1 and his Slavonic March, Op. 31.

"Pletnev is a most caring and thoughtful shaper of moods as the First Symphony shows. The playing is finely nuanced to match the strong balletic character. Indeed it made me think of Nutcracker more than once." - MusicWeb International, (Referring to original DG release now reissued on Pentatone.)

Alongside its ongoing and much lauded Haydn and Schubert series, both on-stage and on-record, the Doric String Quartet with this Mendelssohn album is adding a new milestone in its repertoire. Mendelssohn wrote and published these three quartets at very different stages in his life and they therefore outline the complete trajectory of his creative output. The early Op. 12, also called No. 1, was composed in London and includes many musical allusions to Beethoven, dead only a few years before its composition. These subtly contrast with Mendelssohn’s genially flowing energy. While Op. 44 No. 3, which incorporates many deft variations, developments, and combinations, follows an extended honeymoon tour and Mendelssohn’s twenty-ninth birthday, Op. 80 emerged from a bout of helpless depression after the sudden death of Mendelssohn’s older sister and confidante, Fanny. Mendelssohn described this quartet as a Requiem, and the nervous agitation often found in his music here bursts forth with full force. Resignation, agitation, and nostalgia shape the work, the almost shocking finality of which may be said to prefigure Mendelssohn’s own death only six months later.

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REVIEW:

Op. 44/3 is the longest of the quartets, and the outer movements can sometimes come across as prolix. The Doric’s performance steers clear of this trap – again through the controlled variety and technical ease of their music-making – as well as tripping the light fantastic in the scherzo, and laying bare the emotional ambiguity of the Adagio. I look forward to Volume 2.

– BBC Music Magazine

This outstanding release was recorded live at The Library of Congress on January 28, 30, and February 1 1946, and this is the first time they have ever been available to the public! Beethoven’s 10 Sonatas for Violin and Piano are performed by Henri Temianka and Leonard Shure, two of the finest musicians of the first half of the twentieth century. This remastered recording has received glimmering reviews: “The performances are magnificent: bold and fresh, technically fluid and musically insightful… exciting…elegant…exceptional grace… this duo balances formidable power with magisterial command.” (The New York Times) “A great hit in the Beethoven discography… one of the most beautiful surprises to the discophile in recent years… makes you hold your breath constantly… A priceless treasure.” (Diapason)

Light and Darkness Religious inspiration: Franz Liszt´s religious compositions for piano solo. Interpreted by Martin Filjak. One of the most exciting artists to emerge in recent years, Martina Filjak is garnering international praise for her poetic passion and technical mastery at the keyboard. She came to international attention by winning the Gold Medal, the 1st prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2009. During the past seasons she has performed with esteemed orchestras that include the Cleveland Orchestra, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern, the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Barcelona and the Japan Century Orchestra. Filjak’s most recent conductor collaborations include Michael Schønwandt, Heinrich Schiff, Theodor Guschlbauer, JoAnn Falletta, Alexander Shelley, Markus Poschner, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Josep Caballé-Domenech, Tito Munoz, Carlos Miguel Preto und Stefan Sanderling. Based in Berlin, Martina Filjak speaks seven languages. Fortunately, for an active performer, she loves to travel.

Pianist Jan Schulmeister (b. 2006) belongs to the sixth generation of the Cern�-Schulmeister musical family. Jan Schulmeister has been playing the piano since he was five years old. He is a student of Bc. Eva Zonov� at Elementary Art School in Kromer�. Since the age of seven he regularly participates in national and international piano competitions where he gathers the highest awards. He cooperates with many Czech orchestras such as Brno Philharmonic, Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra in Olomouc and Prague chamber Orchestra. He performed under the conduction of personalities such as Tom� Netopil, Davies or Jakub Klecker. On this release, he presents a Romantic program of works by Johannes Brahms, Frederic Chopin, and Robert Schumann.

This one-of-a-kind release features two of the leading musicians of the twentieth century, Mstislav Rostropovich and Sviatoslav Richter in live performances of sonatas. Especially notable is the Prokofiev sonata from Moscow 1950, which was the piece’s world premiere performance. Two other sonatas, by Beethoven and Brahms, are being released here for the first time. These two concerts took place in March 1950 and June 1964, when both of these remarkable twentieth century musicians were at the peak of their careers.

For Johannes Brahms, the essence and defining feature of chamber music resided in the string quartet, and the form commanded so much respect and rigor from him that he burnt dozens of his first attempts at the genre. This shows how much the three quartets brought together here, and added to quite naturally by the sublime piano quintet, represent the quintessence of that great resident of Vienna. It is a magical climax to this outstanding collection of Brahms’s complete chamber music works released by B Records, still under the auspices of La Belle Saison.

Friedrich Kuhlau (1786 - 1832) lived and worked during a transitional period of classical music. A contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert, his works remain almost unknown to this day, except for some compositions for the flute. The compositional style of the sonatas featured in this recording perfectly identifies with that of his contemporaries, while showing some differences in content; the structure of the sonatas is that of the classical period, but the use of melodic themes and harmony looks to the romantic period. These interpretations of the sonatas for flute and piano highlight the constant dialogue between the two instruments; in fact there is a continuous thematic exchange, which the artists found interesting to discover and highlight. The synergy is perceived above all in choppy tempos, while in every Adagio or Andante the flute assumes the role of the solo instrument, and the piano accompanies and responds. The themes in the slow movements are sweet and moving, and the composer manages to evoke emotions that are always different from each other, thus bringing out his predisposition for this type of tempo, present even in the most brilliant movements: in fact in every allegro, even in the one characterized by the greatest energy, there is a moment of tranquility in which the composer takes the time to make performers and listeners ponder.

Beyond Beethoven explores four works by close contemporaries of the great master composer in the early part of the 19th century, chosen partly due to the connections between the composers, Beethoven and his Op. 17 Sonata, and partly to dispel enduring modern myths about the instrument’s limited options. Performing on original period instruments (an 1810 cor solo by Lucien Joseph Raoux, and an 1815 fortepiano by Johann Peter Fritz), Anneke Scott and Steven Devine, take us on a compelling journey through this enlightening corner of the piano and horn repertoire.

This new release is the thirteenth volume in DOREMI’s Svaiatoslav Richter Archives series. Considered one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century, Svaiatoslav Richter was known for his virtuosic technique, vast repertoire, and the depth of his interpretations. On this volume, he performs Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 alongside the USSR State Orchestra, George Georgescu conducting. The performance was recorded live in Moscow in 1958. The other performances are of Etudes on Caprices by Paganini, Marchenbilder for Viola and Piano, and 3 Fantasiestucke for Cello and Piano recorded in 1986, 1985, and 1969, respectively. He is joined on this volume by cellist Pierre Fournier and violist Yuri Bashmet.