This 18-opera collection displays the scope of The Royal Opera's work. From the sumptuous beauty of Richard Eyre's La traviata and the picturesque realism of John Copley's La bohème to the psychological intensity of David McVicar's Salome and Kasper Holten's Król Roger, the impressive collection spans more than two hundred years of great operatic works from the classical period to the present day. Featuring some of the company's most popular guest artists, including Renée Fleming, Jonas Kaufmann, Joseph Calleja and Diana Damrau, and conductors including The Royal Opera's Music Director Antonio Pappano, The Royal Opera Collection is a dazzling tour of operatic treasures by Mozart, Verdi, Bizet, Wagner, Mascagni, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Richard Strauss, Szymanowski, Britten and George Benjamin. This title is a re-packaging of The Royal Opera Collection (OA1244BD) at budget price, including the same content and booklet as the original release (which will be discontinued).

After the tremendously successful first Rendez-Vous with Martha Argerich, this second volume will certainly thrill music lovers from all around the world again. For this new edition, Martha Argerich partners with high-profile musical friends such as Sylvain Cambreling, Renaud Capu�on, Charles Dutoit, Gabriela Montero, Edgar Moreau, Akane Sakai and many others in new repertoire like Mendelssohn' Second Piano Trio, or in stalwarts of her repertoire such as Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, Beethoven's 'Kreutzer' Sonata or Schumann's Kinderszenen. In total: 6 albums that will allow you to marvel at the art of Martha Argerich and her friends in state of the art new recordings.

Robert Schumann’s songs are not only one of the high points of musical Romanticism, they also represent a unique marriage of words and music. Not since Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s pioneering recording in the 1970s has there been a singer who has explored Schumann’s entire lieder output in such detail. As one of the foremost lieder singers of our day, Christian Gerhaher has gone even further than Fischer-Dieskau and together with his brilliant pianist Gerold Huber has realized one of his dearest wishes after more than three decades of intensive engagement with Schumann’s music.

Their 11-CD edition of Robert Schumann: The Complete Songs will be released on September 3, 2021 and will be available digitally as well. A co-production between Sony Classical and BR-KLASSIK, with the support of the International Song Centre Heidelberg, initiated by the Heidelberger Frühling music festival, this set features 299 songs – almost the whole of the composer’s lieder output. The approach adopted by Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber is artistic and biographical rather than encyclopaedic. Schumann famously focused on lieder composition during two periods in his life: 1840–41 and 1849–53. By analogy with this focus, the first six CDs are devoted to the earlier period, the remaining five to the later years. Within this arrangement, Gerhaher and Huber have consciously eschewed a purely chronological or purely thematic approach, their aim being to preserve what for Schumann himself was the essential unity of his song cycles and to embed the individual songs within a chronological and thematic inner context. The songs that Schumann wrote during his youth and that were not published during his lifetime have not been included in this project. Also omitted are the melodramas and the works that deviate from classical song form or that are a part of much longer works. In the wake of these recordings, Gerhaher has also subjected his earlier Schumann releases to a critical overhaul. The bulk of the songs that appeared in his earlier albums Dichterliebe and Melancholie in 2004 and 2007 respectively have been re-recorded (among these songs are Dichterliebe op. 48 and the Sechs Gedichte und Requiem op. 90); conversely, other earlier recordings, including the Eichendorff Liederkreis op. 39, have been taken over into the present set. This unique project acquires an extra appeal as a result of new recordings of the cycles for female voice, the rarely heard duets and trios and works for several voices such as the Spanisches Liederspiel op. 74, in which Schumann raised the medium to a whole new artistic level. Among the other eminent artists featured in this edition are Sibylla Rubens, Camilla Tilling, Julia Kleiter, Wiebke Lehmkuhl, Martin Mitterrutzner, Christina Landshamer and Anett Frisch.

The extensive booklet includes all the song texts together with an introduction by the German musicologist Laurenz Lütteken, while Gerhaher himself has set down his personal thoughts on the individual songs. A detailed index completes the documentation. These recordings were supported by the Robert Schumann Research Centre in Düsseldorf.

REVIEWS:

A wonderful achievement and a marvel of sustained artistry: subtle, intelligent performances, impeccably prepared and movingly executed.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, October 2021)

It’s undoubtedly a fine, constantly rewarding set, with every song delivered with the fastidious attention to detail and to the individual coloring of each phrase that has always been a feature of Gerhaher’s lieder singing.

– Guardian (UK)

Following the success of 100 Christmas Classics (Capriccio C7331) comes Christmas Meditation, featuring 100 choral and vocal works from across the centuries. The set encompasses sacred Renaissance treasures including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Bach/Gounod’s Ave Maria, Handel’s Baroque masterpiece Messiah (‘He shall feed his flock’) and classic Christmas carols such as It Came Upon A Midnight Clear by Richard Storrs Willis and Franz Xaver Gruber’s Stille Nacht (‘Silent Night’). Featuring some of the most renowned choral institutions, Christmas Meditation offers listeners a classical Christmas to remember.

REVIEWS:

A rather sumptuous collection of seasonal choral works, instrumental pieces and carols. --BBC Music Magazine

After the success of the 5 CD box “100 Christmas classics” (Capriccio C7331), the new 5 CD box “Christmas Meditation” contains 100 choral and instrumental works from past centuries. It contains works from 43(!) composers, including excerpts from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Bach/Gounod's Ave Maria, Handel's Baroque masterpiece Messiah, and traditional and classical carols such as "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" by American composer Richard Storrs Willis, and Franz Xaver Gruber's "Silent Night”. With some of the most renowned choirs, “Christmas Meditation” offers you an unforgettable Christmas.

In addition to world-famous Christmas music, in this box you will also discover previously unknown but no less beautiful work by Bruch, Rheinberger, Carl Neuner, Wagenseil, Robert Fuchs, Johann Philipp Reichert or Johann von Herbeck. Cannot be missed!

--Stretto

As the central figure of Spanish music in the first half of the last century, de Falla (1876-1946) came to define the sound of Spain for listeners beyond its borders. Folk music, romanticism, neoclassicism, modernism: all the prevalent styles of his time were assimilated and absorbed within a personal idiom that advanced the work of notable predecessors such as Albeniz and Granados in establishing a distinctively Spanish idiom for art music, making him a worthy contemporary of other composers outside the central European mainstream from Vaughan Williams in England to Bartók in Hungary and Sibelius in Finland. Falla’s cycle of Seven Popular Spanish Songs is a perfect synthesis of artsong and folksong, performed here in Luciano Berio’s orchestration by Marta Senn and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela under the baton of Eduardo Mata, the Mexican conductor renowned for his dynamic interpretations of Hispanic repertoire. The songs return in their instrumental guise as the Suite populaire espagnole, with the cellist Timora Rosler accompanied by Klára Würtz. Rafael Puyana is a uniquely sympathetic soloist in the Harpsichord Concerto which gave the instrument new life beyond its Baroque associations. Benita Meshulam is widely recognized as the inheritor of Alicia de Larrocha’s mantle with her superbly atmospheric recordings of Spanish piano music.

REVIEW:

Manuel de Falla Collection is an honest title, since the five CDs present only a selection of his works, including well-known ones such as Nights in Spanish Gardens, El Amor Brujo, and The Three-Cornered Hat. The recordings with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra from 1981 convey particularly well the intensity of Spanish emotional worlds that Central Europeans like to assume. The round is opened with El Amor Brujo in a striking and lively performance. The interpretation of the Seven popular Spanish Songs, as well as Homenajas let the listener dive into Spanish worlds. The three dances from The Three-Cornered Hat in the version for orchestra will be joined by others in the piano version on a later CD.

For the recordings made in Venezuela, the conductor Eduardo Mata certainly holds the orchestra together and inspires it to effective performances. One could well imagine more sensitivity here, the nocturnal sultriness of the tango instead of the midday heat, so to speak, but there is little more to offer in the way of fire and color. More delicacy without sacrificing the technical quality of the recording is offered by the oldest recording.

In Nights in Spanish Gardens, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra performs under the judicious direction of Günther Herbig. The singers go along with the emotional South American approach, not without delicately savoring the music.

The two pianists offer mature quality. Benita Mehuslam, who has also recorded the complete works for piano by De Falla on the label, is featured here with excerpts, Dances from the The-Cornered Hat and Spanish pieces. In the only chamber work, besides the piano music, Klara Würtz accompanies cellist Timora Rosler on the piano in the Suite Populaire Espagnole. The two artists, who have also won awards as a duo, give the top dance of sensitivity and European noblesse, so to speak, with their interpretation that concludes the collection. Harpsichordist Rafael Puyana from Colombia can show all the registers of his skills in the harpsichord concerto. Here and also in El Retablode Maese Pedro as well as in Psyche the Solistas de Mexico play, again conducted by Eduardo Mata. Those who want to experience this composer intensively will find in this compilation a good opportunity to be infected by the joie de vivre of the music.

-- Pizzicato

The son of a Weimar-based organist, Johann Krebs (1713-1780) entered the Thomasschule in Leipzig under the tutelage of Capellmeister Bach at the age of 12 in 1726. There he remained for the best part of a decade, and a glowing testimonial from Bach commended his talents on the clavier, violin and lute, as well as in composition. Krebs never attained the Leipzig post which his instrumental talents deserved, but he served as an organist in several churches south of Leipzig through the course of a long and distinguished professional life which reached fruition as organist at the court of Prince Friedrich of Gotha-Altenburg from 1755 onwards. The inveterate traveler and commentator Charles Burney reported that ‘M. Krebs of Altenburg, scholar of Sebastian Bach, has been much admired for his full and masterly manner of playing the organ.’ The style of Krebs’s own music reflects the transitional period in which he lived. The hand of the master lightly guides the cosmopolitan elegance of the three partitas on album 1 of this collection. Krebs compiled a Clavier-Übung (Keyboard Practice) of his own in 1744, from which Michele Benuzzi performs a C major suite and, six lively Italianate sonatas. A volume of six suites from 1746 shows the influence of the galant style which was coming into fashion at the time, embodied by the output of Bach’s most accomplished son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Several more suites here are sophisticated examples of Krebs’s mastery in the ‘French and Italian taste’ as well as demonstrating the fluency of his keyboard writing and the craftsmanship of his counterpoint.

This important collection joins several other albums of little-known keyboard music from the period, recorded for Brilliant Classics by Michele Benuzzi. A student of Ottavio Dantone, he has performed the complete sonatas of Scarlatti and given recitals at major festivals in Europe and Asia.

Boris Giltburg is lauded worldwide as a deeply sensitive, insightful and compelling interpreter, with critics praising his impassioned approach to performance. This project to record all of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas is a personal exploration for Giltburg, driven by curiosity and his profound respect for the composer. These exceptional performances received widespread critical acclaim upon their original digital release and this premiere release includes extended personal and informative booklet notes written by the pianist. From the vivid energy of the early sonatas, through the dark passions and enchanted lyricism of Beethoven’s middle period, to the awe-inspiring transcendence of the final sonatas – this cycle runs the full gamut of human emotion.

At home in repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Shostakovich, in recent years he has been increasingly recognized as a leading interpreter of Rachmaninoff. He is recording the complete Beethoven piano concertos for Naxos with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (RLPO) and Vasily Petrenko. In 2018 he won Best Soloist Recording (20th/21st century) at the inaugural Opus Klassik Awards for his Naxos recording of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Carlos Miguel Prieto, coupled with the Études-Tableaux.

Past praise for previously released performances included in this set (digital video format only):

Beethoven: 32 Piano Sonatas, Vol. 3, Nos. 8-11

In keeping with the character of both the Op 14 Sonatas, Giltburg’s approach is prevailingly lyrical. For me, the two standouts of the series thus far are Opp 13 and 22. I can think of no other performance of the Pathétique that imbues the Grave introduction with a greater sense of melancholy desolation. The bright, ingratiating Op 22 is also brimful of character, its narrative unfolding with a charming urgency.

– Gramophone

Beethoven: 32 Piano Sonatas, Vol. 8, Nos 27-29

These interpretations are enormously pleasurable and at times revelatory. Always clean and never showy, Giltburg’s pianism is ideally suited to late Beethoven, and his touch throughout is light and flexible. His Hammerklavier lacks fury at the outset but magnificently makes up for that in the closing fugue, where his easy control of the tumult of voices is impressive.

– BBC Music Magazine

Cameron Greider is a guitarist, producer and composer who has worked with Joan Baez, Chris Cornell, Natalie Merchant, Sean Lennon, Freedy Johnston, Rufus Wainwright, P.M. Dawn and many others. He started on classical guitar at age 12, but soon figured out that by putting a microphone inside the instrument and hooking it up to the family stereo, he could rattle the windows of their Washington D.C. house. In 1988 he moved to New York to study at the New School Jazz and Contemporary Music program, and soon found himself playing gigs with local singer-songwriters. In 1993 he auditioned for his first tour, with alternative hip-hop group P.M. Dawn, and the next week he was playing with them on the Tonight Show. He would go on to play and co-write on their next few records. Writing for strings led to an interest in classical music, which soon became an obsession. He went back to school at the Mannes conservatory to study music theory, piano, composition, and conducting. He enjoys writing for groups from string quartets to full orchestra and has contributed arrangements to film scores as well as pop songs. He also arranges classical pieces for his electric guitar duo with Jack Petruzzelli, High Low Duo. Jack Petruzzelli is a seasoned touring and recording musician. As a multi-instrumental performer, producer and songwriter, he has had the privilege of working with artists like Patti Smith, Ian Hunter, Joan Osborne, Rufus Wainwright and Sara Bareilles, to name a few. In the studio, Jack has collaborated with everyone from platinum artists to unknown sensations. He co-produced Joan Osborne's album Bring It On Home, which was nominated for Best Blues album of the year at the 2012 Grammy Awards.

Following up its widely acclaimed reissues of the Juilliard Quartet’s complete Epic and RCA Victor albums – originally issued between 1956 and 1960 – Sony Classical is excited to present a new box set collecting the earliest albums of this august American ensemble. Made between 1949 and 1956 in Columbia’s studio on Manhattan’s 30th St., these landmark recordings are mostly new to CD.

From its first appearances in New York, the Juilliard Quartet was identified as a champion of modern music. Its first recordings for American Columbia, all included here, were dedicated to the works of Alban Berg and Béla Bartók (then only recently deceased), as well as to Arnold Schoenberg (still very much alive), and to active American composers including William Schuman. But the heart of this release comprising 16 newly mastered CDs and also featuring works by Mozart, Ravel, Webern, Milhaud, Copland, Peter Mennin, Alexei Haieff and Andrew Imbrie, are three discs containing the premiere of Béla Bartók’s six quartets on records, which were set down in 1949. They appeared on LP and 78s the following year, bringing the Juilliard Quartet its first real celebrity. Recorded on 78-rpm shellacs rather than on tape, this path-breaking set thus consists of live, unedited performances. When reissued some years ago on CD – the only portion of the new Sony Classical box set ever to have appeared before on silver discs – it was rapturously praised in Fanfare magazine for “its joy of discovery, which remains completely fresh and vivid” even though numerous other traversals of the Bartók cycle had appeared in the meantime.

Another Juilliard milestone was the premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s four quartets on records, set down in 1951–52. At last, all these historic Juilliard String Quartet recordings are available to today’s music lovers.

REVIEWS:

[An] engrossing 16-disc box set of [the Juilliard Quartet's] earliest recordings for the Columbia label, many appearing on disc for the first time.

What other quartet of that era would have made its recorded debut not with standard repertoire but with a cantata by Darius Milhaud, written just a few years before? There are works here by composers both renowned (Berg, Webern, Copland) and virtually forgotten (Peter Mennin, Alexei Haieff), all rendered in the Juilliard’s trademark sound: X-ray clear and devoid of schmaltz.

Two complete cycles anchor the set: Bartok (the first recording of his six quartets) and Schoenberg. Given how unfamiliar these works were at the time, the Juilliard’s confidence and authority is stunning. Subsequent recordings may have disclosed other aspects of this repertory, but that does not dampen the freshness and sense of discovery audible here.

-- The New York Times

If patience is a virtue, then fans of the Juilliard String Quartet’s earliest records must be saints. For only now have these much-cherished monaural recordings returned to circulation, some 70 years after their debuts, in a new 16-CD set from Sony Classical titled “Juilliard String Quartet: The Early Columbia Recordings, 1949-56.” The quartet, currently observing its 75th anniversary, is still going strong, though the present ensemble naturally comprises personnel entirely different from those selected for the group at its founding in 1946 by the composer William Schuman, then president of the famed Juilliard School in New York.

Sony has been good to the Juilliard, having previously released important sets of recordings from a bit later in the group’s life, specifically the 1950s and ’60s, when the quartet made what quickly became fabled discs for Epic and RCA Victor. The addition of this box means the quartet’s early prime is now thoroughly documented. (That said, good luck acquiring those Epic and RCA reissues, which were quicky snatched up—something worth keeping in mind while pondering this latest one.)

String quartets, with their changing personnel and specialized repertory, have rarely achieved lasting fame, at least among the larger population. They have never in modern times commanded the attention that celebrated instrumental soloists garner, and they haven’t the institutional resources that orchestras command. So releases like this one serve a special purpose. They make us aware of great musicians who might otherwise be, at best, dimly recalled. And, certainly in this case, they return to public attention extraordinary performances that should never have been out of the limelight.

-- The Wall Street Journal

This new release is a recording of JAGD- a collective composition by Emil Miszk, Kuba Sokolowski, Hubert Zemler, Jerzy Rogiewicz, and Milosz Pekala. Marcelina Obarska writes: “Four raw, minimalist pieces use the poetics of hunting signals, but introduce a definite distortion into their score. The trumpet, which has a triumphant function in the hunting ritual, acts in dispersion here. The sounds of the trumpet are after-images of the proper signals, they are diluted, distant, stripped of their symbolic role. The ecstasy of the hunter is suspended, it appears to be impossible to accomplish. JAGD is a spell against ecstasy. At the same time, a suppressed hunting triumph is not replaced by another triumph; ecstasy does not turn into another ecstasy. It is left in the distance, to die. One can see in JAGD a gesture of renouncing ecstasy as an ultimate form of strong, firm, and explosive expression. Departing from it means turning to regularity and aesthetic severity, and simultaneously – to the meditative dimension of music.”

Orison is a sound prayer and meditation in seven parts. Composer Chris Campbell originally conceived Orison as a spatial piece within a sacred space. He envisioned presenting it in a church or a Zen center with performers, visual media, and planes of sound inhabiting different zones or rooms throughout the space. This album is the linear, concert version of that original conception, recorded with a large ensemble. The music is phantasmagoric, moving and shifting fluidly from one part to the next. Its timbres and lines dovetail and transform, moving through time into new forms, but always retaining some essence of their previous identity as they blossom into the next textural idea or sonic image. For Campbell, creating this music has been a way to process the world around him, things rising up and falling away. Its been a way to bear witness to cycles and events, both macro and intimate. Chris Campbell is a collaborator, composer, producer, and the Director of Recordings at innova recordings\/ACF. Praised as heady, possessing elements of post\-Minimalism, avant\-garde rock, jazz and global fusion styles that mingle and merge with dreamlike mutability...(The New York Times) and a surreal (or super\-real?) vortex...(Gramophone), Campbells music is focused on ritual and sonic texture, and how sound can transform space. In addition to his own music, Campbell has either produced or worked directly on the promotion and distribution of over 300 projects and albums (2 of them Grammy winners).

Hailed as an “epic traversal of solo violin repertoire” and a “monumental achievement” (Chicago Tribune), American violinist Jennifer Koh’s complete Bach & Beyond recordings, pairing J.S. Bach’s violin sonatas and partitas with 20th- and 21st-century works inspired by Bach’s groundbreaking masterpieces, are now available in a convenient, economical boxed set offering all three albums for the price of two. Bach & Beyond Part 1 features Koh’s “alluring performances” (The New York Times) of Bach’s Partitas Nos. 2 and 3, Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 2, Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne, and the world-premiere recording of Missy Mazzoli’s Dissolve, O My Heart, commissioned for Koh by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Newark Star-Ledger cited the violinist’s “distinctive voice over a range of styles.” Toronto’s The Whole Note said of Bach & Beyond Part 2, “Koh, as always, is superb, her intelligence and interpretation always matching her outstanding technique” in Bach’s Sonata No. 1 and Partita No. 1, Bela Bartok’s Sonata for Solo Violin Sz. 117, BB 124, and Saariaho’s Frises. Koh’s Bach & Beyond Part 3 earned BBC Music Magazine’s and ClassicsToday.com’s highest ratings for performance and recording quality. The Strad admired Koh’s “eloquent, artful, yet unadorned playing” in Bach’s Sonatas Nos. 2 and 3, Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VIII, and the world-premiere recording of John Harbison’s For Violin Alone, written for Koh. AllMusic said, “Koh’s series is highly recommended to those in search of an experience that will reward repeated hearings.” Audiophile Audition called it a “remarkable three-disc effort, recommended to all with a good degree of urgency.”

Excerpts of reviews from previously released volumes included in this set:

Bach & Beyond, Part 1

Koh makes short work of the Bach pieces—not in a bad sense: she just nails these works with a confident technique and a free-flowing, un-mannered style that remains true to Bach yet reminds us that a modern violinist is at the helm. Although ostensibly “modern”, the works by Saariaho and Mazzoli still incorporate time-honored traditions of solo-violin writing and don’t stray into what some might call “experimental” territory. These are both very ingratiating and accessible works to anyone who appreciates interesting, involving, intelligently written new violin music.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

Bach & Beyond, Part 2

Koh’s Bach is amazing as usual–so fluid and delivered with such a sensitively nuanced, confident authority. A personality emerges: is it Koh? is it Bach? It’s either or both, but ultimately, who cares? This is exceptional Bach playing. Throughout, Koh is in command, from the dazzling explications of the Bartók Fuga and Presto movements, to the sometimes frighteningly audacious dynamic and timbral assertions of the Saariaho.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

After a boxed set devoted to nineteenth-century French music (Alpha, 2015) and another containing Beethoven’s symphonies and overtures (Alpha, 2018), Jos Van Immerseel and his period-instrument ensemble Anima Eterna present an anthology of seven albums including recordings of major nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers of many nationalities. Whether it is Liszt with his symphonic poems, Orff with his Carmina Burana or Gershwin with his Rhapsody in Blue, all of them seem to be driven by a deep-seated urge to push back the formal limits of orchestral music by confronting it with other traditions and musical horizons, thus giving it a universal resonance.

This epic collection brings together all of Opus Arte's recordings from the Bayreuth Festival. Included are many of Wagner's much-admired operas which show how the mastery of composer, conductor, and performer can combine to create a true musical excellence. Wagner's epic four-opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, is a work of extraordinary scale and is given an interpretation that is both thrilling and sensitive by the conductor Christian Thielemann and a cast of renowned Wagner interpreters. Thielemann also presents an incredible account of Der fliegende Holländerin a recording which secured his place as the world's greatest Wagner conductor. Klaus Florian Vogt is staggering in the title role of Lohengrin, with Andris Nelsons brings out the best in the festival chorus and orchestra. This recording of Tannhäuser, Wagner’s tale of the struggle between spiritual and profane love, and of redemption through love, was described by Opera Journal as 'outstanding’, whilst Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which tells a humorous tale about artistically inclined craftsmen, was described as ‘on an entirely new Wagnerian scale...” (The Washington Post). The set is completed by the critically acclaimed recording of Tristan und Isolde starring the leading Wagner exponents Robert Dean Smith and Iréne Theorin in the title roles.

These recordings of Balakirev’s complete solo piano works by the much-lauded pianist Nicholas Walker have been hailed as ‘the reference set’ by the American Record Guide. Originally released between 2013 and 2020, these critically acclaimed performances are now collected together for the first time in a 6 album box set. Includes world premiere recordings. Hailed by the London Evening Standard as a 'prodigy, of awesome technical fluency backed by exceptional artistry', Nicholas Walker possesses a rare combination of talents combining sensitivity with 'the flair of a full scale virtuoso and a sparkling intelligence' (BBC Music Magazine). Nicholas Walker teaches at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he devised the celebrated keyboard skills course, the advanced level of which not only helps students to be proficient in all aspects of practical musicianship, but offers them the chance to learn how to improvise in various forms, such as minuets, variations, sonatinas and Mozart-type cadenzas, in addition to devising and performing a virtuoso transcription of their own.

CONTENTS:

• Balakirev: Piano Sonata in B flat minor
• Balakirev: Piano Sonata No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 5
• Balakirev: Piano Sonata in B flat minor, Op. 3 'Grand Sonata'
• Balakirev: Waltz No. 1 in G - Valse di Bravura
• Balakirev: Nocturne No. 1 in B flat minor
• Balakirev: Waltz No. 2 in F minor
• Balakirev: Waltz No. 3 in D - Valse Impromptu
• Balakirev: Nocturne No. 2 in B minor
• Balakirev: Waltz No.4 in B flat
• Balakirev: Nocturne No. 3 in D minor
• Balakirev: Waltz No. 5 in D flat major
• Balakirev: Nocturne in G sharp minor (early version of Nocturne No. 1)
• Balakirev: Fantasiestuck
• Balakirev: Chant du pêcheur
• Balakirev: Waltz No. 7 in G sharp minor
• Balakirev: Mazurka No. 1 in A Flat
• Balakirev: Mazurka No. 2 in C sharp minor
• Balakirev: Sonatina (Esquisses) in G
• Balakirev: Berceuse
• Balakirev: Mazurka No. 3 in B minor
• Balakirev: Mazurka No. 4 in G flat minor
• Balakirev: Dumka
• Balakirev: Mazurka No. 5 in D
• Balakirev: Rêverie in F major
• Balakirev: Mazurka No. 6 in A Flat
• Balakirev: Piece in F sharp minor
• Balakirev: Mazurka No. 7 in E flat minor
• Balakirev: Capriccio
• Balakirev: Scherzo No. 1 in B minor
• Balakirev: Novelette
• Balakirev: Pustinya
• Balakirev: Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor
• Balakirev: Fandango-Etude
• Balakirev: Spanish Serenade
• Balakirev: Caprice Brilliant Sur La Jota Aragonesa
• Berlioz: L'Enfance du Christ, Op. 25: La fuite en Egypte - Overture
• Balakirev: Scherzo No. 3 for Piano in F sharp major
• Balakirev: Spanish Melody
• Taneyev, S: Valse-Caprice No. 1 in A flat
• Taneyev, S: Valse-Caprice No. 2 in D flat major
• Glinka: Ivan Susanin (A Life for the Tsar): Overture
• Glinka: Ruslan and Lyudmila: Chernamor's March
• Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 - Romanza (transc Balakirev)
• Balakirev: Impromptu on the themes of two Preludes by Chopin
• Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 31
• Liszt: Mazurka brillante, S221
• Beethoven: String Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59 No. 2: Allegretto
• Beethoven: String Quartet No. 13 in B flat major, Op. 130: Cavatina
• Balakirev: Gondellied
• Balakirev: Tarantelle in B
• Balakirev: Polonaise Brillante
• Balakirev: La fileuse
• Balakirev: Au Jardin
• Glinka: Kamarinskaya
• Balakirev: Symphonic Poem 'Tamara'
• Balakirev: Polka in F sharp minor
• Balakirev: Elegy on the Death of a Mosquito
• Balakirev: La Danse De Sorcières (Witches Dance)
• Glinka: Ne Govori: Lyubov' Proydyot (Do Not Say: Love Passes Away)
• Balakirev: Tyrolienne
• Zapol'sky: Reverie
• Balakirev: Toccata
• Balakirev: The Lark
• Balakirev: Islamey - Oriental Fantasy

Past praise of previously released volumes included in this set:

Balakirev: Complete Piano Works Vol 1

Walker presents the works in reverse chronological order, thereby giving us the best and best-known work first. It is a masterly performance, fully on a par with or exceeding ones I have reviewed in recent years: Hinrose (Mirare 181, Nov/Dec 2012), Driver (Hyperion 67806, July/Aug 2011), and Hellaby (Cameo 2081, Sept/Oct 2009). Besides Kentner’s great recording (Naxos 111223, not available in US), I also enjoy Earl Wild’s (Ivory 73005, May/June 2004). Walker finds inner voices and emphasizes some different aspects of the harmony and form, making for a new and well thought out interpretation. He has the full technical capability to handle all of the demands of this score

– American Record Guide

Balakirev: Complete Piano Works Vol 3

This third volume of Balakirev’s complete piano works is built around his seven Mazurkas, joyous and colourful pieces with an unmistakable Slavic tone. This series continues to establish Walker as the new reference for Balakirev’s music.

– Musiq3

Balakirev: Complete Piano Works Vol 5

This one is particularly fascinating for transcription junkies, beginning with the spectacular (and spectacularly difficult) Reminiscences on Glinka’s A Life for the Czar, famous from Earl Wild’s 1969 recording. Walker is quite his equal—and that is saying something—and is also beautifully recorded in a realistic, sympathetic acoustic. Indeed, Walker’s playing throughout this absorbing disc is a pleasure to hear, with a sophisticated tonal palette and eschewing any superficial virtuosity: ‘bravura with integrity’ is how I would describe it. Why don’t we hear more of him?

–Gramophone