Warner Classics - Schubert: The Complete Piano Sonatas, Wanderer Fantasy - Elisabeth Leonskaja Eight CD set. These very recent recordings by Elisabeth Leonskaja, released on her label a few years ago, have been bought by Warner Classics at the occasion of her new signing as a Warner Classics artist.

Shaped by pianist Andrew von Oeyen's experience of lockdown, this solo recital comprises Bach's eight-movement Overture in the French Style BWV 831, Beethoven's Piano Sonatas No 13 in E flat and No 23 in F minor, 'Appassionata', and arrangements by Wilhelm Kempff of two movements that Bach wrote for accompanied flute. "Perhaps more than any other composer, Bach expresses the clearest sense of order in a chaotic world," says von Oeyen. "If Bach served as my first musical mooring in confinement, I returned to Beethoven for second-wave pandemic relief... I was now ready to weigh anchor and face the storm in the company of stalwart and indestructible 19th century sonatas. Crises, for all their destructiveness, can also lead to renewal and discovery."

Nicholas Angelich's new album is dedicated to Prokofiev, the so-called unclassifiable artist- considered revolutionary by some, neo-classical by others. Came to public attention as a virtuoso pianist, Sergei Prokofiev left a fascinating body of work, that of a composer torn between two societies, between the culture of his homeland and the unchallenged culture of the West.

In their first Warner Classics release of symphonic repertoire, the players of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and their Chief Conductor Michael Sanderling perform the four Brahms Symphonies and Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor. Founded in 1805, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (Luzerner Sinfonieorchester) is Switzerland's oldest orchestra. As Sanderling points out, Brahms made two visits to Lucerne.The location of Switzerland's central city, creates a link with Brahms," says Sanderling.It's proximity to the mountains, it's position on beautiful Lake Lucerne.. I can hear that in Brahms' symphonic music. I can hear his love for nature.. The purity of the air. And in his Symphony No 1, I think we can all hear the sound of the alphorn, which Brahms heard for the first time in Switzerland and which inspired the gorgeous theme [of the symphony's fourth movement]." Sanderling feels that, more than 200 years into it's existence, new vistas -especially in the symphonic repertoire of late Romanticism - are opening up for the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. He and the players are looking forward to further voyages of discovery.

Antonio Pappano conducts Rome's Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in two works from the earlier phase of Richard Strauss's career: a comparative rarity, the mercurial, virtuosic Burleske for piano and orchestra, with Bertrand Chamayou as soloist, and the epic autobiographical tone poem Ein Heldenleben, one of the composer's orchestral masterpieces. "Strauss always thought dramaturgically," says Pappano. "Recording this music in Italy, the link has to be through opera, with all it's theatricality, temperament, contrast and colour... You need a certain charisma in the sound, which these players achieve."

With the 10 arias on Tormento d'amore, Ian Bostridge demonstrates the important place that the tenor voice held in Italian opera from the mid-17th to the mid-18th century - often thought of as the era of the castrato. At this time, there were two main centres of opera in Italy: Venice, where such composers as Cavalli, Vivaldi, Cesti, Stradella, Sartorio and Legrenzi were active, and Naples, home to Provenzale, Caresana, Vinci and Fago. In addition to arias - two of them in world premiere recordings - the album offers five instrumental sinfonie and a traditional Neapolitan song, 'Lu cardillo', or 'The Goldfinch', a songbird closely associated with Naples. Bostridge is partnered by conductor Antonio Florio and his ensemble Cappella Neapolitana.

The EMI Classics recordings of C�cile Ousset (b. 1936), spanning the years between 1982 and 1991, would mark her third and most prestigious recording collaboration, launching her, at age forty-six, into the international limelight. Indeed, recognition did not come easily to this grand dame of the piano, who, at the age of fourteen, obtained her prize at the Paris Conservatoire under the tutelage of Marcel Ciampi and began the grueling rounds at major competitions shortly after: Geneva, Long-Thibaud, Queen Elisabeth and Busoni, as well as the inaugural edition of the Van Cliburn. As a young female pianist, doors remained firmly shut, even with the support of the great Arthur Rubinstein, who personally invested in Ousset's early career after witnessing her performance at the Long-Thibaud competition. Her rise to international fame came primarily in the 1970s, notably through her recordings for the German Eterna label as well as for Decca France. The year 1982 marked the release of her first solo recording with EMI, a vivid program pairing Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition with Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit. Writing in The Musical Times, Cyril Ehrlich lauds a "luminous tone" and a "sense of style", proclaiming, "C�cile Ousset is an exhilarating pianist". Her strong technique, based on the Russian method taught by Ciampi lends her playing a clear-cut and robust tone; her virtuosity is proved incontestable, revealing a mastery of sound, color and brilliance. Works of the French repertoire continued to occupy an important place in Ousset's programs. To France's greatest modernists, Debussy and Ravel, the pianist would consecrate significant recordings in the second half of the 80s. Liszt and Chopin were essential components of her repertoire as well. The recording of Chopin's Third Sonata brims with poignant lyricism and heroic sentiment, it's excellent pacing just as admirable as the naturalness of the playing, hardly ostentatious but in every way spellbinding. "Like Pollini," observes Gramophone, "the masterful Ousset commands in this work... [her] Chopin CD will give immense pleasure by reason of her indefatigable musical verve." A survey of C�cile Ousset's acclaimed concerto recordings for EMI may point to a seemingly-logical conclusion - that the pianist was drawn to the unabashedly-virtuosic heavyweights of the concerto literature: Rachmaninov, Saint-Sa�ns, Liszt, Prokofiev, Grieg, Tchaikovsky

Limited 11 CD set. "In his warm and serene person all the essential qualities of the great interpretative artist were blended in perfect harmony." Dennis Brain's life was cut short in 1957 when he was just 36, but he had already assured his reputation as the greatest horn-player of the 20th century. He remains an exemplar for his successors today. "Technical problems did not exist for him," continued the eulogy written by Walter Legge, EMI's legendary producer and founder of the Philharmonia Orchestra. "Over his instrument's whole range he had a mastery of intonation, of legato, of staccato, of dynamic range and, above all, of expressiveness." This 11CD collection presents all his Warner recordings as concerto soloist and chamber and ensemble player - including music composed with him in mind - and his most notable contributions to symphonic, choral and operatic works. He performs in several CD premieres - music by Handel, Strauss, Richard Arnell and Norman Forber Kay - and a 1953 recording now released for the first time: Vincent d'Indy's wind septet Chanson et danses.

The Beethoven concerto is a piece of overwhelming power," says violinist Vilde Frang. "It is somehow more than music - the dimension of it feels almost cosmic. The force of this concerto takes me by surprise, over and over again." Frang juxtaposes Beethoven's epic, lyrical work with Stravinsky's compact violin concerto, which pays spiky tribute to 18th century models. The conductor is Pekka Kuusisto, himself an adventurous violinist, in his role as Artistic Best Friend of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. "It was the chamber musical qualities of the Beethoven concerto that provided the key for me," says Frang. "The violin is constantly 'feeding' and playing around the orchestra... In it's own way, the Stravinsky too engages the soloist in a constant dialogue with the orchestra. With Pekka Kuusisto and the Bremen players, I really feel in such a comfort zone... There is a feeling of having everything to gain by gathering together, coming together.

2021 release. "A talent to reckon with: poised, committed, graceful and spirited," is how the Los Angeles Times has described the Russian-American cellist Nina Kotova. Her Warner Classics catalogue already includes an album of sonatas by Rachmaninov. It is now joined by a programme of German Romantic music which she recorded with the Brazilian-born pianist Jos� Feghali, a laureate of the Van Cliburn Competition who died aged just 53 in 2014. Spanning 65 years of musical history, the recital comprises works by Schumann and Brahms, who were close friends, and by Max Reger. He drew inspiration for his Suite No. 2 for solo cello, composed in 1914, from Pablo Casals's advocacy of Bach's solo suites.

BEETHOVAN Sonatas for Piano and Violin - Midori teams up with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet for Beethoven Sonatas. "Sonatas are really musical conversations between two artists. Melodies are traded back and forth. Timing is critical. There is no room for error in the absence of a large orchestra. Truly they are performances without a net. Midori and Thibaudet proved a deft pair. "

Two symphonies from the turbulent 1930s are juxtaposed in Lahav Shani's second Warner Classics release as Chief Conductor of The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra. Shani has described Kurt Weill's Symphony No 2, premiered by Bruno Walter in Amsterdam in 1933, as "one of my favourite pieces to conduct... It is tonal music, very melodic, very theatrical, and really not comparable to anything else." Shostakovich's powerful Symphony No 5, with it's enigmatic interplay of sincerity and irony, was chosen by Shani to conclude his inaugural concert as Music Director in Rotterdam in 2018.

Seven CD box set containing Ralph Vaughan Williams' complete symphonies. Vaughan Williams is a much revered figure in the history of British music. Included in this set is the ravishingly beautiful 'The Lark Ascending'. Conducted by Bernard Haitink, a one-time principal conductor of the London Philharmonic.

Kurt Masur's achievement is defined above all by his relationships with two orchestras exemplifying vastly different traditions. Having spent some 20 years as Kapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, which traces it's roots to the 15th century, he became the transformational music director of the New York Philharmonic, an embodiment of the New World. Through all this, his musical integrity remained consistent. As the New York Times wrote: "He brought to the podium the ardent conviction that music-making was a moral act that could heal the world." Masur himself put things more simply: "My goal is meaningful playing... What counts is to be able to communicate the composer's meaning to the audience... When I conduct Beethoven, I wouldn't like to replace Beethoven. He should be in your mind, not me." This 70CD set consolidates the entirety of the catalogues that Masur built for EMI and Teldec between 1974 and 2009.

DANIEL BARENBOIM - MOZART: COMPLETE PIANO SONATAS & PIANO VARIATIONS - WARNER CLASSICS - panning the length of his mature career and documenting stylistic reinvention as well as emotional change, Mozart's piano sonatas and variations occupy a fundamental position within the keyboard repertory. Here they are performed by one of the composer's best-known interpreters; crisp in detail and wide-ranging in mood, Daniel Barenboim's readings are among the most lauded in recording history.

2021 release. "The album's title Adela comes from a song by Rodrigo which constitutes the emotional culmination of our duo's programme. What counts is not the name, but the person we love and long for. Everyone certainly has such a person, and so we hope that each listener will find on our CD something close to his or her heart. The piano and classical guitar virtually never collaborate in music. However, after our first joint performance with Lukasz Kuropaczewski we immediately realised that we could create intriguing music worlds together. We followed the same line of thinking in our choice of programme, which derives from both the piano and guitar repertoires, though the spirit of the South that influences most of that music is more typically associated with the guitar tradition. In my arrangements of classical works, I strove to represent the sonic qualities of both instruments, their unique expression, and cultural associations. I reworked Domenico Scarlatti's famous "Sonata in D Minor (Toccata)" K. 141 so as to bring out it's Spanish roots. Titled "Domingo" on our album, it features distinctive flamenco qualities and an improvised layer. The "Aranjuez Concerto BWV 1056" is, as it's very name suggests, a fusion of the world's most famous piece for guitar and orchestra, Joaquin Rodrigo's "Concierto de Aranjuez", with Johann Sebastian Bach's "Keyboard Concerto in F Minor" BWV 1056. Themes from the second, slow movements of both concertos interlink here as in the film cross-cutting technique, and we swap roles, Lukasz leading the Bach theme while I take up Rodrigo's."

The first complete Schumann symphony cycle on disc, this set was recorded in Tel Aviv in 1956 by one of the most highly respected conductors of the post-war period. Paul Kletzki (1900-1973) brings out the fundamental strangeness and feverish excitement of Schumann's orchestral writing. His readings of these iconic works are key to understanding the path they have travelled towards the recognition they enjoy today.

John Williams Reimagined is a project of film score producer Robert Townson, who imagined an album where John Williams famous film themes are scored for a chamber trio of flute: Sara Andon, cello: Cécilia Tsan and piano: Simone Pedroni. A double album with hits, spanning a period of more than 50 years of terrific film music from Jane Eyre to the recent The Fabelmans and including, ET, Star Wars, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

2018 release. This album takes a look back at Chanticleer's favorite composers and works. It combines pieces from Renaissance and Baroque composers (Lassus, Byrd, Morley, Palestrina etc.) with 20th American works composed or arranged by Stucky, Bates, Gershwin (Summertime) and members of Chanticleer.

Alim Beisembayev, winner of the 2021 Leeds International Piano Competition, makes his album debut on Warner Classics with solo works by Liszt, including seven of the ambitious �tudes d'ex�cution transcendante. Born in Kazakhstan and trained primarily in the UK, Beisembayev has been praised by leading critics for the spellbinding Polish and maturity of his playing. "The Transcendental �tudes of Liszt are amongst the most challenging piano works ever written by any composer," he says. "Frequently described as tone poems, these inspirational works take the �tude to a new level... Since early childhood, I had been inspired by performances of these works by legendary pianists such as Cziffra, Richter and Kissin, never dreaming that I would one day be performing them myself... However, like most young pianists, the challenge, for me, was the attraction, and I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to record these pieces." This debut album follows the digital release in Autumn 2021 of a programme marking Beisembayev's victory at Leeds and comprising works by Scarlatti, Ligeti and Ravel.