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J.S. Bach: Musikalisches Opfer

Ricercar

$15.99 ~~$20.99~~ Save 25% Jan 24, 2025

Although it has been clearly established for which instruments the Musical Offering and the Art of Fugue were intended, the Musical Offering has continued to be the object of realisations for other instruments, such as Anton Webern's orchestrated version of the Ricercar a 6. Here Cindy Castillo marks the completion of a new organ in the German baroque style by Dominique Thomas in the church of Saint-Loup in Namur with her own realisation of this work, a monument to the late Baroque style.

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J.S. Bach: Musikalisches Opfer
Ricercar Jan 2025
CD
~~$20.99~~ $15.99

The Fantastic Philadelphians - A Dazzling Dance Spectacular / Ormandy
RCA Apr 2009
CD
$17.99

Wagner Liaisons

Berlin Classics

$19.99 Nov 28, 2025

The German star pianist Matthias Kirschnereitdedicates this album entirely to the piano cosmos of Richard Wagner?. Wagner himself wrote few works for solo piano, but he influenced many of his contemporaries and musical heirs with his work?. Matthias Kirschnereit presents a wide range of repertoire - Wagner: Sonata for the album M.W., Lied ohne Worte E major for Eduard Reitz, In das Album der Furstin M., Zurcher Vielliebchen Walzer, Polka, Notenbrief fur Mathilde Wesendonck, Ankunft bei den Schwarzen Schwanen; Wagner/Stradal: Schmerzen; Wagner/Rubinstein: Musikalische Bilder aus Siegfried; Liszt: Am Grabe Richard Wagners; Bizet: Premier Nocturne D Dur; Duparc: Aux etoiles; Langgaard: Stambogsblad; Bulow: Innocence; Bruckner: Erinnerung; Mendelssohn: Lied ohne Worte E Dur op.38/3?

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Wagner Liaisons
Berlin Classics Nov 2025
CD
$19.99

Mix & Match

Bergman: Choral Works / Schweckendiek, Helsinki Chamber Choir

BIS

$17.49 ~~$34.99~~ Save 50% May 05, 2017

In his later years often described as the grand old man of Finnish modernism, Erik Bergman (1911-2006) was among the first in Finland to use compositional methods such as twelve-tone technique, serial music, choral Sprechgesang and aleatory counterpoint. His specialty was choral music, and a large part of his huge production involves a choir in some form. This recording focuses primarily on his works for mixed choir that have not appeared on disc before, and gives a broad picture of his production for the medium over a period of more than 60 years. Born to a Swedish-speaking family, many of Bergman's settings were of poems in Swedish, but he was a true internationalist and this two-disc set also includes works with texts in Italian, Norwegian, English, German, and naturally, Finnish. These are here performed by the Helsinki Chamber Choir, Finland's only professional chamber choir, under its artistic director Nils Schweckendiek.

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Bergman: Choral Works / Schweckendiek, Helsinki Chamber Choir
BIS May 2017
CD
~~$34.99~~ $17.49

BERLIN PEOPLE

SUNNYSIDE

$16.63 Mar 22, 2019

The dream of many international jazz musicians is to experience the jazz life of New York City. Saxophonist Tobias Meinhart had the same dream and made a move to the City from his native Germany a decade ago. Having lived in New York for ten years, he came to the realization that a young man from Bavaria can never be from Harlem and that his German roots are central to his musical identity. // For his new album Berlin People, Meinhart wanted to bridge the musical cultures of New York City and Germany by recording with a band of his German peers and an American jazz guitarist who has made Berlin his home, the great Kurt Rosenwinkel. // Though Meinhart had made his home in New York, he regularly returned to Europe and frequently stayed in Berlin during the summers, where he would reconvene with his musician friends. It was his long time friend, bassist Tom Berkmann, who put Meinhart in touch with Rosenwinkel, a musician that the saxophonist had long admired and hoped to perform with.

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BERLIN PEOPLE
SUNNYSIDE Mar 2019
CD
$16.63

Beethoven: Missa Solemnis (Documentary And Performance) / Bernius, Kammerchor Stuttgart [Blu-Ray]

Naxos AudioVisual

Blu-Ray

$15.49 ~~$30.99~~ Save 50% Sep 11, 2020

Beethoven’s Missa solemnis is the one work the composer admired above all his compositions. It was written for his great patron and friend Archduke Rudolf of Austria at around the same time that he embarked on his Ninth Symphony and as the writer Donald Tovey noted, ‘there is no choral and no orchestral writing, earlier or later, that shows a more thrilling sense of the individual colour of every chord.’ This insightful documentary follows Frieder Bernius on a journey of discovery as he immerses himself in Beethoven’s monumental masterpiece in preparation for a recording.

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Beethoven: Missa Solemnis (Documentary And Performance) / Bernius, Kammerchor Stuttgart [Blu-Ray]
Naxos AudioVisual Sep 2020
Blu-Ray
~~$30.99~~ $15.49

Raff: Benedetto Marcello / Nowak, Southwest German Radio Orchestra

Sterling Records

$32.99 Jan 03, 2020

This new release features a recording from the world premiere performance of the opera in Metzingen Stadthalle, Bad Urach, Germany, October 4th, 2002. The opera is set in Venice in 1727. In the house of Marcello, a musician and poet, two of his pupils Rosana and Faustina wait for their teacher who is late for their singing lesson. Marcello at last arrives, apologizes, and announces that instead of their lessons he wants them to sing for a guest of his, the famous composer Adolph Hasse, from Germany. Rosana sings first: a sad song about unrequited love. Hasse praises her warmly for singing from the heart, whereas Marcello is just puzzled by her sudden ability to find the correct tone. Faustina immediately recognizes that Rosana is singing about her love for Marcello and is irritated that he cannot see it himself. She then sings a joyful song about a nightingale, which leaves both Hasse and Marcello captivated. Hasse expresses his profound admiration for Marcello and she invites him to accompany her to a party that evening. Faustina is preparing for the evening and her thoughts turn to Hasse, and she realizes that she loves him. Hasse has quietly arrived and, overhearing her soliloquy, immediately tells Faustina that he has fallen in love with her too. Marcello, masked, arrives and stands outside Faustina’s rooms, consumed with love for her and intending to sing her a serenade. He hears the gondola bearing Faustina and Hasse approaching, and jealously listens to their loving conversation. Hiding while they enter her apartment, he vows revenge on Hasse. Marcello wants to pick a quarrel and both men draw their swords. Faustina, who has heard the commotion outside, opens her balcony window, sees the events below and collapses with a scream. Hasse leaves, telling Marcello that he may keep his life as a pledge of their friendship…

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Raff: Benedetto Marcello / Nowak, Southwest German Radio Orchestra
Sterling Records Jan 2020
CD
$32.99

V2: DANSES DU MONDE

Frémeaux

$20.99 Jul 01, 2011

Lindy Hop, Boogie… The dazzling greatness of the latest Jazz dances in the peak of the Forties and Fifties! This CD belongs to the “Dance Master Classics” anthology, a collection of 20 discs compiled by specialists in each of dancing’s domains. Gathered here in almost exhaustive fashion for the very first time, this a panorama of the best titles in dancehistory, grouped by aesthetic form, follow one special guiding principle: to magnify the relationship between dancers and music. Noël Herve & Patrick Fremeaux

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V2: DANSES DU MONDE
Frémeaux Jul 2011
CD
$20.99

Ruth

CPO

$36.99 May 16, 2025

The German composer Georg Schumann (1866-1952) is already well represented in the cpo catalog, with two symphonies, several orchestral works, two chamber music productions, a lied recital, and a piano recital - a collection that offers an unrivaled overview of this significant composer's output. Now, this impressive catalog is enriched with Schumann's undisputed magnum opus: the oratorio Ruth, for four soloists, choir, and orchestra, based on the eponymous book of the Old Testament. The premiere of this work on December 9, 1908, in Hamburg was a tremendous success, with enthusiasm spreading rapidly across the Atlantic to the United States. Conceived, it seems, as an ethical counterpart to the decadent Salome by Schumann's contemporary Richard Strauss, this "hymn to love" is now experiencing a glorious revival after nearly eight decades of neglect.

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Ruth
CPO May 2025
CD
$36.99

BACH BERG SCHOENBERG WEBERN

APARTE

$20.17 Mar 11, 2022

There is a link between the style of the early masters and that of the innovators, asserted Schonberg. The program of this recording seeks to prove this saying of the master of the Second Viennese School. Hortense Cartier-Bresson sets up a dialogue between the fathers of serial music and Bach. Interweaving the Toccatas BWV 910-913-914 with the first Sonata of Berg, the Three Pieces of Schonberg and the Variations of Webern, this recording explores the great Austro-Germanic tradition and it's inheritance.

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BACH BERG SCHOENBERG WEBERN
APARTE Mar 2022
CD
$20.17

TRUMPET CONCERTOS
WARNER CLASSICS Oct 2008
CD
$19.36

Schumann: The Roots & The Flower - Counterpoint in Bloom / Christensen

OUR Recordings

$10.99 ~~$21.99~~ Save 50% Sep 03, 2021

Although Robert Schumann’s public role in the Bach revival is less well known than that of Felix Mendelssohn, Bach’s music would play an influential effect throughout his life. Schumann would in turn, arrange and perform many of Bach’s works including adding piano parts to the Solo Violin Sonatas and Cellos Suites and trumpets to the St. John Passion! In 1843 he and Clara rented a custom-made pedalflügel - a dreadnought of an instrument combining a Friedrich Wieck grand piano with a pedal keyboard that enabled Schumann’s to play Bach’s organ music at home. During one of his periodic bouts of depression, Schumann became gripped by what he called Fugenpassion and shortly thereafter his obsession with Bach would blossom in the Canons and Fugues of Opp. 56 and 58. The curious name of this album references Carl Nielsen’s advice to fellow composer Ture Rangström, namely, to get down to the roots of a piece so that it would truly flower. And so following Nielsen’s advice, acclaimed organist Jens E. Christensen, a master of styles ancient and modern, dug deep to uncover the roots of Schumann’s imagination for this truly extraordinary program, a lovingly cultivated German-Danish, Piano-Organ, Baroque-Romantic hybrid, that will no doubt become a perennial favorite for fans of Schumann’s most florid contrapuntal creations.

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Schumann: The Roots & The Flower - Counterpoint in Bloom / Christensen
OUR Recordings Sep 2021
CD
~~$21.99~~ $10.99

V2: MUSIQUES DE DANSE DU MONDE

Frémeaux

$74.99 Oct 01, 2011

Throughout the ages, people have danced to the rhythms of music, and dancers have always expected musicians to perform at their artistic best. In their exchanges, dancing – music’s authentic physical representation – has today developed into an entirely separate art-form. Jazz, rock, tango – and many other major forms of musical expression now familiar in concerts, shows or films – would doubtless have never existed if dancing hadn’t been music’s primary function. To reach the body, heart and soul at the same time, music composed and played for dancing fully requires all of music’s qualities. This collection of dances from around the world – an anthology selected by specialists in each one of these styles – proves how true this is, thanks to the best titles in dance-history. The selections here, sorted by aesthetic form, were chosen with one thing in mind: to show the relationship between dancing and music. Noël HERVe & Patrick FReMEAUX

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V2: MUSIQUES DE DANSE DU MONDE
Frémeaux Oct 2011
CD
$74.99

Mahler: Symphony No. 5 & Des Knaben Wunderhorn / Nelsons, Goerne [Blu-ray]

Accentus Music

Blu-Ray

$41.99 Mar 21, 2016

Also available on standard DVD

Andris Nelsons conducted the Lucerne Festival Orchestra for the third time in August 2015, the orchestra’s second summer without founder and guiding spirit Claudio Abbado. The first half of his concert was already a highlight: the baritone Matthias Goerne seemed completely at home in a selection of songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. His warm, dark voice allows him to capture the somber and tragic atmosphere of this music like no one else. Its shaded timbre is most perfectly suited to the work’s melancholy and nocturnal moods, where one can directly experience how an artist of this caliber can bring music to the edge of the abyss. The Lucerne Festival Orchestra, renowned for its unique Mahler sound, had last played Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in the summer of 2004 with Abbado – a flowing, transparent, and ethereal interpretation. Nelsons finds a completely different approach to the work. His Mahler is fiery, expansive, and powerful. In spite of the introductory funeral march, his reading is more positive than tragic, radiating an intense vitality. It is breathtaking to observe the orchestra’s response to Nelsons’s energetic, physical, and emotional conducting style. The relationship between orchestra and conductor is one of giving and taking, nothing else.

Picture Format Blu?ray: NTSC 16:9, Full HD

Sound Formats Blu?ray: DTS HD Master Audio, PCM Stereo

Region Code: 0 (worldwide)

Running Time: 123:12 min

Disc Format: BD 25

Subtitles: German (Original), French, English, Japanese, Korean

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Mahler: Symphony No. 5 & Des Knaben Wunderhorn / Nelsons, Goerne [Blu-ray]
Accentus Music Mar 2016
Blu-Ray
$41.99

Martinů: Violin Concertos 1 & 2 / Zimmermann, Hruša, Bamberg Symphony

BIS

SACD

$21.99 Nov 06, 2020

Frank Peter Zimmermann, one of today’s most highly regarded violinists, takes our breath away with this recording together with the Bamberger Symphoniker and their chief conductor Jakub Hruša – one of the leading Martinu conductors of today. They start off by exploring the lyrical side of Bohuslav Martinu, offered in the Second Violin Concerto (1943), to dive into the neo-classical idiom championed by Stravinsky that informs the composer’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin closes the album. Composed in 1944, only a year before Bartók’s death, it is a deeply personal statement which fuses the overall layout of Bach’s solo violin sonatas with Hungarian folk tradition with results that are as fascinating to the listener as they are challenging to the performer.

REVIEW:

Hrůša is as fine a Martinů interpreter as anyone on the podium currently. What impresses most here, however, is the clarity and naturalness of Zimmermann’s performances, remarkable in combining an intimate knowledge of the music (the result of long study) with a freshness of approach. This is, for me, the top recommendation for these two works and, frankly, is how Martinů should always be played.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, January 2021)

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Martinů: Violin Concertos 1 & 2 / Zimmermann, Hruša, Bamberg Symphony
BIS Nov 2020
SACD
$21.99

Fruhling: Piano Quintet, Op. 30, Piano Quartet, Op. 35 / Mijnders, Karmon, Giglberger, Triendl, Glassl

Haenssler Classic

$20.99 Mar 04, 2022

It is frankly little short of a miracle that the name of Carl Frühling is still remembered today, since we know next to nothing about him. Scant biographical notes provide a few reference points rather than an orderly résumé of his life, and a mere handful of the hundred or more works he is thought to have composed is extant today. The main reason for his relegation to oblivion is a fact that Frühling kept secret; a fact that nevertheless had to be declared on official documents: he was Jewish. Even before the Nazis took power his religion had caused him problems, making it difficult for him to pursue a career as a composer. As a result, Frühling understandably tried to conceal his religious adherence. In 1907 he converted to Protestantism and in his CV of 1929 he stated that he was born in Vienna. The truth is however that he actually came from Lviv (the Germans called it Lemberg, and today, the city is in Ukraine), then a predominantly Jewish city, where he was born on November 28, 1868. Frühling concluded his piano studies around 1889 and was awarded the Liszt Prize. He quickly established himself as a pianist, and was frequently in demand as a chamber musician. As a composer, however, Frühling found it difficult to make his mark. Initially, he tried to make a name with easy-listening piano works; he wrote virtuoso salon compositions such as concert waltzes, mazurkas and later, fantasias on tunes from popular operas. Although they were meant to be popular works that would sell well, they nevertheless evince a sense of proportion and cleverly thought-out pianistic writing, and are marked by humor and imagination.

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Fruhling: Piano Quintet, Op. 30, Piano Quartet, Op. 35 / Mijnders, Karmon, Giglberger, Triendl, Glassl
Haenssler Classic Mar 2022
CD
$20.99

Festmusik: A Legacy / Onyx Brass

Chandos

SACD

$21.99 May 07, 2021

Described as 'easily the classiest brass ensemble in Britain' by BBC Music Magazine, Onyx Brass continues to be the leading light in establishing the brass quintet as a medium for serious chamber music, presenting it in the entertaining and articulate style that has become the group's trademark. For this, it's third recording for Chandos, Onyx Brass presents a programme steeped in the German romantic tradition. Arrangements for small ensemble of works by Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Rubinstein, and Franz demonstrate the musicality and virtuosity of the group, as well as a wide expressive and textural range. The programme opens and closes with three large-scale works by Richard Strauss, in which the quintet is joined by a host of other top UK brass players and the conductor John Wilson. Festmusik der Stadt Wien for brass and timpani, written for the city of Vienna, is the only original composition: all the others are arrangements made by members of the group.

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Festmusik: A Legacy / Onyx Brass
Chandos May 2021
SACD
$21.99

Baermann: Clarinet Quintets / Graaf, Schubert Consort Netherlands

Brilliant Classics

$9.99 ~~$12.99~~ Save 25% Mar 15, 2024

New recordings of early-Romantic quintets by the supreme clarinet virtuoso of his day, an inspiration to Weber and Mendelssohn but also an accomplished composer in his own right.

Heinrich Baermann's career took off once he met Carl Maria von Weber in 1811. Weber was immediately taken with the French-accented brilliance and German richness of tone which Baermann drew from his instrument, and began to write a series of works – including two concertos and a concertino – which still rank among his most inspired instrumental pieces, as well as defining a new sound and reach for the clarinet as a solo instrument The clarinet, now thanks to Baermann, could take on multiple roles, as leader, jester, and magus-like figure to complement the likes of Paganini on the violin and Giuliani on the guitar.

Weber pushed Baermann’s technique to new heights of facility and eloquence, which in return inflected Baermann’s own works for his instrument with comparable ambition. He wrote three quintets for clarinet and string ensemble, the first of them more concerto-like in character, the latter two full-scale chamber works. They have been recorded complete only once before, making this new album from a fine team of Dutch musicians all the more welcome.

Especially impressive are the slow movements of the quintets, cast as arias without words in order to capitalize on the fluid legato of Baermann’s playing, but formed with an economy of means which leaves their themes lingering in the mind’s ear. The Adagio of the Op. 23 Quintet was misattributed to Richard Wagner for many years, which speaks for Baermann’s craftsmanship, even if its harmonic language evidently belongs to a generation or two after Mozart. Now restored to its rightful place, the Adagio is the crown jewel, but there are treasures in store throughout Baermann’s clarinet quintets.

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Baermann: Clarinet Quintets / Graaf, Schubert Consort Netherlands
Brilliant Classics Mar 2024
CD
~~$12.99~~ $9.99

Hagios III (Songs of Peace)

Berlin Classics

$19.99 Oct 16, 2026

Helge Burggrabe is a versatile composer who writes large oratorios and orchestral works, but also realises large-scale projects involving music, dance, and education. The composer has produced his extremely successful HAGIOS series for Berlin Classics, which is continued here with it's 3rd part. The idea behind HAGIOS is musical meditation and making music together, accompanied by concerts and workshops.

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Hagios III (Songs of Peace)
Berlin Classics Oct 2026
CD
$19.99

Favourite Melodies

Musicaphon

$16.99 Jan 30, 2026

This CD features works whose first editions or manuscripts are preserved in libraries north of the Alps, particularly in present-day Germany. Of particular interest is that these are primarily works for wind instruments, especially oboes, but also trumpets. Another important aspect is the transcription and arrangement of Albinoni's works and themes from the pen of two famous German composers, Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Gottfried Walther. Albinoni was already very famous during his lifetime and admired by princes and fellow musicians, even north of the Alps!

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Favourite Melodies
Musicaphon Jan 2026
CD
$16.99

Mix & Match

Manuel Ponce: Piano Music, Vol. 1

Piano Classics

$19.99 Apr 30, 2026

While Rodolfo Ritter's repertoire encompasses many well-known and unfamiliar composers, he has made a speciality of Ponce's piano music. He recorded the two piano concertos (for Sterling) in 2013, as well as several solo pieces. Now, for Piano Classics, he embarks on a new adventure, which should win new friends everywhere for an idiom full of charm and optimism, essentially Romantic in spirit and piquantly coloured by the composer's Mexican heritage. A social and cultural revolution followed on the heels of Mexico's political revolution of 1910-1917, as a once largely rural nation became, within a matter of years, predominantly urban. Born in 1882, Manuel Ponce in some ways embodied the outward-facing spirit of that revolution, as the country's first internationally renowned composer of European-style art music ('classical'), and yet in the nostalgia-soaked language of that music evoked a romanticized past. This is the tension explored by Rodolfo Ritter as he begins a multi-volume journey through Ponce's piano output - only the second pianist to do so on record. Ponce was something of a child prodigy, already accomplished and cultivated as both a pianist and composer before he entered the national conservatoire in 1901. Take the dance for the left hand titled Malgre tout, which Ponce was inspired to write in 1900 as a homage to the sculpture of the same name by Jesús F. Contreras - a resonant depiction of a chained and defenceless woman who, "despite everything", looks up with hope (not so oblique as a politically charged metaphor). Earlier still is the bel-canto style lyricism of the Misterio doloroso (1899). Another pivotal work for the left hand dates from a full quarter-century later, the Prelude and Fugue which Ponce wrote in Paris while under the tutelage of Paul Dukas. No less schooled by an earlier period of study in Europe, as a pupil of Martin Krause in Berlin, comes the Variations on a Theme by Handel (1906). In the interim, Ponce channelled this classical technique through the melodies and rhythms of his home country in pieces such as the Rapsodia Mexicana No. 1 of 1911. Volume 1 of Rodolfo Ritter's survey contains all these and many more exciting discoveries. As a Mexican pianist, teacher and scholar of German heritage, Rodolfo Ritter is ideally placed to guide us through such unfamiliar territory.

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Manuel Ponce: Piano Music, Vol. 1
Piano Classics Apr 2026
CD
$19.99

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Guitar Triptychs

DUX

$19.99 Jan 30, 2026

The album consists of five triptychs written for solo guitar in the 20th century by composers representing various areas of musical culture. The album opens with a work by Tansman, which references the compositions of Frédéric Chopin. Rodrigo's composition strictly follows his characteristic musical language, based on stylizations of dances and motifs drawn from Spanish tradition. Torroba's suite is a tribute to the music of the Castilian region, an emotional, virtuosic work with playful elements. The miniatures by Henz, with their dreamlike, meditative character, bear the mark of the versatile German composer's personal style, whose musical language combines elements of expressionism, twelve-tone technique, neoclassicism, and tonality. The final work on the album is by Barrios Mangoré, the Paraguayan guitarist and most prominent composer of his country, whose piece borders between the sacred and the profane, containing elements of Baroque virtuosity. Andrzej Grygier is one of the most outstanding classical guitarists of his generation, a laureate of prestigious guitar competitions worldwide, and this album confirms his virtuosic skill and musical sensitivity.

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Guitar Triptychs
DUX Jan 2026
CD
$19.99

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Venite alla danza!

Arcana

$20.99 Oct 09, 2026

Venite alla danza! Is the project with which La Reverdie intends to celebrate it's 40th anniversary. Since 1986, the ensemble has explored a wide range of vocal and instrumental repertoires from the 13th to the 15th century but has never attempted a program entirely dedicated to dance. It's time to do it! The project is entirely dedicated to the different forms of medieval dances, in which the role of voice and instruments is paradoxically interchangeable. The theme of dance allows us to cross the Middle Ages far and wide, entering monasteries, the world of popular devotion, the courts, and public entertainments. Dances celebrated the joy of life and were present in the various manifestations of daily life, always as a form of social sharing. The repertoire is extremely varied: from the 13th- to the 15th-century dances to Italian laude and pilgrimage dances, from Italian ballate to French ballade, virelai, and rondeaux, together with French and Italian instrumental dances that bring the listener into the middle of the 15th century. A program that dispels the idea that dance music was only instrumental music!

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Venite alla danza!
Arcana Oct 2026
CD
$20.99

Shostakovich: Symphony No 4 / Boreyko, Southwest German Rso

SWR

$10.49 ~~$20.99~~ Save 50% Feb 15, 2007

Shostakovich’s Fourth presents the elements that were to burst upon the Soviet scene in his next symphony, but without the Fifth’s tidier, simpler form, emotional unity, and morally uplifting finale to act as a buffer between the composer and the Composer’s Union. The enormous first movement alone, lasting nearly a half-an-hour in performance, offers both delicately spectral and crudely overblown waltzes, lyrical recitatives of intense beauty, parodies of ceremonial marches and polkas, learned counterpoint, violently dissonant climaxes, gentle solos, and brass riding the percussion like the Czar’s galloping army carving down a field of peaceful protestors without mercy. This is Shostakovich come into his own full, focused symphonic power for the first time, and reveling in it.

To complaints of sectionalism, both in the first and final movements, Boreyko’s reply might well be, “Your point?” He doesn’t downplay any of it. Instead, he uses its often dissociative blocks of content to deliberately create juxtapositions that shock, moments of quiet melancholy followed by instrumental screams or taunts. It’s as if he were shouting (with Shostakovich) at the audience to pay closer attention, to consider each panel in the triptych of brutality, mockery, and sullenness that he’s placed upon display. When the time is right, nothing is held back, and this becomes among the most uninhibited of available Fourths. At other moments, Boreyko reminds me occasionally of Jansons (Avie 2096) in the silken beauty he coaxes from the Stuttgart strings. But where Jansons makes that sound an end in itself, this conductor uses it to better conjure those points of relative emotional stability that Shostakovich repeatedly creates, and quickly destroys.

If I have a criticism, it is that the Scherzo is too deadpan. The coarse sarcasm of the winds and brass are taken straight, and the dissonances in the subsequent string fugue are slightly downplayed. The conductor builds an impressive climax to the movement, but he clearly views it as an emotional intermission between two lengthy, harrowing events. While sympathetic to the need to interject some ray of hope into the proceedings, I don’t find that this treatment works especially well. In the coda to the third movement, certainly; and Boreyko makes something powerful out of the side glance Shostakovich takes there at Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. But the Scherzo requires something darker and more incisive, in my opinion.

The rest of the album is given over to a short three-movement orchestral suite drawn from the composer’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. It is described on the jewel box cover as the world premiere recording of the original version, but nowhere inside is this discussed; and it’s the same suite present on Deutsche Grammophon 650702, issued last year. I find these three tiny excerpts tell us far less about the work than the lengthier conductor-arranged suites of Conlon and Runnicles. Still, as filler goes, they make light-hearted listening. Boreyko makes more of the score’s spikiness than Thomas Sanderling, and the Stuttgart RSO runs rings around the Russian PO.

Despite my expressed reservations, Boreyko’s Fourth moves in among my favorites. There it joins Kondrashin/Moscow PO, Rozhdestvensky/Bolshoi Theater Orchestra, and Sinaisky/BBC PO, all currently out of print. I find it slightly superior to Gergiev/Kirov Orchestra (Philips 470 842), where momentum trumps detail, but these are matters of personal taste. Both treatments are in excellent sound, and either will do for the modern Shostakovich collector looking for a first-rate performance of this fascinating work.

-- Barry Brenesal, FANFARE [11/2007]

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Shostakovich: Symphony No 4 / Boreyko, Southwest German Rso
SWR Feb 2007
CD
~~$20.99~~ $10.49

Hossam Ramzy's Bellydance Workshop

ARC Music

$20.99 Aug 28, 2012

Bellydance is one of the most popular dance styles in the world today, rooted equally in the beauty of both classical and folk styles. Integral to bellydance is the music that leads the body to motion. From Arabian music and bellydance master Hossam Ramzy comes a must-have disc of the most popular music for bellydance. Ramzy not only illumines the tradition through 2.5 hours of music, but also provides insight to the world of Arabian rhythm and dance, including exercises in interpretation, through a personally written guide.

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Hossam Ramzy's Bellydance Workshop
ARC Music Aug 2012
CD
$20.99