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Boccherini: Cello Concerti & Symphonies / Bylsma, Tafelmusik

Deutsche Harmonia Mundi

$17.99 Sep 16, 2010

Tafelmusik are a Canadian period-instrument group who bring plenty of spirit and enthusiasm to their performances. I have chiefly heard them before in baroque repertory, to which their rather direct and even slightly edgy tone may be better suited than it is to the more suave Boccherini. The B flat Symphony they offer here, Op. 21 No. 4 in Boccherini's numbering, is not to my knowledge otherwise available; the chief interest resides in the first movement, a typically exuberant piece, full of repeated notes and dashing off every now and then into brilliant semiquaver passages, though there is some characteristically charming pathetic music in the andantino. The players here make a hairsbreadth pause before each accent in the first movement (and there are rather a lot of them), which seems to me disturbing to the rhythm. They also offer the D minor Symphony, La casa del diavolo, based in part on Gluck's Dance of the Furies from Orphee. They play the first movement at a tremendous speed and with great vigour, the slow movement rather dully and the finale, again, very fast and duly diabolically. Here, however, they run into competition with the disc by Ensemble 415 (Harmonia Mundi), which offers a superior performance; tighter and more controlled, more graceful as well as sweeter-toned in the middle movement and less reliant on breathtaking thrills to make the fast movements effective.

But with Anner Bylsma playing two concertos, this is certainly a disc to be considered seriously. His performance of the G major work is far more appealing than that of the relatively staid Wouter Willer on the EMI disc cited above, its quick movements quicker, its slow movement slower— and played with remarkable control (you cannot hear the changes of bow) and with much poetry. And there is some dazzling playing at the very top of the instrument in the finale. The D major work is perhaps slightly more ordinary, but that vein of pathos is again much in evidence in the andante lentarello (a typical Boccherini marking, whatever it may mean), where the cello duets with a solo oboe. A record, then, that in spite of some flaws the Boccherinian will want to have.

-- Stanley Sadie, Gramophone [2/1990]

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Boccherini: Cello Concerti & Symphonies / Bylsma, Tafelmusik
Deutsche Harmonia Mundi Sep 2010
CD
$17.99

Chopin: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 (Arr. B. Kominek)

Oehms Classics

$9.99 ~~$19.99~~ Save 50% Feb 12, 2016

The piano concertos of Frédéric Chopin are amongst the greatest and best-known orchestral works of the 19th century. It is thus no wonder that every pianist would like to play them and, of course, record them as well. Joseph-Maurice Weder, winner of the SWISS AMBASSADOR'S AWARD 2013 in London, has achieved this in the unusual ensemble of the piano sextet. Chopin Concertos with Joseph-Maurice Weder and the Berlin Camerata. During the 19th century, the practice of transcribing orchestral works for smaller ensembles was widespread- in the age prior to recordings, this was an indispensible way of helping compositions achieve their breakthrough with the public.

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Chopin: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 (Arr. B. Kominek)
Oehms Classics Feb 2016
CD
~~$19.99~~ $9.99

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 & 24 / Levin, Egarr, Academy of Ancient Music

Academy of Ancient Music

$21.99 Mar 03, 2023

Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) resumes a celebrated project to record Mozart’s complete Piano Concertos, with this ninth volume released after an extraordinary 20-year wait. Together with renowned scholar-pianist Robert Levin, AAM presents Mozart’s Piano Concertos No. 21 in C Major K467, perhaps one of Mozart’s most well-known Piano Concertos and featured in films The Spy Who Loved Me and Elvira Madigan, and No. 24 in C Minor K491, described by Mozart scholar Alexander Hyatt King as ‘not only the most sublime of the whole series but also one of the greatest pianoforte concertos ever composed’. AAM’s founder Christopher Hogwood and Robert Levin came together in 1993 to record Mozart’s complete works for keyboard and orchestra for the first time ever on period instruments. Only eight albums out of a total of 13 were recorded, with the most recent released in 2001. This release marks the renewal of this landmark project and will be followed by the four final albums of the series later in 2023 and 2024.

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Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 & 24 / Levin, Egarr, Academy of Ancient Music
Academy of Ancient Music Mar 2023
CD
$21.99

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Orchestral and Chamber Works – American Youth Concerto / Symphonic Suite for Strings / Concertino for Oboe, Clarinet and Strings / A Lament on an African Theme / Trio Sonata No. 1 / Duo for Oboe and Clarinet
Naxos Oct 2005
CD
~~$19.99~~ $9.99

Piano Concertos No. 1, 2, 3 &
Kontrapunkt Jun 1992
CD
$22.99

Romantic Flute Concertos

NOTE ONE

$20.99 May 15, 2026

This CD recording with flutist Anne Pustlauk is an experiment: For about 15 years, she has been researching flute performance practices in the early and late 19th centuries, which differ greatly from our performance practices today. It is not only the historical instruments that make the difference; the playing style of that time is also extremely rare today. Together with L'arpa festante under Korneel Bernolet, Anne Pustlauk searches for new forms of expression without copying a specific playing style of that time. The artists demonstrate this impressively with the famous Flute Concerto, Op. 283, by Carl Reinicke and Peter Benoit's Symphonic Poem, Op. 43A, from 1865. The program also includes Ferdinand Langer's Flute Concerto in G minor, which he composed for his friend and colleague at the Mannheim Court Theater, Franz Neuhofer (a student of the famous flute maker Theobald Boehm), who held the position of principal flutist in the orchestra there.

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Romantic Flute Concertos
NOTE ONE May 2026
CD
$20.99

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Concertos of Josef Guretzky / Richter, Gaborjani, The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen

Chandos

$21.99 Jan 20, 2017

The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen takes its name from the original ensemble that gave London’s first public concerts, from 1678, and which continued to meet well into the middle of the eighteenth century. The members of the group are leading figures on the period instrument scene in the UK and Europe, offering programmes that draw on recent and original research. They have been described on BBC Radio 3 as ‘purveyors of exhilarating and uplifting music.’ The baroque ensemble here commits to record unjustly neglected concertos by Josef Guretzky, rich in Italian-influenced virtuosity and dynamism, yet highly innovative in the contrast of rhythms and forms. The album features the premiere recording of four of Guretzky’s nine cello concertos as well as Guretzky’s only surviving Violin Concerto. They are complemented by a contemporaneous keyboard fugue by another Czech master of the baroque era, Bohuslav Matej Cernohorsky.

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Concertos of Josef Guretzky / Richter, Gaborjani, The Harmonious Society of Tickle-Fiddle Gentlemen
Chandos Jan 2017
CD
$21.99

Bach: Overtures, BWV 1066-1069 / Mortensen, Concerto Copenhagen

CPO

$13.99 ~~$18.99~~ Save 25% Aug 13, 2021

Concerto Copenhagen, the Danish National Baroque Orchestra, has developed into one of Scandinavia’s leading Baroque orchestras and has earned its place in the front ranks of the world’s most fascinating and innovative orchestras of this kind. The orchestra now turns to Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous Orchestral Suites. Although extensive research has been conducted for many years, it is not known when the suites were composed. Today everything indicates that the suites were written much earlier than is assumed and then merely had to be adapted to Bach’s new Leipzig circumstances. It is therefore not unusual for them to be performed – as on this recording – without timpani and trumpets. Although the especially popular third suite is a ceremonious, sumptuous work, the material contributed by the wind instruments is hardly of considerable significance. The suite enjoys a top ranking on the charts of Bach’s most attractive and best-loved works. Some of his most popular melodies can be found in their movements. Suite No. 2 in B minor ends with the immensely famous flute solo of the Badinerie (a “joke” comparable to the Italian “scherzo”) frequently employed on television as a signature tune. Here the Johann Sebastian Bach we encounter is not the one who quests for deep spiritual knowledge or probes hidden aspects of the human soul. On the other hand, he rarely wrote mellower, more uplifting melodies or simpler, more elegantly designed dance rhythms than in these twenty-four movements brimming with magical variations, atmosphere, and rich color.

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Bach: Overtures, BWV 1066-1069 / Mortensen, Concerto Copenhagen
CPO Aug 2021
CD
~~$18.99~~ $13.99

Herbert: Cello Concertos Nos. 1, 2 & Irish Rhapsody / Kosower, Falletta, Ulster Orchestra

Naxos

$19.99 Apr 08, 2016

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Irish-born Victor Herbert was one of the most celebrated names in American music in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A cellist, conductor, and composer of light operas, he was also a recording artist. His two cello concertos are full of gracious melodies, the D major having a song-like slow movement and a spirited polonaise finale that earned praise at its 1885 première in Stuttgart. The E minor concerto, scored for a large orchestra, is more tightly constructed then the first and it was hearing this work that inspired Herbert’s superior at the National Conservatory in New York, Antonín Dvorák, to write his own great B minor cello concerto.

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Herbert: Cello Concertos Nos. 1, 2 & Irish Rhapsody / Kosower, Falletta, Ulster Orchestra
Naxos Apr 2016
CD
$19.99

Saint-Saëns: Cello Sonatas / Favalessa, Semeraro

Brilliant Classics

$10.99 ~~$13.99~~ Save 20% Sep 23, 2022

Prior to the turn of the 20th century, Camille Saint-Saëns enriched the cello repertoire with two important compositions: his Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor (Op.33 ) and his Cello Sonata No.1 in C minor (Op.32). The first Cello Sonata was composed in the autumn of 1872, and its first public performance – with J. Reuschel on cello and the composer at the piano – was given on 26 March 1873 at the Salle Érard in Paris. The work is divided into three movements: the first and third have a tragic character, while the second offers an oasis of quiet serenity. The work opens with a dramatic Allegro in sonata form. The second movement stems from an organ improvisation performed by Saint-Saëns at Saint-Augustin. The final movement takes up the tumultuous and agitated character of the first and ends in an unrelenting race. Some 30 years separate the Cello Sonata No.2 in F (Op.123) from its predecessor. The fruit of laborious work, it was completed in early 1905. The Sonata is structured in four movements, the first in sonata form with contrasting heroic and lyrical characters throughout. The second movement is a Scherzo with eight variations, each with its own identity while maintaining a link to the theme, one of them in the form of a fugue. The third movement is, in Saint-Saëns’ words, ‘a romance that will delight cellists’, and he wrote of its concluding section, ‘the Adagio will bring tears to sensitive souls’. The sonata ends with a playful, light Rondo in which both piano and cello engage in technical virtuosity and imitative games.

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Saint-Saëns: Cello Sonatas / Favalessa, Semeraro
Brilliant Classics Sep 2022
CD
~~$13.99~~ $10.99

Mozart: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 and 2
Naxos Nov 1990
CD
$19.99

Liszt: Concerto No 1, Etc / Arrau, Ormandy

Sony Masterworks

$17.99 Aug 31, 2012

"...there's no denying that this performance has only infrequently been matched. Here's display with the brains and heart intact..." -- Raymond Tuttle, www.classical.net

"...the dazzling Liszt E flat Concerto he recorded in 1952 with Eugene Ormandy which [Arrau] told me was done virtually in one take..." -- Robert Layton, Gramophone [8/1991]

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Liszt: Concerto No 1, Etc / Arrau, Ormandy
Sony Masterworks Aug 2012
CD
$17.99

CEMBALO CONCERTOS KV 107,1-3/Q
Amati Jan 2012
SACD
$21.99

Kreutzer: Violin Concertos Nos. 1, 6 & 7 / Breuninger, Handschuh, Sudwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim

CPO

$18.99 Jan 03, 2020

Kreutzer’s Violin Concertos Vol. 2. Ten years after our release of the first album featuring violin concertos by Rodolphe Kreutzer, we are now releasing his Concertos Nos. 1, 6, and 7, again in interpretations by Laurent Albrecht Breuninger. Even today Kreutzer continues to be ranked with the great violin virtuosos of his time and along with Viotti, Rode, and Baillot is regarded as a central figure of the French violin school. As FonoForum wrote of Vol. 1 in 2011, Breuninger “does outstanding justice to the virtuosic demands. He adds brilliant polish to his solos, absolutely in a manner reminiscent of Paganini.” Kreutzer wrote his nineteen violin concertos during his active years as a virtuoso. After he had found it necessary to abandon his solo career in 1810, he did not compose a single other such work. Although the concertos adhere to the traditional three-movement design, they contain numerous innovative elements, formal surprises, motivic-thematic interdependencies, and genial ideas.

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Kreutzer: Violin Concertos Nos. 1, 6 & 7 / Breuninger, Handschuh, Sudwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim
CPO Jan 2020
CD
$18.99

Chopin: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 (Arr. for Piano & String
SOMM Recordings Feb 2008
CD
$20.99

Brahms: Piano Concerto No 1 / Berman, Leinsdorf, Chicago Symphony
CBS Masterworks Jun 2007
CD
$17.99

Ries: Piano Concertos Vol 2 / Hinterhuber, Grodd, Gavle Symphony

Naxos

$19.99 Sep 25, 2007

This disc offers you satisfying performances of satisfying music. How can you refuse?

This second instalment in the continuing cycle of Ries's piano concertos from Naxos is a disc for your wish-list.

Ries is more famous today for being Beethoven's pupil and biographer than for his own career in music. In his day he ranked with Hummel and, yes, even with Beethoven himself as one of Europe's greatest composer-pianists. Thanks to the efforts of Naxos and Allan Badley's Artaria Editions, we can now hear for ourselves what it was that so excited nineteenth century audiences.

All three works here show Ries to be a composer of originality, though one with a respect for his musical forebears. It would go too far to call him daring or revolutionary. Nonetheless, despite the backward glances at Mozart, his facility for contrasting grand orchestral statements with piano writing of a free, rhapsodic lyricism bridges the gap between Beethoven on the one hand and Chopin and Schumann on the other.

The Swedish National Air with Variations opens with a proud and darkly coloured orchestral flourish, which is immediately contrasted with a gently glittering statement from the piano. This pattern of contrasts is repeated throughout the 15 minutes of this piece, as Ries plies his skill at conjuring variations, first dazzling, then soulful. He casts the orchestra as chorus rather than as equal partner in dialogue, but he knows how to use its tone colours – listen to the lovely clarinet commentary about five minutes in, for example.

The Piano Concerto in C sharp minor is a delightful work, written largely on the road as Ries toured and then fled Russia in 1812. It is natural to want to draw comparisons with Beethoven's C minor concerto of 12 years earlier, but similarities are few and comparisons unhelpful. Apart from a few blustery tuttis, Ries uses the minor mode to spice harmonies and lend interest rather than to generate Beethovenian drama. The material is predominantly lyrical but virtuosic in the outer movements. The central slow movement lasts for less than five minutes, but is the heart of the concerto. Here Ries'sw gentle lyricism calls for a Chopinesque rubato and lightness of touch. His writing for orchestra, though, is better than Chopin's and full of interesting details and colourings.

The Introduction and Polonaise may have been composed 21 years after the other two pieces in this programme, but it demonstrates a remarkable consistency in Ries's idiom across the years. This piece is full of Mozartean turns of phrase, but with harmonic touches that point to Schumann. Again, there is some charming writing for the clarinets and flutes as they comment on the piano's discourse.

The Austrian pianist Christopher Hinterhuber plays with commitment and is a fine advocate for these works, just as able to command attention with flashes of fire as he is to lead the ear through the most delicate figurations. Grodd and the Gävle Symphony Orchestra support him well enough, though there is a little raggedness in the upper registers of the violins towards the close of the Introduction and Polonaise. The recorded sound is fine and the booklet notes by Allan Badley are interesting, though they hint at but do not explain the reconstruction of the score of the C sharp minor concerto.

All up, this disc offers you satisfying performances of satisfying music. How can you refuse?

Tim Perry, MusicWeb International

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Ries: Piano Concertos Vol 2 / Hinterhuber, Grodd, Gavle Symphony
Naxos Sep 2007
CD
$19.99

Glazunov: Concerto For Violin And Orchestra In A Minor
Nimbus Mar 2016
CD
$20.99

Price: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, Piano Concerto in One Mo

Naxos

$19.99 Jun 27, 2025

Florence Price reached her musical maturity in Chicago during the 1930s - the decade in which she made a famous debut with the city's orchestra and produced two substantial concertos. The Piano Concerto in One Movement contains some of her most beautiful music set alongside moments of Romantic bravura. Violin Concerto No. 1 seems never to have been performed during her lifetime but is the most expansive of her concertos and is richly orchestrated. The later Violin Concerto No. 2 is a much more compact work, cast in one expressive movement. Dances in the Canebrakes, originally for piano, evokes 19th-century African American life, heard here in William Grant Still's orchestration.

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Price: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, Piano Concerto in One Mo
Naxos Jun 2025
CD
$19.99

Boccherini: Cello Concertos Vol 1 / Hugh, Halstead, Et Al

Naxos

$19.99 Apr 29, 1999

This is a winner of a disc, the first of a projected series covering all 12 of Boccherini’s cello concertos, beautifully performed on modern instruments but with concern for period practice and superbly recorded. One minor snag is a confusion over numbering. Naxos calls its first selection of works Nos. 1-4, whereas in Gramophone and on the Gramophone Database the new numbering above is used. What many collectors will be concerned about is the Boccherini Cello Concerto beloved of generations in Grutzmacher’s corrupt edition.

When many years ago I questioned Jacqueline du Pre about choosing it for her recording, she promptly justified herself, saying, ‘But the slow movement is so lovely.’ She was quite right, as her classic recording makes clear (EMI, 10/67), but that movement was transferred from another work, in fact No. 7 in G, one of the four works here. Tim Hugh’s dedicated account of this lovely G minor movement is a high spot of this issue, with rapt, hushed playing not just from the soloist but also from the excellent Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Anthony Halstead. It develops into a long cadenza, a sustained meditation lasting almost two minutes out of the six-and-a-half, and I should have liked to have it identified in the notes.

As it is, Hugh offers substantial cadenzas not just in the first movements of each work, but in slow movements and finales too, though none is as extended as the one in the G minor slow movement. Halstead, as a period specialist and a horn virtuoso as well as a conductor, matches his soloist in the dedication of these performances, clarifying textures (not least in the ripe horn parts, presumably played on natural instruments) and encouraging Hugh to choose speeds on the fast side, with easily flowing slow movements and outer movements which test the soloist’s virtuosity to the very limit, without sounding breathless.

The formula in all four works is similar, even though each has its individual delights, with strong, foursquare first movements, slow movements that sound rather Handelian and galloping finales in triple time. Not just for those who know only the old Grutzmacher concerto, all this will be a delightful discovery. And remember, there are two more issues to come.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [10/1999]

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Boccherini: Cello Concertos Vol 1 / Hugh, Halstead, Et Al
Naxos Apr 1999
CD
$19.99

Mozart: Concertone, KV 190, Horn Concerto No. 3, KV 447, Pia

Alpha

$15.99 ~~$20.99~~ Save 25% Sep 05, 2025

For the 13th volume in the 'Next Generation Mozart Soloists' series, Georgian pianist Giorgi Gigashvili, who has already released a highly acclaimed debut album (Alpha 930), has agreed to tackle the early piano concertos of the very young Mozart: "these works already reveal his brilliance in melody, elegance and charm. Paradoxically, the main difficulty for the performer lies in the transparency of these works: every single note is exposed, which requires absolute clarity and precision". Another interesting feature of this recording is the concertante repertoire for several solo instruments, specifically the Concertone in C major for two violins and orchestra from 1774, performed here by violinists (and sisters) Veriko and Sofiko Tchumburidze, who emphasise the work's chamber music character. Pascal Deuber (the new principal horn of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich) highlights the unceasing lyricism and fluidity of Mozart's third horn concerto, the opening work in this new journey of discovery, conducted by Howard Griffiths.

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Mozart: Concertone, KV 190, Horn Concerto No. 3, KV 447, Pia
Alpha Sep 2025
CD
~~$20.99~~ $15.99

Cello Concertos 1 & 2

CPO

$18.99 Oct 03, 2025

Henriette Bosmans' mother was a pianist and her father played principal cello in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra, so it is no wonder that both of these instruments were lasting influences on her musical thinking and sensibilities. Her friendship with cellists Marix Loevensohn and Frieda Belinfante did the rest to guide this Dutch composer's imagination towards the expressive possibilities of the "little violone". In addition to various pieces of chamber music, the somewhat Iberian-spiced Poeme as well as two concertos were written in the early 1920s. Despite their relative proximity in time, Henriette Bosmans succeeded in not repeating herself. The works are marked by imaginative forms, wildly varied tasks demanded of the soloist and a sophisticated treatment of the orchestra. Despite these works' success, they had disappeared into the annals of history for far too long.

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Cello Concertos 1 & 2
CPO Oct 2025
CD
$18.99

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CLARINET CONCERTOS 1 & 2 / CONCERTINO IN E FLAT
WARNER CLASSICS Sep 2015
CD
$10.49

Mozart: Concertos & Fantasia in C Minor, K. 396

Oehms Classics

$19.99 Sep 09, 2016

Sophie Mayuko Vetter presents this new release of Mozart's final Piano Concerto, K. 595, regarded as his most mature work in this genre. Joined by the Piano Concerto No. 17, written by Mozart for his pupil, Barbara Ployer. Vetter gave a fantastic encore which can be heard with Rainer Kussmaul, performing in both the unfinished Concerto in D Major and the C Minor Fantasia.

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Mozart: Concertos & Fantasia in C Minor, K. 396
Oehms Classics Sep 2016
CD
$19.99

Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, KV 37 & 27, KV 595, Clarinet

Alpha

$20.99 Jul 31, 2026

This new volume in the 'Next Generation Mozart Soloists' series features Mozart's very first piano concerto (K. 37), composed when he was just 11 years old, and his very last, the Concerto K. 595, finished on 5 January 1791, exactly 11 months before his death. "The combination of the naive and youthful first concerto with the mature last concerto and it's reflection of how much Bach's music had affected him shows just how extraordinarily his brilliant mind had developed", says pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen, who performs them under the baton of Howard Griffiths. She studied with Joan Havill, Imogen Cooper, Richard Goode and Andras Schiff at the Kronberg Academy. Blaž sparovec, principal clarinettist of the Gurzenich Orchestra in Cologne, takes on one of Mozart's very last works, the famous Clarinet Concerto K. 622, "a concerto that can only be compared to an opera in which the basset clarinet plays all the roles", says sparovec.

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Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 1, KV 37 & 27, KV 595, Clarinet
Alpha Jul 2026
CD
$20.99

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