Music is the key

Not given to routine planning, Steven Isserlis comes up here with a generous, characterful programme of early-Romantic masterworks—formerly B-road stuff, these days anything but—offset by two suspendingly beautiful song arrangements inimitably natural in their tessitura, utterly painful in their introspective longing. There's a forgotten little 6/8 Larghetto, too, by the dedicatee of Chopin’s Cello Sonata, Auguste Franchomme (1808-84), published in Leipzig in 1838, during the E-flat middle section of which Schubert, dead ten years, quietly dances the ether. Isserlis approaches both main works expansively, getting his 1726 'Marquis de Corberon' Stradivarius to sing, project and fade with beauty, form and expression foremost. More than once one is struck by how paragraphs and episodes breathe, surge and cadence, rests and silences given potent tension; this is finely articulate cultured playing—ruminant poetry and reflective musicality, aristocratically sus...

Mozart’s first three full-fledged piano trios were composed in his most prolific period: in the summer and autumn of 1786. At that time he had spent five years in Vienna, and the aristocratic circles were beginning to recognize his extraordinary genius. He gave solo piano recitals, worked as a conductor on a regular basis, rehearsed his own compositions, received private students, and was involved in the social life of the imperial capital. Two years later Mozart added three new grandiose piano trios to the repertory of the chamber music genre. They are preceded by two pieces: the first is one of the composer’s early chamber works, followed by a piece compiled by Abbé Stadler from various musical fragments and entitled Three movements for piano trio. Pianist Marta Gulyas holds the Liszt Prize, and has been a teacher at the Liszt Academy since 1978 and a professor at the Madrid Royal Conservatory since 1991. Two time MIDEM award-winner violinist Vilmos Szabadi works as ...

Brahms is re-inspired thanks to... the clarinet. For one year the composer wrote little, feeling that his work must be finished. But in 1891 he would go to Meiningen in Germany, and make the reinvigorating acquaintance of virtuoso court orchestra clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld. By the sides of this extraordinary musician, Brahms would gain a deeper understanding of his playing as well as the technical and musical possibilities of the instrument. He thus composed his four last chamber music pieces with the clarinet : The Trio Op. 114 in 1891, the Quintet Op. 115 ; then in the summer of 1894 his two Sonatas for Clarinet, Op. 120.

Sept Particules (Seven Particles) refers to the seven musicians who perform the piece, as well as the seven movements comprising it. The concept of a particle brings us down to the most elementary material which comprises us and music. For me, it was about finding a shared language between us all; between early and contemporary, acoustic and electronic instruments.” “More than a narrative, the piece is like a journey between the musical realms which inspire me. The first particle is influenced by minimalist music with its repetitive figures; cells which return and intertwine with each other, creating polyrhythmia. In the rest of the piece, one can hear evocations of Baroque, electronic, pop and ambient music. (David Chalmin)

Australian flutist Bridget Bolliger, known as the artistic director of the Sydney Chamber Music Festival, presents a diverse range of works on this recital album. Of particular interest is the world premiere recording of Jim Coyle’s “ Paradise of Birds ” suite for flute and piano – a tribute to Bolliger’s home continent, and the perfect link between Europe (where all other music on this recording comes from) and Australia, where all Europeans long to spend their winter months. Australian-Swiss flautist Bridget Bolliger was born in Sydney, where she distinguished herself early, studying under Jenny Andrews, Jane Rutter and Vernon Hill and performing the Ibert Flute Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the age of 15. She graduated from the Sydney Conservatorium High School and was awarded the ASCM with Merit by New South Wales Conservatorium of Music. She went on to study in Switzerland at the Basel Music Academy, and has attended master classes with the world’...

Hildegard of Bingen's (1098-1179) visionary works and chants demonstrate an artistic synthesis the likes of which cannot be rivaled. Hildegard's ORDO VIRTUTUM is the earliest extant mystery play to survive in written form in Europe. Even today, Hildegard's love of giving artistic form to her ideas, as well as creating dramatic productions, is impressive -- like when she lets the Virtutes (the virtues), Anima (the soul), and the Diabolus (the devil) perform and sing: Hildegard's vision of a sounding divine order. With our recording, we would like to document some of the characteristic features of our interpretation of ORDO VIRTUTUM, features which we have developed over many years of intense work in the field of medieval music: - Lucia Mense (recorder and traverse flute) mimes the role of the devil, while improvising suitable music in both a medieval as well as contemporary manner. - The devil speaks through Anima, the soul. Cora Schmeiser, an outst...

Composer and pianist, Karol Beffa is also a musicologist. Passionate about György Ligeti’s work, he published an impressive monograph of the Hungarian composer in 2016. As early as 1998, he had already chosen Ligeti’s Etudes as the subject of his PhD dissertation. It is probably no coincidence that among Beffa’s early compositions there should have been several Etudes for piano, about which he has written: "Even though they were not strictly speaking 'Ligetian' etudes, like those of Ligeti, they too showed the intention to focus on a compositional problem to be dealt with in all its aspects, like a nucleus that radiates throughout the entire piece".

 Boréales is the second album of cellist Hermine Horiot, recently released for the 1001 Notes label. A vast solo cello crossover, in the heart of six Nordic and Baltic countries, spanning more than a century of music. From Sibelius to Arvo Pärt, through contemporary creation and the rediscovery of unfairly unknown works outside their borders, Boréales goes out to meet geniuses from the cold, with dreamlike, complex and luminous language. Like the aurora of the same name, the changing lights of these music rise from the silence to come to bloom in the ear of the listener. Their colors will be different for everyone, that's the strength of the music. The merger of the cello and the electronics accentuates this dimension, with the piece Fratres by Arvo Pärt, in an unprecedented adaptation of Julien Podolak, validated by the composer. At the end of their work for Arvo Pärt's Fratres , Hermine Horiot and Julien Podolak came up with a live version of Boréales, in whi...

Before coming into contact with James Brydges, Earl of Carnarvon, Handel was is dire straits in London. His pension of £200 a year for teaching the Royal princesses had stopped, as had the public taste for opera. London had plunged into a hedonistic, alcohol- and gambling-driven lifestyle, where the bawdier things were the better. Brydges, one of the most colourful and roguish figures of the day, had built himself a vast palace (from wealth plundered whilst he was Paymaster General during the Spanish Wars of Succession) to rival anything the King could boast of – Cannons House in north London, set up as a rival court to King George I, where he employed Handel to replace Johann Pepusch as Kapellmeister. No surprise that the Earl has been described as ‘having no enmity with his conscience:’ The ‘King of Bling’ would have 13 Chandos Anthems and the Te Deum on this recording composed by a grateful Handel. It couldn’t last, though, and Handel was eventually lured back to th...

The 'Ciclo Brasileiro' by Heitor Villa-Lobos begins with two impressionistic pieces, 'Plantio do caboclo' and 'Impressoes seresteiras'. Then the music does explode in a musical feast and a frenetic dance. With incredible virtuosity and impetuous drive Andreas Woyke ignites electrifying music on his piano that probably would scare the devil in hell.  But it does even get more dramatic in 'Rudepoema' (Wild poem, also Savage poem), the longest, most virtuoso and most complex piano solo piece by Villa-Lobos.  Marc-André Hamelin has recorded this work that has often been compared to Stravinsky's 'Sacre du Printemps' on a Hyperion CD in an immensly enthralling way, but Andreas Woyke does surpass him with a fascinatingly passionate, threateningly unrestrained and headily haunting performance.  The listener always gets the impression Woyke would truly have to take off with his piano and fly out of the hall with this incredible thrust.  The...

"In a way this album tells a story of my life, my dreams, my childhood scenes set in the Venetian inlands where I was born and grew up.  It had been always my dream to perform my favorite Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor at La Fenice Opera House, to be on that stage after being on the other side, in the audience where I used to sit as a child with my family.  So I decided to put my memories and wishes into this little ' music box ' and everything that would remind me of my home: the orchestra I used to listen to; a Fazioli piano, built just a few kilometers away; a great conductor friend who just recently made his 'home' in Venice and two masterworks by my favorite composer Robert Schumann." (Gloria Campaner)

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This is a musical family affair,” says David Fray of this collection of Bach’s concertos for two, three and four keyboards. The ‘family’ connection is that Fray, like Audrey Vigoureux and Emmanuel Christien, is a former pupil of Jacques Rouvier, celebrated both as a soloist and as a teacher at the Paris Conservatoire. All four pianists participate and collaborate on this album, which contains Bach’s entire canon of concertos for multiple keyboard soloists, with the exception of the Triple Concerto in C major. David Fray’s Erato catalogue already includes a number of solo works and concertos by Bach, and Jacques Rouvier joined him for duets on his Schubert album Fantasie . Discussing his Bach, BBC Music Magazine wrote: “Fray's touch is exactly nuanced, its technical control aristocratically poised, producing sonorities of irresistibly pellucid light and shade. And his rhythmic vitality is acute.” Fray himself has spoken of Bach as “a pinnacle; both a beginning and ...

Daniel Casares is an extremely talented young flamenco guitarist born in Estepona, Málaga, in 1980. He discovered at an early age that he had a natural talent for playing the guitar, and his passion was fuelled by the music that he listened to at home as a child. It was from the soul of this music that Daniel started his journey through the mysterious and passionate world of flamenco. He spent his youth learning and understanding the rudiments of the flamenco guitar, listening to the masters like Ramón Montoya and Niño Ricardo, but his influences are not solely flamenco artistes. He studied under several guitar teachers in Estepona and Málaga and gave his first live performance at the age of ten. His career started to take shape when he participated in the project A la Guitarra de Estepona, a recording on which he appeared with a collection of artistes native to his birthplace. Six years later, at a mere nineteen years of age, he produced his first solo CD, Duende Fla...

With the Ballades of Monsieur Brassens, we did not want merely to thumb through the editions of Ballard or the old airs of Philidor. More to the point, we wanted to force the portals of time, as in a comic strip of Moebius, or one of Poe’s short stories. We have cracked the codes while still venerating the tradition of the chansonniers who teamed up in brotherhoods in cabarets such as the famous ‘ Trou de la Pomme de Pin ’. Our music, for the most part, goes back to the origins, with the theorbo, viola da gamba, tin whistle and bassoon, reminding us that Brassens, just like his companions of the cabarets known as ‘caveaux lyriques’ liked to make music in a convivial way. Nonetheless, some melodies play with the art of the palimpsest. Between Mallarmé and Genette, we make impressionism burst out over the Middle Ages. In Villon’s Ballade de merci, for example, there is a fine balance between a tenth-century kyrie and a colourful ostinato of Debussy. Or there is Ronsard’s À son âm...

For the first time in recording history we decided to release two versions from this new vision of the Four Seasons. Two different experiences, enjoyable on any system, the start and the end, as the development of human progress, which might leave ample room for interpretation by creating distinctive point of views and perception, and maybe, who knows, a very personal answer to its way out, for a better balance of life. (Michael Seberich) I was born in Pescara and as a child I loved my sea. I loved to swim, fish, sail. Today that same sea is so polluted that it’s possible only to look at it. I still love it the way one loves a gravely ill family member.  My daughters will not be able to remember it other than as it is, in agony. They won’t remember its magnificence, they’ve never seen it.  This interpretation grew from the realization that the Nature described by Antonio Vivaldi is not that which we see before us now. These Seasons live in the desperate distance tha...

My mother often recalls how much I loved to sing Là-haut sur la montagne when I was just three years old. I’m sure I learned to yodel when I was still in the womb, listening to her singing the eresen- Jodel wherever she went. My sisters and I sang from a very early age both on stage and in church with our father, who conducted several different choirs.  So whenever anyone asks me when I learned to sing, I always say, “I never learned how to sing – I came into the world singing!”  Folk songs were part of our everyday life at home and continue to be part of my life on stage. They’re my inspiration and I hope I can always sing with the sense of naturalness that is so key to them. The composer Robert Schumann once said, “Listen carefully to all folk songs; they’re a rich source of the most beautiful melodies, and will open your eyes to the character of different nations.”  When Martin Korn from Sony Music asked me if I would record some Swiss folk songs, I threw m...

Alessandro Stradella’s music is currently enjoying a moment, and not before time. Ensemble Mare Nostrum’s Stradella Project is now four volumes into its comprehensive recording survey of the composer’s oratorios, leading the revival of fortunes that Stradella’s expressive and multifaceted music has long deserved. This recording from soprano Chantal Santon Jeffery and France’s Galilei Consort cherry-picks from both the composer’s sacred and secular works, as well as his instrumental music, to create a more accessible (and even more persuasive) case for this neglected master. The problem, as the disc’s own notes acknowledge, is that for a long time Stradella (whose fragmented career began in Rome before relocating to Venice and finally Genoa) was better known for his colourful biography than his music. Sex scandals, attempted murders and actual murders may make for a great story but they also bring a certain energy to music comfortable at the emotional extremes. ...

Berenice, que fai… Or frantic Berenice. Metastasio’s heroin, facing a dilemma of love versus duty, inspired the great operatic composers such as Hasse, Haydn, Mozart such as one of their female peers, still unknown today, Marianna Martinez, contemporary and even neighboring some of them. To interpret this colorful character, three singers and an orchestra: the mezzo Léa Desandre, rewarded at the Victoires de la Musique in 2017, the sopranos Natalie Perez and Chantal Santon-Jeffery, and the impetuous conductor David Stern at the head of his period instruments-ensemble, Opera Fuoco. True actors, these musicians restore the theatrical dimension of these scores without sacrificing the sensitive and fragile aspect of the character. An emotional complexity, between exhilarating madness and more tragic pages, that we find in Hasse’s Sinfonia, from his opera Antigono and of which Opera Fuoco gives us a full version of panache.

Although Handel was destined to become the most illustrious representative of Italian opera of his era, he actually spent very little time in Italy. However, it was during one of his brief trips that he composed most of his cantatas aimed at a select local private audience. The cantata differs from an operatic aria because although it is composed of several pieces (sacred or profane) it theoretically has no theatrical or dramatic characteristics. This form flourished in particular in the baroque era in response to the new vogue for “domestic” concerts. Handel composed approximately sixty cantatas, mostly for the female voice. But a leopard cannot change its spots and the form inevitably takes on a theatrical aspect in this musician’s hands. Surprisingly, the cantatas that Handel wrote in the earlier years of his career remain relatively little known. The thrilling theatricality of three works composed in Italy – Armida abbandonata , La Lucrezia and Aminta e Fillide ...

Almost 20 years after her landmark Vivaldi album, Bartoli turns to the composer once again for her brand new solo recording. It is a glorious collection of Vivaldi arias, performed with French baroque orchestra Ensemble Matheus under Jean-Christophe Spinosi. Bartoli’s 1999 recording The Vivaldi Album shone a spotlight on the Italian as a composer of vocal works, sparking a revival in the operas of Vivaldi, who had hitherto been primarily known for his concerti. The album sold 700,000 copies in five years and went Gold in six countries. It paved the way for similarly trailblazing releases, including the Italian arias of Christoph Willibald Gluck, the legendary castratos (on the album ‘Sacrificium’) and Bartoli’s personal 19th-century hero, the mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran.

French-Swiss violinist and cellist Camille Berthollet rose to prominence at age 15 by winning a competition on the television program Prodiges on the France 2 network in 2014. She studied violin with Hong Anh Shapiro in Geneva and Mimi Zweig in Zurich, and cello with Augustin Lefebvre in Lyon and François Guye in Geneva. In 2015, she recorded an album with her older sister, violinist and violist Julie Berthollet, and also performed a duet with Gautier Capuçon. She records for Warner Classics. The talented sisters return with an album of enjoyable classics, containing songs popular in France over the last 25 years: it Includes Halliday’s Sang pour sang and Que je t'aime, Gainsbourg’s La javanaise , Brel’s Vesoul and Coldplay’s Viva la Vida . Star guests are Madame Monsieur, Nicolas Fraissinet, and Insa Sane.

Her fingers dance over the piano keys with such breathtaking speed that some say “Yuja Wang must have more than two hands” ( Die Zeit ). After early lessons, the Chinese pianist was accepted at the conservatory in Beijing when she was only nine years old. She went to Canada at the age of 14, and a year later moved to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she studied for five years with piano legend Gray Graffman: “I learned to look closely and to search for the intentions of the composer in the musical text.” First awards at international competitions followed her European debut in 2003, and she made her US debut one year later. The decisive boost to her career came when Yuja Wang took over the solo part in Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto in Boston in 2007, standing in for an indisposed Martha ...

Recipient of Gramophone magazine's Young Artist of the Year award in 2015, Joseph Moog has established an enviable reputation as one of the most exciting virtuosos of our time. With wide ranging repertoire that often takes him far off the beaten track, his Onyx Classics discography includes concertos by Rubinstein, Moszkowski, piano sonatas by Tchaikovsky and Scharwenka, and arrangements of Scarlatti sonatas by Friedman, Tausig, Gieseking and others. For his new album Joseph has chosen an all French program featuring Debussy's 12 Etudes , and Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit - one of the most challenging works in the solo piano repertoire.

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Sincerity, refinement, and sensibility are probably the terms that best describe the Hermès Quartet. Those qualities, noticed at an early stage by Miguel da Silva and the Ravel and Ysaÿe quartets, were developed and confirmed with the guidance of Eberhard Feltz, the Artemis Quartet, and members of the Alban Berg Quartet. In 2009, just a year after its formation at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon, the quartet won First Prize at the Lyon International Chamber Music Competition, in addition to the Audience Prize and the SACEM Prize, thanks notably to its interpretation of Henri Dutilleux’s Quartet Ainsi la nuit. The magic touch was in evidence again in 2011, when it was awarded First Prize at the prestigious Geneva International Competition. In the same year the group received prizes from the Académie Maurice Ravel and the Fondation Charles Oulmont. In November 2012, to cap what was already a series of outstanding achievements, came the supreme ...

Annette Bik, violinist with the Klangforum Wien, is familiar with both early and contemporary music. On her first solo album, “Double Bach”, she presents a fascinating experiment: she asked leading contemporary composers to write a double of each movement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous “ Partita in h-Moll ”. The idea seemed even more compelling since Bach also added a variation, or double, to each movement of his suite.  As listeners we are in the unique situation of being able to experience a Bach double double, a stroke of genius in the mirror of our times, a fascinating auditory document where the greatest virtuosity and immediate impact come together in a rare coalescence. In that moment, we feel what the Austrian publicist Armin Thurnher expresses so succinctly in the Liner Notes for this CD: “Bach is a complete cosmos for sceptics, Bach is the experience of infinity for mortals.”

Quirine Viersen returns to the cello suites of Johann Sebastian Bach on the new label BarcaNova Records. She decided she wants to share with you the development she has gone through after deep inner work. Just as the cello suites were a new journey for Bach, they signify now the same for her. “How you are as a person, will reflect in the way you play the music. My story has changed and together with my journey also the way I play. More than ever before I have a story to tell. “ It was in 2010, just after the birth of her eldest daughter that Viersen recorded Bach’s cello suites for the first time on the label Globe – a beautiful and precious blueprint of her life at that time. “Those recordings are very much connected to the beginning of my new life. Your own life renews through the new life you gave. “ But after the birth of her twin daughters two years later, Viersen found herself in desperation about her life as a professional musician. She was less visible on s...

In her debut recording for harmonia mundi, Lucile Boulanger explores the facets of Antoine Forqueray’s career as a virtuoso instrumentalist: adept in a wide range of Italian repertoire and skilled at transcribing works originally intended for the violin, he could try it on for size, as it were, before settling on a different medium. With the viola da gamba , he extended the technique of playing it far beyond the norm, confronting the performer with fiendishly difficult challenges… which have been met brilliantly by the hugely talented foursome heard here.

Auréole is widely considered to be one of the world's most revered flute, viola, and harp trios. The trio has commissioned and premiered more works and released more albums for their instrumentation than any other similar trio in the world. Embracing The Wind is Auréole's fifteenth album, and their debut recording on the AMR label.  The first work on the album, by Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim, fittingly titled Chamber Music, is regarded as one of his most intimate in instrumentation and content. It explores a colorful dialogue between the three instruments that moves from playful to meditative and prayerlike. It was composed in 1978 and is, as was Debussy’s cornerstone Sonate for the same combination, one of Ben-Haim’s last works before his death in 1984. Chamber Music was commissioned by the New York-based Criterion Foundation.  The title work on the album, Embracing The Wind, is by award-winning American composer Robert Paterson and is one of his most-performed work...

Recording an album is an exercise in itself, totally different from a concert, in which the musicians are galvanised by the audience’s presence. It is important to create comfortable surroundings in order to make music for a virtual audience, which will listen to us later, in rush hour traffic, or under the covers, with headphones on their ears. We chose Bern Cathedral as much for its German Kuhn organ as for the particular atmosphere of its loft: one feels rather at home there, as in one’s sitting rom. However, the lavish sound of the organ reminds us that we are in a cathedral. In order to start a recording, one must first place the microphones; this determines where our virtual audience’s “ears” are. In order to take advantage of the textures of the percussion and the organ, we deployed a forest of microphones which are close to the pipes and capture all the acoustic breadth of this impressive instrument. Thus we were able to play Mozart as if we were making chamb...

For the performing artist, a concert offers the possibility of freedom and spontaneity, the transient moment; while a sound recording, by capturing a crystallized production, makes it possible to record for posterity the current idea of the artist about the given piece of music. Ditta Rohmann chose the order of the works deliberately, fitting in a Kurtág piece as a bridge and also as an essential reflection between compositions by other composers.  Her program gives a selection from about a hundred years of Hungarian cello literature. I first met Ditta in the student orchestra of the Basel Music Academy. I have been following her career since, as her sound and technique were getting ever richer, and as her unwavering interest in everything important, valuable and special has grown. When I came across musical or technical difficulties that other musicians were unable to solve, I invited Ditta for concerts and first performances. Now, listening to this recording , I realiz...

AEQUA presents a varied constellation of recent chamber pieces for smaller forces by composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir — ranging from solo piano to string ensemble — orbiting the large ensemble work “Aequilibria.” The album takes the listener on a journey through Thorvaldsdottir's distinctive soundworld, where sounds and nuances are as much part of the meticulously structured tapestry of the music as harmonies and lyrical material. The works are performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble, with two works conducted by Steven Schick and a work for solo piano performed by Cory Smythe.  “Internally, I hear sounds and nuances as musical melodies and in my music I weave various textures of sounds together with harmonies and pitched lyrical material. The music is written as an ecosystem of sounds and materials that are carried from one performer — or performers — to the next throughout a progress of a work. As a performer plays a phrase, harmony, texture or a lyrical line it is...

“Our daily life has become routinely convenient in today’s society. We can get in touch with others wherever we are and travel easily to anywhere. However, we could ask ourselves if our way of life is natural: is the depth of our relationships between one another, and the way of sharing time getting closer to the essence of humanity, or are we moving away from it? What is the meaning of our life nowadays?  Through “ Four Elements ”, which are the most essential to our universe, I wish to face these questions with my audience. Passed on by many philosophers from diverse eras since before Christ, the four-element theory has been interpreted differently in each cultural, religious or national background, giving birth to myths and thoughts. Concerning music, the four elements inspired composers’ imaginations to create not only images or impressions but also works with profound metaphoric messages based on literature or philosophy. These abundant pieces differ widely from each othe...

Deutsche Grammophon presents a collection of the greatest masterworks for the Christams period. Includes arias, carols, instrumental works and popular tunes all performed by the world's most oustanding musicians.  This imaginatively-curated, generously-filled Christmas package is sure to find favor during this and future holiday seasons.  Why? Because it packs in every conceivable carol, tune, choral work or song in timeless performances from the greatest artists in the world: singers of immense communicative gifts including Cecilia Bartoli, Bryn Terfel, Renée Fleming and Luciano Pavarotti to name but four.  It truly offers something of every Christmas mind, spirit, and looks fantastic.  CD 1: Arias and Songs CD 2: Carols CD 3: Instrumental Music CD 4: Choral Music CD 5: Popular Tunes / The Nutcracker Suite

Hélène Desaint, Laureate of the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, presents a recital with two facets that are an admirable illustration of her personality: ‘This disc was born of my fascination with Schumann. Everything about him captivates me: the tormented human being, the great reader fascinated by the fantastical and the supernatural, the brilliant and introverted composer, the poet who goes where words cannot go, the music, powerfully evocative at once of human characters or tableaux and of complex states of mind. In 1990, György Kurtág composed a trio in homage to Schumann – a way of straddling the centuries and opening up a dialogue between two styles, of reviving the imaginary figures and short contrasting forms with which we are familiar in Schumann. So it seemed an obvious idea to build a programme around these two composers. The comparison seems all the more interesting to me because I find in their music the same interiority, the same concentration (in Kurtág’...

Infusion Baroque draws new audiences to early music through a truly captivating concert experience, deftly combining seasoned musicianship with theatrical elements. Described as “dynamic and alive” (Early Music America) with “polish, energy, and finely-honed style… merrily breaking established traditions” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), the four women of Infusion Baroque enthrall audiences across North America with their creative and interactive programming. Their debut album 1747: C.P.E. Bach was released in 2017 and reached #3 on iTunes Canada Classical chart. Infusion Baroque's second album is the debut recording of six rare quintets by Georg Anton Kreüsser . Joyful and elegant, these pieces for flute, violin, viola, cello, and basso continuo feature the instruments engaged in a lively musical conversation that are sure to delight and charm listeners.

“Debussy is the most difficult of all composers to grasp or define [...]. A listener, on hearing one of his Préludes, cannot know the precise emotion that the landscape or object concerned aroused in Debussy; he can only experience a more or less successful reproduction, a translation into sound of the landscape or object. For the listener, it seems that the object or landscape has been given musical form and, even more worryingly, that he has, in a way, become the composer. Debussy is neither the painter nor the painting: he is the subject itself . He is both the music that is innate in the subject and the musician who gives it audible form.” (Harry Halbreich)

The music of J.S. Bach has followed me throughout my musical life as a sort of leitmotif. I grew up listening to and playing his music in so many different and varied forms - both original versions and adaptations - that it was a natural next step to adapt some of Bach's most beautiful solo works for my instrument. Bach's music is often described as "universal", and has been transcribed, adapted and adopted by and for numerous different instruments and musical genres. However, this is the first time that Johann Sebastian Bach's music has been recorded on the hurdy gurdy! This project represents the culmination of many years of hard work, adapting and transcribing this music for my instrument, thinking outside the box, while still trying not to completely re-invent the wheel (pun intended). (Tobie Miller)

Alexei Lubimov is one of the most admired pianists of his generation, particularly for his exploration of rarely-played repertoire on period instruments. Together with his disciple, harpsichordist and pianist Olga Pashchenko, a rising star of the new generation, and accompanied by the musicians of the Finnish Baroque Orchestra, they embark on a voyage of discovery into the music of Czech composer Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812), with world premiere recordings on period instruments of his Concerto for Two Pianos and Notturno concertant.A trailblazing early romantic composer, Dussek created an innovative piano music style marked by a harmonic richness and intense emotional expressivity.

Rolando Villazón is one of the music world’s most critically acclaimed and beloved stars and one of the leading tenors of our day. This is his first Christmas album on Deutsche Grammophon with all famous hits and fantastic collaborators! The star tenor follows a critically acclaimed Deutsche Grammophon recording of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito with his first Christmas album for the Yellow Label. Feliz Navidad extends the great tradition of seasonal albums by Fritz Wunderlich, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo and Bryn Terfel. Villazón records famous Christmas classics in each of his five languages, including White Christmas, O Tannenbaum, Tu scendi dalle stelle, Petit Papa Noël and Los peces en el río. Heart-warming tracks include duets with German singer-songwriter Sasha and French pop star Julie Zenatti. Rolando Villazón preserves the seasonal spirit in his latest album for Deutsche Grammophon. Feliz Navidad offers a snapshot of the songs and carols that have shaped t...

Piano concertos, designed to please a paying audience, were part of Mozart’s daily business. Yet he lifted the genre high above anything that had gone before, so high that he effectively invented it in the form we know today. His mature piano concertos – famously difficult to bring to life in performance – stand among the supreme tests of a performer’s powers. Seong-Jin Cho has chosen one of the most demanding of the composer’s works for keyboard and orchestra, the Piano Concerto in D minor K466, to launch his first Mozart recording for Deutsche Grammophon. The Korean pianist’s latest album, which also includes the dramatic Piano Sonata in F major K332, the early Piano Sonata in B flat major K281, and the Fantasia in D minor K397 , bears witness to a musical love affair that began in childhood and has deepened since he won the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw three years ago. ...

The duo with Håkan Hardenberger is my musical safe space for maximum risk-taking. From my earliest point of connection with this most regal of musicians, what entranced me was the fearless audacity of the endeavour. Envelopes pushed, or simply reinvented, boundaries moved and canvasses recast. Rehearsals are intense ; not many words spoken, a glance here or there, a certain type of breath taken, whilst the concerts are zones of feverish intensity, many-coloured and highly emotional. Too many now to pick out - San Fransisco, Seoul, Verbier, London, the Hanover concert with three World Premieres - I want to thank him for his encouragement, daring, humour and above all, friendship. (Colin Currie)

Gianluca Cascioli attended the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in his hometown of Turin, where he studied composition with Alessandro Ruo Rui and Alberto Colla, and piano with Franco Scala. As the winner of the Umberto Micheli International Piano Competition in 1994, Cascioli was awarded a contract to record for Deutsche Grammophon. As a pianist, Cascioli has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, Camerata Salzburg, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, among many others. He has also conducted the Deutsche Kammerorchester Frankfurt, and performed chamber music with Yuri Bashmet, Mstislav Rostropovich, Maxim Vengerov, Sayaka Shoji, Sabine Meyer, Stefano Mollo, the Alban Berg Quartet, and the Berlin Philharmonic Oc...

Here is a disc whose contents seem odd as it couples the violin concerto of a (still) Russian composer to the viola concerto of an English one. Instead, the coupling is very clever since Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto, whose premiere was in 1923 (while the composer was still living in France, a few years before his return to Soviet Union) served as a much-admired model to Walton’s Viola Concerto, whose first performance was played by Paul Hindemith in 1929. The similarities between the two works go beyond the three-movements structure slow-quick-slow and concern themes, accompaniments and the rondo form of the virtuoso central Scherzo . The smart idea of such unusual coupling came to one of the few great living violinists who can really play the viola with equal skill: Isabelle van Keulen. This glorious disc is crowned by the orchestrated version of Vaughan Williams’ masterpiece The Lark Ascending . One of German radio best orchestras, the NDR Radiophilhar...