Music is the key

George Frideric Handel was a true European. He had a German work ethic, Italian passion and a Dutch head for business. And after training in Germany and Italy, from 1711 he went on to win the hearts of the British. He wooed them with his many operas and oratorios, and with instrumental works like his Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks. Yet during his lifetime, he was renowned not only as an organist, but also as one of the greatest harpsichordists of his day. The public couldn’t get enough of him on the harpsichord, either as a composer or a musician. Evidently times change. However, if we take a closer look at the period during which Handel settled in London, we soon see that people were occupied with the same issues then as they are today.

Considered to be the highest triumph of instrumental composition in his own day, Mozart’s final symphonies continue to sweep audiences away. From the famous G-minor opening movement of the 40th symphony that cuts straight to the chase to the unprecedented complexity of the 41st symphony’s majestic finale, Mozart displays his vivid melodic invention as well as the maturity of his “old” musical soul. Even if his untimely death came unexpectedly, these two symphonies fill the listener with a sense of culmination, and may be seen as a sublime conclusion of both Mozart’s musical development and of the eighteenth-century symphony in general. These extraordinary works are performed here by the NDR Radiophilharmonie and Andrew Manze, and will be followed by a recording of Mozart’s 38th and 39th symphonies.

Violinist Arabella Steinbacher and pianist Robert Kulek continue their great collaboration with a new PENTATONE release, the recording of César Franck’s Sonata for Piano and Violin in A, which joins Richard Strauss’ Sonata for Violin and Piano in E-flat, Op. 18. While Franck’s violin sonata is epic in character, Strauss’ work is full of jovial energy, hope and anticipation. This fusion of elements brilliantly demonstrates the synergy between Steinbacher and Kulek, something we have witnessed during their recital performances over the past few years. Needless to say, both artists possess superb technique. Steinbacher demonstrates her delicate yet fiery touch, most notably in the robust Franck score , while Kulek plays with resolute intonation, steadfast tempo, and broad dynamics. As exquisite as the performance is, one surely cannot overlook the role of PENTATONE’s recording partner Polyhymnia, whose first-rate recording and engineering techniques have allowed t...

Miroirs is the debut album from the young French-Danish soprano Elsa Dresig. The winner of Plácido Domingo’s Operalia singing competition in 2016, she has performed opera in Berlin, Paris, Zurich and Aix-en-Provence and sung with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic in Berlin, Salzburg, Lucerne and Paris. Miroirs showcases her vocal and dramatic range with different ‘reflections’ on a situation or character in arias and scenes from operas by Gounod, Massenet, Rossini, Mozart, Puccini, Richard Strauss and the rarely-heard Daniel Steibelt. The album includes two world premiere recordings.

To launch their exciting new partnership Robin Ticciati and the DSO present Debussy's La mer, Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande and the premiere recording of composer Brett Dean's arrangements of Debussy's Ariettes oubliées featuring Magdalena Kozená. Following his DSO debut Ticciati chose La mer to perform when he returned as the newly announced Principal Conductor in 2016. Ticciati has conducted La mer and Pelléas et Mélisande across Europe with the LPO, Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Budapest Festival Orchestra receiving excellent reviews. Brett Dean's orchestration of the Ariettes premiered in Sydney in 2015 and at once displayed Debussy's music in a new light. Dean's new arrangements expand on the colours heard in Debussy's original six songs applying unbelievably delicate orchestration that sounds like gossamer; The Daily Telegraph declared it a revelation. The all-French programme also includes the prelude to Fauré's opera Pé...

For me, coming back to baroque repertoire is like opening the door to my grandparents’ loft – full of familiar smells, handmade toys and old fairy-tale books. The sort of place where I can stretch myself out on top of a haystack, forget about the outside world for a little while and allow myself to be carried away to the unexplored wilderness of the past. With this recording I would like to take you with me on a particularly exciting journey, not only because we uncovered some pieces which haven’t been performed since they were rst composed, but also because I could hardly imagine more passionate, savage, uninhibited yet loving and caressing companions for these desperate heroines than Václav Luks and the musicians of Collegium 1704 . I hope you enjoy listening to this music as much as I loved singing it. (Magdalena Kožená)

Possessing a rare combination of passionate musicality, explosive virtuosity and intellectual curiosity, pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has been heralded “Iceland’s Glenn Gould” by the New York Times (Anthony Tommasini, August 2017). Before lighting up the international scene in 2016, Ólafsson won all the major prizes in his native country, including four Musician of the Year prizes at the Icelandic Music Awards, and the Icelandic Optimism Prize. In September 2018 Víkingur Ólafsson released his new album on Deutsche Grammophon,  Johann Sebastian Bach , featuring an eclectic selection of the composer’s keyboard works. In an ingeniously woven tapestry of diverse original compositions as well as transcriptions from different eras, Ólafsson’s “inspired playing makes Bach more human than we’ve heard in a long time” (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2018). The Bach album follows on from the global success (“ Breathtakingly brilliant pianist ” (Gramophone) of the Philip Glass Etudes, Óla...

Thinking up new programmes is something I usually do on my own at my desk. But for this solo album I wanted to take up a new challenge to create a programme with my audience. I had the feeling that this would provide me with new insight. With just my violin as travelling companion, I set off through Europe for a series of solo recitals with a collection of pieces to try out. After each concert I asked the audience for feedback: how had they experienced the programme? The atmosphere, the sequence of the pieces and the length. Instead of treating my audience as passive listeners, I invited them to discuss these matters and feel involved. On my way to the next recital I thought about the reactions. Slowly but surely the programme began to form a logical entity. This is what INSIGHT is all about . The liner notes tell more about the process of making a programme, and the actual music is the final result. What is in store for you? Not the average classical programme. Don’t...

On Cesko we go on a musical journey across Europe to the extraordinary land of Bohemia (popularly known as Cesko, though officially the word actually means Czech), the homeland of two composers we have come to love so much. It doesn’t seem to matter that we hardly know their country: the indescribable energy ofthe music, with its folk melodies and harmonies, revealing the essence of a nation steeped in a deep cultural history, takes us there instantly. These composers are the much celebrated and revered Antonín Dvo?ák, along with the younger and lesser-known Erwin Schulhoff, whose life and career was tragically cut short by the Nazi regime. Both were masters in harnessing the old to the new, fusing a rich musical heritage with the influence of new worlds. Their works take us through the full range of emotions , from the tranquil to the fiery, from the elated to the melancholic. A reflection of human life.

Icelandic-American cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir has recorded VERNACULAR on the Sono Luminus label. The intriguing album, soon to be available from a number of sources, features music for solo cello by Icelandic composers. Páll Ragnar Pálsson’s quietly meditative Afterquake opens the album. The composer finds his inspiration in the poetry of fellow Icelander Auður Jónsdóttir’s The Big Quake , echoing its description of a barren yet beautiful landscape in a series of musical gestures ranging from glissandi, trills, and double string playing to sul ponticello bowing. 48 Images of the Moon by Þuríður Jónsdóttir engages the attention through the use of a nighttime field recording by Magnus Bergsson made close to the Önundarfjörður fjord. The combination of the nocturnal sounds of nature juxtaposed to Thorsteinsdóttir’s sometimes serene sometimes energetic responses to the enveloping soundscape is mesmerizing. Halldór Smárason’s O explores in music the poetic connot...

What a surprise it was when my friend the pianist Julien Quentin introduced me to the music of Szymanowski several years ago. A world full of myths opened up, a landscape with fast streaming rivers where frightened nymphs timidly glanced back at lascivious satyrs with goat hooves. And full of colourful stories about the shepherd’s boy seduced by a princess, and the firebird hiding in the bushes. In the three myths I recognised Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I managed to track down the poems of Szymanowski’s countryman Tadeusz Micinski, which inspired him. In pursuit of the composer’s roots, I visited his villa Atma, where I heard the wonderful music of the mountains of Zakopane, which had moved him as well. And so ‘Myth’ came into being, an issue imbued with the Polish soul, and including, from further afield, some Russian myths as well.

The Ragazze Quartet with its classical roots, Slagwerk Den Haag with its contemporary sounds, and the unusual jazz trio Kapok… Contrasting contours, but a common denominator: none of these three ensembles belong to a specific category. All three push the boundaries of our genres in our quest for new forms and adventurous joint projects. It is through this inquisitive musicianship that the unusual combination feels so wonderfully natural.The choice for Riley’s repertoire gave another stir to our boundary reconnoitre. For Riley’s music allows considerable space for creativity and improvisation. The tension that arises through freedom within strict frames means that every performance is different. And it brings with it that the music has a strong sense of spontaneity and joie de vivre. In C, performed by the Ragazze Quartet and Slagwerk Den Haag, the dynamic range is enormous. Long, melodic lines as well as short, rhythmic motif...

It began with a piece which I fell in love with: Eugène Ysaÿe’s Poème élégiaque. You have to tune the bottom violin string a tone lower. That explains the dark character, which you hear particularly in the middle, which is a funeral march. Ysaÿe dedicated it to Gabriël Fauré. And so the idea for this CD was born: violin music by composers who honoured and inspired one another. I found out, for example, that Fauré often visited the famous singer Pauline Viardot’s salon. It was there that he premiered the Romance. At first it sounds like a rather sweet Fauré, but passions rise high in the middle. Fauré was briefly engaged to a daughter of Viardot. The Russian writer Ivan Toergenjev, Viardot’s lover, used the affaire in his short story Le chant de l’amour triomphant, on which, in turn, Ernest Chausson based his Poème , with its dreamy music and a tragic ring. Chausson dedicated it to Y...

The first album by Judith to be recorded live, this is a work highly charged with emotion and truth. "A live record -the pianist confesses- bears the truth of the moment. As a performer, I believe in the value of honesty, in the value of what is unique, of being able to share an instant of real emotion. And that's what I feel this recording possesses". Pour le tombeau de Claude Debussy came into being as a tribute concert played in 2018 to mark the centenary of the death of the French composer, and it is conceived now in album form as a journey through the works of Debussy and of composers intimately linked to him. "I like a concert or a disc to represent a journey and to tell a story - she explains - and that is why I chose this line of argument instead of a monographic project. Moreover, I also decided on these composers because I've have felt particularly close to them in recent years". In addition, Judith identifies with the aesthetic of...

A reissue with the impact of a new release, that’s what we have in mind for this wonderful set of hailed recordings of Mozart’s Clavier-Concerte, recorded in 1990/91 on historical instruments and still sounding as fresh and beautiful as if we recorded them yesterday!  Anima Eterna Brugge is under the permanent musical direction of Jos van Immerseel, who has led the orchestra through a carefully guided evolution from small chamber ensemble to full symphony orchestra. In 1985 he brought six string players together to study the works of Bach, and two years later the group was enlarged to a baroque ensemble of seventeen musicians. In 1989 the by now twenty-five musicians began to work on the Viennese classical repertoire. The success was expanding and in 1990 the Amsterdam Concertgebouw included Anima Eterna Brugge in its “World famous Baroque Orchestras” series. Mozart’s complete concertos for fortepiano formed the focal point of the next two years, with concert cycles in Kyoto a...

While we’re not short of top-drawer recordings of Franck’s Violin Sonata, I’m still not sure whether I’ve ever encountered it sitting within such a musically and musicologically tempting programme as this one from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien. Not, I might add, that the Franck Sonata should necessarily be seen as the main event here, despite its fame. Au contraire , one of the chief draws is the way it sits in equal balance within the whole, each work informing and being informed by its neighbours. To deal first with the programming, all paths (or almost all paths) lead back to the great French violinist Eugène Ysaÿe: his Poème élégiaque of 1892 , based on the tomb scene of Romeo and Juliet , followed by the Franck Sonata, which was a wedding present to him in 1886, and the 1908 Violin Sonata he commissioned from Franck’s fellow organist-composer Louis Vierne. Then a final petit four in the form of Lili Boulanger’s Nocturne, written only three years after the...

Dedicated to the performance of Baroque music for the last 40 years, Les Arts Florissants never cease unearthing new repertoire, much of which is rated among the finest musical achievements in the cultural life of France (Lully, de Lalande, Charpentier, Rameau), Italy (Monteverdi, Rossi) and England (Purcell, Handel) - a legacy they have made available to musicians and ensembles worldwide. Whether intended for church services, for theatre stages or for royal entertainment, here are some of the choicest musical gems, ranging from the legendary recording of Atys to the most recent collections of airs and madrigals, to list but a few. Nearly every musical chapter in the story of the ensemble made history and, along with hours of pure pleasure, this retrospective is sure to bring back fond memories of your first encounter with Les Arts Florissants , who have become a pillar of our collective cultural life.

The violin was Edward Elgar’s own instrument and his Violin Concerto is almost like a personal confession: it was ‘too emotional’, Elgar admitted, adding that he loved it nonetheless. The solo part is one of the most exhausting in the repertoire – a veritable compendium of bravura violin techniques. In an interview, Fritz Kreisler, to whom the Violin Concerto is dedicated, ranked Elgar with Beethoven and Brahms. Elgar met the challenge: his Violin Concerto combines the singing quality of Beethoven with the symphonic drama of Brahms.  The London-born Gerald Finzi was in many ways more English than Elgar and his teacher Ralph Vaughan Williams. As can be heard in his Violin Concerto, a well kept secret from 1927, that had its first performance after the premiere only in 1999. The work lasts twenty minutes: a six-minute allegro, a superb central ten-minute molto sereno, and ending with a four-minute hornpipe rondo. It is difficult to understand why Finzi was dissatisfied with hi...

(…) Since, I have spent a fair bit of time coaching cellists, both modern and baroque alike, and found myself playing along to demonstrate various points I gradually could feel these pieces joining the violin partitas and sonatas as another kind of ‘daily bread’; I started catching myself playing some of the movements I particularly loved while warming up, and realising that it was actually possible to play them on the violin, and to find a special expressive vocabulary at the higher pitch.
How could one possibly justify it, especially with works that have peppered the recording catalogue with some of the most iconic and adored string performances of all time, the Casals, Fourniers, Torteliers or Starkers? But what I was doing also seemed very much in keeping with Bach’s own habit of recycling his compositions for different instruments and different uses. The examples are endless but I immediately think of the concertos appearing as sinfonias in cantatas, or concertos for violins t...

“I am happy that the Dutch TV company VPRO made a documentary of our recording of this great symphony. This film is available on the internet. [YouTube/Mahler 7/Iván Fischer] It documents my efforts in proving that the last movement of Mahler’s seventh symphony – despite some doubts of Mahler experts – is a masterpiece. This work is often seen as enigmatic, fragmented, less accessible than the other, beloved Mahler Symphonies. May this recording contribute to a revalidation!  Mahler returns here to a perfect balance . He ended the 6th Symphony in a tragic minor key. Here he offers us the full journey from darkness to light. And what a journey it is! Please note the most magnificent scherzo framed between the two unique night music episodes! I love this symphony.” (Iván Fischer)

C lassical Trumpeter and Gold Medal Global Music Award Winner Mary Elizabeth Bowden has been described by Gramophone Magazine as “brilliant” and “radiant in new repertoire for trumpet.” Bowden, a Yamaha Performing Artist, is highly regarded for her artistry and virtuosity as a soloist, and has been praised for the clarity, purity and power of her sound. Bowden released her debut album, Radiance, on Summit Records featuring new American works. She has been featured on MPR’s “New Classical Tracks” with Julie Amacher, which is being aired on NPR stations nationwide. Bowden’s 2018-19 performance highlights include solo performances at the Maspalomas International Trumpet Festival in Gran Canaria and at Lieksa Brass Week in Finland. She will make her China debut performing Hummel Concerto and Debussy’s Rêverie with the Hunan Symphony Orchestra at the Hunan Spring Festival Concert. She will also perform as a soloist with the Kassia Ensemble, Chrysalis Chamber Players, Rich...

In the latest chapter in András Schiff’s ongoing documentation of Franz Schubert’s music, the great pianist plays the Four Impromptus D 899, and compositions from 1828, the last year of Schubert’s too brief life: The Three Pieces D 946 (“impromptus in all but name” notes Misha Donat in the CD booklet), the C minor Sonata D 958 and the A major Sonata D 959. Schiff again chooses to use his fortepiano made by Franz Brodmann in Vienna, around 1820. “It is to me ideally suited to Schubert’s keyboard works,” he has said. “There is something quintessentially Viennese in its timbre, its tender mellowness, its melancholic cantabilità.” Critics have agreed, unanimous also in their praise of Schiff’s interpretations : “I cannot think of anyone of his calibre who has mastered the fortepiano as well as the modern piano and shown such distinction on both,” wrote Stephen Plaistow in an Editor’s Choice review in Gramophone. “In Schubert Schiff has a claim to be considered sovereign am...

The Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina is a multiple prize winner at international competitions. In 2018, she was awarded the Prix Thierry Scherz and the Prix André Hoffmann at the Swiss winter music festi­val “Sommets musicaux de Gstaad”, which includes a recording with orchestra for the Swiss recording label Claves. In the same year, Anastasia was selected by BBC 3 to join the BBC New Generation scheme from 2018 to 2020. In 2016, she won the soloist prize of the renowned German festival „Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern“ and the 2nd prize at the George Enescu Competition in Bukarest. In 2015, Anastasia Kobekina won the 1st prize at Germany’s most important International Youth Competition “ Tonali15 Music Competition ” (Hamburg). As a result of this competition success, Anastasia earned €10.000 prize money and a violoncello made by G. B. Guadagnini loaned for three years. Additionally, in her home country, Anastasia also was the first-prize winner of several intern...

Jointly commissioned by the Konzerthaus Berlin and the Copenhagen Opera Festival, Christian Jost’s reinterpretation of Schumann’s Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love) was first performed in Berlin in October 2017 by the artists who appear on this Deutsche Grammophon world premiere recording: Danish tenor Peter Lodahl and the Konzerthaus Berlin’s own Horenstein Ensemble. In Jost’s Dichterliebe , the Romantic art song is fused with elements of the composer’s own contemporary style. The solo piano accompaniment is transformed into writing for a nine-piece chamber ensemble and Schumann’s cycle is doubled in length, thanks to the addition of newly-composed instrumental passages that link together the sixteen originally self-contained songs. As Jost explains, these transitions form “a harmonic sea, in which the songs are individual islands woven organically into a larger, newly created composition”. One of those islands, “Hör ich das Liedchen klinge...

Conductor Laurence Equilbey is fascinated and inspired by the unconventional, hybrid character of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy and Triple Concerto . She sees it as “the root of their originality, which gives them a special place in Beethoven’s output and in the history of music as a whole.” Their fusion of genres is reflected in performances that unite the period instruments of Equilbey’s Insula orchestra and soloists – pianists Bertrand Chamayou and David Kadouch, violinist Alexandra Conunova and cellist Natalie Clein – who are best known for playing modern instruments.

Grammy-winning musicians Evgeny Kissin and the Emerson String Quartet join forces for their debut collaborative album, captured live at a sold out Carnegie Hall concert, to be released on Deutsche Grammophon this Friday, April 12. Capturing a rare performance of one of the world’s most acclaimed pianists as a chamber musician, this live album is a new gem in DG’s vast catalogue. The rehearsal and preparation process for the recording created space for a true meeting of minds, allowing Kissin and the Emersons to preserve their individual characteristics while revealing qualities unique to their collaboration. Ideas tested in the rehearsal room were subsequently forged in the heat of performance, unleashing elemental shifts between Classical heroism and Romantic introspection, and drawing out points of dramatic tension and release. Everything flowed, nothing became fixed as Kissin and the Emersons moved from one concert to the next. Last year’s performances “we...

After Lucifer (2014) and Pour sortir au jour (2016), the French composer Guillaume Connesson returns to Deutsche Grammophon with "Lost Horizon", a new double-album directed by Stéphane Denève at the head of the Brussels Philharmonic. Already awarded the Victoire de la Musique Classique in the Composer category in 2015, Guillaume Connesson received last February his second award as Composer of the Year 2019 for "Les Horizons perdus", Concerto for Violin created in September 2018 that we find within this double album. These two CDs show two facets of the composer's art and offer two trips. One outside, with the fantastic and festive "Cities of Lovecraft" and the saxophone Concerto A Kind of Trane performed by Timothy McAllister. A work that recalls the memory of the jazzman John Coltrane, real incarnation of the solo instrument as he imagines it. The other is a journey inside oneself illustrated by the Violin Concerto Les Horizons Perdus....

Love is a rollercoaster, and so is this swinging new take on Virgil’s classical tragedy. Dido & Aeneazz is a recomposition of Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas by Raaf Hekkema, combined with newly-composed music by Eric Vloeimans. The album showcases the congenial collaboration between the versatile reed players of Calefax and renowned trumpet player Eric Vloeimans. Dido & Aeneazz invites the listener to join a musical journey that virtuously flows from the baroque original to jazz, calypso and klezmer, and back. Acclaimed in the Netherlands and abroad, the members of Calefax arguably invented a completely new genre: the reed quintet. After their successful PENTATONE debut with Hidden Gems, these gentlemen add yet another treasure to their discography.

Eternal Light: A Requiem was commissioned by London Musici to celebrate its 20th anniversary. It was commissioned as both a choral-orchestral-dance piece for London Musici, The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, and Rambert Dance Company and as a choral-orchestral work. Most requiems are based. one way or another, on the medieval church’s Mass for the Dead, which is made up of a series of sections beginning with the ‘Kyrie Eleison’ and ending with ‘In Paradisum’. Although the traditional requiem text calls for ‘eternal peace, rest and light’ for those who have died, it also emphasises judgement and everlasting damnation for anyone who transgresses the Roman Catholic Church’s code of behaviour, as seen from the perspective of the Middle Ages. I did not feel at ease with this approach to the appalling pain of loss and grief, so in an attempt to provide some solace for the living that mourn, I stripped down the old Latin texts to a few phrases in each movement and l...

'The wealth of compositions using the sensuous and highly charged texts of the Song of Songs is incredibly vast and rich. In the course of compiling this recording I re-discovered music that I have known for years, was introduced to pieces I didn’t know existed, and was privileged to commission a couple of works to add to this wonderful legacy of compositional material. Taken as a whole, the collection of pieces gathered here presents a varied and enlightening journey through the book of Song of Songs , and through the musical language of different centuries. I hope that both those that are well known and those that are new discoveries will encourage listeners to delve further into this miraculous repertoire.' (Suzi Digby)

The late 17th and early 18th centuries were the Golden Age of the Recorder. Played by amateurs and professional and admire by musical connoisseurs, the recorder was everywhere. From Italy to England, the greatest composers of the day were writing hundreds of masterworks to meet the public’s demand! Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, a scrappy group of colonists were carving a new nation out of the wilderness... But where were the recorders? It is one of the great ironies of the recorder’s long history, that despite being ubiquitous in nearly every American public music school program, few composers ever explored writing for it. In order to set this egregious state of affairs to right, Michala Petri , the first Lady of the Recorder, invited four American composers to make their own discovery of just what an Old World Recorder can do!  For the newest installment of her ground-breaking Concerto Project, four works have been specially commissioned to showcase the soun...

Here is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed first volume of Bach’s Harpsichord Concertos by Fabio Bonizzoni and his group La Risonanza. This second volume includes a more varied range of works as it starts with the most famous Brandenburg Fifth, which is the first ever harpsichord concert. After the BWV 1054, we have the rather rare BWV 1057,which is the harpsichord version of the Brandenburg Fourth. To end Bonizzoni’s survey of all Bach’s harpsichord concertos , we find the famous and beloved Triple concerto, with violin and flute. Some critics’ quotation on first volume. For a single CD of these four keyboard concertos, there’s no preferable recording available. - Musicweb  Harpsichordist Fabio Bonizzoni does a credible job in integrating the concertos so that they appear not as a soloist versus the ensemble, but rather as an integral part. – Fanfare Bonizzoni achieves the difficult task of combining subtle artifice and interpretative joie de vivre...

This is the first volume in a complete survey of Bach’s harpsichord concertos, recorded by La Risonanza in one-to-a-part practice performance. With his Fifth Brandenburg Concerto of 1719, Bach had created the first ever harpsichord concerto. From 1729, in Leipzig, the opportunity arose to continue this experiment: each week at Café Zimmermann he conducted his Collegium musicum in orchestral concerts that lasted around two hours. In the summer of 1733, he took delivery of “a new harpsichord, the like of which has not been heard before around here”. This magnificent instrument, which featured at the Zimmermann concerts, urgently called for concertos to be played by himself as soloist, and even more so his sons and students. Not only in Saxony but also well beyond, Bach was considered to be the absolute authority in all things harpsichord and organ; he thus had to make his own contribution to the emerging genre of the “clavier concerto”. The manuscript of his six harpsic...

Kim Kashkashian, who won a Grammy last year with her solo viola Kurtág/Ligeti disc, returns with a new trio. Tre Voci includes Italian-American flutist Marina Piccinini and Israeli harpist Sivan Magen. All three musicians have been acknowledged for bringing a new voice to their instruments. Kashkashian, Piccinini and Magen first played together at the 2010 Marlboro Music Festival, and agreed that the potential of this combination was too great to limit it to a single season. Since then they have been developing their repertoire. On this compelling first release it revolves around Debussy’s 1915 “Sonata for flute, viola and harp” and its influence, most directly felt in Takemitsu’s shimmering “And then I knew ’twas Wind”. Debussy himself had been profoundly moved by his encounter with music of the East and in his last works was emphasizing tone-colour, texture and timbre and a different kind of temporal flow.  In this music, the elasticity of Debussy’s feeling for time (as He...

This release is the debut album of an extremely talented young violinist, presenting a handful of miniatures of classical music arranged by Tomasz Radziwonowicz for violin, with the accompaniment of string orchestra. Gabrysia Balcerek began learning to play the violin at the age of 7 at Krzysztof Komeda-Trzcinski Music School in Ostrów Wielkopolski under the supervision of Agata Falkiewicz, MA. Currently, she is a student of the Poznan Mieczyslaw Karlowicz General Education Secondary Music School, where she develops her talent under the direction of Karina Gidaszewska. From an early age, she has been participating in many violin competitions. In total, she is a laureate of more than forty Polish and international violin competitions.

Dorothee Oberlinger is one of the most amazing discoveries of recent years, an expressive virtuoso who - quite rightly - received numerous awards while still quite young. Today she is seen as one of the best recorder-players in the world. Her concerts have been received with enthusiasm by critics and audiences alike, earning her unanimous acclaim. Her CDs are regularly fêted as the best new issues on the market. Dorothee Oberlinger has given solo recitals at festivals all over Europe, in America and Japan, for example at the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, the Musikfestspiele Potsdam, the Settimane Musicale Stresa, the Nederlandse Oude-Musik-Network, the Festival de Musica Antigua Sajazarra, the Warsaw Beethoven Festival, the Europäische Musikfestwoche Passau, the Rheingau-Musikfestival, the Tage der Alten Musik Regensburg and the MDR-Musiksommer. Other venues in which she has played include the Wigmore Hall in London, the National Philharmonie in Warsaw, the Maria...

Founded in 1998 at Pro Corda, Suffolk, the multi-award-winning Doric String Quartet describes recording Britten’s quartets as a significant milestone: ‘In our recording we have endeavoured to tread a line that brings out the humanity in these works but also recognises the need for distance and fragility. This is very personal and intimate music, yet also world-encompassing and timeless.’ The Quartet continues: ‘Another feature of this recording is that Hélène Clément, our violist, is playing on Benjamin Britten’s own viola. This instrument (on loan from the Britten-Pears Foundation) was made in 1843 in Milan by Francesco Guissani . It was previously owned by the composer Frank Bridge who gave it to Britten, as a departure gift when Britten and Pears set sail for the USA in 1939.’ Hélène Clément writes: ‘To be able to explore the music of Britten with the very sound that the composer had in his ears is the greatest honour and joy I could have imagined.’

This album is dedicated with love and admiration to Alejandro González Iñárritu and his wife Maria Eladia Hagerman. Nestled in the canyons outside their hometown of San Miguel de Allende, ‘El Charco del Ingenio’ is a pool of water which has been the source of popular legends for many centuries, as well as the primary source of water in the area. ‘El Chan’ is its guardian spirit, a mythic being from the underworld who dwells in the mysterious waters and shows its terrible powers to those daring to approach. The pool changes colors throughout the year and is fed by a spring which is one of the last sources of natural water in the area.

Despite the rivalry between the operatic companies leaded by Haendel and Porpora in London (1734-1737), much has to be said about the real nature of the connection between the two composers. Both the musicians were considered outstandingly original for their aesthetic choices. Both admired each other's music. The few whirlwind years of their defiance in Great Britain produced memorable scores: among them, Ariodante by Haendel and Polifemo by Porpora, performed with simultaneous runs in the city theaters. The fight between the two operatic company was an opportunity for the composers to meet and discover each other, to deal with the taste of the audience and to experiment new ideas, getting strength from the incredible skills of the members of the vocal casts (Farinelli, Senesino, Carestini, etc.). This CD tries to capture the soul of such a complicated intellectual relationship, presenting significant exemples of the composers' style and outlining the borders of ...

Throughout history men have feared madwomen, burning them as witches, confining them in asylums and subjecting them to psychoanalysis – yet, they have also been fascinated, unable to resist fantasizing about them. For their new disc, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have created a programme that explores the responses of a variety of composers to women whose stories have left them vulnerable and exposed. As a motto they have chosen an aphorism by Nietzsche: ‘There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.’ Brahms’ Ophelia Songs, composed for a stage production of Hamlet, appear next to those by Richard Strauss and Chausson, while Ophelia's death is described by both Schumann (in Herzeleid) and Saint-Saëns. Goethe’s mysterious and traumatized Mignon appears in settings by Hugo Wolf as well as Duparc, while his ill-used Gretchen grieves by her spinning-wheel in Schubert's matchless setting. Sadness and madness tip into wi...

In all other respects, the primadonnas, the title figures and central heroines, stand at the centre of the spotlight. Handel and Vivaldi also had a special affection for the ‘women in the shadows’ – for the queens, the servants or the spurned lovers, mostly sung in female alto voice. They were given breathtakingly beautiful arias: full of lament, sensuality, vengefulness or fury. In recent years, the German contralto Julia Böhme has developed into one of the most in-demand performers of 17th- and 18th-century music. Her vocal elegance and expressiveness, historically sourced style and unique timbre are just as characteristic of her as a performer as her dramatic intensity and versatility. Concerts and opera productions have taken her to the Dresden Music Festival, the Vienna Musikverein, Prague, Leipzig, Halle, Amsterdam, Brussels, Bruges, Versailles, the Laieszhalle Hamburg and the Leipzig Gewandhaus.

‘Henosis’, Joep Beving’s third album and the last chapter of a trilogy. On ‘Henosis’ the Dutch composer continues his minimalist and at times romantic style of writing, but this time his piano is complemented by a diverse range of other instruments and players. It sets off where his sophomore album Prehension left us, the warm intimate sound of the Schimmel piano Beving inherited from his grandmother. But the compositional language chosen is different from his previous work. As if gently inviting one on a cosmic adventure, it is the commencement of an epic journey into the unknown. What follows is a deep listening experience in which the piano, although sometimes completely absent, is the familiar voice that guides the listener on its way into oblivion. Beving draws his inspiration from man’s relationship to reality. His debut album ‘Solipsism’ investigates the self and how it is related to the other by trying to show we have a shared understanding of what it is to be...

This is volume three in the Doric String Quartet’s ongoing exploration of Haydn’s complete string quartets, already highly praised by major international media and regularly supported by concerts in the world’s greatest venues, from Carnegie and Wigmore halls to the Royal Concertgebouw. The Op. 64 Quartets date from a time of great change for Haydn, compared with the previously recorded Op. 20 and Op. 76. Not only was Haydn preparing for the greatest adventure of his life – what would turn out to be the first of two trips to London – at the time of their composition, in 1790, but they also appeared under a new publisher, Leopold Kozeluch’s firm Magazin de musique. Marked throughout by the virtuosity of the Doric String Quartet , the rhythmic energy as well as the poetic tenderness of the players, this recording showcases a highly characteristic side of Haydn’s music, the inexhaustible versatility and constant unpredictability of the materials.

This is the second volume in the Doric String Quartet’s series devoted to Haydn’s String Quartets. Op. 76 turned out to be the last full set of six string quartets that Haydn was to compose. While they were written over the period 1796-97, they were not published until 1799. They had been commissioned by Count Joseph Erdödy, and such arrangements often entailed, as in this case, a period of time during which the works were reserved for that person’s exclusive use and enjoyment. The composition of Op. 76 coincided with Haydn’s work on Die Schöpfung and the first few of the six masses which Haydn wrote for the name day of Princess Maria Hermenegild Esterházy, and one can readily imagine that such compositional preoccupations rubbed off onto the composition of the quartets. However, that cannot be equated with a particular predominant ‘opus character’, a feature of some of Haydn’s previous sets. Rather – like Op. 20, also recently recorded by the Doric String Quartet ...

Haydn’s six Op. 20 string quartets are milestones in the history of the genre. He wrote them in 1772 for performance by his colleagues at the Esterházy court and, unusually, not specifically for publication. Each one is a unique masterpiece and the set introduces compositional techniques that radically transformed the genre and shaped it for centuries to come. Haydn overturns conventional instrumental roles, crafts remarkably original colours and textures, and unlocks new expressive possibilities in these works which were crucial in establishing the reputation of purely instrumental music. The range within the quartets is kaleidoscopic. From the introspective, chorale-like slow movement of No. 1 via the terse and radical quartet No. 3 in G minor to the comic spirit of the fourth in D major, each of the quartets inhabits a distinct musical world. For many, this is some of the greatest music Haydn ever wrote. Playing these seminal works is one of the world’s finest you...

This disc contains Schubert’s two best-loved string quartets. The first is often called ‘Rosamunde’ because the slow movement contains the melody from an entr’acte Schubert wrote for Helmina von Chézy’s play. The second is named ‘Death and the Maiden’ because Schubert uses Death’s melody in the eponymous song as the basis for ever-wilder variations in its slow movement. Actually, in the performances on this disc, neither is particularly slow; admittedly they are marked ‘ andante ’ but I’d soon be out of breath if I walked at this tempo. One could say that the A minor Quartet is to the great G major Quartet what Schubert’s first song cycle, Die schöne Müllerin, is to the second, Winterreise. In each case, there seems to be hope in the first of the works, though it is dashed; in the second there is none. The D minor Quartet occupies an intermediate position in which Schubert seems to be hoping that if he goes on long enough in the last movement, something good...