Evgeni Koroliov / Anna Vinnitskaya / Ljupka Hadzi Georgieva / Kammerakademie Potsdam BACH Concertos for Pianos

Over the past five years, pianist Anna Vinnitskaya has made three Alpha recordings dedicated to Shostakovitch, Brahms et Rachmaninov.

Evgeni Koroliov is a great master of the piano, a great Bach specialist, whose recordings of Bach are an acclaimed benchmark. His piano duo with his wife, Ljupka Hadzi-Georgieva, has made its mark over the past few years in all the major international concert venues. Also a highly reputed teacher, Koroliov was Anna Vinnitskaya’s professor at Hamburg.

‘Though I no longer study with him, I still meet and talk with him several times a week,’ she confides. ‘That helps me further in my development, not just as a pianist but as a human being…Now that I am myself a professor at the same university, I try to carry it on, to pass his experience on to others.’

These three Slavonic pianists, who for some time have been aiming to record the Bach concertos as a team, decided to invite a German ensemble that is itself highly expert in Bach interpretation, the Potsdam Chamber Orchestra; they recorded this double album in a legendary venue where some of the greatest artists have recorded: the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in Berlin.

Avi Avital J.S. BACH

Avi Avital is one of the world's leading classical mandolinists, gracing concert halls from Tel Aviv to Munich to New York. But the young Israeli says he discovered the mandolin only by coincidence.

"When I was a kid, I had a neighbor who played the mandolin — the neighbor from upstairs," Avital tells NPR's Guy Raz. "It was one of those buildings where all the doors are open and all the neighbors are friends and more close than relatives. It was like one big family.

"I arrived to the age where I wanted to do something after school, and I liked music very much, so when my mother asked me, 'What would you like to play?' I said, 'Mandolin, like my neighbor.'"

Avital says it was also a coincidence that he was able to learn to play classical mandolin in his hometown of Beersheba, a small city in the desert of southern Israel.

It is a seductive sound and his playing is dazzling. Avital has transcribed for the mandolin, music originally written for three other instruments. The texture is different without being distorted. He achieves a bright and brilliant articulation in the works for harpsichord, a more lyrical virtuosity in the violin concerto and a mesmerising woody legato in the flute sonata, demonstrating not just the adaptability of the instrument but the versatility of his playing as well. His "tempi" are brisk and energised without being rushed and the slow movements are taken with becalming sensitivity . . . [the musicians are] doing more than ample justice to the sounds of the baroque. (Shamistha de Soysa)

Emmanuel Pahud / Kammerakademie Potsdam / Trevor Pinnock C.P.E. BACH Flute Concertos

One of the more puzzling remarks about the music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach came from Mozart, who said that anyone who listened closely would realize his debt to the German composer. That seemed unlikely, given that Mozart only rarely availed himself of the Sturm und Drang ("storm and stress") style of C.P.E.'s keyboard music. But listen to this release by flutist Emmanuel Pahud and you'll get an idea of what Mozart was talking about. It's not just that the flute concertos are basically galant in style, not Sturm und Drang. It's a certain nervous energy that makes the flute bloom rapidly out of squarish themes and keeps you guessing as to what's coming next. Pahud has previously recorded music by C.P.E. and others in the orbit of the so-called "Flute King," Frederick the Great of Prussia, and he gives this music an immediacy that avoids cuteness, aided by sharp work from the Kammerakademie Potsdam under veteran historical-instrument conductor Trevor Pinnock. Pahud himself uses a modern flute, which works in this case: the athletic, but not showy, quality of C.P.E. Bach's flute writing in the outer movements lends itself well to the modern instrument. Sample the first movement of the Concerto in G major for flute and orchestra, Wq 169, whose writing has some similarities to Mozart's Flute Concerto No. 1 in G major, K. 313. This is a crackling, energetic recording of music that until now hasn't really received its due. (James Manheim)