The term ‘Baroque’ in music covers a period of around 150 years, from 1600 to 1750, and this collection of six operatic masterpieces shows the diversity of musical experience to be found from this era. All of these excellent Maggio Musicale Fiorentino productions were recorded in Florence, a city that was witness to the origins of opera and saw its rise in popularity with leading names such as Monteverdi and Vivaldi. Lully and Handel represent opera’s spread throughout Europe and its adaptation to national tastes, establishing theatrical traditions of romance and tragedy that are still universal to audiences today.

Misattributed in the past to composers such as Pergolesi, the enduring success of Pietro Auletta’s L’Orazio saw it staged and adapted so many times over the centuries that its original 1737 structure is now lost. This is the opera’s first revival in modern times. The style of L’Orazio reflects the end of the Baroque period at a time in which refined galant and pre-Classical inflections were taking hold. The work’s comic narrative of romantic complications and rivalries take place amidst scenarios in which the music lessons of maestro Lamberto alternate with dubious theatrical engagements and carnival masquerades.

Under the celebrated Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the expert direction of Mariss Jansons, this album showcases the grandeur and emotional depth of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture. Mariss Jansons delivers a masterful interpretation, highlighting the overture’s dramatic intensity and lyrical beauty.

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Featuring timeless orchestral compositions inspired by beloved fairy tales and stories, Fairy Tales Classics offers a magical journey showcasing the imaginative brilliance of history’s greatest compos ers. Revel in the works of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Humperdinck, Debussy, Ravel, and Massenet with enchanting excerpts from The Nutcracker, The Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, and more.

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Victor Bendix (1851–1926) was a complex figure in Danish music, central but at the same time an outsider. Despite being a highly respected composer, pianist, and conductor, he never quite received the recognition he dreamt of. Two of his key works are his Symphonies Nos. 1 and 3 which stand as high points in his career, as well as constituting a poignant narrative of his artistic fate. Symphony No. 1, Ascension is his hopeful, ambitious debut, while the melancholic Symphony No. 3 is marked by resignation and fatalism.

Franz Joseph Haydn’s last great symphonies electrified his London audiences, and with these recordings, Adam Fischer and the Danish Chamber Orchestra recreate the powerful, stormy, and exciting effects that caused such a sensation in the 1790s. Symphony No. 99 in E-Flat Major was Haydn’s first ever symphony to use clarinets; No. 100 in G Major gained its Military appellation due to its grand second movement featuring cymbals and triangle; and No. 101 in D Major has long been nicknamed The Clock due to the ticking rhythm in the second movement for plucked strings and bassoons. Previous volumes in the series are available on 8.574516 and 8.574517.

Alberto Franchetti and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari shared a similar dual heritage. Franchetti’s father was an Italian Baron, his mother was Viennese and Alberto studied in Germany where he composed the Symphony in E Minor in 1884 as part of his graduation examination from Dresden Conservatory. Late Romantic and cast in the German symphonic tradition, it is a colourful, evocative and majestic work. Inspired by the wild beauty of the forests of the Rhine valley, Nella Foresta nera is a tranquil, atmospheric ‘symphonic impression’. Venetian-born to a Bavarian father, Wolf-Ferrari spent many years in Germany where he wrote his Sinfonia da camera. The work has an expansive symphonic breadth and utilises Romanticism’s full harmonic and melodic arsenal.

When Georges Prêtre celebrated his 80th birthday in August 2004, Peter Voß, the SWR director at the time, paid tribute to Prêtre’s ‘personal style’, ‘esprit,’ and ‘profundity.’ Prêtre worked with the RSO Stuttgart for many years, and in 1996, he was appointed its new chief conductor. Together, they celebrated the orchestra’s 50th anniversary with a major tour, and Prêtre was subsequently appointed honorary conductor. His preference, as this edition testifies, was primarily for music of the Romantic and late Romantic periods. It is therefore not surprising that Prêtre immersed himself in works such as Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Antonín Dvořákʼs Symphony No. 9, ‘From the New World’ with various orchestras in his early years, and worked on them again during his time in Stuttgart. He also made occasional forays into classical music, such as with Beethovenʼs Third Symphony. In 2004, Prêtre conducted the RSO Stuttgart for the last time, performing Respighiʼs Roman tone poems, among other works. These and many other recordings from their time together are featured in this collection.

Four-time GRAMMY-winning sextet, Eighth Blackbird (8BB), ‘one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet’ (Chicago Tribune), presents the world premiere recording of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s composition as explanation, based on Gertrude Stein’s seminal 1926 lecture of the same name.

Called Super Chamber Music by David Lang, this multidisciplinary work incorporates elements of chamber music, theatre, and performance art; it has the ground-breaking ensemble not only performing the music, but also speaking and singing Stein’s text. For the performance, the 8BB players committed themselves to a rigorous education process, including lessons in acting, diction, and the art of theatre.

Musical America praised 8BB’s live performance of Lang’s work as ‘every bit as witty, circular, and self-referential as Stein’s own prose; it’s rare, not to mention utterly satisfying, to hear a work that so completely embodies its text. To invoke Stein, one suspects Composition as Explanation will be a work of our time for many times to come.’

In 2016, 8BB asked David Lang to propose a project that they could perform at the Chicago Arts Club in conjunction with the Club’s centennial year. In his research, Lang discovered that Stein had spoken at the Club in 1934; this led him to employ Stein’s text as the basis for the piece.

Following the successful album Nicht Wiedersehen!, internationally-acclaimed bassist Günther Groissböck and distinguished pianist Malcolm Martineau are dedicating their new programme to the subject of love. Titled Männerliebe und Leben (A Man’s Love and Life), this programme explores love from a male perspective, drawing inspiration from Schumann’s well-known cycle Frauenliebe und -leben (A Woman’s Love and Life). The duo begins with what is probably the first known song cycle in music history, An die ferne Geliebte by Ludwig van Beethoven, and proceeds to present Schumann’s Dichterliebe. Three songs by Anton Bruckner – Im April, Herbstkummer, and Mein Herz und deine Stimme – are followed by a selection of songs by Johannes Brahms, including Wie bist du, meine Königin, Unbewegte laue Luft, Die Mainacht, and Nicht mehr zu dir zu gehen.

Spyridon Samaras was the most internationally respected Greek composer of his time, yet it is only in recent years that some of his major works have been edited or orchestrated for performance. Tigra is a major case in point, a ravishing love story set in medieval Venice, and a product of Samaras’s operatic maturity. With its innovative harmonic language set to an Italian text, musical Orientalism and Franco-Italian influences it helped pave the way for the emerging Greek National School. It has been faithfully orchestrated by Byron Fidetzis. Epinikeia is reminiscent of Samaras’s famous Olympic Anthem of 1896, while Chitarrata is a youthful work composed in Paris.

Sergey Taneyev’s music was acclaimed by some as a ‘model of pure style and sublime art’, but he was a loner whose supreme mastery of European Classical technique placed him outside the more nationalist trends of the day. The Violin Sonata in A Minor is neo-Classical in its reserved and often song-like moods and expressions. It contrasts with the grand scale of the Piano Quintet in G Minor in which the virtuoso nature of the piano writing reflects Taneyev’s own prowess, and the brilliant integration of the works’ themes cumulate into an overwhelming conclusion.

Pangea, which is violinist Lea Brückner’s debut album, combines the ideas of expanding and illuminating the diversity of classical music. The selection of works takes the listener on a journey through nine countries, musical styles such as impressionism, minimalism and jazz, and displays the influence of folklore on composers.

Well-known names such as Maurice Ravel, Arvo Pärt and Béla Bartók are complemented by Aleksey Igudesman and his dramatic Flamenco Fantasy, together with works by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and William Kroll. Another highlight is the famous Melody by Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk. Lea Brückner is accompanied by pianist Tamilla Guliyeva and guitarist Gábor Ladányi.

Pietro Giannotti, a native of Lucca, was born in this independent Tuscan city in an unspecified year between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. We have no information about his education or musical activities before his move to France in 1728. From the following year until 1758, he served as a double-bass player at the Académie Royale de Musique. A notable performance as a violinist is documented at the Concert spirituel of 28 March 1749, where he also played some of his own compositions. Giannotti remained in Paris until his death on 19 June 1765. During this time, he published around twenty instrumental chamber works. It is likely that he also performed privately, including in the home of an influential French nobleman. His first publication, Op. 1, is dedicated to Jean-Charles de Crussol (1675–1739), the seventh Duke of Uzès and a French peer, who was not only a patron but also an amateur musician.

In this double-disc album, Pierluigi Mencattini, with the ensemble Labirinto Armonico (also featured in the edition of Giovanni Antonio Piani’s sonatas, TC671690), performs the complete collection.

Ge Gan-ru, ‘China’s first avant-garde composer’, is regarded as one of the most original voices of his generation. Composed in close collaboration with pianist Yiming Zhang, 12 Études for Extended Piano explores techniques using the hands on the strings and keys of the piano, as well as employing a variety of objects to create effects that range from menacing darkness to the kaleidoscopic magic of harmonics, and from skilful drumming to atmospheres as calm as flowing water. Yiming Zhang continues his survey of Ge Gan-ru’s piano music in this second volume of the composer’s works.

The two wonderful works that bookend Idil Biret’s Schubert disc, composed just three years apart, might almost be said to represent two different Schuberts. Within tautly compressed formal lines, the Wanderer Fantasy achieves a monumentality that has rarely been surpassed or even approached in the solo piano medium. The A-major Sonata is written on a relatively modest scale, yet it must be said that in its own way it is just as masterly a creation as the larger Schubert works that were to follow. Laid out in three movements, it is full of the blandly melodious charm that non-Schubertians (if any such unfortunate persons still exist) usually dislike most about Schubert, but that for the happy majority forms an essential element in the personality of this most poetic of composers. At the same time, this beguiling quality is underpinned by an astonishing harmonic richness and formal subtlety… To a superficial ear, Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy sounds much more like a sonata than many an “official” sonata composed after his time. The paradox, however, is only apparent. When Schubert wrote his Fantasy, it was, for all its Allegro-Adagio-Scherzo-Finale pattern, still too far from the traditional forms to be called a sonata. If thirty years later Liszt, for example, could with impunity fix the label on a work that has much less in common with conventional notions of sonata form, it was the Wanderer Fantasy itself that constituted the most crucial single step along the new path.

Nobody knows why Johann Sebastian Bach composed his six suites for solo cello, nor how it happened that the suites were soon forgotten. More than a century later, a 13-year-old Spanish musical prodigy discovered a worn copy of the score in a second-hand bookstore store in Barcelona. For the next 11 years, Pablo Casals practiced them every day. Finally, in 1936, he recorded the second and third suites at Abbey Road Studios in London for the first time. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, Bach’s cello suites have become a rite of passage for all aspiring cellists.

For Henrik Dam Thomsen, the Bach cello suites are an integral part of his life, as they are for all top-flight cellists. During the COVID-19 shutdown, Thomsen had the opportunity to delve even deeper into these suites. ‘When one plays the suites, one is obliged to undertake many choices with regard to all the knowledge about Baroque music available today,’ he noted. Thomsen chose to stay true to his own instrument and perform on his regular cello, a Francesco Ruggieri built in 1680. He used modern strings, a conventional bow, and tuned the cello to the standard pitch of 442 Hz. These choices ensured the best homogeneity for the suites as a whole. The suites were recorded in the burnished acoustics of the Baroque Garrison Church (Garnisons Kirke) in Copenhagen beautifully captured by Mikkel Nymand and Henrik Dam Thomsen.

Le nozze di Figaro is the first of the three operas that Lorenzo Da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart created together, exploring the complexities of interpersonal relationships. This turbulent comedy with erotic entanglements, was far from a harmless comedy even in Mozart’s time. Director Martin Kušej moves the drama of love and jealousy to a mafia-like urban setting where conflicts are resolved with pistols. Young French conductor Raphaël Pichon, described as an ‘original sound expert’ (Der Tagesspiegel) and for the first time on the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker, leads a young ensemble of singers, including the ‘vocally flawlessly brilliant Andrè Schuen’ (Hamburger Abendblatt) as the clan boss Almaviva. ‘Kušej’s staging is musical, Pichon’s conducting theatrical; the two work together to a degree that is far more rare than it should be. Every detail has been carefully thought through, and the symbiosis is breathtaking.’ (Financial Times)

When Brahms composed his German Requiem, he thought little of the salvation of the deceased. With his music, Brahms wanted to give comfort to the bereaved, so he decided against the usual Latin text of the Roman Catholic Church and chose German texts from Luther’s Bible instead. Nevertheless, or precisely because of this, the work thrilled the audience and made it a triumphant success for Brahms. In this performance Christian Thielemann, doubtless one of the leading conductors of Romantic symphonic music, at the podium of the Wiener Philharmoniker, together with the Wiener Singverein, the choir that first performed the first three movements of the Requiem in December 1867, and a duo of outstanding singers, ‘conjures unforgettable moments’ (BR Klassik). Soloists of the evening were French-Danish soprano Elsa Dreisig (‘delicate’, Der Standard) and German baritone Michael Volle. Thielemann’s ‘differentiated conception finds a harmonious balance between intimacy and archaic moments and transports Brahms’s core message of consolation to the audience’s delight in an immediate way.’ (Salzburger Nachrichten)

Globally recognised world music ensemble A Moving Sound (AMS) from Taiwan has joined forces with the ground-breaking avante-classical string quartet ETHEL, based in New York City. Together they create a deeply touching, cross-genre experience of stories-within-music, infused with mysticism and the sounds and sense of the Far East. With Mia Hsieh’s evocative vocals riding the transcendent wave of ETHEL’s gorgeous strings, it courageously showcases a joy for creative experimentation and a penchant for dismantling boundaries.

‘We recorded this album live at Jazzklubb Syd in Ladan, Farsta, on a cold winter’s night in January 2024, but it didn’t take long for the temperature to rise in that small wooden barn. There, the warmth of the connection between the musicians, the music and the audience was palpable. A love of jazz – the fantastic melodies and harmonies, the meaningful lyrics and the swinging rhythms – brought us together in time for a while, and this album is the result.’ – Carin Lundin