For Ferruccio Busoni, Bach’s music was the root and the foundation of piano playing. His many transcriptions confirm this point of view, whilst his monumental Fantasia Contrappuntistica attempts to provide a conclusion to Bach’s unfinished Kunst der Fuge. Busoni received a great deal of criticism for this, to which he replied “the musical art-work exists both within and outside of Time… there is no Old or New. There is only Known or Unknown”. Today — one century and many fashions of “authentic” ways of performing Bach later — is possibly the time to rediscover the true voice of this great musician; for Bach, music was like “a divine child who did not touch the earth with his feet but floated on air”. Jan Michiels takes you into this divine air with an ‘old’ Bechstein from 1860 as well as with a brand new Straight Strung Grand Piano by Chris Maene.

Melodiya presents the string duet of brothers Ivan and Mikhail Pochekin. This is another Melodiya present for music lovers that acquaint us with representatives of musical performing art of the new generation. The young soloists continue a renowned musical dynasty their father is a famous violin maker, and their mother is a violin teacher. Prize-winners of prestigious international competitions, Ivan and Mikhail Pochekin have appeared at some of the leading venues of Russia, Europe and the world, and been active as both solo and ensemble performers for a decade. An unusual composition of this album is noteworthy it is a sort of two-part concert where the first part is dedicated to musical classicism and the other to Russian music of the 20th century.

As one of the most respected Czech composers of his time, Jan Anton Kozeluch (1738-1814) composed around 45 masses and Italian operas, among other things, but was overshadowed by his cousin Leopold Antonín Kozeluch (1747-1818), with whom he is still often confused today. Kozeluch also wrote two bassoon concertos. The Bassoon Concerto in C major was one of the most frequently performed masterpieces for bassoon in the 18th century, and with it the Italian bassoonist Sergio Azzolini is now opening the Kozeluch album with the Camerata Rousseau under the direction of Leonardo Muzii.

Dramma per musica in three acts by Domenico Scarlatti to a libretto by Capece [Capeci], Carlo Sigismondo; Rome, Queen Maria Casimira’s private theatre in the Palazzo Zuccari, ?10 January 1712.

Pehr Henrik Nordgren (1944-2008) is considered by many composer-colleagues, musicians and music experts as one of the leading and most interesting composers of his generation. Works on this recording (Horn Concerto, Violin Concerto Nr 4 and Rock Score) are all recorded before, but now updated to super audio CD with new soloists on ALBA records. The whole league of performers including the orchestra itself are Ostrobothnians, where the composer settled to work too.

The ""Messe de Requiem"" is one of André Campras (16601744) best-known works and was performed especially during the 18th century at important funerals and memorial services. Despite the serious subject, the tenor is neither bleak nor filled with pain but solemnly sublime. Also in the grand motet ""De profundis"" Campra, by means of ever newer pictorial-musical representations, leads us step by step from grief to eternal bliss, thus demonstrating his theatrical abilities. ensemble3 which grew out of the Internationale Chorakademie im Dreiländereck has, under the musical direction of Hans Michael Beuerle, recorded two of the most important works of the French Baroque.

This CD contains sacred music Ippolito Ghezzi, an Augustinian friar who lived between the seventeenth century and the eighteenth. A fresh, inspired writing and a sober, but not austere style are the mainstays of the composer's approach to the great Biblical episodes: the intention of this music is to reach the listeners' understanding in a direct (and sometimes also dramatic) way, unfailingly guiding them towards a conversion to faith. The Cappella Musicale di San Giacomo Maggiore in. Bologna, which has chosen the safeguard of the sacred-music heritage (particularly the Augustinian one) as its most cherished hallmark, deserves our praise for the rediscovery of such an excellent musician.

Composed in 1879, the Piano Quintet in F minor by César Franck belongs to the fruitful final period of his creative life. It heralded the start of an impressive sequence of late orchestral and chamber pieces which set the seal upon his career. The Piano Quintet was premiered in Paris on 17 January 1880 by the Marsick Quartet with Saint-Saëns at the piano. During the last quarter of the 19th century and into the 1920s, it was Gabriel Fauré who made the most substantial and lasting contribution to French chamber music. Faurés Piano Quintet no.1 renews the powerful concentration of his earlier Piano Quartets in its outer movements, while also looking forward to the composers later works in the sophisticated phrasing and chromaticism of its extended Adagio. Vibrant and spirited, it may be counted among the composers finest creations.

In 2010, Maestro Riccardo Chailly releases Johann Sebastian Bach for Decca for the very first time. Having conducted the illustrious Gewandhaus Orchestra since 1986, this esteemed conductor’s association with Leipzig is but one year less than Bach’s. Played on modern instruments, Chailly’s Bach beautifully demonstrates that vivid, stylistically aware performance is not the exclusive preserve of period instrument ensembles. Every concerto of this first release – the Brandenburg Concertos – showcases the Orchestra’s expert soloists. Collectively, they celebrate the orchestra’s renaissance under its charismatic Italian music director. This release will be followed up later in the year with new recordings of the St Matthew Passion and Christmas Oratorio.

The prospect of hearing Alina Ibragimova in two of the most important concertos written for the violin is in itself irresistibly enticing, but Shostakovich acionados will also welcome an opportunity to hear the rarely performed original opening to the Burlesque of No 1, subsequently made less fearsome for the soloist at the request of the works dedicatee, David Oistrakh.

The "Esterhazy Music Collection" is a series dedicated to presenting musical treasures largely forgotten over the centuries. It pays tribute to one of the most important Hungarian noble families, the imperial princes of Esterhazy. From the 17th to the 19th century, the Princes of Esterhazy were as generous patrons of the arts as the most influential rulers of France, England and Austria. Although the titles 'Le Matin', 'Le Midi' and 'Le Soir' have favoured the popularity of the three works in our time, they served Haydn merely as an inspiring impulse to compose. Haydn's symphonies 6 -8 (the 'Times of Day' symphonies) are programmatic music only to a limited extent.

The year after J. C. Bach arrived in London he published three sets of works, among them this set of "Favourite Overtures". All but one of them had been heard in the King's Theatre, where he served as resident composer. Only one, the first on this disc, prefaced an opera of his own, Orione; Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 6 were written for pasticcios produced at that theatre between summer 1762 and early 1763, while No. 3, as far as we know, was not known in London, making the title "favourite" seem a little optimistic (it had been written for an opera heard in Turin in 1761). Being opera overtures, and essentially products of his Italian period, they are rather lighter in content and manner than most of J. C. Bach's music.

The Royal Handel of the title of this Alpha release does not refer to music for the king specifically but to the Royal Academy of Music. Founded in 1719, this opera organization gave Handel his first major post in Britain when he was appointed the music director. He traveled back to Italy, returning to London with the singers and instrumentalists who would bring his music to life over the next two decades. He had rivals whom he eclipsed, Giovanni Bononcini and Attilio Ariosti, and they are represented on the program; it's striking how Handelian their music sounds in this context, even if the Handel arias have greater breadth.

This 7CD set is the fruit of the love affair that developed in Paris between Leonard Bernstein and the Orchestre National de France in the 1970s. Beside long-admired studio recordings, featuring Mstislav Rostropovich and Alexis Weissenberg among the soloists, it presents live performances completely new to the catalogue: a 1975 programme to celebrate Ravel’s centenary – with Bernstein himself as soloist in the G major piano concerto – and orchestral suites taken from two of Bernstein’s most celebrated and brilliant works, both infused with jazz: the film score On the Waterfront and the landmark Broadway musical West Side Story.

After "Carmina Burana" - Carl Orff's most famous piece - the composer went on to write two large compositions for soloists, chorus and instruments which completed the trio of "Trionfi." The current recording presents very fine performances of these two compositions, the "Catulli Carmina" (1943) and "Triumph of Aphrodite" (1951). The last of these is a genuine discovery, a very interesting and attractive take on Greek culture.