Your basket is empty

Categories:
Narrow my search:

Results 1 to 20 out of a total of 6462
From
CD$8.09

Alkan Grande Sonate, "Les Quatre Ages", Symphonie Pour Piano Solo

Vincenzo Maltempo

Classical - Released May 2, 2012 | Piano Classics

Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason
From
HI-RES$18.99
CD$16.49

Johannes Brahms: Sonatas & Liebeslieder for Cello and Piano

Emmanuelle Bertrand

Chamber Music - Released July 23, 2021 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet
Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel celebrate their twenty years together as a cello and piano duet. It is hardly surprising that they chose to mark this anniversary with the music of Brahms, a composer who has been a constant on their beautiful journey together: beyond his two ultra-romantic sonatas, they take the listeners to an even deeper emotional realm, that of his lieder, splendidly “sung” here by the cello! © harmonia mundi
From
HI-RES$16.59
CD$14.39

Brahms: Cello Sonatas & Songs

Antônio Meneses

Chamber Music - Released June 3, 2022 | Avie Records

Hi-Res Booklet
In 2022, legendary cellist Antonio Meneses celebrates his 65th birthday and the 40th anniversary of winning first prize and the gold medal at the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition. Shortly after that triumph Antonio made a renowned recording of Brahms’ Double Concerto with conductor Herbert von Karajan. He revisits the composer’s music on his eleventh recording for AVIE Records and his first of Brahms’ two Cello Sonatas, generously paired with a selection of lieder arrangements. Antonio mines Brahms’ baritonal sound world, extracting the full expressive range of the cello. Similar qualities infuse a selection of seven Lieder in arrangements that sound so effective on the cello that one cannot help but wonder whether somewhere in the back of his mind Brahms had the sound of the instrument – he was, after all, an accomplished player in his youth, and it would remain central to his chamber music output throughout his life. © AVIE Records
From
CD$10.79

Antonín Dvořák: Symphonie du nouveau monde

Philippe Fournier

Classical - Released October 7, 2000 | iMD-ORCHESTRE-CONFLUENCES

From
CD$127.99

Debussy: Complete Orchestral Work

Jun Märkl

Classical - Released January 30, 2012 | Naxos

Booklet
From
HI-RES$24.59
CD$21.09

For Clara: Works by Schumann & Brahms

Hélène Grimaud

Classical - Released September 8, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Hi-Res Booklet
Robert Schumann was never more purely Romantic than in his set of piano pieces Kreisleriana, Op. 16. The set is of extramusical, literary inspiration, taking its name from a character in stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann, and it features the explosive imagination of the young Schumann at its best. Schumann announced the work, which he apparently wrote in four days, rather breathlessly to his inamorata, Clara, and more than almost any other work of his, it seems to spill over the boundaries of the short piano piece. Hélène Grimaud has recorded the work before, but she seems to have added intensity this time around. She is nervously excited in the faster virtuosic numbers, but sample No. 4 to hear her marvelous control over the tonal instability that appears in many of these pieces. The Brahms Intermezzi, Op. 117, were also "For Clara," sent to Clara Schumann toward the end of his life; the two had remained friends, and here, in Grimaud's evocation of tempestuous old-school pianism, one is stirred to wonder what Clara sounded like playing this music. The connection of the nine Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 32, of Brahms to Clara is less clear, and the set, with baritone Konstantin Krimmel on the vocals, may seem like an afterthought; the three performances on the album were all made at different places and times. However, taken on its own terms, it is a fine performance of this set, consisting entirely of settings of texts by Eastern poets. Krimmel catches the rather mystical nature of the songs, and Grimaud, with whom he has worked in the past, is effective as an accompanist. This is an important entry in Grimaud's catalog, with a Kreisleriana that is as fine as any.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$36.09
CD$31.29

Brahms: The Symphonies

Johannes Brahms

Classical - Released April 21, 2017 | BSO Classics

Hi-Res Distinctions Gramophone Editor's Choice
From
HI-RES$15.98
CD$11.98

Ravel: L'Œuvre pour piano

Philippe Bianconi

Solo Piano - Released September 15, 2023 | La Dolce Volta

Hi-Res Booklet
Ravel's piano works include some of the most popular keyboard pieces of the 20th century, so pianist Philippe Bianconi has plenty of competition for this double-album complete cycle. Of course, one advantage of the complete set is that it can include the less common pieces like Ravel's musical impressions of Borodin and Chabrier and the Menuet en Ut dièse mineur ("Minuet in C sharp minor"). These lesser-known works, mostly miniatures, fit Bianconi's style beautifully; he is a precise, concise player who brings out Ravel's considerable rhythmic subtlety. His Ravel performances tap into a long French tradition stretching back to Robert Casadesus and his wife, Gaby, who was one of Bianconi's teachers. Imbued with the French conservatory values of clarity and restraint, Bianconi sacrifices mood for clean execution. In Le Tombeau de Couperin, he is wonderful, one of the very best available, catching the ways Ravel stretches the Baroque rhythms in a really uncanny way. Many pianists can handle the technical challenges of Gaspard de la nuit these days, but few can seem as effortless while doing so. In music that depends more on extramusical references, such as the four-hand Ma mère l'Oye (recorded with Clément Lefebvre), some listeners may want a bit more color, while others will find Bianconi's approach bracing and fresh, with an evocative Miroirs. Sample several different works. Most listeners will agree that the La Dolce Volta label's sound, from the Grande Salle at the Metz Arsenal, is ideal for the music and the music-making here. © James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$16.59
CD$14.39

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 & Academic Festival Overture

Otto Klemperer

Classical - Released June 2, 2023 | Warner Classics

Hi-Res
From
HI-RES$33.49
CD$23.49

Brahms : The Complete Solo Piano Works

Geoffroy Couteau

Solo Piano - Released March 18, 2016 | La Dolce Volta

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason - 4F de Télérama - Pianiste Maestro - Choc de Classica - Choc Classica de l'année - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
From
HI-RES$31.79
CD$24.59

Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Céphale et Procris

Reinoud Van Mechelen

Classical - Released February 9, 2024 | Château de Versailles Spectacles

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or
From
HI-RES$26.29
CD$22.59

Brahms – Reger: Song Transcriptions

Rudolf Buchbinder

Classical - Released March 22, 2024 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Hi-Res Booklet
The veteran pianist Rudolf Buchbinder is known best for Haydn and Mozart, but he has the kind of record that has earned him the right to do pretty much what he wants in later life. Here, he plays transcriptions of Brahms songs by Max Reger, items that most listeners will not have heard. Of course, on the one hand, transcriptions were part and parcel of the 19th century scene (although perhaps less so in the song genre); on the other, 28 of these things, deprived of the texts, may sound like a lot, but Buchbinder's program is interesting on the whole. He takes his Brahms songs chronologically, and this yields various insights. There are simple pieces from throughout Brahms' lied output, but most of these songs are not simple, and without the contrast provided by the voice, the listener's attention is directed toward the place of the melody line in a web of polyphony. Consider a song as straightforward as the Wiegenlied, Op. 49, No. 4, the so-called "Brahms Lullaby." There turns out to be plenty going on below, and often above, the melody, holding the listener's interest in a whole new way. The chronological organization gives the listener a unique window into the growing density of Brahms' late style. There is probably no way to know whether Schoenberg and the other members of the Second Viennese School, great admirers of Brahms, heard the masterful treatment of register in these transcriptions, but they certainly might have. A fine offbeat find for Brahms lovers, and indeed those of Reger.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$16.49
CD$10.99

Berlioz : Symphonie fantastique (Live)

Les Siècles

Classical - Released October 25, 2019 | harmonia mundi

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason
The large collection of antique instruments at Les Siècles' command makes its recordings more than just speculative period exercises, but something approaching musical time travel. Led since 2003 by its founder, François-Xavier Roth, this singular French orchestra has given thrilling historically-informed recreations of the repertoire of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries on vintage instruments that were available to the musicians of the time, crafted by hand, and possessing the unique sonorities and tunings of different regions. For this 2019 album from Harmonia Mundi, Roth and his musicians play Hector Berlioz's hallucinatory Symphonie fantastique and the dramatic overture Les Francs-Juges with marvelous orchestral colors and a striking textural clarity that almost makes their distinctive characteristics seem especially highlighted. However, this recording isn't meant to be a sonic showcase for audiophiles, because the drama, musicality, and visceral excitement of the performances soon override the novelty of instrumentation, and the overall effect of the presentation is a startling reassessment and a refreshing change from the weightier Berlioz of a Thomas Beecham or a Colin Davis. No one could write for brass more blazingly than Berlioz, and his skillful handling of the woodwinds is even more apparent when heard with early Romantic timbres. The ultimate pleasure of this disc, though, is found in the cohesion, agility, and passion of the group's playing, and Roth's confident leadership comes through in his precision and alert attention to details. Highly recommended. © TiVo
From
HI-RES$17.59
CD$15.09

Brahms: The Final Piano Pieces, Op. 116-119

Stephen Hough

Classical - Released January 3, 2020 | Hyperion

Hi-Res Booklet
By the early 1890s, Johannes Brahms began thinking that his career was approaching its end, perhaps because of his growing awareness of his mortality, due to the deaths of several close friends. In spite of that, encouragement from Brahms' publisher Fritz Simrock and a renewed burst of creativity brought about the major works of his final years, which included chamber pieces for clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld; a collection of arrangements of German Folk Songs; the Four Serious Songs; the 11 Chorale Preludes; and the piano pieces published as the Fantasias, Op. 116, the Intermezzos, Op. 117, the Clavierstücke, Op. 118, and the Clavierstücke, Op. 119. This group of 20 keyboard pieces collectively represent the autumnal and sometimes gloomy moods that dominated Brahms' thoughts in his last decade, and have even retroactively colored the overall character his music, suggesting a nostalgic attitude in his work as a whole. Yet there is a balance between melancholy and exuberance in Brahms, and while much can be made of the sorrowful events in his life that influenced him, particularly in the Intermezzos, Op. 117 (which he considered to be lullabies for his sorrows), expressions in the late piano music are artfully conceived and perhaps less a measure of Brahms' emotional state than of his genius. Stephen Hough has recorded Brahms' piano concertos, and some of the chamber works, but this 2019 Hyperion album is his first album since 2001 devoted to Brahms' solo piano works. At this stage of his career, Hough seems to have found the right approach to these character pieces, which can be just as fiery and passionate as they are sad or sentimental. However, just as important are their structures and formal designs, which show an active and lively imagination, especially in Brahms' use of chromatic harmony and his sometimes expansive treatment of the Romantic "miniature."© TiVo
From
HI-RES$21.09
CD$18.09

Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, Op. 71, TH 14

Gustavo Dudamel

Classical - Released November 16, 2018 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Hi-Res Booklet
This new version of Tchaikovsky's famous ballet has been released hot on the heels of Disney's Nutcracker and the Four Realms, whose original music by James Newton Howard reprises and updates some of the themes from the Russian's score. Recorded by Gustavo Dudamel with Lang Lang at the piano and Andrea Bocelli singing the titles, this film's soundtrack is made to measure for these three global stars. This recording of the original material was carried out at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in December 2013 during a Christmas celebration. The concert marked ten years of fruitful collaboration between Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. The Venezuelan maestro brings us a hedonistic vision of this German fairytale by ETA Hoffman, re-imagined by Alexandre Dumas and so wonderfully turned in to music by Tchaikovsky. It was one of the Russian's last masterpieces, coming just before the "Pathétique" Symphony which would be his musical testament. But here, all is hardly fairytale and sugar thanks to an extraordinary melodic inspiration which is brought out by a light orchestration with unique timbres, like in the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy which popularised the Celesta, an odd instrument invented in 1886 (an improbable lovechild of the glockenspiel and the piano that Tchaikovsky encountered in Paris). Dudamel is playing with dreams here. We are treated to a supple, refined conducting style that looks towards Vienna more than it does to St Petersburg, but it never loses sight of a childlike spirit that's sure to delight. © François Hudry/Qobuz
From
HI-RES$17.59
CD$15.09

Duo (Œuvres de Brahms, Chostakovitch, Debussy, Schumann)

Sol Gabetta

Classical - Released October 2, 2012 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or de l'année
Argentine-Swiss cellist Sol Gabetta and the nationally unclassifiable Hélène Grimaud (who is listed first in the graphics here, presumably so that Deutsche Grammophon may capitalize on her former enfant terrible reputation) are both known for a tendency toward interpretations that push the extremes. Grimaud, in fact, has named Glenn Gould, still among the greatest extremists of all, as an exemplar. But, perhaps because the necessity of working in a duo puts a damper on strong manifestations of individualism, the two play it pretty straight on this, the first duo recording for both. Their interpretations in this diverse recital of Romantic and modern pieces, in fact, tend distinctly toward the quiet side. Although Grimaud has resolutely declined to classify herself as French (she is of North African Jewish background, spent some years in Florida, and then lived in Switzerland), this is a chamber recital in the classic French vein, with plenty of impeccably elegant passagework from both players and an absence of emphatic gesture even in the Drei Fantasiestücke, Op. 73, of Schumann, which are arch-Romantic pieces. The Brahms Sonata for piano and cello No. 1, Op. 38, gets a very light touch that does delightful things with the contrapuntal finale. The pair are clearly at home in the Debussy cello sonata, and really the only piece that falls flat is the concluding Cello Sonata, Op. 40, of Shostakovich, where the restrained performance misses the icy fear of the slow movement and the sarcastic snap that was so characteristic of the composer's early years. The sound, from the Philharmonie Essen hall, is a bit too spacious for the music but is up to the task of capturing clearly the fine detail work on exhibit here.© TiVo