Alexis Kossenko delves into the repertoire of one of the most admired orchestras in Europe during Bach’s lifetime. The greatest composers of the century composed for this famous ensemble, a showcase for the musical splendour of the court of the prince-electors. Combining concerti and sacred music, this album is the first volume in an exceptional series devoted to this orchestra. © Aparté

Of the various young cellists contending for the crown these days, Bruno Philippe is among the strongest, with a highly varied palette of tone production. He applies the full power of the instrument sparingly, keeping a light touch in lyrical sections and making details clear even at the growling bottom of the instrument's range. The large pieces here are perhaps of varying quality, but they serve Philippe well. The Violin Sonata in A major of César Franck was transcribed for cello with the composer's approval, but it is a different work lower down, losing the soaring quality of the finale's melodies. Still, it fits Philippe's way with a tune nicely, and he applies a good deal of tempo rubato in a way that holds the interest. Philippe keeps the cello lines clear in Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 33 (the mix of cello-and-piano works with a cello concerto is entirely characteristic of what might have been offered in these composers' own era), featuring the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Francis Poulenc's Cello Sonata was sketched out by the composer in 1940, laid aside, and completed only reluctantly in 1948. The composer disparaged it, and no one would pick it as top-grade Poulenc, but for all that, it has a remarkable Cavatine slow movement that displays Philippe's lyrical gifts to the hilt. Serving as intermezzi among these works are short pieces by Fauré, and these, too, show Philippe as the possessor of a remarkable cantabile. Philippe is ably accompanied by the veteran pianist Tanguy de Williencourt; they make an effective pair, with the pianist's restrained style seeming to keep the young Philippe within bounds. Harmonia Mundi contributes idiomatic chamber music sound from the Hessische Rundfunk studios in Frankfurt on an album that will appeal to any lover of French chamber music.© James Manheim /TiVo

One of the difficulties facing a composer of movie music is finding the happy middle between the unobtrusive, but dull, and the stirring, but distracting. In a recent BBC survey, some of the composers capable of staking out that elusive territory include the legendary Max Steiner, Bernhard Herrmann, John Barry, John Williams, and the late Ennio Morricone, whose scores for the so-called "spaghetti westerns” brought him fame, though he did not restrict his talents to that genre alone.Violinist, arranger, and conductor Marco Serino worked with Morricone in his latter years creating concert suites from his earlier movie scores, some of them released on Morricone: Cinema Suites for Violin and Orchestra. In this sequel, Cinema Rarities for Violin and String Orchestra, Serino has delved into the late composer's lesser-known scores, including some for pictures never released outside of Italy. The titles were chosen, as the excellent and thorough booklet informs us, for their rarity and "distinctly Italian character.” About half of the arrangements are by Morricone, the rest by Serino.There is no disputing this is gorgeous music and few will fail to note the soaring themes and lush arrangements. The playing by both the soloist and orchestra is superb, polished, and refined. The same lushness, polish, and dolcissimo might prove excessive for some listeners, as it eventually did for this one, who by recording's end, found himself strangely craving the sound of a brass band and the juice of a lemon. © Anthony Fountain/Qobuz

Dvořák’s works for solo piano are in the main an unexplored landscape even for many a pianist and musicologist. This segment of his music lacks Chopin’s sway and finely nuanced emotionality, nor does it possess Liszt’s osten­tatious virtuosity. Just as he did in his entire oeuvre, in his piano works too Antonín Dvořák eschewed flashiness, focusing instead on tender intimate lyricism, teeming with ideas, and shaping even his miniatures with the sensibility of a genius. Such music is certainly worthy of a new complete album. Upon the initiative of Supraphon and the Classical Music Academy, the challenging task was undertaken by Ivo Kahánek, an artist whose recording of Dvořák’s Piano Concerto made with the Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Jakub Hrůša has deservedly gained critical acclaim. The present set encompasses larger cycles and occasional pieces, as well as several little-known works, recorded for the very first time. The album of Dvořák’ piano works provides yet another precious insight into the abundant world of the composer’s soul. Ivo Kahánek recalled the creation of the new recording as follows: “Preparations actually began back in the autumn of 2020, when I gave a concert featuring Dvořák’s music at Dvořák Prague and was the patron of the marathon of Dvořák’s pieces for solo piano within the self-same international festival. Yet I would only learn most of the repertoire in the spring of 2021, directly for the purpose of this recording. The most difficult thing to cope with was the time pressure, since due to the availability of the hall and the team we had to record five hours of music within a mere three months. The most gratifying aspect was discovering some little-known gems among Dvořák’s numerous piano works and having the opportunity to view the better-known pieces in a new way”. The album was made with the generous support of the Karel Komárek Family Foundation, the Classical Music Academy, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Faculty of Music of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. © Supraphon

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Recordings by Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman are a rare event, and eagerly awaited by his many fans. They surely won’t be disappointed with this new opus that brings together Szymanowski, Zimerman and legendary pianist Arthur Rubinstein.Returning to his roots, Krystian Zimerman pays tribute to his compatriot Karol Szymanowski on the 140th anniversary of the composer’s birth. This selection of little-known works testifies to the importance of Szymanowski within the piano repertoire. A long twenty-eight years separate Zimerman's recording of Masques, Op. 34 (made in 1994 in Copenhagen) from the rest of the programme, which was recorded in 2022 in the exceptional acoustics of the Fukuyama Concert Hall near Hiroshima.Nevertheless, the considerable lapse of time between these recordings doesn’t detract from the album's coherence. This is thanks to Zimerman's fluid, clear and readable sound, which—as we know—leaves nothing to chance. This fascinating recording reveals various facets of Szymanowski's compositional genius and features both his mature and early works, all of which were influenced by the great Chopin.Composed during the First World War whilst staying at the family estate in Ukraine, the three parts of Masques evoke Debussy, Scriabin and Stravinsky. However, each movement is overlaid with the orientalist perspective so typical of the Polish composer. A few carefully chosen Préludes and Mazurkas stand alongside the splendid Variations on a Polish Folk Theme for piano, Op. 10, composed by a young Szymanowski still in the process of mastering his mother tongue. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Five years after her solo debut recording, Direct Message, which programmed 20th and 21st century works for trumpet and piano, trumpet player Matilda Lloyd departs the traditional repertoire (aside from the two Arban arrangements from the Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet). Instead of following more well-worn routes, Lloyd elects to present a program of Romantic period opera arias, mostly in arrangements for trumpet and chamber orchestra (undertaken here by the Britten Sinfonia under Rumon Gamba) by William Foster, who worked closely with Lloyd on this project. Lloyd's skill as a musician is evident throughout, though the two Arban tracks most clearly allow her abilities to shine. The arrangements throughout are good, though how much they add to the performances rather than transcriptions and transpositions is up for debate. Lloyd notes with excitement the decision to include two pieces by Pauline Viardot, and one of the highlights here is the treatment of Viardot's Havanaise. This is certainly a trumpet release aimed at a wider audience than trumpet and brass circles, and it has already found success on the retail market. Chandos delivers just the right atmosphere from the Church of St. Augustine, Kilburn, in London. The future is bright for this trumpeter, and one looks forward to where her path may take her. © Keith Finke /TiVo

Beware the pen of a critic. When in 1720 an arrangement of Domenico Scarlatti’s 1714 opera Amor d’un’Ombra e Gelosia d’un’aura arrived at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, Charles Burney’s pen was gently damning. “Though there were many new pleasing passages and effects”, proclaimed London’s esteemed writer on all things musical, “those acquainted with the original and happy freaks of this composer in his harpsichord music, would be surprised at the sobriety and almost dullness of the songs”; and over the ensuing centuries, critical opinion has largely persisted with the line that Scarlatti’s best work is to be found not among his vocal or instrumental works, but instead among the 555 harpsichord sonatas he wrote for the Portuguese Queen of Spain, María Bárbara. Now though, here is a multi-genre Scarlatti programme from Bertrand Cuiller and his period instrument ensemble Le Caravansérail, its aim to enable the listener to reach his or her own conclusion as to Scarlatti’s wider worth. Although with repertoire and performances as fine as these, it’s perfectly clear which side Cuiller wants us to come down upon. Not least he opens with a piece of shameless wooing: the famous Sonata in G major, K. 144, but heard not on harpsichord but instead from harpist from Bérengère Sardin in a performance of melting warm fragility and hope-filled nobility. Then with that still ringing in your ears comes one of the few surviving examples of Scarlatti’s sacred music, the Stabat Mater in C minor with its rich, ten-voice texture supported by basso continuo accompaniment alone; and instantly your ears are locking on to that continuo section’s harp-reminiscent archlute, and thus becoming extra-alive to the accompaniment’s poeticism, even as the clear-toned voices unfurl over it and entwine around each other, themselves bringing definition and lucidity to even the score’s most lavishly contrapuntal vocal writing. Onwards and there’s a D minor instrumental feast: violinist Leila Schayegh’s sombre, expressive reading of the Sonata, K. 90, one of a few harpsichord sonatas that appears to present the option of choosing a solo instrument on the melodic line; then, following a nimbly urgent ensemble reading of Charles Avison’s “concerto grosso” transcription of another harpsichord sonata, Cuiller himself bringing gossamer-weight lyricism to Harpsichord Sonata, K. 213. As for the secular vocal works, the numbers from Amor d’un’Ombra e Gelosia d’un’aura more than hold their own here, thanks to soprano Emmanuelle de Negri and countertenor Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian’s committed performances, while an album highlight is the lilting melancholic expression brought by de Negri to ”Pur nel sonno almen tal’ora vien colei” from the Cantata “Pur nel sonno almen” – composed to a Metastasio poem that appears to have been given to Scarlatti by star countertenor Farinelli, and thus inevitably sounding like a composer inspired to give his best. In short, in the case of Cuiller versus Burney, it’s a win for Cuiller. Also, indeed, for Scarlatti. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

Vivaldi penned more than 500 concertos. At least 214 of these are for solo violin and orchestra, but as Michael Talbot remarks, ‘scarcely a year passes without the announcement of some fresh discovery’. So what was the ‘concerto’ to Vivaldi? What about it did he love so much to have composed so many? In the decade before Vivaldi composed Le Quattro Stagioni.Despite what this recorded collection suggests, few of Vivaldi’s instrumental works have programmatic titles. On the whole, titles gesture towards a general mood. Il Riposo and L’amoroso are examples of this indication of Affekt – indeed, both are united in their key of gleaming E major. The case of Il Grosso Mogul is stranger. There seems to be no known link between Vivaldi and the Indian court of the Grand Mughal, Akbar. The extreme virtuosity required by the soloist in the outer movements, as well as the long, fully written-out cadenzas, suggest a theatrical function. Perhaps Vivaldi performed it as a ‘theatre concerto’ as part of an opera plot set in India. French royalty, however, did play a huge role in the reception of Le Quattro Stagioni.Producer Jonathan Freeman-Attwood writes:"Working with Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque has been an object lesson in starting anew and identifying the ingredients which make ‘Le Quattro Stagioni’ great works. Virtuosity is non-negotiable here and Rachel has it in abundance. But it’s the colour, poetry, vibrancy and evocative characterisation of weather, human warmth and fragility, captured by the dynamic flux of Rachel interlocking with her colleagues in Brecon Baroque, that deliver near-unimaginable qualities in this music."

When it comes to posterity, Vivaldi has been quite lucky. Thanks to a series of happy accidents, his personal manuscript collection has survived through the centuries, allowing his music to be preserved and later played and recorded. Contralto Delphine Galou and Ottavio Dantone, the director of the Accademia Bizantina, drew from this invaluable batch of nearly 450 compositions to develop this album’s program of sacred music dedicated to the alto voice.This recording includes two “introdutioni” for alto, a kind of motet whose form would have been devised by Vivaldi for his Venetian work for the Pietà. You can also find the vespertine hymn Deus tuorum militum for alto and tenor (Alessandro Giangrande), as well as a Regina coeli, a Marian antiphon played on Easter Sunday.At the heart of this album is a violin concerto written for the day of the The Assumption of Mary (August 15th). The importance of this celebration in the Italian liturgical calendar is underlined here by a score of an unusual length for a Vivaldi concerto, with it being divided into two orchestral parts that exchange a sometimes and sometimes joyous dialogue. Written for his student Anna Maria, the solo violin part preserved in the archives is played here by Alessandro Tampieri, who has once again enriched it with a very virtuoso "capriccio" of his own making. © François Hudry/Qobuz

The Messa di Gloria recording, a relatively unknown piece of work by a young Giacomo Puccini, was uncovered by Michel Corboz in 1974 for the Erato label, then again, ten years later, by Claudio Scimone, with the same publisher. This discovery, by no means anecdotal, caused quite a stir at the time. Clearly this ample tenor, bass, choir, and orchestra score, written by Puccini while studying in his native city of Lucca – which was premièred in the Duomo (Cathedral) in 1880 – is full of sweeping and sensual melodies which would become this future opera composer’s trademark. It has now become commonplace in choral repertoires around the world.Recorded in May and June 2022 at the Philharmonie du Luxembourg, this new version calls on the voices of Charles Castronovo and Ludovic Tézier, under the passionate direction of Gustavo Gimeno at the head of the excellent Orfeó Català choir and the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, of which he is the musical director.Puccini would reuse some materials from his Messe, most notably in his Manon Lescaut opera, where he moved from the sacred to the profane, unlike Johann Sebastian Bach who always did the opposite when reusing any of his works. The programme is completed by three instrumental pieces from the same period in which the themes (Tosca) and the theatrical meaning of his future masterpieces are already emerging. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Fabio Luisi and his musicians from the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, for which he has been the musical director since 2014, worked extensively to play the vast corpus of Carl Nielsen's Six Symphonies before recording them for Deutsche Grammophon over three sessions in 2022. We immediately revel in the beauty of the sound recordings made in the warm acoustics of the Copenhagen Symphony Hall built by Jean Nouvel. With a reverberating sound giving an airy sense to the entire ensemble, the sound plans are clearly defined and always remain readable, without overloading or saturating the ears.In the Scandinavian countries and Northern Europe, the symphony took some time to really take off. In the 19th century, the Swedish recluse, Franz Berwald, did not have a following despite the very original and personal style he gave to his four symphonies. While a few adventurous composers have made attempts, it wasn’t until after the two masterful cycles by Sibelius and Nielsen that the genre really came into its own.Composed between 1892 and 1925, Carl Nielsen's Six Symphonies are, like those of Sibelius, six masterpieces. They represent an immense field of research, with an expressive power of great force. While the first two remain somewhat dependent on the Brahmsian model, they already demonstrate a very personal fearlessness, combining both style and harmony. The array of moods expressed in these works did not escape Maestro Fabio Luisi, who endeavoured, above all to exalt the dark and dramatic, even violent, side of Nielsen's music, demonstrating similar levels of drama previously created by Bruckner, Mahler, and Shostakovich. He is accompanied by an all-encompassing orchestra of exceptional quality, endowed with a great richness of tone and incredible sound power resources. It represents an essential gateway for appreciating a great composer’s music, one who’s symphonic repertoire can be considered somewhat “off the beaten track,” in a world where we usually say “well-worn.” © François Hudry/Qobuz

Constantly shifting from the most impulsive exuberance to the most restrained meditation, from the most intense passion to the most innocent tenderness, this programme forms a representative panorama of Schumann’s chamber music. Going beyond the Piano Trios, which already give us a fully rounded account of Schumann, the Trio Wanderer have invited their favourite partners to join them for their interpretation of two supreme masterpieces, the Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet. © harmonia mundi