Narrow my search:
From
HI-RES$17.49
CD$13.99
Caprice
Nathanaël Gouin
Classical - Released October 13, 2023 | Mirare
Hi-Res
Booklet
Pianist Nathanaël Gouin explores the caprice as it has evolved, with works that fall squarely into that form and some that, as Gouin discusses in the booklet interview, fit the mold. Gouin's phrasing and style seem best suited to the Romantic and Post-Romantic periods, and that is where he excels here, especially in the Valse-Caprice No. 2, Op. 38, of Fauré and Alkan's Le festin d'Ésope, Op. 39/12. Another draw is the premiere of Reynaldo Hahn's Mignouminek from 1943, an unpublished work that was dedicated to and later found in the library of François Lang, a pianist and collector who died in Auschwitz in 1944. There are countless recordings of Rachmaninov's Rhapsodie sur theme de Paganini, Op. 43, and this one is worth considering. The freedom associated with the caprice form is necessarily reined in owing to the presence of the orchestra here. The Sinfonia Varsovia under conductor Aleksandar Markovic is a good stylistic match with Gouin. The juxtaposition of the Rachmaninov variations with those of Brahms' first book of his Variations sur un theme de Paganini, Op. 35, for solo piano, allows listeners to hear the extra freedom given to the pianist in the Brahms. The inclusion of Bach's Caprice sur le depart de son frère bien-aimé, BWV 992, makes sense given the title and the overarching theme of the album. Gouin is less convincing in this Baroque master's work as his playing is sometimes uneven and loses a bit of momentum in the slower movements, but the quicker, lighter movements are better matched to his playing style.© Keith Finke /TiVo
From
HI-RES$21.99
CD$16.99
Call to Prayer
Ghalia Benali
Classical - Released May 15, 2020 | Fuga Libera
Hi-Res
Booklet
From
HI-RES$10.79
CD$8.09
J.S. Bach: Miscellaneous Pieces for Harpsichord
Pieter-Jan Belder
Classical - Released September 28, 2022 | Brilliant Classics
Hi-Res
Booklet
Over a career spanning more than 30 years, the Dutch harpsichordist and conductor Pieter-Jan Belder has become renowned as a Bach interpreter with his surveys in concert and on record of the keyboard and orchestral masterpieces such as The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos and no fewer than three recordings of the Goldberg Variations. On this album, recorded in 2020 and 2021 on a modern Titus Crijnen copy of a Ruckers model, Pieter-Jan Belder turns to the overlooked corners of Bach’s early writing for the harpsichord. These include standalone fugues, fantasias and suites based on themes by contemporary composers such as Reincken and Albinoni. Nevertheless, there is no sense of routine or technical exercise about them. The pieces here are almost all extrovert, playing to the strengths of the young Bach as a performer as well as composer, and already demonstrating that confidence which would go on to mark his mature compositions. An appreciation of French flair is discernible in the F minor Suite, BWV 823 and elsewhere, but the dominant influence is the keyboard writing of Girolamo Frescobaldi, whose toccatas and canzonas were studied by Bach from an early age. The better-known pieces here include the sober and songful Aria variata, BWV 989 with its courtly French theme, and the E-flat Prelude, Fugue and Allegro originally written for lute, but which also finds a happy home on the harpsichord. The most famous but also most uncharacteristic piece is the mysterious Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother which appears to be a work of Bach’s late teenage years, though no definite corroborative proof of its commission or purpose has yet come to light. Rather, it seems unique in Bach’s output as a humorous parody of styles and emotions. © Brilliant Classics
From
HI-RES$22.99
CD$17.99
Stravinsky: Violin Concerto & Chamber Works
Isabelle Faust
Classical - Released March 3, 2023 | harmonia mundi
Hi-Res
Booklet
Distinctions
Diapason d'or -
4F de Télérama
Stravinsky's Violin Concerto in D major of 1931 has always been a troublesome work, perhaps less often programmed than any other violin concerto by one of the generally acclaimed great composers. However, that situation may well change with this release by violinist Isabelle Faust and the historically oriented ensemble Les Siècles, playing instruments of the early 20th century, which hit classical best-seller lists in early 2023. Les Siècles have been better known for French music, but the group started out with Stravinsky, who, of course, was working in Paris when he wrote this music, and the effect of their technique in his works is really revelatory. The neoclassical Violin Concerto, hard to grasp in a mushy modern-instrument performance, comes alive in the reading by Les Siècles and leader François-Xavier Roth, where the period winds emerge and enter into lively dialogue with the violin. The group is a perfect match for Faust, whose gut strings vividly outline the big space defined by the violin's opening material. Her sound, wiry and lively, is also impressive in the shorter pieces that fill out the program as she shifts gears from concerto soloist to string quartet leader in the radical Three Pieces for String Quartet of 1914, an unclassifiable work unlike anything else Stravinsky wrote (imagine string quartet miniatures in the vein of The Rite of Spring). Harmonia Mundi's studio sound serves the musicians well in this bracing, fresh Stravinsky release.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
CD$19.77
Ludwig van Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas
Annie Fischer
Classical - Released April 15, 2001 | Hungaroton
From
HI-RES$21.09
CD$18.09
Bruckner: Symphony in D Minor "No. 0, Die Nullte" – Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer Overture; Rienzi Overture
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Classical - Released October 26, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
Hi-Res
From
HI-RES$17.49
CD$13.99
Récit
Salomé Gasselin
Classical - Released January 13, 2023 | Mirare
Hi-Res
Booklet
Distinctions
Diapason d'or
From
HI-RES$30.09
CD$26.09
Bach: Partitas | Sonatas BWV 1001 — 1006
Johann Sebastian Bach
Classical - Released July 28, 2023 | Delphian Records
Hi-Res
From
HI-RES$37.47
CD$29.97
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Complete Works for Keyboard, Vol. 8: Köthen, 1717-1723 - For Maria Barbara
Benjamin Alard
Classical - Released May 12, 2023 | harmonia mundi
Hi-Res
Booklet
The new delivery of the complete works for keyboard of Johann Sebastian Bach (Volume 8), brought to us by harmonia mundi, and featuring Benjamin Alard on the harpsichord, clavichord, and organ, is centred around the composer’s work while he was with his first wife, Maria Barbara. Featuring 3 CDs, or 85 tracks in this digital version, it brings together a series of compositions for educational purposes. On the one hand the Inventions and Sinfonias, on which all apprentice pianists and harpsichordists have tried their hand, and, on the other hand, the six French Suites probably composed to perfect the musical skills of their eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann.They are “French” only in virtue of the apocryphal title which was given to them after Bach’s death. We find no trace of this mentioned on the original manuscripts. Bach's music also escapes strict classification, even if the influence of Couperin can be quite clearly perceived in this vast corpus, demonstrated by Benjamin Alard’s clever introduction of some Preludes by the French composer as an epigraph to the French Suites of Bach. Above all, these pieces are reminiscent of his own genius, with various influences intended to create a world belonging to the Cantor.Faithful to his organological research, here Benjamin Alard uses a pedal clavichord like that built by the French organ maker, Emile Jobin. The colour of this discreet instrument is simply bewitching. A sort of fruitiness is exuded, the full depth and subtlety of which can be savoured, notably in the Pedal-Exercitium, BWV 598 and in the transcription for keyboard of the famous Chaconne - Second Partita, initially composed for the violin. We also like the golden tones of the Couchet harpsichord from 1645, "restored" (modified later) by Blanchet in around 1720. We find the entirety of Benjamin Alard’s skill in this new recording; his science which illuminates complicated polyphony, his clean energy, and his curiosity for fascinating worlds of sound. © François Hudry/Qobuz
From
HI-RES$22.99
CD$17.99
Rachmaninov: Études-Tableaux - 3 Pieces
Nikolai Lugansky
Classical - Released February 3, 2023 | harmonia mundi
Hi-Res
Booklet
Nikolai Lugansky has been honing and distilling his vision of Rachmaninoff for years. He recorded his first complete Études-Tableaux in 1992, at the age of just 20, when he was still the 'favourite pupil' of the great Tatiana Nikolayeva in Moscow, and yet to launch his international career. Having gained the artistic maturity of 30 years of experience, Nikolai decided to re-record this entire corpus in 2022, in order to complete the composer’s entire works for the French label Harmonia Mundi, with whom he regularly collaborates. In 1911 Rachmaninoff began composing his first cycle of eight Études-Tableaux, Op. 33, which he extended in 1917 with a new series, forming Op. 39. In all, there are seventeen gems in which Rachmaninoff, more at ease in the great concerto form, successfully undertakes an uncharacteristic search for conciseness. His Études-Tableaux stand out as major achievements as they reimagine the forms and modes of expression of last century’s piano world.In this new performance, Nikolai Lugansky seems to emphasise the word "Tableau" (Pictures) more than the word "Étude" (Study). He has a tremendous mastery that allows him to describe the ever-changing, but always passionate, landscapes of the Russian composer's complex, and sometimes tortured, states of mind, making him one of its best and most talented interpreters. © François Hudry/Qobuz
From
HI-RES$21.99
CD$16.99
Mon amant de Saint-Jean
Le Poème Harmonique
Classical - Released August 25, 2023 | Alpha Classics
Hi-Res
Booklet
This release showed up on classical best-seller charts in the late summer of 2023, perhaps because it represented a genuinely original experiment. Mezzo-soprano Stéphanie d'Oustrac, the small ensemble Le Poème Harmonique, and conductor and theorbist suggest... well, what, exactly? That there is an affinity between French popular song and French and Italian music of the 17th century? Not quite, although there were intriguing connections between popular song, outlined in the booklet, and the very earliest stages of the historical performance movement at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The program is organized into three sections, "Jeunesse," "Les vieux airs," and "Les amours passées," but the 20th century songs and the 17th century pieces mostly don't overlap within these groups; "Les amours passées" are all popular songs. The program makes quite a lurch between an excerpt from Cavalli's L'Egisto and Paul Marinier's D'elle à lui, and the lurch would have been even greater if the popular songs hadn't been chosen to exclude any hints of African-American-influenced song. Léon Fossey's Les canards tyroliens, a kind of yodeling song about ducks, simply doesn't inhabit the same universe as Monteverdi's Lamento d'Arianna. Perhaps it would be best to say, as the publicity does, that there are "echoes" between the two traditions, and d'Oustrac plainly has enthusiasm for both repertories; her personality is largely enough to carry the listener through. There is definitely a need for programming and performance that mixes classical and popular material, which have never been as far apart as they have been made out to be. This release may not be a definitive solution, but it is an intriguing and listenable attempt.
© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$31.79
CD$24.59
Franck: Les Béatitudes
Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège
Classical - Released January 5, 2024 | Fuga Libera
Hi-Res
Booklet
Distinctions
4F de Télérama
César Franck worked on Les Béatitudes for ten years but never heard it performed in full and would certainly have been dismayed at its general neglect. The work even shifts in style a bit from the Fifth Beatitude onward, becoming more Wagnerian as Franck discovered Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and the exultant finale ("Blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs") packs quite a punch. The texts blend the biblical Beatitudes with tropes from a French children's book author, and they are generally thought to be a weak point of the work. However, the piece is worth experiencing, especially in this reading by the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and conductor Geregly Madaras, with the Hungarian National Choir and eight generally strong soloists. The choir is also divided into "terrestrial" and "celestial" units. The work is hard to classify; it is often called an oratorio, but there is not really any dramatic action despite the various personae the eight soloists adopt (celestial voices, Christ, Satan, Pharisees, and more). Nevertheless, Madaras manages to keep things moving and, more importantly, to keep things clear, with vivid contrasts among the various forces and warmth that capture the flavor of the biblical texts. The Fuga Libera label delivers idiomatic sound from the Salle philharmonique in Liège, and the work, though it may be tough going in spots, is characteristic of Franck and of the French musical scene of its time in a compelling way.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$21.99
CD$16.99
Soaked in Colour. From Purcell to Queen
Isabel Pfefferkorn
Classical - Released June 2, 2023 | Fuga Libera
Hi-Res
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$10.79
CD$8.09
Couperin: Complete Harpsichord Music
Massimo Berghella
Classical - Released June 30, 2023 | Brilliant Classics
Hi-Res
Booklet
From
HI-RES$16.59
CD$14.39
La Danse
Martin James Bartlett
Classical - Released January 26, 2024 | Warner Classics
Hi-Res
Booklet
Maurice Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin has sometimes been paired with music by its namesake, naturally enough, but here, pianist Martin James Bartlett expands the concept a bit, adding Rameau at the beginning, some little two-piano pieces by Reynaldo Hahn and Ravel's apocalyptic La valse as a grand finale. The result is that he looks outward from the neoclassic world, catching the memorial function of Le tombeau de Couperin (the work's six movements memorialize friends of the composer killed in World War I) and carrying overtones of the whole world that vanished with the war. The inclusion of the pair of two-piano pieces from Le ruban dénoué by the intensely nostalgic Hahn intensifies the mood. Bartlett's tone is measured, avoiding sentiment and holding to an elevated aesthetic. His La valse has an impact that is all the greater in this context. Ravel denied that this work was a symbolic representation of the decline of the old central European culture or of anything else, but one might rejoin that he did not have to realize it for this to be so. Hahn plays the work in its single-piano arrangement, made by Ravel. This is not often heard, due not only to its sheer difficulty but also because of its swirling density. Having introduced the second piano of Alexandre Tharaud in the Hahn works, Bartlett could easily have kept it on for the Ravel. However, his decision was intelligent; the single-piano arrangement has an overwhelming quality that works very well here. This is an unusually cohesive and powerful program, beautifully performed, and the album landed on classical best-seller lists in early 2024.© James Manheim /TiVo
From
HI-RES$17.59
CD$15.09
A Golden Cello Decade, 1878-1888: Dvořák, R. Strauss, Bruch, Le Beau
Steven Isserlis
Classical - Released November 4, 2022 | Hyperion
Hi-Res
Booklet
From
HI-RES$15.56
CD$12.45
Tchaikovsky : Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (Excerpts) - 9 Sacred Pieces, TH 78
Sigvards Kļava
Choral Music (Choirs) - Released June 14, 2019 | Ondine
Hi-Res
Booklet
Distinctions
5 de Diapason -
Gramophone Editor's Choice -
5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik
Tchaikovsky's sacred music is not often performed, although he was religious (even if in a somewhat blurry way) and was willing to let himself in for a hassle by writing the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 41, in 1878: it was promptly banned by the Russian Orthodox Church, which considered it too modern. Indeed, Tchaikovsky wrote a textbook on church music composition and seems to have contemplated a kind of reform of church music. That went nowhere, but this gorgeous setting of an Orthodox liturgy was performed quite often during its own time in non-liturgical settings. The abridged version here is quite effective. Sample "Dostoyno yest" ("Hymn to the Mother of God") for an idea of what he was thinking: the work keeps the opening chants and much of the traditional sound, but Tchaikovsky introduces Western harmonies with the intent of a quietly lyrical effect. Big Russian choirs have recorded the work, but the lighter sounds of the 24-voice Latvian Radio Choir under Sigvards Klava seem ideal here, probably resembling the Moscow art societies that first performed the music, and more likely in keeping with the spirit in which Tchaikovsky composed it. Also included are nine a cappella sacred pieces that really let the Latvian Radio Choir show what it can do: this group has a precision and grace that are hardly matched anywhere in the world these days. The choir may be better suited to Tchaikovsky than to Rachmaninov, whom it has also recorded, but check them out, whatever it takes. Ondine's sound engineering, at St. John's church in Riga, is absolutely exemplary. An exceptional choral release.
© TiVo
From
HI-RES$17.59
CD$15.09
Schubert: Impromptus, D. 935; Pieces, D. 946; Variations, D. 576
Steven Osborne
Classical - Released September 25, 2015 | Hyperion
Hi-Res
Booklet
From
HI-RES$17.49
CD$13.99
Reminiscence
Simon Bürki
Solo Piano - Released May 19, 2023 | Aparté
Hi-Res
Booklet
The annotations for this Aparté release include a full-throated defense of the common fund of 19th and early 20th century piano music; "censors took a dim view of serving up little pieces bequeathed by the 19th century and the first years of the 20th, because of their 'sentimentality,' their 'virtuosity.' This era is over," writes Alain Lompech. Yet this debut by pianist Simon Bürki, still a student at the Juilliard School when this album was released in 2023, still stands out a bit for its adherence to pure Romantic and post-Romantic favorites. Bürki places works by Rachmaninov, mostly from the Études-Tableaux, at the center of his program, delivering confident performances with an attractive bit of restraint. From there, he does indeed move into more sentimental pieces, including Rachmaninov's arrangement of Fritz Kreisler's evergreen violin piece Liebesleid and Liszt's Liebesträume, a work that would have appeared on countless 19th century recitals but is perhaps a bit less common nowadays. He also includes the somewhat more modern Scriabin, performing him in a lyrical mood that emphasizes his Romantic rather than his experimentalist connections. It is an attractive collection, beautifully recorded at the Gustav Mahler Hall in Dobbiaco, Italy, and it makes one hopeful about future releases from the player.© James Manheim /TiVo
Suppose you have a more precise idea of what you want. If you are searching for the album "Bad" by Michael Jackson, type michael jackson bad. The album in question will be displayed at the top, as it is the most relevant.
By default, search results are sorted in order of relevance. The drop-down menu to the right of "Sort by" allows you to display the results in the desired order.