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Solo Cello

Nina Kotova

Chamber Music - Released April 21, 2023 | Delos

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Peaceful Guitar: The Baroque Collection

Luigi Attademo

Classical - Released November 22, 2022 | Brilliant Classics

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Stravinsky: Violin Concerto & Chamber Works

Isabelle Faust

Classical - Released March 3, 2023 | harmonia mundi

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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
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Bach: Partitas | Sonatas BWV 1001 — 1006

Johann Sebastian Bach

Classical - Released July 28, 2023 | Delphian Records

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Récit

Salomé Gasselin

Classical - Released January 13, 2023 | Mirare

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Rachmaninov: Études-Tableaux - 3 Pieces

Nikolai Lugansky

Classical - Released February 3, 2023 | harmonia mundi

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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
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Mon amant de Saint-Jean

Le Poème Harmonique

Classical - Released August 25, 2023 | Alpha Classics

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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
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Couperin: Complete Harpsichord Music

Massimo Berghella

Classical - Released June 30, 2023 | Brilliant Classics

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La Danse

Martin James Bartlett

Classical - Released January 26, 2024 | Warner Classics

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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
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A Golden Cello Decade, 1878-1888: Dvořák, R. Strauss, Bruch, Le Beau

Steven Isserlis

Classical - Released November 4, 2022 | Hyperion

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

Stephen Hough

Classical - Released January 3, 2020 | Hyperion

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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
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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
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Schubert: Impromptus, D. 935; Pieces, D. 946; Variations, D. 576

Steven Osborne

Classical - Released September 25, 2015 | Hyperion

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Dandrieu: Trois Livres de Pièces de Clavecin

Pieter-Jan Belder

Classical - Released April 28, 2023 | Brilliant Classics

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Reminiscence

Simon Bürki

Solo Piano - Released May 19, 2023 | Aparté

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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
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Robert de Visée: Pièces pour Théorbe & Guitare

Xavier Díaz-Latorre

Classical - Released March 5, 2018 | Passacaille

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Haendel : Water Music, Rodrigo

Marc Minkowski

Symphonic Music - Released September 27, 2010 | naïve classique

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Sviatoslav Richter plays Alexander Scriabin

Sviatoslav Richter

Classical - Released January 1, 2017 | Praga Digitals

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Vertigo (Rameau - Royer)

Jean Rondeau

Classical - Released February 19, 2016 | Erato - Warner Classics

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