Revered since the height of the Classical era up to the simmering years of the 20th century, the string quartet represented an ideal genre to which composers entrusted their most innovative ideas. The Modigliani Quartet illuminates these brillant masterpieces, each bearing witness to a turning point in the lives of their authors. Brimming with poetry, audacity and a thirst for life, the singular narratives of these quartets herald the advent of new horizons. © Mirare

Pianist Ekaterina Derzhavina (be careful in searches, her name has been transliterated several ways and may still reside in databases under older spellings) recorded an entire box set of Haydn's piano sonatas, on nine CDs, and received generally positive critical notices. She has a sort of bond with Haydn and his quiet sense of humor, and it's also on display in this group of variation sets and short pieces that make up an addendum to the sonata series. There's a reason these works are all but unknown: Haydn's brand of humor was dependent on being able to play with the listener's expectations, and that's more likely to happen in larger works. Nevertheless, there are any number of charming moments here. The opening Capriccio in G major, Hob. 17/1, is a delicious miniature. There are variation sets, arrangements for piano, and pieces that sound like sonata movements discarded for one reason or another. Sample the Fantasia in C major, Hob. 17/4, which was written in 1789 and has an abrupt manner reminiscent of Beethoven (and it is certainly possible that Beethoven encountered the work during his studies with Haydn), and could have been a sonata finale although Haydn composed it independently. Haydn spoke highly of this work, and Derzhavina's sharp little performance is worth the price of admission. So too, is Profil's typically excellent engineering work from a studio at Germany's Saarland Radio. Perhaps this is of most interest to serious Haydn collectors, but there are many works that any listener might enjoy © TiVo

The title "Unlocked" for this album by the historical performance group La Serenissima and director/violinist Adrian Chandler refers to the making of the album as the musicians emerged from pandemic-time lockdowns. However, it also might indicate the status of composer Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello, whose music has been little explored even though he was among the first composers to write symphonies (here, "sinphonie") in Germany. Brescianello was certainly a transitional figure. It is likely that he encountered the music of Vivaldi in Venice before moving to Germany to work as a valet for the Electress of Bavaria (who paved his way to lucrative court positions). The works here, mostly taken from the composer's Op. 1 publication of Concerti & Sinphonie, resemble Vivaldi's in general sound, but the consistent harmonic rhythm of the Baroque is starting to break up, and in the violin concertos, especially there is a new kind of expressiveness. Chandler is quite effective in these, catching the small details that an audience of the time would have found new. In the final Ouverture for strings and continuo in A major, Brescianello seems a bit constrained by the French Baroque dance forms, but this sets off the innovations that were present in the concertos and symphonies. The second of a pair of albums devoted to Brescianello by La Serenissima, this may be of most interest to those fascinated by the pre-Classical era, but it is listenable in a Vivaldian vein for anyone.© James Manheim /TiVo

20 years old and a brazen amount of talent: the Afro-British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has three idols. Cellists Jacqueline du Pré and Mstislav Rostropovitch and reggae legend Bob Marley, three passionate and extrovert forces. His career really took off after he performed at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in 2018. His album Inspiration released the same year broke all sorts of sales records in the United Kingdom and his hometown of Nottingham even named a bus after him. As part of a partnership with the label Decca, he is back with a new recording, this time dedicated to the famous Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra headed by their new conductor, Sir Simon Rattle. A first class encounter which produces a poetic vision, almost like chamber music, of this renowned concerto. Made famous by Jacqueline du Pré’s versions (with Barbirolli then with her husband Daniel Barenboim), Elgar’s Concerto is accompanied on the track listing by other shorter pieces which were popular among soloists and music lovers alike a century ago, which the younger generation is bringing back in vogue. The album features arrangements of traditional music and works by Bloch, Elgar, Bridge, Fauré and Klengel. From the infinitely large to the infinitely small with the staggering virtuosity of this bright young talent. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Buxtehude’s Opus 1 and Opus 2 Sonatas for violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord belie the composer’s common image as austere and sober. They instead delight the listener with what Johann Mattheson, writing in 1739, called their « unfamilar progressions, hidden ornamentation, and ingenious colourations ». It comes as no surprise to learn that the Sonatas were a great success when they were first published in Germany in the 1690s, in the midst of the fashion for the "stylus fantasticus" (described by Athanasius Kircher in 1650 as “…especially suited to instruments. It is the most free and unrestrained method of composing, it is bound to nothing, neither to any words nor to a melodic subject. It was instituted to display genius, and to teach the hidden design of harmony and the ingenious composition of harmonic phrases and fugues"). These Sonatas are undoubtedly challenging, which is no doubt why there have been so few complete recordings. For their fourth album, the founding trio of Les Timbres – Yoko Kawakubo, Myriam Rignol, and Julien Wolfs – take up the challenge with brio, joyously returning to their roots in Baroque chamber music to uncover all the intricacies of these very special works. © Flora

The Mr Charles the Hungarian named in the title of this Linn release was probably Charles or Carlo Vernsberg, a hornist active in England from the 1730s onward. He must have had some connection to Hungary, but biographical details of his early years are scant. Mr Charles mounted a concert in Dublin in 1742, just as Handel was in town to perform Messiah. It is not at all clear that Mr Charles was "Handel's rival in Dublin," as he is here proclaimed to be. The Irish Baroque Orchestra and conductor Peter Whelan here offer a hypothetical loose reconstruction of Mr Charles' concert. Both this program and the original, insofar as it is known, include a lot of Handel, including excerpts from the ubiquitous Water Music; Handel ruled the roost, and it is doubtful whether Mr Charles was much of a rival. Reconstruction is made difficult by the fact that almost all of Mr Charles' own music has been lost; the Chasse movement here, an excerpt from a suite, is one of the few surviving pieces. Whelan compensates with some virtuoso solo pieces: a wind trio by Hasse, a concerto grosso by Handel with a lovely flute part, and a cello concerto by the obscure Lorenzo Bocchi. The idea of reconstructing a concert of Handel's day is a valuable one, and the performances here are uniformly strong. Even the well-trodden Water Music is distinctive, with a blistering Bourée. Handel aficionados and Baroque fans, in general, will welcome this release. © James Manheim /TiVo

Haydn's piano trios aren't terribly often played in comparison with his instrumental works in other genres, and the general line on them has been that they are simple Hausmusik with violin and cello lines that may be omitted if desired. The Gaspard Trio, which has embarked on a complete cycle of Haydn's trios (this is the second installment), strenuously disputes this idea, and the group's playing seems designed to bring out the independence of the stringed instruments where it occurs. Perhaps the best way to look at the question is that Haydn is the true creator of the keyboard trio, and his output in the genre offers a fascinating look into his mind as he realized its possibilities. Rather than plow through the trios chronologically, the Gaspard Trio, playing modern instruments, chooses to make each volume in the series an independent release, containing music from various phases of Haydn's career, and here the group lands on three works from the mid-1790s. In these works, which Beethoven certainly would have known, the trio is indeed made up of three equal instruments, and the Piano Trio in E flat major, Hob. 15/29, is one of those Haydn works that seem to look forward to Romanticism. The Gaspard Trio gives it a warm, relaxed performance that's quite appealing, and in general, the group's Haydn is sympathetic and alert to little turns of humor or unexpected formal detail, although they apply improvised, non-notated ornaments that will be to the taste of some listeners but not others. Despite the Gaspard's belief in the importance of these works, the group does not try to put them on the plane of Haydn's quartets, which is all to the good; there is a lightness in the performances that is just right. The early Piano Trio in G major, Hob. 15/41, only occasionally assigns primary material to the violin; by the middle-period Piano Trio in B flat major, Hob. 15/8, Haydn was experimenting all over the place with the emancipation of the violin and cello. Another intriguing feature of the Gaspard Trio's series is that each volume has (and apparently will have) a newly commissioned work that comments on Haydn in some way; the one here, by the cellist-composer, Leonid Gorokhov, is intriguing. There is plenty here to make listeners look forward to what is going to be a substantial series; Haydn composed 45 piano trios. © James Manheim /TiVo