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

Supraphon made these recordings for Nippon Columbia within a short timeframe, from June 1983 to April 1984, at the Rudolfinum in Prague. They capture the mature ensemble when it included the pianist Josef Hála, who in 1980 had replaced Jan Panenka. The trio’s sound was dominated by the strings, primarily the violin of Josef Suk, who also defined the interpretation principles. The singularity of the ensemble and their recordings alike rests in infallible technique, sonic refinement, admirable interplay and profound musicality devoid of any showboating. © Supraphon

Issued complete for the first time, a new recording of Franz Liszt’s iconic piano transcriptions of the nine Beethoven symphonies. As the Italian pianist Giovanni Bellucci remarks in an extensive booklet introduction, this album is the fruit of study over the past 20 years and more, into the worlds of both Beethoven and Liszt and their meeting point in these transcriptions where the Hungarian composer sought to honour his forebear as the original leader of an artistic movement we now think of as Romanticism, where the composer places himself at the front and centre of his works. Liszt’s transcriptions diverged from the ready-made arrangements which publishers rapidly produced and reprinted to meet the demands of amateur and domestic audiences. Here, the symphonic world of Beethoven is not merely experienced as a distant echo but translated into the idiom of the virtuoso piano which swept across Europe during the latter half of the 19th century, led by Liszt and Clara Schumann. Thus in these performances, Bellucci seeks a kind of fidelity to the Romantic age of the transcriptions rather than the Classical age of the original works. Taking broad tempi and probing deeply into textures which, after all, condense the soundworld of an entire orchestra into the span of ten fingers, Bellucci presents an individual and compelling new vision of works which renew themselves at the hands of each new generation’s interpreters. The cycle reaches its climax with the Ninth, recorded live at the 2014 Lisztomania Festival in France, with the participation of the Czech Philharmonic Choir of Brno and soloists Hana Škarková, Lucie Hilscherová, Michal Lehotský and Martin Gurbal. Other studio sessions have taken place in the famous Salle de Musique at La Chaux de Fonds in Switzerland, between 2018 and 2021. "In completing the project", Bellucci remarks, "I would like to borrow Franz Liszt’s words and make them mine, albeit just for a moment: "The piano is, for me, what the frigate is for the sailor, indeed, perhaps even more, because the piano is my word, is my life". In transcribing the 9 Beethoven Symphonies for piano solo Franz Liszt (1811-1886) not only made these symphonic masterworks available for domestic use but also demonstrated his immense creativity, insight, knowledge and pianistic resources. The work of a true genius, these transcriptions reveal the essential language and message of Beethoven, written down in pianism of the highest quality and difficulty, in this sense still valuable today. It takes a pianist of near superhuman powers and virtuosity to do justice to these scores. Giovanni Bellucci is such a pianist. Not only he "plays all the notes" but he is able to recreate the grandeur, drama, lyricism and intimacy of the original, presenting a monument made up of countless details. © Brilliant Classics

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

The Alpha label's Haydn 2032 series, produced in collaboration with the Joseph Haydn Stiftung (or Foundation), may be optimistically conceived. It's hard to say in what form Haydn will be absorbed in 2032; a guess could be something like Neal Stephenson's Metaverse. Be that as it may, the series apparently will have a pair of organizing principles. The first is that individual programs will be loosely thematic rather than simply running in numerical sequence. Here, that idea doesn't work out so well. The title "Il Filosofo" or "Der Philosoph" for Haydn's Symphony No. 22 in E flat major, Hob. 1/22, seems not to have been Haydn's own and to have been derived later on from a superficially dialogue-like passage near the beginning. And it's hard to see how the other two Haydn symphonies on the album fit into the plan. But the news is better with the second principle, under which each album will combine several Haydn symphonies with one by another composer. Nobody has done this, and it works brilliantly here: the booklet expands on the notion of "originality," but the listener may well have already deduced that novelty is the reason for the rarely heard Symphony in F major for strings and continuo of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, composed in Dresden the 1730s or 1740s. It's an earlier work, but in its spiky melodic lines and experimental treatment of register it's easy to imagine that the young Haydn might have heard it. More broadly, the concept reflects how music might have been heard by audiences in the 18th century, when it wasn't yet clear that Haydn would emerge as the great. One looks forward to the pairings in future releases in the series. The rather old-fashioned silvery sound of the historical-instrument Il Giardino Armonio under Giovanni Antonini is clear and accurate, and generally this promises to be a Haydn series with fresh ideas.© TiVo

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

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

The new Trio Ernest attempts to make a splash here with its cheeky buried-in-the-score graphics and unconventional Haydn All-Stars title, which doesn't make more than a little bit of sense, but the program and playing can stand on their own. Trio Ernest offers some late Haydn trios, all hanging right at the point where the piano trio was emerging as an independent genre, along with works that show the lasting influence of Haydn's chamber music. The players are right that this influence is a bit overlooked, showing up in works as diverse as a Brahms song (here transcribed for piano trio) and Ravel's little Menuet sur le nom de Haydn, with its musical realization of the letters of Haydn's name. Also included is Lieber Joseph! by composer Jacqueline Fonteyn, a work composed in a modernist idiom in which Haydn's melodic shapes and motifs are nevertheless easily recognizable. Trio Ernest has committed to including a work by a female composer in each concert, and this one bodes well for their ability to find interesting material and perform it convincingly. The Haydn trios themselves are imbued with the high spirits that are essential to a successful Haydn performance. With clear sound from the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Waterloo, this release announces an important new presence in the crowded piano trio scene.© James Manheim /TiVo