Always looking to enrich her repertoire, violinist Isabelle Faust has released an exciting and ambitious album alongside soprano Anna Prohaska, who is also experienced in contemporary repertoire. Very much at ease with smaller ensembles, Hungarian composer György Kurtág (born in 1926) began to sketch out tiny pieces for soprano and violin in 1985 without any specific end goal in mind. These pieces were based on texts by Kafka, taken not from his literary works but his diaries. These writings form an overview of the reflections, wanderings and inner workings of the author’s soul, touching on happiness, despair, biting irony, the certainty of death and the bitterly absurd.Kurtág wrote around forty haiku-like miniature pieces reflecting on existential fragility, leaving the sequence of their selection to the performers, and their publication, to the Hungarian musicologist András Wilhelm. This piece of work is filled with strong, contradictory emotions, which are magnified here by two musicians at the peak of their artistic careers. © François Hudry/Qobuz

Masaaki Suzuki's Bach organ recordings, something of a labor of love after the completion of his magisterial cantata cycle, have been well-received; this one landed on classical best-seller charts in early 2024. It is the second of a pair recorded on a 1737 organ at the Stiftskirche St. Georg in Grauhof, Lower Saxony, Germany. The builder was Christoph Treutmann, one of the greats of the age, and if it is not an organ Bach played, it is certainly one he would have regarded as state-of-the-art. Both this release and its predecessor, Vol. 4 in Suzuki's series, feature intricate chorale settings from the Orgelbüchlein, played on this organ and tied to the liturgical year; this volume features chorales for Easter (and the album was released just in time for that holiday) along with other settings and a few framing preludes and fugues. Suzuki on the organ is recognizably the same musician who led the Bach Collegium Japan on his famed cantata recordings; he is lofty, precise, and warm. The Treutmann organ is ideal for both the repertory and the performer; in many registrations it has an edgy, rather acid sound that clarifies Bach's complex polyphony beautifully. Also, sample the double setting of "Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier," with its contrasting textures. The BIS label's well-known engineering expertise is applied profitably to this small German church on a recording that one suspects Bach would have greatly admired.© James Manheim /TiVo

A is for “Amadeus,” and a recording which marks a return to the source for Quatuor Zaïde, who dedicate their fourth collection to the genius Austrian composer. Z is for Zaïde, a “Singspiel” by Mozart in the style of Die Zauberflöte, which historical transcription for string quartet is a world premiere! Paired with the Quartet in G Major, No. 14, K. 387, this miniature version of one of the most famous operas repeatedly casts each instrument of the quartet in a multitude of lyric roles, celebrating the eternal dialogue between singing and playing. © Nomadmusic

It's not that the songs are fantastic, although Schubert and Schumann's songs are fantastic. It's not that Elly Ameling was young and full of spunk, although the young Elly Ameling was quite full of spunk. It's not that Jörg Demus is not a congenial accompanist, although he is as comfortable as a sofa and a tumbler of port. No, the reason that this disc is so terrific is that it disproves every rotten thing anyone's ever said about performances of Romantic music on period instruments because this is simply one of the most enchanting discs of echt Romantische Lieder ever recorded. Ameling's voice is so fresh and sweet, her tone so light and her technique so supple that she seems less a singer of the songs than the songs themselves given voice. And Demus' playing is so delicate but so strong, so lightly drawn, and so richly colored that one does not miss the sound of a concert grand, but rather revels in the sonorities of a hammerflugel. Only clarinetist Hans Deinzer in Schubert's Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (D. 965) takes some getting used to, and that's mostly because his tone is so wonderfully ripe and his playing is so marvelously dexterous. If all recordings of Romantic music played on period instruments sounded like this, all recordings of Romantic music would be played on period instruments. This is an exquisitely beautiful recording.© TiVo

It's not that the songs are fantastic, although Schubert and Schumann's songs are fantastic. It's not that Elly Ameling was young and full of spunk, although the young Elly Ameling was quite full of spunk. It's not that Jörg Demus is not a congenial accompanist, although he is as comfortable as a sofa and a tumbler of port. No, the reason that this disc is so terrific is that it disproves every rotten thing anyone's ever said about performances of Romantic music on period instruments because this is simply one of the most enchanting discs of echt Romantische Lieder ever recorded. Ameling's voice is so fresh and sweet, her tone so light and her technique so supple that she seems less a singer of the songs than the songs themselves given voice. And Demus' playing is so delicate but so strong, so lightly drawn, and so richly colored that one does not miss the sound of a concert grand, but rather revels in the sonorities of a hammerflugel. Only clarinetist Hans Deinzer in Schubert's Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (D. 965) takes some getting used to, and that's mostly because his tone is so wonderfully ripe and his playing is so marvelously dexterous. If all recordings of Romantic music played on period instruments sounded like this, all recordings of Romantic music would be played on period instruments. This is an exquisitely beautiful recording.© TiVo

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Caveat emptor -- with the purchase of this disc, he or she is getting neither a work called Das jüngste Gericht nor even necessarily music by the Danish/German Baroque composer Dietrich Buxtehude. North German group Weser-Renaissance has made a name for itself with sensitive performances that are nevertheless essentially investigational in nature. Here they take up parts of a lengthy work that, like Bach's Christmas Oratorio, is somewhere between a cantata cycle and an oratorio, and was apparently meant to be performed on successive evenings. No title for the work is known. It is surmised to be by Buxtehude, based on its presence in a collection of manuscripts in Stockholm (a city with which the composer was closely associated) and also on alleged stylistic evidence. The latter point seems weaker; the harmonic palette of the music is restricted compared with that of many other sacred vocal works by Buxtehude. It touches on the theme of the Last Judgment but is not the flood-and-guts scenario that might suggest -- it's sort of a morality play, aimed, the notes tell us, at Buxtehude's well-heeled merchant audiences in North Germany and intended as a warning to them to curb their stylin' ways. (It is not known who wrote the libretto; it may have been Buxtehude himself.) The women, as usual, are singled out: "Because the daughters of Zion are proud and go strolling with stretched necks and painted faces," runs one aria (track 4), "come stepping in and strutting, and wear exquisite shoes on their feet, the Lord will shave the heads of the daughters of Zion and take away their jewels." The music consists of choruses, some of them chorales, with a discourse like that of a Greek chorus, with individual parts for the Seven Deadly Sins, Jesus, divine voices, and good and bad souls; the characterization is light but recognizable, and the individual parts combine into attractive duos and trios. The soloists of Weser-Renaissance are just right for the small dimensions and serious tone of the music, but the one-to-a-part choruses of Weser-Renaissance don't work well here -- chorale-based music loses its congregational resonances with this approach, and the preponderance of trios in the music loses its impact when the trio is just a slightly smaller quartet. Even if the music is less effective than that heard on other recent Buxtehude vocal recordings (check out the version of Membra Jesu nostri by the Sixteen, or by the German group Cantus Cölln), this disc, no matter what the music was called or who wrote it, offers an intriguing historical document. Casual listeners won't need this, but serious German Baroque collectors will find something new (or old) and different here.© TiVo

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After two glorious albums devoted to Chopin and Liszt, Benjamin Grosvenor continues his exploration of the Romantic period by tackling the third leading faction of the genre, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms (who was a close friend of both the Schumann’s). The Kreisleriana, like many of Schumann’s other cycles, are a virtuosic reflection on his artistic 'doubles'; Eusebius, the melancholic dreamer, and Florestan, the feverish and passionate rake. The Three Romances Op.28 expresses Schumann's eternal and unconditional love for Clara, who saw in these pieces "the most beautiful love dialogues". In the last movement of the Sonata No. 3 Op.14, Schumann makes an elegant reference to his own Kreisleriana. Clara Wieck's Variations on a Theme of Schumann later inspired Brahms to write his own variations on the same theme. There are similarities in character to his Intermezzi at the end of the album. With his singular and unmistakable touch, Benjamin Grosvenor delivers an interpretation of unadulterated purity, with a simple and luminous audio recording that gives these great passages their deserved nobility. © Pierre Lamy/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