This album is organised in seven sets and enables us to discover many sides of a repertoire Jordi Savall explores with the steadiest and most respectful hand.

Thanks to in-depth researches on original manuscripts, Jordi Savall reveals the hidden beauties of Irish and Scottish music from the 17th to 19th centuries.The transcription from fiddle to treble baroque viol sounds so obvious that everyone realises the closeness of traditional and ancient repertoires immediately. Most of the pieces are irresistibly vivid and virtuoso, some are more melancholy, but all of them deserve the renaissance Jordi Savall offers them in his customary, masterly manner. And… for the first time in Alia Vox history, the cover art features a photo of Jordi Savall.

This disc is a direct competitor to Schumann, Dvorak: Piano Concertos - Paolo Giacometti and in even in terms of artists employed they are comparable: both have young and up-coming pianists accompanied by less familiar orchestral/conductor partnerships. In the end, this release is more succesfully artistically, honours split with regard to sonics. Whilst there is little competition for the Dvorak (although what exists is heavyweight), the same cannot be said of the Schumann concerto (even on SACD) and Helmchen has many illustrious names to compete against.

A relaxed, easy vocal stylist who clowned with the Rat Pack, developing into an extremely popular ballad singer and light comedian.

Helmchen has returned to Mozart with these beautiful performance of two of the composer's liveliest concertos, Nos. 15 and 27. Crystalline pianism throughout, with splendid accompaniment from the fine Dutch orchestra and conductor Nikolic. Well-balanced audio, with natural balance between soloist and orchestra are another plus. Another Mozart concerto easily could have been included; playing time is rather brief.

This 26-CD set containing CPE Bach's complete solo piano works represents a landmark of the highest importance and, more significantly, listening pleasure. Ana-Marija Markovina has made a specialty of playing these works. She previously recorded the Prussian and Württemburg sonatas (for Genuin), but it is difficult to overstate the richness and variety found on these discs, or Markovina's consistent success in rendering it all with such freshness, excitement, intensity, and charm.

Johann Pachelbel (baptised 1 September 1653 – buried 9 March 1706) was a German composer, organist, and teacher who brought the south German organ schools to their peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era.

One wonders how Repin manages to find so much freshness and spontaneity in a work as well known as the Tchaikovsky Concerto…one is tempted to put Repin, with Milstein, Heifetz and Stern, at the very summit of a plethora of recordings.

It may not contain everything written by French modernist composer Francis Poulenc – the solo works, the chamber works, the stage works, and the songs with piano accompaniment are naturally not included – but Charles Dutoit's five-disc set of the orchestral works, the concerted works, the sacred choral works, and the vocal works with orchestral accompaniment by Poulenc has everything else that matters and lots, lots more. It has the charming Piano Concerto and the delightful Two Piano Concerto, the impressive Organ Concerto and the beguiling harpsichord concerto called Concert champêtre, the four-movement Sinfonietta and the seven-movement Suite française, the ballet Les biches and the Concerto chorégraphique called Aubade, plus 11 other shorter orchestral works.

It's hard to fathom today, but Roland Kirk was considered a gimmick for much of his early career. For sure, the man was a cagey character, which certainly didn't help his reputation. People were bemused by the way he played multiple horns simultaneously, including some horns that he invented himself. His style wasn't easy to pin down, either, so fluent was he in every jazz idiom.

This issue completes Cooper’s and Podger’s collected recordings of Mozart’s music for keyboard and violin. At first sight, Volumes 7 and 8 might seem to consist of leftovers – Vol 8 devoted to a set of six sonatas (K10-15) written in London when Mozart was eight, and Vol 7, apart from the two variation sets composed shortly after he settled in Vienna, containing a sonata dating from his 1766 stay in The Hague, plus two fragments, completed after Mozart’s death by Maximilian Stadler. In the event, however, both CDs are full of interest.

The duo partnership Gary Cooper & Rachel Podger has taken them worldwide. These recordings of Mozart’s Complete Sonatas for Keyboard & Violin have received countless awards & accolades, including multiple Diapason d’Or awards & Gramophone Editor’s Choices, & hailed as ‘benchmark’ recordings.

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995) mastered the art of being elusive. During his long career the legendary Italian pianist’s forays into the recording studio were few and far between. The concerts and broadcast performances he didn’t cancel, though, sometimes found their way onto pirated discs. This allowed pianophiles to gain a fuller dimension of their puzzling, ultra-perfectionist hero.

We bundled the eight Mozart cds that Rachel Podger and Gary Cooper recorded over the last ten years into an atrractive box, with an informative note from producer Jonathan Freeman-Attwoord. The duo partnership Gary Cooper and Rachel Podger has taken them worldwide. These recordings of Mozarts Complete Sonatas for Keyboard & Violin have received countless awards and accolades, including multiple Diapason dOr awards and Gramophone Editors Choices, and hailed as benchmark recordings.

At its première in June 1969 Shostakovich described his Symphony No. 14, in effect a symphonic song cycle, as ‘a fight for the liberation of humanity… a great protest against death, a reminder to live one’s life honestly, decently, nobly…’ Originally intending to write an oratorio, Shostakovich set eleven poems on the theme of mortality, and in particular early or unjust death, for two solo singers accompanied by strings and percussion. This is the penultimate release in Vasily Petrenko’s internationally acclaimed symphonic cycle.