Linn is absolutely thrilled to launch a new recording partnership with the Consone Quartet. The first period instrument quartet to be selected as BBC New Generation Artists, the ensemble will embark on a complete Felix Mendelssohn string quartets cycle. Playing on gut strings, thus creating a warm, grainy soundworld akin to analogue photography (as violinist Agata Daraškaitė puts it), the four musicians have drawn inspiration from editions of the time, including Ferdinand David’s own scrupulously marked-up parts, to present fresh accounts of the E flat major quartet ‘1823’ and Op. 44 No. 3. These two works paired together – the former is an early work, the latter is the composer’s penultimate achievement in the genre – allow for some revealing comparisons between styles at different points in Mendelssohn’s life.

Il Gardellino is a period-instrument ensemble devoted largely to the performance of Baroque music, both instrumental and vocal. Consisting of eight core members, Il Gardellino can range in size from three to as many as thirty players, depending on demands of the repertory. That said, most of the instrumental concerts feature fewer than a dozen performers.

Whether we call them ‘Mystery’ or ‘Rosary’ Sonatas, these fifteen pieces, crowned by a sublime passacaglia for unaccompanied violin, form one of the greatest violinistic masterpieces of the Baroque repertory.This version, by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti, derived from a dance project with the Rosas company, leads us into their magical universe through a novel prism: that of movement, to which these pieces are an infinite ode.

Reference Recordings is proud to present a very special new release! Entitled Le Dolce Sirene to represent the all-women force of Bach Aria Soloists, this exciting new album includes works by Monteverdi, Handel, Mendelssohn and Bach, alongside a new transcription by BAS of Cecilia McDowall’s song cycle Four Shakespeare Songs. Hailed for producing 'surprising and brilliantly innovative collaborations,' Bach Aria Soloists delivers each year their acclaimed concert series presenting the genius and relevance of Johann Sebastian Bach, his contemporaries, and those he inspired. BAS consists of Founder/Artistic Director and violinist Elizabeth Suh Lane, GRAMMY-winning soprano Sarah Tannehill Anderson, Elisa Williams Bickers who plays Harpsichord, Organ and Piano, and cellist Hannah Collins.

Do we need to know, before hearing a work, whether it was composed by a man or a woman? Does this information change the way we listen? Does it influence our judgment?With the works selected for this recording, we enter the realm of so-called ‘programme music’.Composers proclaim therein their ability to depict, through purely aural means, a non-musical subject.
A poem, a narrative, a painting, a scene from a play or even a sculpture could be used as the basis for the score of a symphonic poem.

Obwohl beide Meister denselben Text verwenden, unterscheiden sich die Vertonungen sowohl in ihrer Art als auch in ihrer Form erheblich. Während Haydns Melodien den Inhalt mit einem Augenzwinkern und viel Feinsinnigkeit präsentieren, lädt Holzers Stück vor Lebensfreude und Musikalität sprühend zum Mittanzen ein. Joseph Haydns Lieder umfassen ein breites musikalisches Spektrum und sind für die Entwicklung der Gattung von unschätzbarem Wert: Sie stellen einen entscheidenden Beitrag zur Weiterentwicklung des Wiener Liedes bis hin zu Franz Schubert dar. Wie bei vielen Wiener Charakteristika vermischen sich verschiedenste Stilmittel: volkstümliche Elemente, Merkmale des Singspielliedes und des norddeutschen Liedes werden unter dem zusätzlichen Einfluss der italienischen Arie zu einer völlig neuen Musikgattung geformt. Die Verbindung zum neunzehnten Jahrhundert wird durch französische Lieder hergestellt, die erstmals 1810 von dem italienischen Gitarrenvirtuosen Mauro Giuliani in Wien ausgegeben wurden. Für dieses Projekt wurde ein historisches Streichinstrument gewählt, um ein noch größeres Gefühl der Intimität zu erzeugen.

This is the third and final instalment of the Well-Tempered Consort series (5 Diapasons, Gramophone Editor’s Choice, BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice). In this programme devised by its director Laurence Dreyfus, the viol consort Phantasm continues to shine new light on the fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier interspersed with some of the composer’s most harmonically adventurous experiments from the Clavierübung III. This polyphonic feast also includes two works from the Inventions and Sinfonias as well as the Fantasia in G major BWV 572, or Pièce d’orgue as it is sometimes called, which boasts an extraordinary closing pedal point. A fitting end to a remarkable journey!

‘Blithe ignorance of the future cataclysm’ is the subtitle originally chosen by Shostakovich for the first movement of his ‘war quartet’, String Quartet no. 3, which he considered one of his finest works.

How to express emotion through music from which words are absent? This album attempts to give an answer to this question. Through works by Italian composers from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the two members of Seicento Stravagante, David Brutti and Nicola Lamon, demonstrate the extravagant styles of early baroque music. During the decades surrounding 1600, the dominance of the human voice and of texts came to be replaced by the unfettered imagination of the composer/instrumentalists that allowed instruments to ‘speak’ on their own, and not only support a sung text.

Vénus, irritée par la jeune mortelle Psyché dont la beauté irradie le monde, envoie l’Amour pour lui imposer mille épreuves, que la jeune victime surmonte jusqu’à devenir immortelle. Dans cette fable mythologique qui est sa sixième tragédie lyrique (1678), Lully déploie son immense talent, et se venge de Molière pour lequel il avait écrit en 1671 la musique d’une Psyché monumentale, qui causa leur rupture. Fin connaisseur de Lully, Christophe Rousset dirige une distribution somptueuse qui donne à sa Psyché tout le lustre des grands opéras français !

The Linarol Consort is joined by acclaimed tenor, James Gilchrist, for this, the second volume of viol music composed for the wealthiest and most influential of German merchants of the sixteenth century, Jacob Fugger, who is held to be one of the wealthiest individuals in history. Recorded from a new edition of a manuscript held in the vast collection of the National Library of Austria, this rare recording champions viol consort pieces from some of the greatest German, Flemish and French composers of the time.

Selim Palmgren’s piano miniatures were extremely popular during his lifetime and were played by the great virtuosos of the day. The sixth volume in this acclaimed series presents a panorama of Palmgren’s works and includes two of his greatest and most important solo pieces – the suite Ungdom, Op. 28 laced with Impressionist and Finnish folk elements, and the Three Piano Pieces, Op. 54 which includes Raindrops and Moonlight, two of his best-known and most atmospheric works. Also included are Lisztian virtuoso studies, Hungarian evocations, and a beautiful, moving Prélude funèbre that was played at Palmgren’s own funeral. Jouni Somero, Palmgren’s greatest modern exponent, continues his historic survey of piano music by one of Finland’s most respected and admired composers.

‘Polarity’ is the first in a three album series reflecting on the many calamitous water crises affecting life on this planet.
Fifty percent of the sales for the three album series will be donated to communities that are at the front line of these crises, in perpetuity.

Hailed by the music press as one of the most gifted pianists of her generation and recipient of many international awards, established German-Italian pianist and ECHO winner Sophie Pacini invites us on a very personal journey across the pianistic cosmos. In her own words: “On this album, I have combined pieces which have accompanied and reassured me in seemingly small, but ultimately crucial moments of my life.”

Timothy Ridout gives us the opportunity to discover the splendid viola version of Elgar's famous Cello Concerto - an arrangement approved by the composer, who conducted it's premiere in 1930. In addition to this deeply moving work, he gives us a powerful, poetic reading of Bloch's all too rarely performed Suite for Viola and Orchestra, in which the Swiss composer indulged his fascination with the Orient.