Louis XVI was the last king of France (1774-92) in the line of Bourbon monarchs preceding the French Revolution of 1789. Louis and his queen consort, Marie-Antoinette, were guillotined in 1793 on charges of counter-revolution.
Following the abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814, the Bourbons returned to power in France and restored the system of monarchy under Louis XVIII. During this process, they also introduced a number of highly symbolic cultural acts as a public representation of the Bourbon dynasty. In 1815, the new king Louis XVIII had the mortal remains of Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette removed from the Cimetière de la Madeleine in a solemn ceremony, taken to Saint Denis and placed in separate graves in the crypt.

Wilhelm Kempff's cycle of the Beethoven Piano Concertos with Ferdinand Leitner and the Berlin Philharmonic is one of the great achievements of the golden age of stereo. Kempff had already recorded a magnificent mono cycle in the mid-1950s with the same orchestra under Paul Van Kempen (recently reissued on the box set "Wilhelm Kempff: The Complete 1950s Concerto Recordings" in DG's Original Masters series – see my review), but these new performances maintained his highest playing standards while offering the added dimension of stereo sound.

The Dover Quartet, “the young American string quartet of the moment” (The New Yorker), makes its recording debutwith an all-Mozart album on Cedille Records honoring the soaring young ensemble’s illustrious teachers and coaches,the Guarneri Quartet.

Concertgoers and critics alike rave about Silke Aichhorn's entertainingly moderated concerts, and her goal is nothing less than the redefinition of the image of the harp! Active as a soloist and chamber musician, Aichhorn is one of the most sought-after and versatile harpists of her generation. Following her release featuring Eichner's harp concertos, she now interprets for cpo three harp concertos by Johann Wilhelm Hertel, a composer regarded as one of the most important representatives of the empfindsamer Stil during the German preclassical period. His concerto oeuvre comprises some fifty solo concertos, and seventeen harpsichord concertos by him are known today.

This recording demonstrates, the Lindsays still continue to make the same sort of expressively intense and interpretatively aggressive recordings the group produced for the past three decades. And it must be admitted that the current Lindsays are every bit as willing and able to bend tempos, push phrases, and exaggerate dynamics as the original Lindsays. Indeed, in the group's need to prove its potency, it is now even more willing and there are times when the Lindsays' approach is too powerful for Haydn's music. Listen to the climax of the Largo assai from the G minor Quartet: if you like the sound of Peter Cooper's stabbing violin rending the tempo and texture of the music, you'll love the rest of the recording. If you don't, you won't. ASV's sound is nicely detailed, but slightly too reverberant.

A charismatic presence, [Casals] embraces each work with the passion of a devoted horticulturist tending his most precious flowers … I can't think of any other interpreters who so successfully underline the sheer inventiveness of Beethoven's writing.

–Gramophone Magazine

Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his period orchestra, Concentus Musicus Wien, never recorded a complete cycle of the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, and this 2016 Sony release is their only recording of the Symphony No. 4 in B flat major and the Symphony No. 5 in C minor, made almost ten months before the conductor's death. Harnoncourt planned for this to be his last recording before his retirement, so it inevitably has the feeling of a valedictory performance, and one can also hear it as the orchestra's warm tribute to its leader and his sterling musicianship. But beyond the well-deserved accolades, this is a truly fine live recording of one of the most famous symphonies of all time and its somewhat less loved sibling, so the musical value of this singular Beethoven disc is quite high. Because the Symphony No. 4 is often overlooked, it's gratifying that it opens the album, and listeners are well advised to try it first.

The characters move in a musical setting which is perhaps less revolutionary than Pergolesi's had been, the scenic action moves at a slower pace, with longer arias. Pergolesi's means are certainly more limited than Paisiello's, his vocal styles more essential and specific — his Uberto is more desperate and his Serpina craftier, while in Paisiello's opera the characters take on a more worldly and fugy-rounded form. In Paisiello's work Uberto and Serpina sing with greater awareness of the fact that they are actors in an institutionalised theatre, and their arias could at times belong to a different text, as for example the splendid 'Donne Vaghe' with which Serpina opens the second act or the delightful duet 'Donne infeste', whose music sounds more like an act of love than the celebration of deep disagreement. These two episodes, whose pertinence to the development of the plot is quite questionable, do not appear in Pergolesi's text.

When EMI made their various sonata and concerto recordings with Claudio Arrau in the 1950s, his reputation in this country was at its zenith; and rightly so, to judge from much that their five-CD Beethoven Edition has to offer. Later, a reaction set in, something that first became apparent in these pages in 1963 as Arrau, now a Philips artist, embarked on his cycle of all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas.

Louis Spohr was a slightly younger contemporary to Beethoven and was the only main contender to Paganini as a violin virtuoso. His earlier violin concerti here are a good example of his style and how it was in great parts similar to that of Paganini's. The performance and direction is well done. More gifted than Paganini in terms his greater diversity of compositions and ability for instrumental arrangement, Spohr's obscurity is somewhat more the product of academic questions on his originality in method and application and his merit for them in contrast to Paganini's whose genius talent was unquestionable.

An apocryphal notion of the composer as iconoclastic revolutionary infuses this new cycle from the Turner Quartet, authenticists who consistently outflank rival period accounts from the Smithson Quartet, also on Harmonia Mundi. These are curtly doctrinal readings; the emphatic urgency propelling the opening Allegro con brio of No. 6 and heroic muscularity of the finale of No. 2 underscore another familiar dictum, as ‘Napoleon [or rather his musical alter ego, Beethoven] bursts into the Classical drawing-room’ with these works. The Turner Quartet heralds his triumphant arrival, yet asserts that he’s in no hurry to leave.

Every so often, one becomes enchanted by the accomplishments of a true genius. When such a genius is only 11 years of age, we cannot help but reflect on mankind's wonderful gifts. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart granted the world with a source of pleasure, beauty and inspiration that will be ours to enjoy forever. The goal of this recording was to produce, as simply, organically and accurately as possible, a journey back to what might have happened when the 11-year-old Mozart wrote and performed the music featured here.

Before talking to Fazil Say about these performances, I’m not sure that I would have used the word “operatic” to describe them—but from the beginning, I was struck by their conversational quality, by the superbly characterized playing of the solo winds and by the exceptional chamber-music rapport of pianist and orchestra as they toss material back and forth. And while I might not have thought of the word “smiling,” I certainly noticed the high level of wit, both in the playing itself and in the slightly anachronistic cadenza that Say offers for K 467.

In history, the beginning of the genre of piano or cembalo concertos is usually associated with the name of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose sons had continued the undertaking which their father had begun. Thus, for example, Mozart was influenced by C.P.E. Bach in his own, further development of the genre, the "classical" character of which would become significantly influenced by him. The source of Haydn's inspiration to write piano concertos, and knowledge of appropriate compositions by his contemporaries, cannot be determined for certain, as we do not have any reliable documentation.

Lola Bobesco: an admirable and great musician whose name is nowadays not as well-known as that of other important violinists of the 20th century. This might be attributed to the fact that you had to experience her live, on stage, where she was especially convincing. Her compelling and lively playing as well as the way she efficiently dealt with the kinetic energy of music made her audience listen with rapt attention. This is an extensive release which features Lola Bobesco. It contains three albums featuring violin concertos from the Baroque to the 20th century. Some of the recordings featured here are being released for the first time.