Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenth-century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and Heine. The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert’s Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. Thanks to the Bärenreiter’s Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (New Schubert Edition), Tübingen, which uses primary sources, the performers have been able to benefit from the most recent research of the editorial team.

Large industrial complexes, built of solid brick tell the story of industrialization of 19th century Leipzig. Where spinning wheels once rattled, chimneys smoked and thousands of workers carried out their daily work, new life has moved in over the past few years. Today, former factories are home to artists' studios, galleries and manufactories.

Founded in 1992, the New York-based Brentano Quartet is known for its interpretations combining perfect technique and matchless musicality. Those qualities are even more obvious in this series of late Beethoven quartets with this first volume bringing together the Op. 127 and 131. This pure crystal of intelligence and brilliance will doubtless constitute a milestone.

Schubert moved to Vienna in early 1817, which was the center of musical activities in Europe at that time. Schubert focused strongly upon composing piano sonatas, and the result was these four superb works. Korean-born pianist Sookkyung Cho brings these sonatas truly to life. Noted for her "sensitive and imaginative" (New York Concert Review) playing, Sookkyung Cho has been captivating worldwide audiences with her personal, thoughtful expressionist style. She has appeared in venues such as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, Sarasota Opera House, Baltimore Museum of Art, Montreal Conservatory, Beaux concerts de la releve in Quebec, Château de Fontainebleau in France, and Zijingang Theater at Zhejiang University in China, among others, and was recently heard on Chicago's WFMT.

Music publisher, friend, benefactor to Mozart, and respected composer Franz Anton Hoffmeister was a significant figure in late eighteenth century Vienna; his star did not fade until well into the nineteenth century, when he was eventually disparaged as a mediocrity. Yet Hoffmeister could have no better advocates than violist Ashan Pillai and conductor Christopher Hogwood, who have restored some of this composer's reputation in a delightful album of his complete works for viola. Pillai's idiomatic and sensitive solos and Hogwood's fastidious direction of the Gulbenkian Orchestra elevate the music to a high level of elegance and charm, and it becomes apparent from these performances that Hoffmeister was much better than his detractors claimed.

“The Other Mozart” is Franz Xaver, son of Wolfgang Amadeus, who was born in the year of Wolfgang Amadeus’s death, 1791. Franz Xaver lived into the era of high romanticism and died in 1844. Franz Xaver’s lineage, some enthusiastic early reports from his teachers (not least Salieri!) and the influence of his mother, Mozart’s widow Constanze, ensured that Franz Xaver’s talents as a pianist and composer allowed him a career. He grew up and lived his last years in Vienna, but spent most of his adult life in and around Lvov (in present-day Ukraine). Constanze complained of his easy-going nature; whether this was the cause of his limited success is not known.

In this new concerto album one of the greatest violinists of our time, Christian Tetzlaff, performs two standard violin concertos in fresh new interpretations together with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin directed by the orchestra’s exciting new music director, Robin Ticciati. Both Ludwig van Beethoven and Jean Sibelius made outstanding contributions to the history of music as great symphonists. Both composers also wrote a violin concerto – Beethoven wrote his D major concerto in 1806, Sibelius his D minor concerto a century later.

Schubert set the poetry of over 115 writers to music. He selected poems from classical Greece, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, from eighteenth-century German authors, early Romantics, Biedermeier poets, and Heine. The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert’s Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. Thanks to the Bärenreiter’s Neue Schubert-Ausgabe (New Schubert Edition), Tübingen, which uses primary sources, the performers have been able to benefit from the most recent research of the editorial team.

Experience two grand classics, alive with all the excitement and verve of their very first performances. Thrill to one of Haydn’s masterful ‘London’ symphonies that wowed England’s capital – the smash hit ‘Military’, so-called for intense depictions of the clash of arms and ferocious roar of war. In the epic Nelson Mass Handel and Haydn Society's magnificent chorus and soloists join the orchestra in this homage to the heroic admiral who helped to vanquish Napoleon.

Stylistically, Hogwood is on firm ground, and there is much to be said for his insights into the music. He prefers not to "conduct" the symphonies in the conventional manner, but to "coordinate" their performance as a musician of the period might have done. His Eroica and Pastorale are outstanding, and his Ninth most impressive. The symphonies were recorded in the order of their composition, and the sound is consistently good throughout.

Johann Forkel, the biographer of J.S. Bach, numbered Müthel among the most remarkable of Bach’s pupils. Another of the great chroniclers of 18th century music, Charles Burney, described Müthel's works as 'so full of novelty, taste, grace, and contrivance, that I should not hesitate to rank them among the greatest productions of the present age.’ In Müthel's five concertos for keyboard and strings we nevertheless meet a distinctly individual composer, displaying sophisticated rhythms and harmonic playfulness. Presenting them on this set of two CDs, the young Polish harpsichordist Marcin Świątkiewicz makes his début on BIS. He is supported by his compatriots in the acclaimed period band Arte dei Suonatori, who clearly relish the often intricate and always eventful orchestral parts.

For the 300th anniversary of C. P. E. Bach’s birth, Alpha proposes discovering the work of one of the Cantor’s sons from an original angle: that of the Alexis Kossenko’s flute.
In this boxed set, Alpha has brought together the complete Flute Concertos as well as the marvellous Trio Sonatas, masterpieces that allow for discovering Carl Philipp Emanuel’s close connection with the traverso, and also perceiving Alexis Kossenko’s strong ties with this brilliant composer.

To celebrate their traditional New Year's Eve Concert, Daniel Barenboim and the Berliner Philharmoniker encouraged the audience to dance. The result was a lively whirl of catchy and melodious numbers selected from over 300 years of music history - a heady cocktail of old and new that put a spring in the steps of both connoisseurs of brilliant orchestral miniatures and lovers of Latin American rhythms.

The latest album of star oboist Albrecht Mayer is inspired by his lifelong love for the music of Mozart and featuring a world premiere recording and several new arrangements of Mozart’s most famous pieces. Mayer’s album is made in partnership with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and harpsichordist Vital Julian Frey and will be released 9 April 2021. Its tracklist features a B flat major version of the Concerto for flute and harp, K. 299 (297c) arranged for oboe and harpsichord, and a transcription of Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165 (158a) for oboe d’amore, orchestra and organ. Also included are arrangements of the concert arias Non temer, amato bene, K.505 and Ah se in ciel, benigne stelle, K.538, the Rondo in C major, K.373 and the motet Ave verum corpus, K.618.

This is the second disc devoted by the Chinese-German Trio Parnassus to the chamber music of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, the dedicatee of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. The prince was an aristocratic patron for whom the irascible Beethoven actually had musical respect, noting that he played not "in a princely or royal manner but rather like a competent piano player." Ferdinand, who was killed by Napoleon's troops in 1806, in turn venerated Beethoven, but the strongest tribute to his talent is that as a composer he wrote music that neither aped Beethoven's nor took refuge in Classical models.