The two sets of dances are charming products of Schubert's mid-teenage years and provide Gidon Kremer with much food for musical thought. Whereas a lesser artist might settle for charm and no more, Kremer locates those occasional corners where bodeful intimations lie dormant: witness the darkening cadences at the close of the Sixth German Dance or the third (D minor) Minuet's pensive outer sections. His solo playing has a fine-spun, slightly husky quality, spot-on the centre of the note and with constantly shifting nuances.

Renata Scotto (born 24 February 1934) is an Italian soprano and opera director.
Recognized for her sense of style, musicality and as a remarkable singer-actress, Scotto is considered one of the preeminent singers of her generation, specializing in the bel canto repertoire with excursions into the verismo and Verdi repertoires.
Since retiring from the stage as a singer in 2002, she has turned successfully to directing opera as well as teaching in Italy and America, along with academic posts at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Juilliard School in New York.

Tchaikovsky only wrote one "official" piano sonata, the Grande Sonate in G major, Op. 37, but when he was a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he began an Allegro in F minor and completed a full sonata in C sharp minor, published posthumously as Op. 80. Leslie Howard, in the midst of his enormous Franz Liszt project, recorded all three works for Hyperion. Howard fleshed out the Allegro into a complete sonata allegro movement. The result is a movement that is solid, structurally and musically, much meatier than the Tchaikovsky character pieces that are more often heard, but still an immature work for the composer.

GRAMOPHONE AWARD WINNER: INSTRUMENTAL AWARD 2013 & BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE RECORDING OF THE MONTH. Steven Osborne has become one of the most valuable pianists recording today. His recent complete Rachmaninov Preludes release was critically acclaimed as the greatest modern version since Ashkenazy. Now he turns to further cornerstones of the Russian repertoire in this recording of Musorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition (a work which has been in Osborne’s concert repertoire for many years), and two sets of Prokofiev’s miniatures. Musorgsky’s masterpiece is one of the most popular programmatic works of the 19th century. Yet it is also a great pianistic challenge, with the spectacular textures of the climactic movement ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’ requiring the highest technical accomplishments.

This time-honoured production of Verdi's final opera, one that has seen all the greatest Falstaffs of the last four decades hold court at its convincingly shabby Garter Inn and upset the decent folk of its lovingly recreated Tudor Windsor, marked the first appearance at the Met of producer and designer Franco Zeffirelli in March 1964. The Anglophile Zeffirelli had by then made his Shakespearean reputation with a revelatory Romeo and Juliet in London - his films of this play and of The Taming of the Shrew were shortly to follow - as well as with a similar production of Falstaff at Covent Garden, and the attention to visual and psychological detail displayed in his Met Falstaff won it high praise: “a milestone in the history of operatic production in this city" was the judgement of the New York Herald Tribune.

Perhaps it's true that Vladimir Horowitz claimed Leopold Godowsky's 1928 Passacaglia "impossible to play." That hasn't stopped brilliant, note-gobbling supervirtuosos from taking up its uncommon cause. The work treats the opening measure's of Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony as a ground bass from which 44 variations and a gigantic fugue evolve. The increasingly elaborate, upholstered textures and harmonic purple prose often suggest Max Reger huffing and puffing his way through the Gershwin songbook, leaving little time to relax or breathe.

On ne fait pas plus désolé que le chromatisme à l'orgue qui ouvre ce Requiem, avant que les chœurs n'en reprennent la lente progression en demi-tons qui, cette fois, montent et se poursuivront tout au long de l'œuvre. Enregistrée en 1993, cette version originale - quatre solistes, chœurs, harpe, orgue, quatuor à cordes - contraste, par son intimisme et sa discrétion avec les prodigieux déferlements de Mors et Vita, laissant apprécier la rare plénitude de l'inspiration musicale portée par la rare fougue de tous les interprètes, notamment dans le Dies Irae, dont on dirait les phrases mordues, tant elles sont scandées avec conviction…

Joncières epitomises the Romantic artist fascinated by nobility and grandeur. This is clear from the titles of his works alone: Sardanapale, Lancelot, Le Dernier Jour de Pompéi, Le Chevalier Jean, Dimitri. Listening to the latter, his masterpiece (1876), we realise too that he was a contemporary of Gounod and a champion of Wagner. Dimitri carries on the tradition (begun by Meyerbeer) of spectacular, monumental works. It takes the listener from a monastery near the River Don to a palace in Krakow, then to the castle of Wyksa and finally the Kremlin in Moscow. At the time it was written, Bayreuth, Orange and Béziers were about to turn opera into a popular art with mass appeal.

In the 41 - year gap between these two sonatas Fauré, increasingly beset by deafness, withdrew into a more private, recondite world all his own. The Second, in consequence, has never enjoyed the popularity of the First—and in fact was conspicuous by its absence from the CD catalogue until this welcome new release. Collectors may recall that when Lydia Mordkovitch and Gerhard Oppitz recorded the First for Chandos they preferred to couple it with Richard Strauss's early Sonata in E flat. Comparison of the two teams in the A major Sonata, Op. 13, leaves me in no doubt that the newcomers would be my first choice. In saying that, I don't want to underestimate Mordkovitch. But with her fine-spun, silken tone and sensitively tapered phrasing she is far too often overpowered by Oppitz, who in the resonant acoustic of St Luke's Church, Chelsea, emerges not only too loud but also rather too often the victim of his own over-generously used right pedal. The Cologne venue accorded to Mintz and Bronfman is kinder: though anything but timid Bronfman preserves far greater textural clarity, and never allows his piano to outweigh Mintz's violin unless at the composer's own behest.(Gramophone, 1/1988)

Patricia Petibon's album Melancolía: Spanish Arias and Songs is a result of the soprano's lifelong fascination with the music and culture of Spain, with a special interest in the ways Spanish and French influences have cross-pollinated. She has put together an exceptionally attractive selection of songs and arias from zarzuelas, most of them likely to be unfamiliar to general audiences. Petibon is known for her light, silvery coloratura, and her gift for inhabiting her roles, both dramatic and comic, with great spirit and penetrating insight. This repertoire doesn't especially exploit her coloratura abilities, but it gives free range to her expressive talents, from the feral intensity of the traditional Yoruba chant Ogundé uareré and the unrestrained yawps of Giménez's aria "La tarantula é un bicho múmalo" to the suave lyricism of the familiar Aria from Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5.

A greatest-hits album ought to stick to the middle of the road, playing to what an artist does best. Yet it ought not simply wallow in past glories: this collection from Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, arguably the best-known soprano of the present day, hits the spot and can safely be recommended to newcomers. Netrebko is at her best in core Italian repertory like Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma or Libiamo ne 'lieti calici from Verdi's La Traviata.

This DVD is the first release of this legendary performance by a legendary artist. "Rubinstein's superb form is matched by the incredible musical sensitivity of Haitink and the orchestra… Sounds and images are expertly cued to the split second… Rubinstein's face, body and hands are captured in a smooth flow of shots and reflectionsThe Beethoven takes on an almost Mozartean delicacy, the Brahms is infused with all the power it requires." -The New York Times

It was something of a surprise to be reminded that this recording was made thirty-eight years ago. I've been re-listening to it and Rattle's later recording with the Berlin Philharmonic recently and found my memories confirmed. The Berliners are a great orchestra, make a sumptuous sound, and Rattle is on fine form. And yet, it is the intensity of the Bournemouth performance that is the more gripping for me: it is constantly on the edge, just as Mahler was as he struggled to get the outline of this intensely personal music onto paper in the last summer of his life.

Vincent d’Indy was born in Paris in 1851 and became a pupil and leading disciple of César Franck, whose music he did much to propagate. He distinguished himself as a teacher, founder of the influential and rigorous Schola Cantorum, and writer on musical subjects, and was an important figure in the musical life of Paris in his time, although by the time of his death a new era in music was well under way.

This is the romantic story of a three-way love-affair told to us in music. We know that the young Brahms, as beautiful as a star, made a very noticed irruption within the couple Schumann. "Arrival of Brahms, a genius! Notes Robert in his diary with an extraordinary intuition. The sequel is told by Shuichi Okada on violin and Clément Lefebvre on piano, two young musicians of the National Conservatory of Music of Paris, co-producer of the present, where they deftly weave the links between the three characters. Schumann's First Sonata in A minor, Op. 105, opens fire, followed by two excerpts from the famous Sonata F-A-E, composed by Schumann, Brahms and Dietrich, the latter unfortunately being systematically left out by the violinists. Caught in the vice between the two men who love him, here is Clara with his Three Romances, Op. 22 which precedes the very melancholy Sonata No. 1, Op. 78, "Regen-Sonate" by Brahms. The music gathered here speaks better than words of how the three composers respond to one another and become a kind of common language, that of the impulses of the heart, of the outpouring of feelings and the unspoken.