Claude-Benigne Balbastre (1727-1799) published his first book of harpsichord pieces in 1759, nine years after a decisive move from his home city of Dijon to the metropolis of Paris. France had been inundated with Italian music and musicians for more than 50 years, and Balbastre’s style is inflected by the latest Italian trends, while remaining unmistakably and deliciously French.

Inspired by their release earlier this summer of Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’, performed by a Milanese wind ensemble of principals from La Scala, Brilliant Classics here takes the excellent opportunity to combine that brand new recording of the pinnacle of Mozart’s chamber music for winds with all the rest of his music in the genre, recorded for Brilliant back in the spring of 2001 by the wind soloists of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Thus we have the leading players from two renowned orchestras breathing life into the wind music that played such a large role in the career of the Viennese genius. Mozart’s chamber music for winds stems from the genre of Harmoniemusik: entertainment music that was in vogue in the second half of the 18th century named for the courtly wind ensemble of pairs of woodwinds plus horns, called Harmonie or Harmonieorchester in German-speaking countries. Its characteristic forms include the Serenades and Divertimenti. This was music that could be performed outdoors (due to the instruments’ power of projection) or at informal settings such as meals (where they could be heard over lively conversation) with the musicians entertaining either themselves or an aristocratic dinner party, the so-called Tafelmusik (music for the table). Hence, Mozart was called upon often to write such works, either by wind-player friends (fellow Freemasons) or by his employers for the enrichment of courtly life.

World premiere recordings of beguiling flute sonatas written on the cusp of the early-Romantic era in Germany.
Almost completely forgotten in our own time, Johann Christian Friedrich Schneider (1786-1853) once enjoyed substantial fame as a pianist, composer, teacher and musical organiser. He was born in 1786, 16 years after Beethoven, in the same year as Weber and the Brothers Grimm, and received his first musical education from his father. His talent was evident from an early age, as he learnt the piano and several other instruments. Breitkopf & Hartel published his Op.1, a set of piano sonatas, in 1804; he went to study in Leipzig, where he became organist of the Thomaskirche, and settled there for his 20s, giving the local premiere of Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto in 1811.

A world premiere recording of elegant harpsichord suites from the high French Baroque.
Philippe-François Véras (c.1690-1742) published a single volume of Pièces de Clavecin in 1740 in Paris. Following the example of Couperin, he arranges his four suites in ‘Ordre’. Much about his life and work remains unknown and mysterious, but a firm fact is that Véras was organist at Saint-Maurice in the city of Lille.

instrumental output is being championed on the Brilliant label by Italian pianist Costantino Catena, who features in this well-rounded 8-CD set in solos as well as in the Violin Sonatas, Cello Sonata and Piano Quintet.
Completing the chamber music side are recent recordings of the String Trios and Quartets, the Piano Trios and the Violin-Cello duo.

The first complete recording of a colourful collection of keyboard dances from early 17th-century Italy.
What we know of Giovanni Antonio Cangiasi (? - c.1614) is restricted to the publication details of his surviving music. Four collections of sacred works were published between 1590 and 1612, and there followed, in 1614, this sole extant example of his keyboard music. He lived as a Franciscan friar in Milan, and dedicated this volume of Scherzi forastieri to ‘the most noble community of Castelnuovo di Scrivia’, referring to a comune in Piedmont now encompassed by the town of Alessandria, 70km southeast of Milan; perhaps this was his birthplace.

The final volume in a distinguished quartet cycle by one of the most exciting Italian ensembles of the present day.
Founded in 2011, Quartetto Noûs have been playing Shostakovich since their earliest concerts together, and their performances, both in concert and on record, bear the mark of both deep study and complete identification with the scores. These are risk-taking, thoroughly embedded performances, as many critics have recognised, which live up to the edgy intensity of the music itself.

Klára Würtz is among the more important pianists to have emerged from the latter decades of the 20th century. Hungarian-born, Amsterdam-based, she has, since the early '90s, made numerous tours of the United States and Canada while also appearing throughout Holland and elsewhere in Europe. If her repertory generally excludes Baroque as well as contemporary music, it is broad still, taking in all the sonatas of Mozart and large chunks of the outputs of Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Bartók, Debussy, and many others. Würtz has made numerous recordings for a variety of labels, including Brilliant Classics, Regis Records, and Globe. Würtz was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1965. She was a child prodigy: she first sat down at the piano at age five and soon became an extraordinarily accomplished player.

The overdue revival of interest in Mieczysław Weinberg has focused on his chamber and orchestral music, with periodic revivals of pivotal operas such as The Passenger. As this new recording illustrates, song was no less significant as a facet of his creative personality, beginning with the cycle of Akazie (Acacias), which the 21-year-old Weinberg composed in 1940, having lately fled Warsaw and briefly settled in Minsk.Each a minute or two long, the six Akazie unleash a passion out of proportion to their brevity. Weinberg later said that he wrote them as a distraction from the tragedy around him, but they speak of their time in their angular, expressionist vocal writing and supple, chromatic accompaniments. Most of the Jewish Songs Op.13 are similarly concise and direct, though their alternative title of ‘Children’s Songs’ hints at the lighter and more playful idiom.

A complete collection of Brahms’s work for trio, illuminating the span of his career in new, Italian-made recordings. Over the course of almost 40 years, the greater span of his career, Brahms composed five trios in different instrumentations. Whereas he wrote piano sonatas and later symphonies within specific periods of his life, Brahms always returned to songs and to chamber music. The piano is the central, unifying presence in the trios, and often the dynamic engine driving their material forward.

New recordings which have the field almost to themselves in an overlooked corner of Buxtehude’s output.
‘One of the world’s most prolific harpsichordists’ (Gramophone), Pieter-Jan Belder now leads this comprehensive and often revelatory survey of the surviving chamber music by Dieterich Buxtehude. Comprising eight musicians active on the Dutch early-music scene, Ensemble Fantasticus presents the only complete set of this music on record, making it an essential acquisition for all Baroque-music enthusiasts, further enhanced by detailed notes on both composer and works by Jon Baxendale.

Giovanni Battista Fasolo (1598-1680) was born in Asti (Italy) and spent his life as a Franciscan Friar in Rome, Naples and finally as Maestro di Cappella at the Cathedral of Monreale, Sicily. He is mainly known for his "Annuale", the largest compendium of organ music for liturgical use written in the 17th century.

Erik Bosgraaf Bosgraaf was born in Drachten, Netherlands. He received his Master of Arts in musicology from Utrecht University in 2006. In 2007 Bosgraaf, under the supervision of musicologist Thiemo Wind, released a 3-CD-box with compositions of the Dutch composer Jacob van Eyck (1589–1657), a collection which attained unexpected commercial success and sold more than 25,000 copies. In the 2011–12 season he was nominated by Concertgebouw Amsterdam and the Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, on behalf of the German ECHO music award organisation, to take part in the Rising Stars series for a tour of the most important concert halls in Europe.

Pieter-Jan Belder Multi-instrumentalist Pieter-Jan Belder conducts his Musica Amphion ensemble from the keyboard. He is also active as a soloist, playing harpsichord, fortepiano, organ, clavichord, and recorder. Belder was born on January 19, 1966, in Capelle aan den IJssel in the southern Netherlands. From the start, he pursued several instruments, studying recording at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with Ricardo Kanji and harpsichord with Bob van Asperen at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. He graduated from both institutions in 1990. Belder founded the chamber group Musica Amphion in 1993 and since then has divided his time between that group, his solo career, and teaching at the Sweelinck Conservatory, whose faculty he joined in 1990. In 1994, he made his recording debut, appearing on recorder under Kanjii's baton on the album Georg Philipp Telemann: Baroque Orchestra Concerto '91.

Saucy songs of sex, love and life in the Spanish Golden Age, revived and performed with relish by a native early-music ensemble.