Beatrice Rana combines Clara Wieck-Schumann and Robert Schumann's piano concertos with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin In an interview with the New York Times, Rana, who called the piano concerto by Clara Wieck "a genius work in many ways," said: "I think that it's very, very underestimated - the intellectual value of this concerto in the history of music. It's fascinating to see that she conceived of this music free from any limitations; that as a teenager she composed an uninterrupted concerto with no breaks between the movements.

If you’re approaching these familiar Bach concertos for the first time, or want inexpensive performances that still provide decent musical rewards, then you won’t go far wrong with this Eloquence disc. Salvatore Accardo (who also directs the Chamber Orchestra of Europe) is soloist in the violin concertos in A minor and E major. Both are earnest, direct readings that hardly differ from Accardo’s EMI remakes.

It is more than twenty years since Solti last recorded Così for Decca, and if that earlier version was far from ideally cast, this new one more than makes amends. Above all, it has a commanding Fiordiligi in Renée Fleming, who conveys all the tragic vulnerability of this central character. Her performance of the great second-act rondo ‘Per pietà’ would be enough to melt the hardest of hearts. Anne Sofie von Otter and Olaf Bär are in fine form, too; and while Adelina Scarabelli is not exactly a mistress of disguises (she scarcely alters her voice at all for Despina’s part as the mesmeric doctor), her vitality is irresistible.

Schubert's 'Tragic' Symphony and Mozart's 'Paris' Symphony are performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Wiener Musikvereinsaal in 1984. Harnoncourt goes back to Schubert's original manuscripts to perform the music in its purest form. Harnoncourt joined forces with The Chamber Orchestra of Europe for Mozart's last symphonies (Nos. 39-41), performed at the Wiener Musikvereinssaal in 1991. Known throughout the world for his highly original approach to classical music, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt reveres Mozart as 'the most romantic composer of all'.

This CD is one of two Warner Classics recordings taped live during a series of concerts presented by the world renowned Chamber Orchestra of Europe during Easter Week 2003. The title for the concert series, presented in London, was Passions and Diversions as the works relate to different aspects of reflection and inspiration. In this program, Britten and Stokowski interpret works by Purcell in their own idioms; Britten draws on his English musical roots to inspire an original work, Lachrymae and Britten himself is the source of inspiration in Pärt’s Cantus. In the case of the Vaughan Williams, Tippett and Walton works, the inspirations are other composers and literature. The Chamber Orchestra of Europe has been described in The Financial Times as “the best orchestra in Europe.” The COE was founded in 1981 and has a membership of 50 musicians from 15 countries who perform together mainly in continental Europe and occasionally in the US and Japan. Since its inception, it has appeared with the world’s leading conductors and soloists, and its recordings have consistently won the highest praise and international prizes, including three Gramophone “Record of the Year” awards.

Maisky takes the dual role of soloist and conductor on this single disc issue. It receives a well-deserved Penguin Rosette in The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009. I wasn't familiar with the works on this CD before buying it. I'm an avid classical music CD collector and not too shabby amateur pianist (heavy emphasis on the amateur) and am currently listening to a course on Papa Haydn by Robert Greenberg from "The Great Courses" (formerly The Teaching Company), in addition to personally working on a Haydn Piano Sonata. As such, I've got a new found appreciation for this composer.

How appropriate that Harnoncourt, a conductor who through recordings has probably done more than anyone else to allow us to explore Bach's choral music, should now turn his attention to Mendelssohn; a composer who, as a conductor, was responsible in his time for the revival of Bach's fortunes, not to mention revising the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra's programmes to ensure that Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Handel and Bach formed the backbone of the repertoire—exactly those composers, in fact, who form the core of Harnoncourt's discography.

Like Paavo Berglund’s Sibelius symphony recordings, also with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, these Brahms performances inject a certain novelty that will be appreciated especially by the listener who has wearied of them due to excessive repetition. While these are not radically desiccated renditions in the manner of Chailly or Harnoncourt, the COE’s smaller-scaled string body does require a bit of time at first for your ear to adjust to the thinner timbres. But the reward is a harvest of inner detail, much of it barely audible in full-size orchestral performances (but well captured by Ondine’s vivid recordings), which continually surprises and delights.

The third of DG’s series of seven Mozart operas conducted by Yannick Nezet-Seguin and initiated by Rolando Villazon. It was recorded live in the stunning venue of Festspielhaus Baden Baden and features a star cast full of critically-acclaimed artists – including Diana Damrau, the reigning Konstanze of our time – with an extraordinary strong showing of Deutsche Grammophon artists: Anna Prohaska, Rolando Villazon, Thomas Quasthoff and more.

This Così fan tutte enchanted the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus audience when recorded in concert in 2012, with Nézet-Séguin inspiring his stellar cast to feats of vocal derring-do. An enthusiastic advocate of Mozart s music, Rolando Villazón takes on the lead tenor role. Das Opernglas hailed his debut as Ferrando, calling him ideal for the role we have not heard a more beautiful, better sung and deeper felt Un aura amorosa in a long time. Starring a thrilling cast of both young and experienced Mozart opera stars including accomplished soprano Mojca Erdmann as Despina, acclaimed Mozartian soprano Miah Persson and prize-winning young American mezzo Angela Brower as the emotionally manipulated sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. Also joining this crème-de-la-crème cast are distinguished Mozart bass-baritone Adam Plachetka as Guglielmo and Italian buffo baritone Alessandro Corbelli as Alfonso.

Douglas Boyd and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe play Bach's concerto masterpieces with wonderful sense of rhythms, refinement and articulation.

Beatrice Rana, partnered by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, performs the piano concertos of Robert Schumann and Clara Wieck-Schumann. She complements them with Liszt’s transcription for solo piano of Robert’s song ‘Widmung’, an exuberant dedication of love, composed in the year of Robert and Clara’s marriage. The previous year (1839), Robert had written to Clara: “You complete me as a composer, as I do you. Every thought of yours comes from mysoul, just as I have to thank you for all my music.”

It would be difficult to speak about the life and work of Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund without mentioning the name of his illustrious compatriot, composer Jean Sibelius—but the reverse is also true, as Berglund spent a lifetime exploring the profound depths of Sibelius's music and bringing it to an ever wider public. After three recordings of the complete Sibelius symphonies on CD, Berglund returned to these titanic works in 1998, aged nearly 70, with a level of insight—shaped over the course of decades—that perhaps no other conductor has ever achieved.

For those that prefer to hear these works on piano rather than harpsichord, you can hardly find more enjoyable, illuminating, and elegant performances than these. Andras Schiff has surely become one of the most prominent proponents of J.S. Bach on the piano and its hard to believe these particular discs were ever allowed to slip from commercial availability. Their re-issue here is reason to rejoice. It is with good reason that another chapter in the career of Andras Schiff has started recently with his new series of Beethoven Sonatas on ECM, and of course more Bach. He is a true master, and the Bach Concerto recordings with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, led by Schiff himself, exemplify this and count as essential listening.

This is the fourth instalment in Deutsche Grammophon’s new Mozart cycle. In the end this will encompass the seven great operas, from Idomeneo forwards. I haven’t heard the previous three, but from the reviews I have seen the reception has been rather mixed. Concerning this latest issue I am also in two minds. The problem, as I see it, is that Nézet-Séguin hasn’t quite decided what he is up to. He has the excellent Chamber Orchestra of Europe at his disposal.