This is a really great five-CD set. You get all of Bach's concertos except the Brandenburgs - which is a shame because Pinnock's Brandenburgs are terrific. Nonetheless, this remains an absolutely cracking collection of some of Bach's most enjoyable music in excellent performances. In the Harpsichord Concertos Pinnock is himself the soloist and shows why he is such a very well-liked and highly regarded musician. The music springs to life under his fingers (and under his direction) and many of these performances set new and enduring standards when first released in the early 1980s. They have informed much subsequent Bach playing and have worn extremely well themselves, sounding as fresh and involving as they did nearly 30 years ago. He is joined by other fine harpsichordists in the concerti for two, three and four harpsichords, (Kenneth Gilbert, Nicholas Kraemer and Lars Ulrich Mortensen) and the Concerto for Four Harpsichords in particular is an absolute joy.

The appetite for evolving performance practices in Bach’s St Matthew Passion appears undiminished as we have gradually shifted, over the generations, from larger to smaller ensembles and also towards a greater dramatic understanding of the implications of Bach’s ambitious ‘stereophonic’ double choir and orchestra choreography.

“Unquestionably one of the greatest pianists of all time” is how Gramophone magazine has described Martha Argerich. Her relationship with the label goes back to 1965 and her victory at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Over several decades it has produced a rich catalogue of live and studio recordings, embracing a repertoire that spans three centuries, a diversity of genres, and collaborations with such figures as Charles Dutoit, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky and Itzhak Perlman. The complete recordings for EMI Classics, Teldec, Erato and Warner Classics are featured in this box.

These three sonatas - composed originally for the viola da gamba and harpsichord - are very musically-appealing compositions. And unlike previous Baroque cahmber-music tradition, the harpsichord is not relegated to mere continuo but projected into the spotlight as co-soloist - perhaps to showcase some of Bach's keyboard virtuosity. There are several fine period recordings of these works on viola da gamba and harpsichord (Savall, Peri, Crum, Wispelwey) or modern cello with harpsichord (Ma, Tortelier). But if your taste favors all modern instuments (cello, piano), then this circa-80's CD by the legendary Martha Argerich and Misha Maisky is the ticket.

Eugene Istomin (1925–2003), one of America’s most respected pianists, was highly esteemed by audiences and colleagues alike for his mindful virtuosity and unusually wide-ranging repertoire. 2015 marks Istomin’s 90th birthday year, a milestone that Sony Classical celebrates with the first-ever release of his complete Columbia Masterworks concerto and solo recordings in a limited original-jacket collection including 10 previously unreleased studio recordings. Many of these performances appear in their first authorized CD editions, including the 19-year-old pianist’s recorded debut in Bach’s D minor Concerto led by Adolf Busch; his youthful concerto collaborations with Pablo Casals; Chopin’s complete Nocturnes; Brahms’s Handel Variations; Schubert’s D major D 850 Sonata, plus the long-out-of-print Rachmaninoff 2nd, Tchaikovsky 1st, Brahms 2nd, and Beethoven 4th and 5th (“Emperor”) Concertos with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Newly remastered from the original analogue tapes, the discs are presented in facsimile sleeves and labels corresponding to the original LP releases. An enclosed booklet offers full discographical information, an essay by Jed Distler, and a photographic retrospective.

In his recording of Bach's 48 Colin Tilney, unlike his fellow competitors in the same repertory, plays both a clavichord (Book 1) and a harpsichord (Book 2). Why not? Bach's title for the first book of 24 preludes and fugues, The Well-tempered Clavier leaves both this issue and that of tuning wide open. The clavichord was a favourite instrument of Bach's, so was the harpsichord and the organ; indeed, I am sorry that Tilney does not include a chamber organ since some of the pieces, the E major Prelude and Fugue (Book 2), for instance, seem well-suited to it. Tilney's performance of the 48 differs again from almost if not all others in the sequence which he adopts in playing the preludes and fugues. But an apparently random approach is in fact nothing of the kind, but one that is directly linked with tuning. We know that Bach himself was a master in matters of tuning as he was in all other aspects of his craft. What we do not know is the exact nature of his tuning.

With this volume 4 in a complete recording of Bach’s keyboard works whose ingenuity has been underlined by every reviewer (e.g. Gramophone, July 2020), Benjamin Alard continues to explore the Weimar period, known as that of his ‘early mastery’. After À la française, we turn to Italy, where the Vivaldian concerto reigned in Venice. The young Bach created here a wonderful space of freedom between the transcriber and the improviser. For ‘if transcription is a matter of freedom, it is also a matter of powerful imagination: each piece on this recording transports us into a Venetian universe that fascinated Bach as much as it inspired him’, as Benjamin Alard demonstrates on three exceptional instruments.

Maria João Pires “shapes and colours every phrase, and with immaculate taste, and she makes sure the phrases end as eloquently as they begin,” wrote Gramophone in 1974. “She conveys not just the details but the relevance of every note to the whole … Best of all, she communicates everything she has discovered about the music, and it is worth having.” This Portuguese pupil of Wilhelm Kempff, Pires was one of the artists who defined the Erato label in the 1970s and 1980s. This 5-CD box gathers together the recordings she made over the period from 1976 to 1985 and it reflects the consistent focus of her repertoire, with its special emphasis on Austro-German composers of the Classical and early-Romantic periods. Embracing solo works, piano duets and concertos, it contains works by Mozart, Schumann, Beethoven, but also by Bach and Chopin.

This fabulous five disc set is replete with some of those old Stokowski warhorses all recorded in absolutely mind boggling Phase 4 sound, overblown perhaps but astounding for its time. Decca's remastering is absolutely magnificent and the discs are jam packed with almost six hours of music. This is another fine memorial to a great conductor who remained astonishingly vital until the very end of his life.

Having already attracted attention for his exceptional gifts, Bach entered the service of the Weimar court at the age of twenty-three. This was the start of the period known as his ‘early maturity’, in which his formal and expressive experiments reflect a significant interest in French music and ‘la belle danse’. The close intertwining of French and German styles is the dominant feature of this third volume in Benjamin Alard’s recording of the complete organ and harpsichord works.

In this second instalment of complete keyboard works, Benjamin Alard demonstrates with splendid eloquence how invaluable the young Bach’s north German experience proved to be; his attentive examination of the works of the great organ masters and his craving for all kinds of music significantly broadened the stylistic foundations of his keyboard writing. The wide range of works presented here, complemented by pieces by Buxtehude, Reinken and Pachelbel, illustrates in exemplary fashion the power of a master in the making.

Markku Luolajan-Mikkola has a reputation for excellence and already has two Gramophone Awards. With a fan base to match, Luolajan-Mikkola is at the top of his game. In Luolajan-Mikkola’s Linn debut, he tackles the pinnacle of Bach’s productions for violinists: the Partitas and Sonatas. Luolajan-Mikkola transcribed these works for cello. His goal with this recording has been to encapsulate expression and emotion according to the character of each movement. A historically informed musician, he performs on baroque cello.

This offering from the combined forces of Musica Amphion and the Gesualdo Consort is presented as a hardback book with a CD tucked into the back cover. It is the second in the Bach in Context series. The aim of the project is to present Bach’s works in a liturgical format. The book goes to considerable lengths to explain Lutheran liturgy and how Bach’s compositions would have fitted into a Sunday morning service, thus presenting a prelude, cantata, choral, motet, choral and postlude - in this case the fugue. The performers also give concerts using this format.

Bach's setting of the Magnificat is one of his most often-recorded vocal works; as a rule, it's paired with one of Bach's lavishly scored festal cantatas. (The Easter Oratorio seems to be a current favorite.) Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan had a different idea: they've paired Bach's Magnificat with roughly contemporary settings by Johann Kuhnau, who was Bach's immediate predecessor in Leipzig, and Jan Dismas Zelenka, who was a composer at the court of Saxony in Dresden. Zelenka is an interesting composer, among the most underrated of the Baroque era. His writing is less dense and intricate than Bach's–at times it looks forward to the simpler, more elegant style of Haydn and C.P.E. Bach. Zelenka knew his counterpoint, however, and was fond of slipping the occasional surprising chord change into his music.

When, around 1705, Johann Sebastian Bach came to write his Toccatas, this form of keyboard music had already been known for over a century, and was strongly influenced by Italian, English and Flemish ideas. The Toccata was a product of both vocal and instrumental music, and preserved many of its distinctive features.