Violins of Hope presents instruments that were owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust, representing strength and optimism for the future during mankind’s darkest hour. They have been refurbished by luthiers Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, founders of the Violins of Hope project. On this album, recorded live at Kohl Mansion, the instruments are used to perform two string quartet masterpieces by Schubert and Mendelssohn, alongside a new composition by Jake Heggie, inspired by the violins’ histories. Schubert’s unfinished Quartettsatz is often considered Schubert’s first mature work and displays a typically Schubertian mix of impetuous agitation and sublime lyricism.

This is the less commonly available of two recordings made of a complete realization of Schubert's "Tenth" Symphony in D Major (D. 936A), a collection of piano sketches of parts of three movements with some instrumentation notes, which Schubert was working on during the very last days of his life. Even though Schubert may have intended the work to have only three movements, with the last serving as a combination Scherzo/Finale, for this recording Bartholomee adds in the scherzo from an earlier abandoned symphony in D Major (D. 780A) as the third movement; Schubert evidently recycled this prototype as the scherzo of the Great Symphony.

Pianists Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire are stupendous virtuosos, and there's nothing in this recording of their 2009 Salzburg recital of staggeringly difficult works they cannot play. They know each other so well as old duo piano partners that their playing is stunning in its unity, but their distinctive individuality also comes across. What's most impressive about this recital is how completely Argerich and Freire have made this music their own. Brahms' Haydn Variations sound freer and fresher, more playful, and more profound than ever. Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances are thrillingly rhapsodic, rapturous, and dramatic. Schubert's Grand Rondeau is more lyrical, intimate, and graceful than usual, and Ravel's La Valse more ecstatic and apocalyptically over-the-top frightening than in any comparable recordings, including Argerich's own earlier releases. Captured in wonderfully clear yet wholly present digital sound, the performances on this disc will be compulsory listening for anyone who loves music, any music.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Deutsche Schubert-Lied-Edition presents all Schubert’s Lieder, over 700 songs, grouped according to the poets who inspired him. Thanks to Bärenreiter’s Neue Schubert-Ausgabe, which uses primary sources, the performers have been able to benefit from the most recent research of the editorial team. The third volume devoted to settings of poems by Goethe includes the best known song of all, Erlkönig. These songs for male voice range from 1814 to the 1820s, some in Goethe’s preferred strophic form, others through-composed.

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.

Schuberts Die schöne Müllerin ist eine Bewährungsprobe für jeden Liedsänger. Der Südtiroler Bariton Andrè Schuen hat sich ihr gestellt und veröffentlicht den zeitlosen Liederzyklus als sein Debütalbum bei Deutsche Grammophon – gemeinsam mit dem Pianisten Daniel Heide.

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. For the first time, the listener and interested reader can follow Schubert’s textual alterations and can appreciate the importance the written word had for the composer.

Tabea Zimmermann and Kirill Gerstein return to the studio to record the follow-up to their highly praised first duo album. The new disc includes spellbinding performances of three late works by significant 19th century composers: Brahms mature Sonata in F minor, Schubert s melancholic Arpeggione Sonata, and Franck s splendid Sonata in A major, all masterly performed on viola.

I spend part of every summer at the Aspen Music Festival, at least partly because it's where one can easily hear a lot of young musicians, some of them still students, who are the cream of the crop. It's there that I heard, when they were very young, musicians like Yo-Yo Ma, Midori, Sarah Chang, Yefim Bronfman, Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Kalichstein, Ian Hobson and many others. I've been amazed, repeatedly, at the quality of youngsters coming up. An embarrassment of riches, one would have to say. And it's hard to keep track of them.

Mozart, of course, is probably the archetypal musical prodigy, paraded around Europe, playing, improvising and composing from the ridiculously early age of about four. It used to be thought that Leopold might have done much of his son's early composing, as well as his publicity, but it's clear that even infantile Mozart is streets ahead of his father - witness the latter's supremely facile 'Toy Symphony'. Easier to overlook are the prodigious talents of Franz Schubert. It is astonishing to think that so accomplished a work as 'The Trout' was written when he was a mere 22.