BACH Complete Chamber Music for Flute

Another collection of Bach’s chamber music from the ensemble led by Jed Wentz and Michael Borgstede, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung’s Middle East correspondent. As on its earlier release on Brilliant Classics, the ensemble has researched the scores, performance techniques and the types of instrument used at the time of composition. That is not to say that the approach they take is a dry academic one. On the contrary, having assimilated all the information available to them, they then take an open-minded view of the score – freely admitting that if they were to play these works tomorrow, they’d more than likely give them a totally different interpretation.

This new recording includes the flute sonatas and solos, and the Ricercar from the Musical Offering BWV1079. As no one actually knows what Bach’s intentions were when it came to performance and interpretation, the listener can be assured of fresh and invigorating readings of this fascinating and timeless music.

VIVALDI Concerti per violino Volume 4

“Riccardo Minasi is a player with lively feeling for theatrical gesture and a technique that comfortably accommodates Vivaldi's virtuosity. He breathes life into these wonderfully expressive concertos with a musical rapport that perhaps responds more readily to bravura passages than to lyrical ones...committed Vivaldians should be delighted.” --BBC Music Magazine, September 2012

“His virtuosity cannot be doubted and his tone courses like a young stream but a restless imagination looks beyond straightforward niceness and elegance for something deeper, more sharply moulded, in places even darker...This is not really Vivaldi as easy listening...But for anyone wanting a touch of Dionysian poetry, it is a disc worth returning to.” --Gramophone Magazine, September 2012

“Minasi is certainly an impressive virtuoso and his playing is rhythmically exciting and expressively affecting in equal measure. His account of the Largo of the G minor Concerto, RV327 is beautifully sustained and tenderly spoken. Yet too often, elsewhere, I feel cheated of the music's 'gentillesse' and its lyricism. Notwithstanding such misgivings, though, this is impressive playing by all concerned.” --International Record Review, June 2012

JOHN WILLIAMS Greatest Hits 1969 - 1999

For better or worse, John Williams has completely reshaped the art of the soundtrack. His scores for Star Wars, E.T., and Jaws are simply unforgettable, and his knack for tugging at our heartstrings is uncanny. John Williams: Greatest Hits 1969-1999 collects 30 years of the composer's best-loved themes into one double-CD package. You'll find all the soundtrack moments you'd expect from Indiana Jones, Close Encounters, and Schindler's List, along with a few surprises (The Reivers Americana-filled main theme and Williams's 1984 Olympic theme, for starters).

↷ Star Wars Main Title

Most of the earlier works have been digitally rerecorded by Williams, so while you may not get the original recording of these works here, nothing shows its age. And although we really do get only his "greatest hits" (the longest track is the nearly 10-minute-long Close Encounters theme), most of these soundtracks can be purchased in their entirety for the true aficionado. John Williams may be an acquired taste, but this set proves why--year after year--he scores some of the most successful films Hollywood can produce. --Jason Verlinde

BERTALI Tausend Gülden

The sonatas are real gems from the mid-17th century Habsburg Court, one of the most exciting times in music history.

Antonio Bertali’s courtly compositions reflect the enormous diversity of instrumental music from the 17th century: sonatas with highly virtuosic violin parts alternate with dance-like sonatelles and a ciacona with boisterous rhythms. The most famous work, perhaps the only one you may have heard before by Bertali, is his ciaconna in C. Among the other works on this album are sonatas for multiple strings (sonatas a2, a8, a6, etc.)

The playing is superb, the intonation impeccable, the interpretation brilliantly original. 

Technically, these sonatas are well-done, with a live acoustic, but plenty of recorded detail to capture the clean playing by the FBO Consort.

SIMPLY Baroque

It was only a matter of time before the remarkable Yo-Yo Ma went along with the tide and dipped his talent into the so-called authentic instrument movement. On this recital, abetted by Ton Koopman--one of the most respected names in early-music practice--Ma plays Bach and Boccherini. The Bach are all transcriptions and very fine ones, indeed--the alto aria "Erbarme Dich" from the St. Matthew Passion; the equally famous "Air on a G String" from the Third Orchestral Suite; Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring; and six others, most less well-known.

These are followed by two fascinating cello concertos by Boccherini, made all the more interesting by Koopman's cadenzas, which are pretty outrageous. Throughout, Ma's stunning virtuosity is matched by his taste and musicality. The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra plays handsomely, and the recorded sound is warm and full. "Authentic" or not, this is mighty fine playing, and wait till you hear those cadenzas. --Robert Levine

SHOSTAKOVICH The Cello Concertos

“Gautier Capucon is too consummate a musician to opt for pale imitations. Working hand in glove with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, he delivers passionate and rhythmically incisive accounts…[there is] much to admire here, particularly in the way both soloist and orchestra ratchet up the emotional temperature throughout the course of the second movement [of the Second Concerto]” --BBC Music Magazine, December 2015

Gautier Capucon (cello) - Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, Valery Gergiev

“Capuçon and Gergiev deliver some grand and glorious moments” wrote Gramophone when the French cellist Gautier Capuçon and the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev last collaborated on a disc of Russian music for Erato – works by Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, released in 2010. The Daily Telegraph found that: “Capuçon [plays] with a blend of impeccable taste, Romantic ardour and technical aplomb ... Whether quizzical, rapturous, pensive or demonstrative, Capuçon has full measure of [the music] here in a performance of impressive stature.”

Now, the two musicians -- whose collaboration, again in Gramophone’s words, “was bound to strike sparks” – have come together for two live recordings, made in December 2013 at Paris’s Salle Pleyel and June 2014 at St. Petersbourg’s Mariinsky Thetre with the Mariinsky Orchestra. The works in question are Dmitri Shostakovich’s cello concertos Nos 1 and 2, both of which were written for Mstislav Rostropovich. The first was composed in 1959 (a year after the Central Committee of the Communist Party admitted that in 1948 there had been unjust condemnation of Shostakovich and other composers as ‘Formalist’), the second in 1966. The two concertos are different in spirit and shape: the first is often assertive and energetic, and features a huge cadenza for the cello that is almost a movement in its own right, while the second is introspective and enigmatic.

When Capuçon played the Concerto No.1 in New York in early 2014, the New York Times said: “Mr Capuçon played the work beautifully, negotiating its difficulties with seeming ease ... his elegance paid dividends ..., especially in the meditative Moderato and the brooding opening of the cadenza.” When he took the piece to Montreal, also in early 2014, the news website Pieuvre.ca reported that “[his] sensitive, virtuosic interpretation was rewarded with a long ovation.”

“Gautier Capucon immediately shows that his are interpretations to be reckoned with. His account of the first movement of the First Concerto brings to bear an exceptional variety of articulation where lesser players storm through regardless.” --Gramophone Magazine, November 2015

PIANORCHESTRA

François-Xavier Poizat “A magician at the piano”

Trained within the Russian school by Alexeï Golovine in Geneva and Evgenij Koroliov in Hamburg, and now with Nelson Goerner, the pianist is described by Martha Argerich as “a very talented young pianist with a remarkable virtuosity and deep lyricism” and by Boris Berezovsky as “an excellent musician with high virtuosity”. Born in 1989, the French-Swiss pianist began his career at the age of 12 when the great Argentinian pianist invited him to Japan to play for the “Pacific Music Festival”.