BRILLIANT CLASSICS

(3-CD SET) SOLO PIANO MUSIC
Accepted onto the early admissions programme of the University of Chicago, Philip Glass graduated aged just nineteen with a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy, practising the piano in his spare time. Subsequently studying at the Juilliard School, Glass's name has since become synonymous with the minimalist style. His film compositions have earned him a Golden Globe as well as three Academy Award nominations. This selection of pieces showcases Glass's music for solo piano, with each of the works baring the hallmarks of minimalism. Among t...
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(7CD) WAVES
Ludovico Einaudi's aesthetic of emptiness has won him legions of fans worldwide, and Jeroen van Veen's survey of the piano music which is central to Einaudi's style belongs with his survey of minimalists including Glass and Nyman who are less concerned in music as an expressive language than as a commercial artefact. Likewise, his listeners absorb the music less in the sense of engaging with meaning than as backdrop to activity or release from stress. The works on this compendious collection are nearly all 'songs' of between 3 and 7 minute...
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(10-CD SET) THE ULTIMATE CLASSICAL COLLECTION
[CD1] Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750) [CD2] Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) [CD3] Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) [CD4] Frederic Francois Chopin (1810 - 1849) [CD5] George Frideric Handel (1685 - 1759) [CD6] Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911) [CD7] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) [CD8] Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828) [CD9] Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893) [CD10] Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741)...
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(3-CD SET) COMPLETE MUSIC FOR PIANO DUO
If it is true that the end of Romanticism coincided with the invention of electric light, then we can date this to 1880 -- the year in which Thomas Alva Edison patented the light bulb. At around this time, a brilliant student at the Paris Conservatoire, Claude Debussy, decided to embark upon a composing career that would soon 'illuminate' the history of music. Debussy's output is roughly divided into three periods, each of which is represented by one of the three discs in this set. Focusing solely on his works for piano duo, the collection...
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(CD) THE FOUR SEASONS
Vivaldi's Four Seasons is one of the world's most popular and widely recorded collections of music, a set that instantly became an international hit after it was first published at part of the composer's Op.8 in 1725. No doubt it was its imitative directness - extra musical occurrences/phenomena evoked in an extremely suggestive manner and even written into the score, such as 'the barking dog' or 'the drunkards' sleep' etc. - that caused such as sensation in its time, effortlessly bridging the gap between the salons of the highborn and the...
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(CD) DUO BILITIS: L'HEURE ESPAGNOLE
This release contains an adventurous programme of Spanish or Spain-inspired works, arranged for the enchanting combination of two harps, and (in some works) voice. The combination of 2 harps works particularly well in this mainly impressionistic music, providing a fascinating colour palette and deep sonority. One of the harpists, Ekatarina Leventhal, possesses an exceptionally beautiful mezzo soprano voice, and sings the solos in De Falla with zest and passion. OTHER INFORMATION: - Duo Bilitis won the International Chamber Music Competitio...
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(2CD) LEIPZIGER CHORALE BWV 651-667 (WEIMAR VERSION)
The C minor Passacaglia and Fugue is one of the great masterpieces for the instrument and one which inspired countless responses from composers great and lesser. So it's all the more astonishing to think that Bach wrote it while still a twenty-something hireling in Weimar, where his Kapellmeistership to the Duke ended badly with the composer being clapped in irons for touting his availability for other jobs, frustrated as his ambition was by the restrictions of the position. He had, however, managed to overhaul the organ of the court chape...
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(2CD) FUR ANNA MARIA
Jeroen Van Veen has released a series of acclaimed recordings on Brilliant Classics of music by the masters of Minimalism, that 1960s-derived aesthetic in which it is not so much the case that more can be said with less as that less seems to be necessary in an increasingly noisy and chaotic world. The Estonian composer Arvo Part has never counted himself as among the minimalist number, nor indeed was he schooled in their new traditions, but emerged in the 1960s as an angry and dissonant voice whose musically expressed anger against Communi...
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(CD) RECORDER CONCERTOS, CHAMBER MUSIC
"He is the father, we are the sons," said Mozart of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. This statement reveals just how venerated a figure the latter composer was in his day - to the extent that much of Haydn's musical apprenticeship was based on the study of his works. Today he is hailed as the forefather of the First Viennese School: a composer who was instrumental in the development of the empfindsamer Stil, which sought to express 'true' or 'natural' feelings in music. C.P.E. Bach is perhaps best known for his cultivation of the keyboard sonata...
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(9CD) COMPLETE PIANO WORKS
Sergei Rachmaninoff's name will always be associated with the piano. As one of the greatest composer pianists of the 20th century, he stands alongside his younger contemporaries Prokoviev and Mednter as the last in a long line of great composer pianists that reaches back to Mozart and Beethoven 100 years before his first works for piano. These 9CDs chart his progress as a composer for his instrument, starting with the earliest works from the late 1880s. These show the influences of Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Chopin, with Liszt sometimes det...
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(CD) VIOLIN SONATA, CELLO SONATA, PIANO TRIO
These original works and arrangements for violin, cello and piano by Claude Debussy span the composer's protean career, from the early Piano Trio of 1880 to the Cello Sonata of 1915 and the Violin Sonata, completed in 1917 as part of an abortive six-sonata project which ended halfway when he died the following year. Especially since the performances are given with the experience harvested by three musicians who are better known as early-music specialists, soaked in the philosophy of historically informed performance practice, they offer an...
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(CD) PIANO TRIOS Nos.1, 3
Here's an opportunity to hear two cornerstones of the chamber repertoire performed by one of today's leading ensembles, the Gutman Trio. The music in question: Brahms' First and Third Piano Trios, works which, separated by 33 years, effectively date from the extremes of the composer's career. A chronological gap such as this automatically invites judgement on stylistic development, and indeed No.1 in B major is a youthful work, one which succeeds in capturing the brave, witty and passionate nature of its fictional dedicatee, E.T.A Hoffmann...
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(3CD) COMPLETE MUSIC FOR STRINGS
Such was his renown in the musical world - 'one of the most celebrated Masters of the Science of Musick in the Kingdom and scarce inferior to any in Europe' - when Henry Purcell tragically died aged only 36 in 1695, that he was essentially afforded a state funeral. This collection brings together the composer's complete works for strings. Showing Purcell's success as a cutting-edge composer, both sets of sonatas showcase the contrapuntal technique with which he would become so intimately linked, demonstrating the techniques that Purcell d...
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(CD) THE RECORDER SONATAS
Handel's sonatas for recorder were composed in the years 1724-6. What is remarkable is that he found the time to concentrate on such work at a time when his operas were in great demand in London: this is the period of Scipione and Agrippina. The young composer was the toast of the town, and had become a naturalised Englishman having followed his old employer the Elector of Hanover, Georg to London. Georg became King George I, and Georg Frideric Handel became George Frederick Handel. It will come as no surprise that the sonatas contain a lo...
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(CD) OBOE SONATAS
Sonata in G minor FXIII No.5 RV28 Sonata in C FXV No.3 RV48 Sonata in B flat FXII No.16 RV34 Sonata in G minor FXV No.9 RV51 Sonata in C minor FXV No.2 RV53 Sonata in G minor FXVI No.10 RV58, from Il pastor fido Op.13 No.6 by Chedeville, once attributed to Vivaldi ENSEMBLE J.M. ANCIUTI Paolo Pollastri: baroque oboe Gaetano Nasillo: cello Alberto Guerra: baroque bassoon Giovanna Losco: harpsichord...
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(CD) PATRIE!
In the 19th century, Paris consolidated its position as the leading city of opera. Composers from Germany (Meyerbeer, Paer and Wagner, who famously had a very unhappy time there) and Italy (Rossini, Verdi, Spontini, Cimarosa and Cherubini) worked there alongside native composers, vying for public favour in the years following the French Revolution. Opera was performed in Paris's major theatres (the Opera, Opera-Comique, Theatre-Lyrique and Theatre-Italien) and divided into two varieties -- serious works on heroic themes and lighter works b...
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(CD) 6 CONCERTOS "LA CETRA" - CONCERTO IN D MINOR FOR OBOE AND STRINGS
Marcello's Oboe Concerto is one of the best-loved and most performed works in the instrument's repertoire. Originally written in C minor, it is heard here in its D minor transcription by J.S. Bach, who clearly appreciated the work's special qualities. With its astonishingly sophisticated use of melody and harmony for its time, its lyrical and graceful outer movements and the exquisitely beautiful central Adagio that has made it so famous, this work is widely regarded as Marcello's finest masterpiece (if, indeed, it was composed by Marcello...
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(2-CD) COMPLETE GUITAR MUSIC
Villa-Lobos is perhaps best known for his large scale and exotic orchestral works, but he had a passion for the guitar that went back to his youth, and on which he was a masterful performer. Listeners who know the large orchestral works such as Choros Nos.9 and 12 will be surprised that this group of works -- Choros, (which numbered 14 in all, and are all based on Brazilian folk music) started with a work for solo guitar -- no.1 is included on CD2 of this set. His output for guitar is slim, but of good quality, and it suffers little from t...
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(2CD) STRING QUINTETS VOL.IX
[CD1] 1. String Quintet No. 1 in F, Op. 28, G. 307 for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos: I. Allegro giusto 2. String Quintet No. 1 in F, Op. 28, G. 307 for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos: II. Larghetto 3. String Quintet No. 1 in F, Op. 28, G. 307 for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos: III. Minuetto - Trio 4. String Quintet No. 1 in F, Op. 28, G. 307 for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos: IV. Finale: Allegro 5. String Quintet No. 2 in A, Op. 28, G. 308 for 2 violins, viola and 2 cellos: I. Allegro vivace 6. String Quintet No. 2 in A, Op. 28, G. 3...
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(2CD) STRING QUINTETS Op.29, VOL. X
Luigi Boccherini spent his early life in the service of the authorities of his hometown of Lucca, in Tuscany, though his talent as a cellist and composer often saw him travel abroad with his family at this young age. Settling in Spain in 1770, he spent the next 15 years of his life in the service of the Infante Luis Antonio Jaime of Bourbon. The String Quintets Op.29 for two violins, viola and two cellos were composed for the Infante in 1779 and represent a peak in Boccherini's output, both for the magic of their texture and their great fo...
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