BRILLIANT CLASSICS

(4CD) COMPLETE GUITAR MUSIC
The magic and mystery of Mexico make a welcome return on this recording, as the expert skills of Gerard Abiton explore Manuel Ponce's complete works for guitar. There is a wealth of treasures to be enjoyed here, as Ponce's vast career led him to explore a number of different styles. His time in Paris exerted a French influence on his music, heard in the wonderfully lyrical song-without-words motif in the second movement of his Sonata III. The folklike passage that follows it, alongside a daring counter-melody, are brought together in a joy...
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(CD) TOY SYMPHONY
There is little doubt that Leopold Mozart (1719-1787) exercised a huge influence on his son's musical education, guiding and supporting Wolfgang's development through the many extended tours he organised to Europe's musical centres - ones that he himself took part in. As well as being a leading teacher (his Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing is still highly regarded today), Leopold was also a talented composer, and the advice that he bestowed on Wolfgang was the same he followed himself: to create 'popular' music. Fa...
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(CD) MYSTERIOUS NATIVITY
One of the most fascinating characteristics of 20th-century classical music is its continuous revival of sacred music. Despite the many new developments that have taken place in our increasingly secular society, modern composers from Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) to Dimitri Tchesnokov (b.1982) have all been inspired by ancient religious texts to compose music that is spiritual, pure, and above all, remarkably peaceful. This release is a celebration of modern sacred music, and, given how timeless the music sounds, it is astonishing to note t...
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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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(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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(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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(2CD) COMPLETE MUSIC FOR CELLO SOLO AND CELLO AND PIANO
"Your music is truly among the most outstanding work of the twentieth century. And for me it is a source of great and strong impressions. Write as much as you can." (Shostakovich to Britten, 1963) This set represents the first-ever complete collection of Benjamin Britten's music for unaccompanied cello and cello with piano. Many of these works were composed for the legendary Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Britten and Rostropovich were close friends and regularly gave recitals together in both Britain and Russia. It is perhaps beca...
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(3-CD SET) EMIL GILELS PLAYS RUSSIAN MUSIC
With a style recalling the grandeur and fieriness of Anton Rubenstein's, Emil Gilels -- born in the southern Ukrainian seaport of Odessa on 19 October 1916 -- ranks among the foremost musicians of all time. The maestro was especially renowned for his wide-ranging repertoire, and in this excellent release listeners can enjoy a selection of works based on one particular area of his extensive library -- great Russian masters of the piano repertoire. Gilels begins his recital with a disc entirely devoted to Prokofiev. Having detailed the compo...
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(2CD) COMPLETE MELODIES
French composer Maurice Ravel may be well known for his instrumental music, in particular the orchestral work Bolero, but it is his vocal compositions that fully encapsulate the shimmering colours of early-20th century music. Spanning an important period of Ravel's career, from 1893 up to 1932, this release is an integral recording of Ravel's songs, with both piano accompaniment and Ravel's original scoring for ensemble. Many of the works reveal Ravel's affinity with other cultures and his penchant for the exotic; from the Chansons madecas...
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(CD) GISELLE
GISELLE, Ballet in two acts - Highlights ACT I 1. Introduction 2. Les vendangeurs 3. Entree du Prince 4. Loys seul et entree de Giselle - Scene d'amour 5. Retour de vendangeurs - Valse 6. Pas de deux 7. La Chasse 8. Marche des vignerons 9. Variation de Giselle 10. Final ACT II 11. Apparition des faux follets 12. Apparition et scene de Myrthe 13. Apparition de Giselle 14. Entree de Loys - Pas de deux 15. Scene des Wilis 16. Grand pas de deux 17. Variation de Loys 18. Variation de Giselle 19. Final...
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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) 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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(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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