BRILLIANT CLASSICS

(CD) MUSIC FOR HARP
Alphonse Hasselmans was one of the greatest harp virtuosos of his generation, equally renowned for his powerful sound and velvet touch as for his style of teaching. The Belgium-born maestro was appointed professor at the Paris Conservatoire in 1884, and his class soon garnered a reputation for excellence, preparing all the great harpists of the 20th century. Today many harpists can trace their pedagogical lineage back to Hasselmans - including Floraleda Sacchi, the soloist on this recording. The harp was a favourite instrument of the Art ...
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(35-CD BOX SET) ALFRED BRENDEL
The complete Vox, Turnabout and Vanguard solo recordings Alfred Brendel retires this year from public performance. He will give his last recital in December at Vienna's Musikverein, in the city where he came to prominence over half a century ago. The recordings he made then for young American labels established in the wake of the Second World War, harnessing young talent in classic repertoire, have stood the test of time. They put down a marker for the music that Brendel would come almost to 'own' in the eyes of the piano-music-loving publ...
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(160 CD-SET) HAYDN EDITION
-CD1-33: SYMPHONIES (complete) Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra - Adam Fischer -CD34: PIANO CONCERTOS Jolanda Violante - L' Arte dell' Arco - Federico Guglielmo -CD35: VIOLIN CONCERTOS (complete) Federico Guglielmo - L' Arte dell' Arco -CD36-37: ORGAN CONCERTOS (complete) Anton Holzapfel - dolce risonanza -CD38: TRUMPET AND HORN CONCERTOS (complete) + HORN DIVIERTIMENTO John Wallace - Michael Thompson Phliarmonia Orchestra - Christopher Warren-Green -CD39: CELLO CONCERTOS (complete) Jan Vogler - Virtuosi Saxoniae - Ludwig Guttler -CD40: L...
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(66CD) VIVALDI EDITION
The master of Italian Baroque music is indisputably Antonio Vivaldi. Throughout his life, he composed hundreds of works, and is remembered perhaps second only to J.S. Bach, ranking as one of the most popular composers of all time. His oeuvre crosses an extraordinarily wide range, from instrumental compositions of all types to sacred cantatas and operatic works, a vast number of which are presented in this comprehensive box set. Vivaldi composed a large part of his works while working at the Ospedale della Pieta in Venice, where he was emp...
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(4-CD SET) SCHUBERT: COMPLETE SYMPHONIES
All seven of Schubert's completed symphonies - plus the B minor fragment known as the 'Unfinished' - enjoy a popularity now which they haven't always had. Only the twentieth century gave these pieces the recognition they deserved and an appreciation of their true emotional depth. All display his gift for pure and lovely melody, but there are great differences between the restraint of the earlier six symphonies and the last two, where he fully employed Romantic expression. His last symphony, the 'Great' C major Symphony, is both classic and...
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(21-CD) RODRIGO EDITION
On this, the largest set ever compiled of one of the last century's most popular composers, we may not only renew our familiarity with the Concierto de Aranjuez, or perhaps with one of the other ever-melodious guitar concertos that sustain his reputation with audiences, but also discover chamber, instrumental, choral and especially vocal works which testify to a creative imagination confident in the formation of its style but never satisfied with repetition, one which responded directly to poetic and lyric inspiration, and transformed its ...
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(6CD) COMPLETE BALLETS
Tchaikovsky's three ballets - Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker - are all much-loved treasures of the balletic canon, having undergone countless performances and reinterpretations. Yet this was not always so. It took time for their status to be established, and reactions to the productions were decidedly mixed during Tchaikovsky's lifetime. Particularly saddening is the fact that the great composer died believing Swan Lake, perhaps his most celebrated ballet today, to be a failure - although this is in part due to the fact ...
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(30CD) C.P.E. BACH EDITION
Here's a rare opportunity for listeners to explore the extremely rich and varied oeuvre of a composer who achieved considerable renown in his own lifetime and was in fact much more highly regarded than his father - contemporaneous references always referred to him, rather than Johann Sebastian, as the 'great Bach'. The second eldest of four sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel's reputation declined somewhat during the course of the 19th century, when Mendelssohn's revival of his father's Matthew Passion fuelled a surge in appreciation for the master...
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(CD) GLORIA - MAGNIFICAT
In 1701 Antonio Vivaldi was appointed violin teacher at the Ospedale della Pieta - an orphanage that specialised in musical training for young girls. The choir master, Francesco Gasparini, retired in 1713 and his successor was not deemed to have been successful enough as a composer; Vivaldi was selected to provide all compositions required for the chapel. It was during this time that Vivaldi composed the works recorded on this disc. In addition to these pieces, it has since been discovered that there was a contractual requirement for the c...
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(CD) WINTERREISE
Winterreise, or Winter's Journey was composed in 1827, just a year before Schubert's premature death. The song cycle contains some of his greatest music - by turn highly emotional, desolate and spare, and with a sense of alienation and loss that makes the listener shudder even after repeated hearings. Schubert was especially proud of these songs, writing to his friend and fellow composer Josef von Spaun: 'I will sing you a cycle of eerie songs. I am keen to see what you will make of them. They have affected me more than any other songs'. ...
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(CD) O ORZCHIS ECCLESIA
The religious Hildegard von Bingen was known as 'The Sybil of the Rhine' on account of her visions, translated into music with prophetic charisma. This disc presents two sides of Hildegard, an instrument and a mirror, reflecting her divine revelations, through the sound of her words both spoken and sung. The performances are from a specialised early-music ensemble, based in Florence, who have undertaken study of the original manuscripts and (perhaps more unusually) performed the music in public before making this testament to the art of on...
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(2-CD) ARIADNE AUF NAXOS
Initially designed to be a play with music, it quickly became apparent to Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal that what was intended as an after-dinner entertainment would require an opera company to perform it. So, in 1916, a 30-minute 'divertissement' became a 90-minute opera, with a newly composed prologue. Set in the house of 'the richest man in Vienna', it concerns the struggles of a young composer to arrange a performance of his new opera for the guests his master has invited to the house. His opera is about Ariadne on t...
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(CD) NOCTURNES
A highly original selection of guitar works in which the night is the inspiration: darkness, suspense and fright for the unknown, but also the mystery, the sense of the supernatural and the immaterial. With its romantic and mystical connotations, 'night' has long been the inspiration behind many works of art. This release presents an alternative reading of its beguiling message, detailing a selection of little-known and contemporary compositions that have all been written for guitar. The compilation contains expert performances by Giorgio ...
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(2-CD) PASSIONS-ORATORIUM
Telemann was a prolific composer, writing over 40 Passions (musical compositions reflecting on the final days of Jesus' life) for the Church of Hamburg alone. His Passion oratorios, of which he wrote six, differ in that they do not strictly adhere to the literal text of the Gospels, instead making use of literary and operatic techniques. Indeed, in the case of Das selige Erwagen des bittern Leidens und Sterbens Jesu Christi (written around 1722), Telemann took it upon himself to write the libretto, and his status as one of the most famous ...
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(3-CD SET) COMPLETE SYMPHONIES
Symphony No. 1, H. 289 Symphony No. 2, H. 295 Symphony No. 3, H. 299 Symphony No. 4, H. 305 Symphony No. 5, H. 310 Symphony No. 6 ('Fantaisies symphoniques'), H. 343 Orchestra: Bamberger Symphoniker Conductor: Neemi Jarvi...
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(14CD) MUSSORGSKY EDITION
Mussorgsky, an "amateur" composer, was a great innovator of Russian music. He created an essential Russian musical language, in which folklore, Russian legends and fairytales played an important role. He wanted to free himself from Western classical and romantic traditions, and found a bold, raw, unpolished and passionate tone in his music, which speaks directly to the heart in its deep human emotions. This is the most complete set ever assembled of music by one of the most original composers in the Western canon, whose bold synthesis of ...
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(CD) SLOW MUSIC
Gymnopedies Gnossiennes Petite Ouverture a Danser Pieces Froides...
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(2CD) COMPLETE SYMPHONIES
Carlos Chavez is one of Mexico's most important and prolific 20th-century composers. He championed the symphony form at a time when it was generally neglected by other Latin American composers, and the results are magnificent: when his first symphony Sinfonia de Antigona was premiered in 1933, invoking the best of Mexican tradition in a revived symphonic form, it received a rapturous reception, and led to a burst of inspiration for Chavez, who went on to compose five more symphonies before his death in 1978. He became a master of the symp...
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(CD) CHAMBER MUSIC WITH PIANO
The death of Henri Dutilleux on 22 May 2013 robbed the musical world of one of its most distinctive voices. Dutilleux was renowned for his exquisite craftsmanship and feel for instrumental colour, as well as for an extraordinary generosity of spirit that was invariably reflected in his music. Indeed, pianist Akane Makita describes Dutilleux as a 'generous, sensitive man' who, when the artists involved in this recording wrote to him to tell him about the project, replied to say how 'greatly touched' and 'moved' he was. This warm and unexpec...
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(2CD) COMPLETE PIANO CONCERTOS
Camille Saint-Saens was a truly revered composer in mid-19th- and early-20th-century France. A contributor to many genres and to the general French musical renaissance of this time, he was described as 'the greatest musical mind' of the era by Hans von Bulow, after he sight read the orchestral scores of Wagner's operas Lohengrin, Siegfried and Tristan und Isolde. Saint-Saens' music was often bold and ambitious, but he was nevertheless a cautious composer who understood the importance of reputation in Paris at this time; his most successful...
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