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A Limited Edition, Original Jackets collection showcasing the artistry of the magnificent American soprano, Kathleen Battle. Kathleen Battle enraptured opera audiences of the 1980s and 1990s. Here was a lyric soprano combining unsurpassable beauty of tone with a keen musical intelligence, a way with words and a communicative warmth that drew listeners to Strauss and spirituals alike. She has the easy phrasing of a great jazz singer combined with the breath, breadth and precise projection of a trained voice.

Maria Kubizek joined the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in 1992.

Distilled sparingly over the course of Franz Schubert’s all too brief life, the few works that make up his output for violin and piano fascinate and intrigue, writing the episodes of a story that is undoubtedly fragmentary, yet in reality deeply unified in a mysterious yearning for elsewhere. Situated somewhere between the miniature of the lied and the large symphonic forms, these pieces open countless windows onto Schubert’s contrasted and tormented universe. Nathalia and Maria Milstein’s choice of a splendid Blüthner piano of 1857 plays a crucial role in the quest for unheard-of sound worlds on which this disc invites us.

Schubert: Complete Works for Violin and Piano by Michèle Auclair and Geneviève Joy is a captivating exploration of Schubert’s lyrical and delicate compositions for violin and piano.

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin launches a series of Mozart symphonies to appear on Pentatone, starting with the composer’s “Paris” and “Haffner” symphonies. On this first album, the works are coupled with his enchanting Oboe Concerto – performed by the ensemble’s first oboeist Xenia Löffler – and the bold overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail in Mozart’s own woodwind arrangement. Taken together, these pieces demon-strate the rich palette and expressive power of Mozart’s music in the period between 1777 and 1783, during which he finally managed to spread his wings and leave his hometown of Salzburg.

This album includes the complete Franz Schubert Sonatas for Violin and Piano, performed on period instruments. Elizabeth Holowell is an eminent teacher of violin and viola, chamber music and string orchestra, with extensive experience at universities and music colleges in Australasia and Britain. Her graduates are found in many major international orchestras. She was herself a student of Robert Pikler who was, in turn, taught by Hubay and by Thibaud.

Violinist Julia Fischer was born in 1983, in Munich, Germany. She began taking lessons on the violin at age 3 from Helge Thelen, and at 4 began simultaneous studies on the piano with her mother, Viera Fischer, an amateur pianist.

From May to September 1908, in his appartment in Levallois, Maurice Ravel composed Gaspard de la nuit, a piano triptych inspired by Aloysius Bertrand's collection of poems of the same name. The work opens with Ondine and its spellbinding cascades of notes, before moving on to Le Gibet, the central episode introducing a heady, crystalline death knell, which leads on to Scarbo, a finale whose virtuosity is as diabolical as it is famous. François-Xavier Poizat delivers an elegant and incredibly mature interpretation of this piece that "gets the blood flowing"!

The three concertos featured on this album were composed together in 1782 / 83 – shortly after Mozart had left his patron and position in Salzburg to establish himself as a freelance composer and performer in Vienna. The concertos were all performed by the composer in a series of subscription concerts that he gave in the city. All share the same form – opening movement in sonata form, slow movement in ternary form, and a bright rondo finale.

Experience the timeless brilliance of Mozart's masterpieces with this stunning legacy programme, originally recorded in 1962 and performed by the incomparable Otto Klemperer and the illustrious Philharmonia Orchestra.