Faust Bach

Isabelle Faust hit the Classical charts earlier this year with her mesmerising recording of Beethoven and Berg with Claudio Abbado. She followed up with some welcome live appearances here in the UK, which included the Brahms' concerto at the Barbican with frequent collaborators Jiri Belohlavek and the BBCSO. Isabelle's recordings have won prizes since her harmonia mundi debut in 1997 which earned her a Gramophone Young Artist Award. In 2010 her Beethoven Violin Sonatas with Alexander Melnikov also won.

Johann Sebastian Bach and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin go back a long way together! This recording, made with the welcome participation of Isabelle Faust and Antoine Tamestit, follows the complete violin concertos (2019), which left a lasting impression.

"Isabelle Faust has never cultivated the whale-boned red-carpet glamour that many female soloists feel obliged to pursue. On stage and off, the German violinist's manner is relaxed, her style understated. She sports a gamine, Jeanne d'Arc crop and, save for the tell-tale violinist's love-bite just below her jaw, you might guess her to be an architect or an academic. In a way, she is both, for an appreciation of musical structure and an interest in historical research are integral to her work.

After the double album of the Violin and Harpsichord Sonatas with Kristian Bezuidenhout, a bestseller in 2018, here is the next installment in a Bach recording adventure that began nine years ago with a set of the Sonatas and Partitas now regarded as a benchmark. Isabelle Faust, Bernhard Forck and his partners at the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin have patiently explored a multitude of other works by Bach: harpsichord concertos, trio sonatas for organ, instrumental movements from sacred cantatas etc. All are revealed here as direct or indirect relatives of the three monumental Concertos BWV 1041-43.

Celebrated for her brilliant qualities as a first class cellist, Xenia Jankovic carries out a worldwide career as soloist, chamber musician and pedagogue.

Lovingly long, smooth and slowly drawn, the quietly subdued broken G minor chord with which Augustin Hadelich opens his Bach Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas is of a showstopping beauty and distinctiveness that's rarely heard so immediately and unmistakably in recordings of this Everest of the violin repertoire

The famous organ of Notre-Dame de Paris is a brilliantly colourful instrument which in the course of numerous overhauls has acquired a versatility allowing it to encompass every style. It was completely rebuilt between 1863 and 1868 by the visionary organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who installed five manuals and 86 stops, and in 1932 a rich palette of neo-classical colours was added. Between 1963 and 1971 Pierre Cochereau further extended the instrument's possibilities and replaced the old mechanical action with a faster electro-pneumatic action. Finally, in 1992, computer technology increased yet further the organ's resources by making its 110 stops completely independent.

Throughout his career, Ilya Gringolts has devoted himself to performing contemporary music as well as the great concert repertoire, while also developing a keen interest in historical performance practice.

The Time of the Oath is the seventh studio album by German power metal band Helloween, released in 1996.

With her first solo album, Emily Hoile would like to present works rarely heard on the harp until now.