Federico Lorka

During Albinoni’s lifetime (1671-1751) four separate collections of sonatas with violin were published under his name, though only the Trattenimenti armonici Op.6 were prepared by their composer. The works in Op.6 have accordingly dominated the record catalogues and obscured the virtues of the others, which Federico Guglielmo presents here with his customary flair and feeling for the Italian Baroque which has previously yielded the much-praised Brilliant Classics collection of Vivaldi’s Opp 1-12 (95200) as well as the Op.1 Trio Sonatas (94789) by Albinoni himself.

Jorge Federico Osorio, “an imaginative interpreter with a powerful technique (The New York Times), deftly pairs Brahms’s final solo piano works with those by Schubert for an inventive program of richly satisfying works that capture the essence of each composer’s towering individuality.

Songs of love and loss by a trio of early 18th century Spanish composers, showcasing the vocal art of a distinguished early-music soprano.

As with many composers from the early modern period, very little is known about Grégoire Brayssing. This recording features his only surviving work, printed in Paris in 1553 as the fourth volume in a series dedicated to the guitar published by Adrian Le Roy and Robert Ballard. Brayssing’s collection provides us with a few clues about his life: the frontispiece describes him as ‘de Augusta’, meaning he was born in the German city of Augsburg.

The so-called “Anna Maria Partbook” consists of an elegantly bound volume in red leather containing the violin parts of 31 violin concertos, of which 26 are by Antonio Vivaldi. It was the personal repertoire of Vivaldi's most gifted pupil, the famous “Anna Maria della Pietà”, who played also the viola d'amore, the mandolin, the theorbo, and the harpsichord. Anna Maria's partbook represents an extraordinary collection of violin concerts of high virtuosity.

From Dynamic comes the riveting opera performance of Olivo e Pasquale, a fan favorite that has delighted audiences for years. Known also as Melodramma giocoso, or romantic comedy opera about the title character brothers and their conflicting lives with those around them, this is the 1827 Neapolitan version with slight revisions and recorded for the first time at the 2016 Donizetti Festival of Bergamo.

Following a highly successful series of concerts in the summer of 2022, Francesca Dego, Timothy Ridout, Laura van der Heijden, and Federico Colli headed into the studio to record Mozart’s Piano Quartets. Whilst he may not have been the first composer to add a viola to the popular piano trio, Mozart was certainly the first to do so with such outstanding success. In his piano quartets, the strings become an equal partner to the piano, rather than mere accompaniment – much as in his piano concertos.

After the enormous success of Vivaldi’s earlier collections La Stravaganza and L’Estro Armonico, his publisher Estienne Roger was eager to capitalise on the composer’s soaring popularity. With that in mind, Op.7 was published in 1720 containing 12 new concertos, ten for solo violin and two for solo oboe. However, it seems unlikely Vivaldi either authorised or approved of this publication, and recent research has even discovered that the authenticity of the concertos is doubtful, with at least the two oboe concertos certainly not by Vivaldi. The concertos may not bear the traditional Vivaldian hallmarks, with movements simplified or moved around, but they are still a worthy tribute to the composer, whether penned by the ‘Prete Rosso’ himself or not.

Música Callada (Music of Silence) is a very special work, one of the most beautiful and elusive in the entire piano repertoire. It is extremely difficult to perform. On the one hand, there’s the temptation to stretch each piece out hypnotically, if monotonously, while quicker speeds preserve the music’s melodic essence at the expense of much of its atmosphere and harmonic richness. For although much of the music is indeed quiet, and none of it moves quickly, it is all meaningful. Mompou himself found the perfect balance between incident and repose, and of all the pianists since, Jenny Lin arguably comes closest to doing the same, only in much better sound. It’s not so much that her tempos match Mompou’s own (she’s actually not copying him–it would hardly be possible in a work containing 28 individual pieces), but rather that her phrasing and sense of timing let the music breathe and sing with its own special poetry. To take just one example, consider the sadness that Lin finds in the fourth piece, “Afflitto e penoso”, by allowing the piece’s harmonic color time to speak simply and eloquently.