Hanacpachap Cussicuinin (1631)~ritual Formulario, in Quechua Juan Pérez DE Bocanegra

Juan García de Salazar was a Spanish Baroque composer from the Basque country who spent most of his career working at Zamora Cathedral; he is so obscure the entry for him in the New Grove doesn't even include a list of his works. Musicologist Manuel Sagastume Arregi has pulled together a number of Salazar's extant movements related to the Vespers service with additional material to create Juan García de Salazar: Complete Vespers of Our Lady in Naxos' Spanish Classics series. It is performed by the Basque ensemble Capilla Peñaflorida and features the period wind group Ministriles de Marsias and the fine baritone of Josep Cabré. There are no stars here, though – everything on Juan García de Salazar: Complete Vespers of Our Lady is done to the service of the music, which is outstanding. Sagastume Arregi's realization of García de Salazar's Vespers service incorporates appropriate plainchant sections taken from a Basque hymnal dated 1692, organ music by García de Salazar's contemporaries José Ximenez and Martín Garcia de Olagüe, instrumental arrangements of García de Salazar's motets, and an arrangement of Tomás Luis de Victoria's Vidi speciosam probably made by García de Salazar himself.

If Boccherini was mischievously dubbed “the wife of Haydn”, then Arriaga must have been his second cousin or so. These three quartets are lovely works. Particularly noteworthy is the Quartet in E-flat major (No. 3), with its charming “Pastorale” second movement, but they are all rewarding pieces. The Guarneri Quartet plays them beautifully. Because they are marginal pieces in the quartet repertoire, and because this disc appeared in the mid-1990s when the classical glut was in full “glutitude”, it was easy to overlook these performances. However, if you enjoy Haydn and his school, you won’t find a better release than this one—and it’s extremely well recorded too. It’s good to see it back.

Fire Burning in Snow, the third volume in Ex Cathedra's series of Baroque music from Latin America, is strong testimony to the vitality of the musical scene in South America in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The bulk of this album is devoted to the sacred and secular choral music of Juan de Araujo (1648-1712), who was born in Spain, but whose family moved to South America when he was a child. He lived in Peru and Panama, but spent most of his adult life in La Plata, Bolivia, where he was the organist at the cathedral. The music recorded here is notable for its almost Monteverdian range of styles and expressiveness. This selection of Araujo's strongly rhythmic work includes a rigorously polyphonic motet for triple choir; a simple, lovely lullaby for women's voices; and many stylistically diverse choral villancicos.

Limited Edition 41-CDs set presenting Alicia de Larrocha’s complete Decca & American Decca recordings.
Including previously unreleased recordings of Grieg and Albéniz. Includes discs of bonus material: 2 CDs of de Larrocha’s early Hispavox (EMI/Warner) Madrid recordings of piano encores. Includes recordings with Pilar Lorengar, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, André Previn, Sir Georg Solti, Riccardo Chailly, Zubin Mehta and David Zinman. Greatly respected by her peers, not least Arthur Rubinstein, Gina Bachauer, Van Cliburn, Claudio Arrau and Vladimir Horowitz, if you wanted to witness a Who’s Who of New York City-based keyboard luminaries gathered in one place, you simply had to purchase a ticket for an Alicia de Larrocha recital..