Johann Christian Schickhardt: Six Sonatas Op. 22 Epoca Barocca

The members of the chamber music ensemble EPOCA BAROCCA are united in the shared passion for the representation of Baroque music on original instruments. The main focus of the repertoire is the trio and quadrosonate with concertante bass, about the time from Caldara to Zelenka.

Violinist Michelle Makarski is joined by her friend Keith Jarrett on this 2010 recording devoted to Bach's classic duo sonatas, where violin and keyboard meet on equal terms and both are challenged by Bach’s compositional demands. C.P.E. Bach would later pronounce these pieces as “among the best works of my dear father”. This is Jarrett’s first "classical" album since his Mozart piano recitals of 1996 and only the second occasion on which he has recorded Bach on piano rather than harpsichord.

The award-winning duo ensemble formed by Christian Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt are returning to the masterworks of European chamber music with this new album that includes Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770–1827) three violin sonatas Op. 30. The expressive and intimate chamber music recordings by the star duo have gathered numerous awards and their previous album also received an ECHO Klassik award in 2017.

“The artist's first task is to forget himself.” This statement, bold in its time, has been ascribed to Eugène Ysaÿe, referred to as the “King of the Violin”, who as a composer and performer considerably contributed to the modernisation of violin playing. In 1923, he was so deeply impressed by J. S. Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001, as performed by Joseph Szigeti, that within a few hours (!) he sketched a set of six sonatas as a counterpart to Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, BWV 1001-1006.

Yevgeny Sudbin has previously recorded Beethoven’s piano concertos – releases which have received international acclaim, for instance on the website ClassicsToday.com: ‘A Beethoven experience you will not want to miss.’ For his first disc featuring solo works by Beethoven, Sudbin has chosen the two final sonatas and the Six Bagatelles, Op. 126 – late works written between 1821 and 1824, just a couple of years before the composer’s death. There are numerous anecdotes that testify to the fact that Beethoven was highly temperamental. But in his liner notes to this disc, Sudbin writes of another, contrasting side to the composer: ‘warmth, generosity and wisdom – with unexpected outbursts of cheeky humour – are also unmistakably among Beethoven’s qualities and particularly evident in the works on this recording’.

Alfredo Campoli (20 October 1906 – 27 March 1991) was an Italian-born British violinist, often known simply as Campoli. He was noted for the beauty of the tone he produced from the violin. Campoli spent his childhood and much of his career in England.

Antonio Vivaldi composed several sonatas for cello and continuo. A set of six cello sonatas, written between 1720 and 1730, was published in Paris in 1740. He wrote at least four other cello sonatas, with two manuscripts kept in Naples, another in Wiesentheid, and one known to be lost.

Kerson Leong recently participated in the award-winning Tribute to Ysaÿe (FUG758). Here is his first solo recital for Alpha. The young Canadian violinist’s career began at the age of thirteen when he won the First Prize of the Junior division of the Menuhin Competition in Oslo in 2010.

Gwen Hoebig, Concertmaster, and Karl Stobbe, Associate Concertmaster, both distinguished musicians of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, combine their talents to bring us the album Six Sonatas for Two Violins, by the great French composer Jean-Marie Leclair, whose tumultuous life led to his murder in 1764.

Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, cousins to the Six Cello Suites written around the same period, are certainly to be placed at the pinnacle of the entire violin repertoire; however, they were not meant to be insurmountable. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), ever the keen pedagogue, always composed music that was intended to be played as well as contemplated. His sons, and generations of budding musicians ever since, learned this the hard way, only to be later gratified in abundance. They all have crossed swords with the Orgelbüchlein, the Clavierbüchlein, the Well-Tempered Clavier or the aforementioned collections for solo stringed instrument, and they were bettered by them. It has been suggested these sonatas, partitas and suites must have been unplayable in the age of their composition.