Label: Brilliant Classics

Bach at his most extrovert and exhilarating: new, period-instrument accounts of the earliest masterpieces in the lineage of keyboard concertos.

The playing is of a high order,’ observed Early Music World when reviewing Labirinti Armonici’s debut on Brilliant Classics (95718), with the Op.2 Sonatas of Francesco Antonio Bonporti: ‘the overall effect is of a highly professional group at home with the repertoire. So few of Bonporti’s works have been recorded to the highest standards; let us hope this is a start of a revival!’The revival hastens on with a third volume of Bonporti from the same performers, all practised Italian musicians specialising in music of the 17th and 18th centuries and who began coming together under the Labirinti Armonici umbrella in 2006. Since then they have hosted many masterclasses in Baroque performance practice, based in the Trento region of northern Italy, as well as giving concerts across the region.

Brilliant Classics makes classical music recorded in top quality affordable to everyone! 100 Best of Beethoven recordings now!

Pavans and galliards by the Elizabethan master of melancholy, complemented by a new recording of Benjamin Britten’s magnificent Nocturnal inspired by both Dowland’s music and by the playing of Julian Bream.After the success of ‘The Golden Age of the Guitar in Europe’ (2CD, 96157), Brilliant Classics releases a second album by the French guitarist Pascal Boëls, a unique collection of music by 17th and 20th-century English masters. In a booklet introduction, the guitarist explains how he sees Dowland as ‘a universal genius, eternal wanderer who – already! – knew how to rub shoulders with all facets of the human soul.’

In the 1970s and 1980s, when the listener was starved of the unusual and was happy to listen to anything off the beaten track, some of these pieces sounded more exciting than they do now. I can remember enjoying a couple of the pieces more then than now. This is partly due to Hyperion’s wonderful Romantic Piano Concerto series, which has taken us yet further off the beaten track. It should be noted that some of the works presented here by Brilliant Classics do not feature in the Hyperion series and this makes this set all the more valuable.

Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812) was a cosmopolitan piano virtuoso who studied with C.P.E. Bach, lived and performed in one European capital after another in a tumultuous progress across the continent, and wrote huge quantities of eclectic music which has largely been forgotten. Dussek's music for his own instrument may now be much better known than half a century ago - not least thanks to the first period-instrument edition of his piano sonatas, produced by Brilliant Classics - but he wrote almost 80 violin sonatas which also deserve revival as the product of a fluent and always inventive mind working on the cusp of eras we now identify as Classicism and Romanticism.

Whether or not they actually travelled south of the Alps, as Handel did early in his career, all 18th-century German composers of note were influenced by the Italian style of vocal and instrumental writing at the time. Manuel Tomadin’s latest album for Brilliant Classics explores the connections between these apparently disparate traditions, beginning with the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue BWWV564 which stands among the most striking examples of JS Bach’s work during his years as Capellmeister to the ducal court in Weimar (1710-1717).

Ivan Ronda studied under Maestro Luigi Toja at the Giuseppe Nicolini Conservatory in Piacenza, graduating with the highest distinction in piano, organ, harpsichord, choral and orchestral conducting; he also received an honorary diploma of merit on completion of his eighth year of advanced study and went on to attend masterclasses in piano and organ, notably with the great French virtuoso Jean Guillou. Central to his repertory are the great works of J S Bach, Mozart, Reger and Liszt.

German-American organist Wolfgang Rübsam is known for many recordings of music from the Baroque and Romantic periods, as well as for his own compositions and his long career as an educator.

Raised in Florence, Italy, Italian harpsichordist and organist Simone Stella studied with many masters of the keyboard, including Ton Koopman, Ludger Lohmann, Guy Bovet, Francesco Cera, Giancarlo Parodi, Stefano Innocenti, Klemens Schnorr, and Monika Henking, among others. The winner of organ competitions in Lucca and Pistoia, Stella has recorded for the Italian label OnClassical and the Dutch label Brilliant Classics, performing music by George Frederick Handel, Dietrich Buxtehude, Georg Böhm, Johann Adam Reincken, and Jean-Philippe Rameau.