Label: Brilliant Classics

Klára Würtz is among the more important pianists to have emerged from the latter decades of the 20th century. Hungarian-born, Amsterdam-based, she has, since the early '90s, made numerous tours of the United States and Canada while also appearing throughout Holland and elsewhere in Europe. If her repertory generally excludes Baroque as well as contemporary music, it is broad still, taking in all the sonatas of Mozart and large chunks of the outputs of Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Bartók, Debussy, and many others. Würtz has made numerous recordings for a variety of labels, including Brilliant Classics, Regis Records, and Globe. Würtz was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1965.

This album features Christmas music for the piano in a timeless journey through the decades and centuries. These songs have been through a remarkable evolution over the course of several centuries, with the changes they have undergone reflecting the shifting musical styles and cultural influences that prevailed in various times.

Brilliant Classics Presents Bart van Oort & Pieter-Jan Belder - Mozart: Complete Piano Variations album original hits and the original artists genre Classical Music.

Just as Brilliant Classics has completed a notable discographic first with the complete keyboard works of Jan Ladislav Dussek, Beethoven’s Bohemian contemporary, on instruments of the period, it now presents the first-ever complete survey of an unrelated predecessor. Across 24 numbered sonatas, a divertimento, a set of variations and a handful of works for keyboard duet, František Xaver Dušek comes to life as not merely a Czech contemporary of Mozart but the father of the Czech piano school.

This set with 3 CDs contains the complete songs of Alban Berg, including the complete Jugendlieder. During this musical journey we witness the development of Berg as a composer, who in his Jugendlieder was inspired by Schubert, Schumann, Wagner and Mahler and by his chromatic language by Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf. In his own personal style we find the twelve-tone system of his teacher Arnold Schönberg with his free, flowing and lyrical expression.

The complete sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and the first-ever complete recording of the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book are monuments old and new of the Brilliant Classics catalogue. Their author, harpsichordist Pieter-Jan Belder, has recently been adding to his considerable Bach catalogue with new recordings of canonical masterpieces such as the Goldberg Variations, the Toccatas BWV 910-916 and The Art of Fugue : these have attracted the enthusiasm of international critics: ‘Excellently recorded and faultlessly played’ (Goldbergs; Early Music Review).

The dates are deceptive: the Viennese composer Ferdinand Rebay (1880-1953) remained largely unaffected by the turbulent musical currents swirling around him in the Austrian capital during the early 20th century. Instead, he composed highly appealing music, Romantic in harmony and Classical in form, with a particular focus on the guitar. Brilliant Classics have brought his name back to light in recent years with modern recordings of the duets for clarinet and guitar (94171), the quartets for guitar, flute and strings (9250) and the sonatas for flute and guitar (9291).

Born in Rome around 1610, Francesca Campana evidently benefitted from an education accorded to very few women of her time. Little of her background is known, but her talent and opportunity combined to cultivate gifts as a singer, keyboard-player and composer. The collection of arias recorded here was published in 1629. It enjoys the notable status of the very first published collection of music solely dedicated to a female composer. Francesca dedicated it to the Mantovan nobleman Luigi Gonzaga, and it was followed the following year by a book of madrigals; after which time she almost falls from the historical record save in her marriage to Giovan Carlo Rossi, brother of the opera composer Luigi Rossi.

Many first recordings on a comprehensive, newly recorded survey of a distinguished modern Italian guitar-composer.Joining the extensive library of guitar music in the Brilliant Classics catalogue, Franco Cavallone is a worthy successor to Italian guitar composers from Giuliani to Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He is an accomplished performer himself, having studied with the likes of Leo Brouwer and Angelo Gilardino, and the pieces recorded here have been composed with an intimate knowledge of the guitar’s technical and timbral possibilities, which Cristiano Porqueddu exploits to the full, with the composer’s enthusiastic approval: ‘He has managed to create a kaleidoscope of sound and sense that is truly rewarding for the listener. I am convinced that this CD set is a benchmark recording for my music for the guitar.’