Lars Gunnar Lars Gunnar Bodin

Johann Sebastian Bach's flute sonatas undoubtedly require congenial partners, who play together in an unpretentious, equally important way - in the truest sense of the word, in concert. This is brilliantly fulfilled by Lars Ulrik Mortensen with his hardly surpassable vocal playing on the harpsichord and Linde Brunmayr-Tutz with virtuosity and full sound on the transverse flute.

The organ duo Marion Krall and Lars Schwarze take us to enchanted lands with their new GENUIN CD, playing their own transcriptions of great orchestral works for organ with four hands and four feet. Since the Baroque era, orchestral works have been transcribed for the organ. Even today, the instrument's various colours make it possible to discover new, unexpected, but equally rich sounds in seemingly familiar works. The internationally awarded duo has now recorded works by Paul Dukas, Edward Elgar, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky. The contemporary contribution is the radiant tone poem Kalliope by the Austrian composer Franz Danksagmüller, which is positively overflowing with imagination. A surprising CD featuring the sound of the organ in all its grandeur and moments of true intimacy.

The music of the 17th century is deeply influenced by fearless innovation and bubbling creativity, characterized by experimentation with form that only with the subsequent generation of composers develops into fixed conventions and a higher degree of conformity. Here, a glimpse of the richness represented by the music from the Baltic region in the latter half of the 17th century is presented by bass-baritone Jakob Bloch Jespersen and Concerto Copenhagen under the direction of Lars Ulrik Mortensen.

Christmas celebrations are thought to go all the way back to the formidable feasting of the Vikings at midwinter, when in true Nordic fashion yuletide was toasted in. The celebration of the birth in Bethlehem is more subdued and spiritual, but it is of a far more recent date. We do not know if the Vikings celebrated yuletide with music, but music at Christmas has been a popular tradition since the Middle Ages. Today, practically all peoples around the world celebrate midwinter with special religious and cultural rituals; the precise times vary, but gifts, decorations, festivities, candles, bells and special Christmas music are apparently always part of this. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Christmas was the busiest time of the year for church composers.

Violinist and director Johann Ernst Hartmann is mainly known to posterity for his Danish Singspiel though he actually wrote far more instrumental music than songs. A disastrous fire in the Christianborg Palace in 1794 destroyed a large number of his manuscripts so it’s uncertain quite how many symphonies and other concerted music he did write – only one Symphony ever made it to publication, the First, which was published by Hummel in Amsterdam in 1770.

Listening to a work of Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness, you recognize his characteristic style in a few measures. His music is often broadly expansive, painting sonorous landscapes that often use brass instruments to blend with and accentuate the strings. Also, while his peers experimented with serialism or highly intellectually challenging styles, Hovhaness maintained his world music-infused neo-Romantic style throughout his life. The result is an enormous body of work that are all a joy to listen to.

This recording is the culmination of a process spanning several years, in which the performers delved into the works of composers found right in their own backyard.

It's hard to believe this CD was done with only a violin, viola da gama and harpsichord. This is polyphonic music at its finest. It does tribute to Buxtehude, who preceded Bach. The ensemble is perfect - the instruments complement each other. When they go from slow to fast, it is remarkable to hear the contrast. These are expert musicians with a complete mastery of their instruments. They use loud-soft as easily as any masters of the Baroque. The result is joyous, lively and entertaining.

Emma Kirkby sounds as lithe and radiant as ever, superbly able to negotiate Amodei's melismatic writing and imbue it with subtle but effective rhetoric.