Rachel+podger

The Baroque dream team of Rachel Podger and Kristian Bezuidenhout interpret the astonishing music of C.P.E. Bach’s Violin Sonatas in C Minor, B Minor, D Major and G Minor. The two early sonatas here from the 1730s resemble the older style of his father. Listening to these works, you can imagine J.S. Bach glancing over Emanuel's shoulders while he wrote them as a teenager at home in Leipzig. The later sonatas, written 30 to 50 years later, reveal an emancipated composer whose developed musical language embodies the 'Empfindsamer Stil', the directly emotional and rhetorical style characteristic of northern-german music of the time.

Rachel Podger's growing reputation among early-music enthusiasts is buttressed by this set of Bach's sonatas for violin and continuo. Her intonation is always on target, her tone sweet but not cloying. While she shares the understated interpretive stance of so many historically informed performers, she allows the emotions to shine through in, for example, the opening Largo of Sonata No. 5. And where the dancelike elements are to the fore, as in the Allegro of No. 6, she shows she can swing with the best.

Among the many instrumental pieces that remained incomplete at Mozart's death there were four particularly beautiful fragments for violin and piano. Timothy Jones has made multiple new completions of these fragments based on Mozart's evolving style during the 1780s, exploring the open-endedness of the fragments and the different directions the music might have taken. Rachel Podger and Christopher Glynn present the world premiere recordings, which include two completions of each Sonata fragment, enabling listeners to take alternative journeys through Mozart's material.

A new recording from violinist Rachel Podger is always worth attention. And before you even get to appreciating the first-class performances - faithful realizations of Bach’s Art of Fugue skillfully arranged for strings - you notice the immediate, vibrant presence of the instruments. The sound is stunning, reminiscent of the early days of digital recording, when listeners used to marvel at how realistic the sound was. Channel Classics has been doing this forever; we just may have forgotten how special it is when it’s done right.

The duo partnership Gary Cooper & Rachel Podger has taken them worldwide. These recordings of Mozart’s Complete Sonatas for Keyboard & Violin have received countless awards & accolades, including multiple Diapason d’Or awards & Gramophone Editor’s Choices, & hailed as ‘benchmark’ recordings.

We bundled the eight Mozart cds that Rachel Podger and Gary Cooper recorded over the last ten years into an atrractive box, with an informative note from producer Jonathan Freeman-Attwoord. The duo partnership Gary Cooper and Rachel Podger has taken them worldwide. These recordings of Mozarts Complete Sonatas for Keyboard & Violin have received countless awards and accolades, including multiple Diapason dOr awards and Gramophone Editors Choices, and hailed as benchmark recordings.

Brecon Baroque was founded in 2007 by violinist Rachel Podger as resident ensemble at her annual Brecon Baroque Festival.