Reincken

John Adam Reincken was a celebrity. When the genial Johann Sebastian Bach was a sixteen-year-old secondary school pupil, he made his way on foot from Lüneburg to Hamburg to experience in person this undisputed master of improvisational artistry. What the young man heard must have made a profound impression on him. In his toccatas Bach closely follows his great model and even quotes motivic material from Reincken's works.

At the centre of this production are the sonatas for keyboard instruments BWV 963-970 by J. S. Bach, which are relatively unknown and only rarely performed, recorded or published. The Italian pianist Francesco Tropea came across these musical treasures during his research in the library of the Mozarteum in Salzburg and realised that there are only a few recordings of this music, mostly on old instruments and rarely on a modern piano. He was therefore grateful for the opportunity to be able to explore these comparatively little-known compositions – two of which are still completely unpublished (no piano recordings of the sonatas BWV 969 and 970 exist to date) – composed by one of the most important geniuses in the history of music.

Stradivarius' 1991 studio and live digital recordings of Sviatoslav Richter are now brought together for a new definitive mid-price luxurious digipak box. Sviatoslav Richter is widely regarded as one of the finest pianists of the 20th century.With a career that began in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, listeners in the West had their first opportunity to hear him through recordings made in the 1950s, and his reputation among classical fans grew quickly. Richter's approach to music is best illustrated by the enormous range of his repertoire. In recital and on recordings he played everything from Bach to Stravinsky to George Gershwin as well as championing unknown or unpopular works he thought deserved the public's attention.

Holland Baroque offers a colourful sonic ride through the microcosmos on this soundtrack for Pim Zwier’s Metamorphosis, a film portraying the extraordinary seventeenth-century natural science artist Maria Sibylla Merian and the fascinating life of the insects she studied. Judith Steenbrink composed new music, combining nature sounds, Baroque-inspired dances and groovy melodies. Together with the sound design by Paul Gies this results in a sound world as iridescent, enticing and original as Zwier’s film.

Gustav Leonhardt was one of the most important harpsichord and organ players in the world and a very well-known specialist in baroque music. Gustav Leonhardt -The Edition is a 15-CD retrospective containing a representative selection of his numerous recordings, including famous solo recordings such as the legendary Goldberg Variations and Bach's organ and harpsichord works. 6 CDs feature collaborations with his famous colleagues Sigiswald Kuijken, Frans Bruggen and Anner Bylsma, the Leonhardt-Consort and Harry van der Kamp.