Schoenberg Michael Gielen Bwv 552

Like the growth of the cult of Christ, the growth of the cult of Mahler started with the man himself performing his works whenever and wherever he had the chance. Like Christ, Mahler was followed by true believers who had known him and who proselytized for him among the unbelievers with the fervor of musical Pentecostals. The true believers were followed by those who had never known the man himself but whose belief was therefore all the more passionate and subjective. And thus it was that the faith spread from Mahler to Walter, Klemperer, and Mengelberg; and then on to Mitropoulos, Bernstein, Kubelik, Solti, and Haitink; then on to Abbado, Bertini, Boulez, de Waart, Inbal, Maazel, and Rattle, spreading from the true believers to the passionate believers of the true believers to those who still keep the belief but whose faith is more reason than emotion, more intellect than spirit, more nuance than rapture.

The exceptional Italian pianist Pina Napolitano, whose Odradek albumTempo e Tempi was selected asThe Sunday Times 2020 'Best Contemporary Classical Album', returns to Schoenberg, in whose music she specialises. With Michael Zlabinger conducting the musicians of the Wiener Concert-Verein, this release features Schoenberg's Piano Concerto, Op. 42 in a new arrangement for 15 solo instruments by Hugh Collins Rice; the same forces used in Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony No. 1, and similar to those of his 'Song of the Wood Dove' fromGurrelieder, performed here by mezzo-soprano Ida Aldrian.

On Synergy, flautist Sharon Bezaly and her musician friends demonstrate that one plus one can be much greater than two. Featuring works that celebrate the coming together of like-minded musicians, this project is a reminder, after more than two years of a pandemic that has affected all of us, that true musical synergy can only be achieved 'face-to-face’, rather than ‘remotely’.

Johann Sebastian Bach was an incredibly good "recycler" of his own music and reused much of what he had already composed in a different form. For the concerts of the Collegium Musicum, which had been taken over from Telemann, in the famous Caf Zimmermann, he needed a large number of instrumental pieces. This was also a special opportunity to perform music for up to four harpsichords - a field of experimentation that must have been extremely appealing to Bach as a legendary keyboard virtuoso.

On "PraeBachtorius", works by Praetorius and Bach based on the same Lutheran chorales are ingeniously combined, so that the respective verses of Bach and Praetorius are heard immediately after each other. It is impressive how well Praetorius' music of the late Renaissance combines with Bach's baroque music to form a harmonious whole on this CD.

The ghost of Schweitzer hovers around this recording beyond the fact that it is dedicated to the Albert Schweitzer Institute for the Humanities. The programme includes, in the three chorale preludes, Schweitzer’s favourite Bach works, and the magnificent Arp Schnitger organ at Zwolle was one he himself played. More than that, though, Michael Murray’s performances are strongly influenced by, if not deliberately modelled on, Schweitzer’s style of Bach playing.