Xconfessions Vol. 18

Auf der neuen Kuschelklassik sind wieder einige der schönsten und berührendsten Momente der klassischen Musik zu hören. Stars wie Sol Gabetta, Joshua Bell, Lang Lang, Adoro, Yo-Yo Ma, Il Divo, Martin Stadtfeld, die 2Cellos und viele andere interpretieren einige der gefühlvollsten Stücke von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Frédéric Chopin, Johann Sebastian Bach, Maurice Ravel oder Antonio Vivaldi. Aber auch neue Komponisten wie Yiruma, Ludovico Einaudi und James Horner sind mit ihren träumerischen Werken auf diesem Doppelalbum vertreten.

Brahms often produced four-handed piano arrangements of his orchestral, vocal and chamber music, which made his works more easily available to the general public. The final volume of this highly acclaimed series features the monumental Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major which Brahms played through with the composer Ignaz Brüll in a two-piano arrangement prior to its première in Pest, 1881. Brahms also arranged works by his great friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, among them the dramatic Overture to Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Op. 7.

Three years have passed since the release of the previous volume in this series, but now Miklós Spányi continues his traversal of the keyboard concertos of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, a series which in Gramophone has been called a ‘unique monument to one of the 18th century's most underrated composers’. Once again Spányi has joined forces with the Hungarian period band Concerto Armonico, and together they offer us the first four works in a set of six, the Sei Concerti per il cembalo concertato. Composed during the early 1770s, the Sei Concerti were among the few concertos that C.P.E. Bach didn’t write specifically for himself to play. In order to secure a large number of subscribers for the scores, he advertised their publication repeatedly, marketing the works as ‘easy’.