Bach And Mozart Esseys

Perhaps no single musician ever achieved such high accomplishment across such a broad span of repertory as Nikolaus Harnoncourt. His first professional job was as cellist for the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Almost immediately, however, Harnoncourt sought to specialize in performing music of the past upon historically correct instruments; he was one of the first professional musicians to do so.

Perhaps no single musician ever achieved such high accomplishment across such a broad span of repertory as Nikolaus Harnoncourt. His first professional job was as cellist for the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. Almost immediately, however, Harnoncourt sought to specialize in performing music of the past upon historically correct instruments; he was one of the first professional musicians to do so.

The winner of numerous international competitions, the brilliant young accordion player Ksenija Sidorova here presents her debut recording; a recital for solo classical accordion. A particularly accomplished artist, Ksenija has collaborated with many leading musicians (including the Belcea Quartet, and Valergy Gergiev with the CBSO), and won numerous awards and accolades. Still an underexploited resource in western classical music, the accordion has had a fast-increasing amount of music written for it since the mid-20th Century. Here, Ksenija Sidrova brings a varied recital featuring some of the best contemporary compositions for the classical accordion, alongside transcriptions of well-known works. No composer has been transcribed more often than Bach; but the accordion - heard here in Bachs Overture in the French Style - brings an advantage that few other instruments can offer; its notes do not die away as soon as they are sounded. This allows an array of colouristic possibilities, denied to other musicians.

Hughes de Courson Now a unique French exemplar of what in the U.S. might be called classical/world music crossover, Hughes de Courson has consistently sought to broaden the scope of his musical abilities and activities over the course of his distinguished five-decade career. He spent his early childhood in Spain. While still in school, de Courson was writing songs with classmate Patrick Modiano, and some of them were later recorded by the durable French pop-rock vocalist Françoise Hardy. In 1973 de Courson and Gabriel Yacoub formed the group Malicorne, a folk-oriented act influenced by Steeleye Span and by the contemporaneous revival in the folk music of the ethnically Celtic French region of Brittany. Later de Courson formed his own label, Ballon Noir (Black Balloon), issuing discs by Dan Ar Bras, Kolinda, and others. In the 1980s he expanded his own composition endeavors, writing music primarily for modern dance presentations.

Hughes de Courson Now a unique French exemplar of what in the U.S. might be called classical/world music crossover, Hughes de Courson has consistently sought to broaden the scope of his musical abilities and activities over the course of his distinguished five-decade career. He spent his early childhood in Spain. While still in school, de Courson was writing songs with classmate Patrick Modiano, and some of them were later recorded by the durable French pop-rock vocalist Françoise Hardy. In 1973 de Courson and Gabriel Yacoub formed the group Malicorne, a folk-oriented act influenced by Steeleye Span and by the contemporaneous revival in the folk music of the ethnically Celtic French region of Brittany. Later de Courson formed his own label, Ballon Noir (Black Balloon), issuing discs by Dan Ar Bras, Kolinda, and others. In the 1980s he expanded his own composition endeavors, writing music primarily for modern dance presentations.

Eugene Istomin (1925–2003), one of America’s most respected pianists, was highly esteemed by audiences and colleagues alike for his mindful virtuosity and unusually wide-ranging repertoire. 2015 marks Istomin’s 90th birthday year, a milestone that Sony Classical celebrates with the first-ever release of his complete Columbia Masterworks concerto and solo recordings in a limited original-jacket collection including 10 previously unreleased studio recordings. Many of these performances appear in their first authorized CD editions, including the 19-year-old pianist’s recorded debut in Bach’s D minor Concerto led by Adolf Busch; his youthful concerto collaborations with Pablo Casals; Chopin’s complete Nocturnes; Brahms’s Handel Variations; Schubert’s D major D 850 Sonata, plus the long-out-of-print Rachmaninoff 2nd, Tchaikovsky 1st, Brahms 2nd, and Beethoven 4th and 5th (“Emperor”) Concertos with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Newly remastered from the original analogue tapes, the discs are presented in facsimile sleeves and labels corresponding to the original LP releases. An enclosed booklet offers full discographical information, an essay by Jed Distler, and a photographic retrospective.