Classical 2023

Acclaimed Icelandic composer Gabríel Ólafs has released his new body of work, Lullabies for Piano and Cello, through Decca Records US.

In 1906, Komitas gave a concert and lecture in Paris. Debussy came on stage after the concert and knelt before the Armenian composer (who was also a priest, a singer and a pioneer of ethnomusicology), exclaiming: ‘I bow before your genius, Reverend Father.’

What do we actually know about Johann Sebastian Bach? Rather little, one must admit. Nevertheless, the few documents provide a fragmentary but very vivid picture of life. The new BR-KLASSIK audio biography shows Bach against the background of a distant time that is rather foreign to us, which is brought to life in many voices together with his music. Udo Wachtveitl tells the unique life and work of the Thomaskantor and most important composer of classical music. Albrecht Schuch gives Bach his voice.

Pedro Lavirgen Gil (Bujalance, 31 July 1930 - Madrid, 2 April 2023) was a Spanish tenor.

"The Bremen Baroque Orchestra, founded in 2015, has a reputation for being able to play with improvisational elements. This should, of course, provide the wit that is absolutely necessary for Telemann's overture suites. (…) Telemann's musical pictures can be a lot of fun." - Fono Forum, May 2023. On its second album, the Bremer Barockorcheste focuses on three extraordinary works by Georg Philipp Telemann.

Paavo Järvi (Estonian pronunciation: [ˈpɑːʋo ˈjærʋi]; born 30 December 1962) is an Estonian-American conductor. He has been chief conductor of Zurich's Tonhalle since 2020.

Close to the Schumanns and admired by Mendelssohn and Wagner, Theodor Kirchner (1823–1903) was an accomplished pianist, organist and composer in his own right. His lifelong friendship with Brahms began when the two men met at the spa town of Baden-Baden in 1865. Robert Schumann had already mentioned him in the same breath as Brahms in the influential 1853 article which effectively launched Brahms’s career.

Here we have coruscating performances by Simon Callaghan and the Sinfonieorchester St Gallen of three of Reinecke’s four piano concertos. Written respectively in 1860, 1872 and 1900, they reflect big changes both in their musical hinterland and in his evolving art. Callaghan certainly plays them with conviction…he and Pitrénas give Reinecke’s invention space to breathe. The melodic invention is not so individual as that of Brahms or Robert Schumann, but [No. 1] is a fine work that deserves a place on the concert platform…This is a delightful disc and leaves me hoping that Hyperion will give us the Third Concerto (perhaps with the early Konzertstück Op 33) in due course.

Universal Music presents the first volume of The Mercury Masters, featuring Byron Janis' rendition of Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 2" and "Two Preludes". Newly remastered, this collection comprehensively documents a golden era in American classical recording and many of these vividly characterized recordings are appearing in digital formats for the first time.

Throughout his career, clarinettist Robert Plane has giventhe premiere performances of a number of works writtenespecially for him, and is renowned as a champion ofcontemporary music.