Denoise ma

Known during his lifetime as the 'French Beethoven', on this SACD Markus Becker teams up with the Ma'alot Quintet for a closer look at Onslow's virtuoso side. Functioning as virtuoso concertos for the salon, both the Wind Quintet op. 81 and the Sextet op. 30 fully satisfied the discriminating taste of Parisian high society. George Onslow was five years old when the French Revolution began and completely disrupted the life of his noble family with British roots. The young Onslow spent the next two decades travelling throughout Europe, received instruction from Dussek in Hamburg, Cramer in London, and finally from the famous Antonín Reicha in Paris after his return to France.

Classic Yo-Yo is a greatest-hits collection for the famous Yo-Yo Ma, something he's fully entitled to after two decades of runaway success. It's "Classic Yo-Yo" in the sense that it presents well-loved and presumably durable selections from a variety of Yo-Yo Ma albums, not because it inclines toward Ma's straight-ahead classical recordings. In fact the division between classical and crossover pieces on the disc is about 50/50, and they tend to alternate.

World-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his longtime collaborator, pianist Emanuel Ax, are joined by violinist Leonidas Kavakos in their first recording together of all three of the piano trios of Johannes Brahms. Ma and Ax have built together a distinguished catalogue of Brahms recordings, but this is their first recording of the Piano Trios and their first collaboration with Kavakos.