Gustav Leonardt

This unbelievably exciting record is actually a Mahler world premiere! Das klagende Lied was Mahler's first great work–he was only 18 when he wrote it–but he later removed its first part and extensively revised the remaining two. The original versions of the second two parts, then, have never been performed until their release in 1997 as part of the new critical edition. The music is, as might be expected, less polished than the revision, but it's also wilder and even more powerful in many respects. Hopefully it will gain new attention for this neglected but totally characteristic work. This performance is nothing short of spectacular, and makes the best possible case for Mahler's original thoughts.

Gustav Leonhardt, one of the stalwarts of the "early music movement" has just passed a significant birthday and Sony has pulled together a representative 15 titles from his time with the label and put them in a clam-shell box.

This collection was first compiled in 1970 or so from recordings dating as far back as 1961. The set, now remastered and issued on cd, includes performances by three generations of harpsichordists, with Gustav Leonhardt providing the central focus. Leonhardt includes (in BWV 1060, 1062 and 1065) his former teacher from the Schola Cantorum in Basle, Eduard Mueller (the student modestly playing second harpsichord to his mentor in 1060 and 1065) while his own first-generation students Anneke Uittenbosch and Alan Curtis join him for BWV 1061, 1063-1065.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) was a German musician and composer; and the second of five sons of Johann Sebastian Bach and his frist wife, Maria Barbara Bach. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Classical style, composing in the Rococo and Classical periods.

Clearly Philips is not trying to sell this disc because of the works being performed – a fairly miscellaneous collection of Bach's works written or transcribed for the harpsichord – but rather for the performer of the works. But since the performer is Gustav Leonhardt – perhaps the greatest musician of the whole early music movement of the second half of the twentieth century – that is a more than sufficient reason to get this disc.

Start with the sound: Berlin Classics here offers chamber music recorded in a chamber like the ones for which it was intended. Israeli clarinetist Sharon Kam, along with German pianist Martin Helmchen (there's something that wouldn't have been so common until recently) and cellist Gustav Rivinius, performs Brahms' three late chamber masterpieces for clarinet in the Siemens-Villa in Berlin, not the studio it sounds like but a genuine villa in Berlin's swank Lichterfelde neighborhood.

For almost 50 years, Gustav Leonhardt - harpsichordist, organist and, most recently, conductor - has counted among the most respected specialists in both the theory and practice of early music. Acclaimed for his numerous recordings of music ranging from keyboard masterpieces of the early Baroque to Mozart's sonatas, Leonhardt has played a critical role in bringing period-instrument performance into the mainstream of classical music life.