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Composer, conductor and organist Gabriel Pierné wrote in a wide variety of genres, from operas to pieces for solo piano. His orchestral music for the stage shows the utmost refinement and clarity as well as wit and charm in the finest French tradition. His colourful and evocative score for Ramuntcho is rich in Basque flavour with zortzico dance rhythms and village dances, all beautifully textured. Set in the 18th century, the ballet Cydalise et le Chèvre-pied reveals the full range of his inventive scoring, which remains chamber music-like in its finesse.

At the heart of the Köthener Bachfesttage is the ensemble founded expressly for the festival, the Köthener BachCollektiv. This is an exceptional company of eminent musicians spanning three generations that meets in Köthen every other year and has embarked on a musical journey of discovery with works newly restored to the repertoire. At the 2022 Bachfesttage, and on this recording, new reconstructions of Bach concertos and some long forgotten works by his Köthen colleagues set the tone. The consequence, under the direction of violinists Midori Seiler and Mayumi Hirasaki, is a strikingly vivid musical portrait of the Köthen Hofkapelle, which recreates the excellent working conditions and musical opportunities available to Johann Sebastian Bach in Köthen.

Born in the vicinity of Cologne, only two years after and some sixty km distant from Beethoven, Johann Wilhelm Wilms was once a musical force to be reckoned with. In Amsterdam, where he lived from the age of 19, his music was actually performed more frequently than Beethoven’s at one period, and his orchestral works were played in such musical centres as Leipzig. Besides chamber music and solo sonatas, Wilms composed several symphonies and concertos, among them piano concertos for his own use.

After the tremendous success of the 7th Symphony, François-Xavier Roth and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln continue their Bruckner complete symphonies cycle. The "Romantic", as Anton Bruckner himself entitles his 4th Symphony, was composed in 1874 in the midst of a period of personal defeat. And he immediately doubted his work, describing some parts as "unplayable" and finding "the instrumentation here and there overloaded and too turbulent". It was only years later, after numerous revisions, that the Fourth was premiered and Bruckner achieved the success he had longed for with the public of the time.