Philippe Katerinecomme Disait ma Petite Sœur

The music on this 2-disc set and its companion 'Vol 2' set is among the loveliest chamber music you can find anywhere, at least to my mind. Most people know Faure for his gentle 'Requiem,' but anyone wanting to explore the melody-rich world of late 19th-century French Romanticism can't go wrong with these recordings. All of this music is utterly non-flashy and breathtakingly beautiful, never cloying or oversweet like so many works of this period. Faure, an essentially old fashioned guy, was a consummate craftsman and an imaginative melodist.

This is the best recording so far of Partenope. Krisztina Laki is splendid in the lead role as is Helga Muller-Molinari as Rosmira and John York Skinner as Armindo. Rene Jacobs in the counter-tenor role of Arsace does a fine job considering the date of this recording. The orchestra plays with great vitality. This is the recommended recording of this opera.

Doktor Faust remained a fragment at the time of the composer's death. Busoni died in 1924, unable to complete what he himself described as his ''state masterpiece'' - an opera to which he had a deep personal attachment. The missing scenes from the score - the appearance of Helen and Faust's closing monologue - were completed by his pupil, Philipp Jarnach, whom Busoni had become acquainted with during his period in exile in Zürich. In this form the opera was given its first performance in Dresden in 1925. Then in the 1980s the conductor Anthony Beaumont came across previously undiscovered sketches by Busoni and produced a new version of Doktor Faust, which was premiered in Bologna in 1985. The current recording uses the Jarnach score.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, is a concerto for piano and orchestra composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff between the autumn of 1900 and April 1901. The second and third movements were first performed with the composer as soloist on 2 December 1900. The complete work was premiered, again with the composer as soloist, on 9 November 1901, with his cousin Alexander Siloti conducting. This piece is one of Rachmaninoff's most enduringly popular pieces, and established his fame as a concerto composer.

The Surprise Symphony was, before the Mozart craze of the early 1990s, the most famous piece of classical music after Beethoven's Fifth, and if it gets into some feature film it could well regain it's former position. It says something for Haydn's ability to write consistently interesting and witty music that the most popular, "named" part in a symphony (this one included) is likely to be the slow movement. In other words, Haydn is often at his most entertaining just when other composers are putting you to sleep. Symphony No. 93 also has a surprise in its slow movement–a highly scatological comment from the bassoon at the very end, followed by what can only be described as orchestral laughter.

Star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky continues his exploration of operatic settings of the Orpheus myth with the most famous of the many operas inspired by the story of the Greek poet who searches for his dead wife in the Underworld: Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. It contains one of the world's best-loved operatic arias, Orfeo's restrained, but moving lament, 'Che farò senza Euridice'.

Philippe Herreweghe records his third disc devoted to a controversial figure in the world of music and art in general: Carlo Gesualdo, who had his wife murdered and is suspected of having his son smothered. This time Collegium Vocale Gent performs his fifth book of madrigals (1611), published two years before his death. A collection that even today contributes to the eternal debate: to what extent does art become impregnated with reality, and how can it be appreciated when it emanates from a mind living so close to horror? Here the bold dissonances and sometimes tortured expressiveness that can be perceived in his harmonic language offer food for thought. Can we speak of redemption through art for a murderous composer in the twilight of his life?

Les deux compositeurs choisis, l’un anglais, l’autre allemand, nés tous les deux la même année 1685, sont assurément les représentants majeurs du patrimoine musical baroque. Les œuvres présentes sur ce disque ont toutes été composées à des moments particuliers de leur vie, en marge de leurs commandes habituelles destinés souvent à des personnages de haut rang, et se distinguent par la constante recherche de nouvelles inspirations et styles de composition.