Raphael Quartet

America’s greatest and most enduring chamber ensemble – the Grammyâ Award-winning Juilliard String Quartet – celebrates its eighth decade with the release of a new Sony Classical recording of music from three centuries by Ludwig van Beethoven, Béla Bartók and Argentinian-American composer Mario Davidovsky.

Joseph Haydn claimed to have discovered the string quartet form by accident. His Op. 1, No. 1 has the cheerful five-movement form of a Divertimento, while the glorious and harmonically daring Op. 77, No. 1 was among the last he completed in the genre. Falling between the two, Op. 33, No. 5 is full of rhythmic surprises and a theme that gives it the nickname ‘How do you do?’ The award-winning Goldmund Quartet is considered one of today’s most exciting young European string quartets.

The new album of the Goldmund Quartet "Travel Diaries" is already in the wings and catches attention with the first single "Divorce Quartet". Another musical jewel in the history of the quartet, which has existed in the same formation since its foundation ten years ago.On their new album, the four Munich musicians Florian Schötz (1st violin), Pinchas Adt (2nd violin), Christoph Vandory (viola) & Raphael Paratore (cello) bring together five contemporary works by composers with whom they have already collaborated. The first is Fazıl Say with his Divorce Quartet, whose "psychological essence can be transferred to a certain extent to playing and living together in a string quartet. We wrestle with each other for the expression of deepest emotion, go through highs and lows."

Oraison is a musical meditation on memory, history and time, articulated in a jazz idiom. Raphael Imbert bases his reflection on his own experience as a resident of a village in Haute Provence, Oraison, which is the only village in France to have given its streets the names of soldiers who died in combat during the Great War, or in an act of resistance during the Second World War. The name ‘Oraison’ is thought to have Provençal origins and to mean ‘the place where the wind blows’. Where the spirit blows! Oraison, a series of original compositions which take the form of a textless secular oratorio, is an opportunity for Raphael Imbert to propose a spiritual and narrative journey with a precise plan, a series of evocative portraits, a different way of remembering, a means of living and reliving through a memory enriched by creation. A deep and communicative emotion that can flower to the full in the ‘classical’ quartet format of sax-piano-double bass-drums, in the company of some of the most innovative improvisers on the French jazz scene.

Karine Deshayes is one of the greatest Rossini singers on the international opera stage. In this first solo album, featuring excerpts from some of his most beautiful works, she traces the different stages in Rossini's life. She is accompanied by Raphaël Merlin (cellist of the Ébène Quartet) at the head of Les Forces Majeures, a collective bringing together musicians from prestigious chamber ensembles and top-flight orchestras.

America’s greatest and most enduring chamber ensemble – the Grammyâ Award-winning Juilliard String Quartet – celebrates its eighth decade with the release of a new Sony Classical recording of music from three centuries by Ludwig van Beethoven, Béla Bartók and Argentinian-American composer Mario Davidovsky.

Acclaimed for its extraordinarily sensitive style, almost telepathic understanding of each other and technical mastery, the Trio Wanderer is one of the world's foremost chamber ensembles. This program contains Brahms's Piano Trio No.1 and Piano Quartet No.3. Composed during 1854 and revised in 1889, the first trio is the only work by Brahms to exist in two published versions. Here, Trio Wanderer treats us to the rarely heard original score.