Toccata Press

The music of Saint-Preux is universal and timeless, combining classical,popular and contemporary musical trends, with worldsales of more than thirty millions records. A small village in France is the setting for his musical inspirations and developments. It is there that he composed his first piece for organ at the age of 6.

When it comes to old Italian vocal music, the Padua-born Italian choir "La Stagione Armonica" under the direction of Sergio Balestracci has repeatedly demonstrated its high musical level: "The sound they produce is extremely appealing in its firm expressiveness and in the way in which Balestracci's interpretive details somehow create a hint of simple but fervent piety, "wrote the press about his album on deutsche harmonia mundi with the responses that Alessandro Scarlatti composed for Holy Saturday.

This is the second and final disc in a cycle of Sergei Prokofiev’s piano concertos with pianist Olli Mustonen and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu. Of the first volume, Gramophone wrote: 'How many times have I regretted a shortage of fantasy, flair and fairy-tale imagination in recordings of the Prokofiev piano concertos? Well, here is a disc that takes all those qualities to the top'.

Venice, 1625: the city of the doges is one of the principal artistic centres of Europe. At the Cappella San Marco, a profoundly original style of instrumental music is in the process of discarding all reference to the tradition of vocal polyphony.The era of Baroque stravaganze has begun! Now, in the hands of a supreme master of the recorder, this ultra-virtuosic art acquires a new lease of life. Maurice Steger is one of the leading artistic personalities of his generation. He is a frequent guest soloist with leading Baroque ensembles such as the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Musica Antiqua Köln, the English Concert, Europa Galante and I Barocchisti.

When this recording first appeared in 1968 it was something of a ground-breaker. It was made during the years (1965-1969) that Seiji Ozawa was Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The booklet note claims that this was the first recording of the work made in the Western hemisphere.