It is a little known fact that Bizet’s Symphony No. 1 (Naxos 8.553027), now regarded as a minor masterpiece, was closely modelled on his teacher Gounod’s Symphony No. 1, only rediscovered in the 1950s and still unaccountably neglected. Anyone familiar with Bizet’s Symphony will recognize the melodic and rhythmic similarities of the delightfully vivacious outer movements, the wistful slow movements, and the drone-bass effect of the third movements. Gounod’s Symphony No. 2, a more ambitious and elaborate work, particularly in its wind instrumentation, is more in the style of Beethoven or Mendelssohn.

It’s great to have the team of baritone Roman Trekel and pianist Ulrich Eisenlohr back together for more Schubert. I’ve been waiting for their return ever since Volume 1 in this Naxos Schubert song series, where they made such profoundly beautiful music in their performance of Winterreise (type Q661 in Search Reviews). Here they join with soprano Ruth Ziesak to perform some of Schubert’s more unusual songs–settings of poems by Ossian (James Macpherson) that are exceptional for their freer structures and near-pictorial musical storytelling. The young composer’s imagination seemed to find special inspiration in the powerfully vivid images and fantastic tales embodied in these poems and he gives the singers and accompanist some bold and challenging music to perform. The latter part of the program is devoted to songs on texts by Walter Scott, primarily from Lady of the Lake.

Mozart’s piano sonatas exemplify the economy and subtlety of the composer’s genius. Though simple at first glance, they are works in which each note is filled with musical and expressive purpose. Alexei Lubimov, a master of keyboard repertoire from the Baroque to the contemporary, plays the complete sonatas on three instruments modelled on 18th century originals. These interpretations, which explore the particular possibilities of the fortepiano, led Gramophone to praise Lubimov’s “uncommon sensibility” and “refinements of colouring, articulation and nuance” in playing that “is fluent and even, never mechanical in its brilliance.”

The music of the 17th century is deeply influenced by fearless innovation and bubbling creativity, characterized by experimentation with form that only with the subsequent generation of composers develops into fixed conventions and a higher degree of conformity. Here, a glimpse of the richness represented by the music from the Baltic region in the latter half of the 17th century is presented by bass-baritone Jakob Bloch Jespersen and Concerto Copenhagen under the direction of Lars Ulrik Mortensen.

The incidental music to König Stephan, Op. 117, must be among Beethoven's least often performed works, with only the overture making regular appearances on concert programs. The music was written for a play marking the opening of a theater in what is now Budapest; it was a festive event that drew from Beethoven no profound response. However, aficionados of the transition to Beethoven's late style will be glad to have this recording, one of just a few available. Compared with, say, the incidental music to Egmont, Op. 84, the music is striking in its simplicity, and there are a few hints, notably in the first part of the "Geistlicher Marsch," of the mystical musical language to come.

Under the single name, Alfonso, lie two composers, father and son. The strongest bond between them must have been composing; there was precious little else, since Ferrabosco the Elder fled England precipitously in the year his son and namesake was born. As viol players they had some influence on developments in their adoptive land. They are well known to viol players today, and what is presented here, with father and son in alternation, is of far more than academic interest.

Angst der Hellen und Friede der Seelen ("Fear of Hell and Peace of the Soul") is a collection of sixteen settings of Psalm 116 in German, "Das ist mir lieb" (Psalms 116), commissioned by the Jena merchant Burckhard Grossmann in 1616 and eventually published in 1623. The composers are Heinrich Schütz, then in alphabetical order Michael Altenburg, Christoph Demantius, Nicolaus Erich, Andreas Finold, Melchior Franck, Abraham Gensreff, Johannes Groh, Johann Krause, Christian Michael, Daniel Michael, Rogier Michael, Tobias Michael, Michael Praetorius, Johann Hermann Schein and Caspar Trost.

When we turn to live recordings, we enter another world, one in which the performances have, on the whole, a greater consistency of thought and execution. That applies in spades to the famous Bayreuth set of 1966. Karl Böhm's swift, incandescent, very theatrical interpretation isn't to everyone's liking. Yet, for all the fast speeds, the charge of superficiality is misplaced. Böhm's direct, cogently thought through reading, in which tempo relationships, inner figures (as one might expect from a Mozart and Strauss specialist), and instrumental detail are all carefully exposed and related to each other, offers rich rewards. Expressive intensity is here married ideally to a transparency of texture.

For this second recording in duo, Lucile Boulanger and Arnaud de Pasquale propose a journey to 18th-century Germany, in the marvellous setting of the Sans Souci palace where Frederick II of Prussia had established his court. This disc, reflecting the extraordinary conjuncture experienced by the court of Berlin under Frederick II, brings together some of the virtuosic works for viola da gamba and fortepiano by Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Johann Gottlieb Graun or Ludwig Christian Hesse and attesting to the results of fruitful collaborations between the composers at that court.

John Dowland is one of England’s greatest composers. In his lifetime, he was acknowledged as an outstanding lutenist, and his songs have always been popular. Dowland’s distinctive hallmark as a songwriter is his uncanny skill at creating a suitable musical atmosphere for a poem. In 1610, John’s son Robert Dowland (1591-1641), a minor composer of the time, assembled a collection of works by third-party composers entitled A Musicall Banquet and put his own name to it. His father is the most famous of the composers included; there is a suggestion that he helped his 19 year-old son with assembling the collection, hoping that the attribution would launch the young man's musical career. The musical net of the collection is cast wide, with French and Italian composers as well as English. It was the first collection of lute songs to take this approach, presenting a cross-section of European solo songs c.1600.

Clavier Übung means 'a keyboard exercise' or 'practice', which is rather a humble term for such exquisitely-crafted music. Bach borrowed it from Johann Kuhnau, his predecessor as cantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, who in 1689 had published a collection called Neue Clavier-Übung consisting of seven suites of dances. Bach's Clavier Übung III was published in 1739, when Leipzig was celebrating the bicentenary of the Lutheran Reformation. The hymns on which the 12 organ chorales on this disc are based focus on the six chief parts of the Lutheran Catechism: the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, Holy Baptism, Confession and Communion.

Born in Danzig in 1626, Balthasar Erben was a cosmopolitan. When he applied for the position of Kapellmeister of the main church of St. Marien in his hometown at the age of 27, the council granted him a generous scholarship so that he could "look around the world and perfect himself as a composer". For five years, Erben traveled throughout Europe, visiting all the centres of musical culture of the time, including Rome. His compositional style, which was developed during this time, is correspondingly distinctive: a combination of different influences, cleverly interwoven. The Abendmusiken Basel offer an impressive collection of instrumental and sacred works by the composer who is unfortunately little known today.

Published in 1733, Pietro Locatelli’s L'Arte del violino for solo violin, strings, and basso continuo took both violin technique and the solo concerto as a genre into a whole new realm. The twelve concertos included in the collection also played a part in forming the image of the violin virtuoso, reaching its full bloom with Paganini towards the end of the century. While the unusually high technical demands of the solo part are obvious to the listener from the start, the great surprise comes at the end of the first and third movements of each of the concertos. Here Locatelli inserts Capriccios for the soloist alone of a difficulty previously unheard of, with a left hand technique making use of extensions, octaves, unprepared tenths, double and triple stopping, arpeggios and double trills.

Heinichen’s Mass employs especially the capabilities of the brass to achieve a festive majesty in sound. A four-voiced trumpet choir in combination with the double choir layout lend Zelenka’s Te Deum a festive character. Hans-Christoph Rademann brings choir, orchestra and soloists to their highest level of performance.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi is arguably one of the best-known baroque composers. However, the rediscovery of the Prete Rosso in modern times took place quite recently. The history of this rediscovery might still offer us some surprises. This recording is aiming to be part of this history, featuring the most recently discovered Vivaldi sonatas for violin and continuo, including the latest discovered works by the Venetian composer (added to the RISM as RV 820 and RV 205/2), as identified by Javier Lupiáñez in 2015, and presenting the first recording of the RV 205/2.