After their explorations of Italian repertoire in Che fai tù? (MU-037) and French in Vous avez dit brunettes? (Alpha 761), Les Kapsber'girls, a vocal and instrumental ensemble founded by lutenist Albane Imbs in 2015, devotes its third album to Baroque women composers: hidden talents, unrevealed destinies, few of these composers have had the opportunity to reveal their art, which is nevertheless very real. Recent research has made it possible to revive the fascinating works of composers such as Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704), Lucia Quinciani (1566-1611), Francesca Caccini (1587-1641), Antonia Bembo (c.1643-1715), and Francesca Campana (c.1615-c.1665), who spent sixty-nine years of her life in an Ursuline convent in Novara, although this did not prevent her from composing no fewer than two hundred works!

The Bach album comprises four preludes and one fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier, as well as the Allemande from the fourth Partita, interspersed with seven compositions or improvisations by Mehldau inspired by the complementary works of Bach—including Mehldau’s Variations on Bach’s Goldberg Theme.

Max Reger just couldn't stop composing. With 131 published works, most of them compendiums of several pieces in the same genre, Reger was relentlessly, even recklessly prodigious as a composer. And apparently when he wasn't writing his own music, the fin de siècle Bavarian composer was arranging Bach's. In addition to arrangements of the Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites for four-hand piano, Reger also transcribed 22 works for solo piano, four organ pieces, and 18 choral preludes, and all of them are included in this two-disc Hyperion set.

Philippe Herreweghe has always seemed well-attuned to the more mystical aspects of Bach’s music, an empathy clearly evident on his new CD of Advent cantatas. Though the opening chorus of BWV 36 seems a touch reserved, those of BWV 61 and 62 match precision with vigour, and Herreweghe’s team of soloists are in fine voice throughout. BWV 36 is a parody, based on an earlier tribute to a local teacher. Bach retained his original music for the arias, but replaced the recitatives with chorales, so the cantata alternates delightfully between dance movements and more formal hymn settings.

The CD, as always with unreleased material, with Antonio Vivaldi's Concertos and Trio Sonatas transcribed for guitar, strings, and continuo. Trio Sonata in C major RV 82, Trio Sonata in G minor RV 85, Concerto in D major RV 93, Concerto in C major RV 425, Concerto in G major RV 532, Concerto in D minor RV 540. Giulio Tampalini, guitar; Maurizio Schiavo, violin and director of Il Demetrio, with the special participation of Simonide Braconi, viola d'amore, and Daniele Fabio, guitar.

In the realm of music criticism and scholarship, Bach’s music is often hailed as the epitome of functional musical logic. Every note has its place, every chord has its function, and all musical elements are combined in a masterful display of contrapuntal craft with few recognised rivals. But despite the intellectual reverence to which Bach’s music is subjected, musicians are still able to find themselves intimately and affectively involved with his compositions.

If you know and love the Brandenburgs, seriously consider listening to these renditions for piano duo. In the imagination place yourself in the days before recording; hearing these peices in that way will give an idea of what it must have been like to know Bach, to want to hear Bach, to have the muscial skills to play Bach, but have no chamber orchestra at your disposal. A piano or two would do, if you had Reger's transcriptions. Why wait years for the next concert, if you could play them today? And because Reger loved Bach each piece has an air of homage.

This "fête Baroque" occurred in December 2011 at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris, marking the tenth anniversary of the ensemble Le Concert d'Astrée under founder and conductor Emmanuelle Haïm. The concert was a benefit for a French cancer research facility, and it attracted a galaxy of guest stars. Le Concert d'Astrée is one of the very best Baroque vocal ensembles, and this release never descends to a low common denominator. Haïm's trademark expressive phrasing is everywhere in evidence, but the biggest attraction is the selection of singers, with several figures from the mainstream showing up alongside established Baroque specialists.

Between the final decades of the reign of Louis XIV and the dawn of a taste already inclining towards galant grace, the transverse flute and the lute, with the theorbo in the background, delineate one of the most subtle landscapes in European music. The programme of this disc, bringing together Robert de Visée, Pierre Danican Philidor, Jacques-Martin Hotteterre, Ernst Gottlieb Baron, Jacques Gallot in the version by Charles Mouton, and Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, follows an itinerary in which courtly dance, pastoral song, memorial portraiture and chamber conversation are gathered within a single idea of eloquence. It is the history of a sonic civilisation that transfers into chamber music the ceremonial of the court, the dream of Arcadia and the taste for a cultivated intimacy, destined for enclosed spaces and entrusted to breath and to the resonance of strings.

With his 2017 release on Erato, Jean Rondeau illustrates the beginnings of the harpsichord concerto, which can be traced from the Baroque masterpieces of Johann Sebastian Bach through the early Classical period, represented here by works of his sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and Johann Christian Bach. While this celebrated musical dynasty contributed to many forms in the 18th century, the keyboard concerto was given a special, innovative treatment by the Bachs, who effectively put the genre on the map.

Eugene Istomin (1925–2003), one of America’s most respected pianists, was highly esteemed by audiences and colleagues alike for his mindful virtuosity and unusually wide-ranging repertoire. 2015 marks Istomin’s 90th birthday year, a milestone that Sony Classical celebrates with the first-ever release of his complete Columbia Masterworks concerto and solo recordings in a limited original-jacket collection including 10 previously unreleased studio recordings. Many of these performances appear in their first authorized CD editions, including the 19-year-old pianist’s recorded debut in Bach’s D minor Concerto led by Adolf Busch; his youthful concerto collaborations with Pablo Casals; Chopin’s complete Nocturnes; Brahms’s Handel Variations; Schubert’s D major D 850 Sonata, plus the long-out-of-print Rachmaninoff 2nd, Tchaikovsky 1st, Brahms 2nd, and Beethoven 4th and 5th (“Emperor”) Concertos with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Newly remastered from the original analogue tapes, the discs are presented in facsimile sleeves and labels corresponding to the original LP releases. An enclosed booklet offers full discographical information, an essay by Jed Distler, and a photographic retrospective.

In his recording of Bach's 48 Colin Tilney, unlike his fellow competitors in the same repertory, plays both a clavichord (Book 1) and a harpsichord (Book 2). Why not? Bach's title for the first book of 24 preludes and fugues, The Well-tempered Clavier leaves both this issue and that of tuning wide open. The clavichord was a favourite instrument of Bach's, so was the harpsichord and the organ; indeed, I am sorry that Tilney does not include a chamber organ since some of the pieces, the E major Prelude and Fugue (Book 2), for instance, seem well-suited to it. Tilney's performance of the 48 differs again from almost if not all others in the sequence which he adopts in playing the preludes and fugues. But an apparently random approach is in fact nothing of the kind, but one that is directly linked with tuning. We know that Bach himself was a master in matters of tuning as he was in all other aspects of his craft. What we do not know is the exact nature of his tuning.

This recording features the UK-based period instrument ensemble Fiori Musicali directed by Penelope Rapson, with Kerstin Linder-Dewan as the featured violin soloist. It was released on Metronome Recordings and combines vibrant Baroque favorites with the lesser-known, richly textured Sinfonia in A minor by the Czech composer Jan Dismas Zelenka.

On this extraordinarily unique and ambitious 1985 classical-crossover release for CBS Masterworks, virtuosic master flutist Hubert Laws bridges the worlds of formal chamber music and sophisticated jazz improvisation. The album is a brilliant dual-natured showcase, split between contemporary Third Stream innovation and high-fidelity Baroque elegance. The centerpiece is Harold Blanchard's sweeping "New Earth Sonata," an evocative piece for flute, guitar, and piano that features legendary jazz giant Chick Corea contributing dazzling, rhythmically fluid piano improvisations alongside an elite rhythm section. Laws then seamlessly pivots to classical tradition, joining force with the iconic Quincy Jones, who steps onto the podium to conduct a rich string orchestra through a pristine, lively reading of Georg Philipp Telemann's timeless "Suite in A minor." Closing with a breathtaking, soulful orchestral arrangement of "Amazing Grace" featuring Dorothy Ashby's shimmering harp and early Yamaha DX7 textures, this album stands as a masterfully engineered, cross-genre monument of immaculate musicianship.

This is a really great five-CD set. You get all of Bach's concertos except the Brandenburgs - which is a shame because Pinnock's Brandenburgs are terrific. Nonetheless, this remains an absolutely cracking collection of some of Bach's most enjoyable music in excellent performances. In the Harpsichord Concertos Pinnock is himself the soloist and shows why he is such a very well-liked and highly regarded musician. The music springs to life under his fingers (and under his direction) and many of these performances set new and enduring standards when first released in the early 1980s. They have informed much subsequent Bach playing and have worn extremely well themselves, sounding as fresh and involving as they did nearly 30 years ago. He is joined by other fine harpsichordists in the concerti for two, three and four harpsichords, (Kenneth Gilbert, Nicholas Kraemer and Lars Ulrich Mortensen) and the Concerto for Four Harpsichords in particular is an absolute joy.