Borbely says “Why am I attracted to such ‘insurmountable peaks’ as Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge? I have always been captivated by researching complex musical structures and the regularities of music as language. Working on such a monumental and searchingly demanding work is challenging for me primarily because it is at this level that I can confront my own limits, my own “finiteness”. It becomes evident here that we, humans, can only aim at Perfection but will never be able to achieve it. This is the reason I never feel that my interpretation is “ready”. I would even abhor the idea. Why? Because one’s approach to a work will never be and can never be final. Bach’s music is also a continually forming, changing, infinite “game”, renewing itself again and again. Bach placed musical variability into divine invariability.

For today s audiences, Vivaldi s name exemplifies Venetian opera in the early 18th century but he was not the only composer to shape the distinctive musical aesthetic of the great trading city known as La Serenissima. In this release of arias by Vivaldi and his contemporaries, countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic further explores Venice s contribution to world s rich store of Baroque opera. Cencic recreates the Venetian ambiance with the support of Italian violinist/conductor Riccardo Minasi and his ensemble Il Pomo d Oro.

Australian composer Mark John McEncroe and Navona Records present SYMPHONIC SUITE NO. 3: THE FOREST AND THE MOUNTAINS featuring three orchestral movements that draw inspiration from the natural world—”Meandering in the Forest I,” “Running Mountain Streams II,” and “Wandering in the Mountain Wilderness III.” Brought to life by Zagreb Festival Orchestra, McEncroe’s unique voice and filmic quality flow throughout, with musical illustrations painted by striking crescendos and gentle string and woodwind melodies.

"Whether it is necessary, or even right, to follow conventions (the beaten track) when recording music, for example, or whether the performer can claim the right to show the listener the world he lives in, the world he knows best, with all its beauty and its countless oddities, even risks? Should he let the listener into his own territory, that is, into a strange and individual dimension that the audience may not have known existed until now? Nowadays, a carefully crafted recording gives the listener the illusion of a world believed to be flawless, a care that is fundamentally designed to cater to the perfectionism of the audience. A 'different' kind of care is therefore needed, one that can breathe life into even a recording. Our intention in making this record was therefore to create the most natural, realistically transcendent material possible, capable of speaking to the audience." (Szabolcs Szilágyi)

Blue sound. Deep focus. Encompassment. This is what awaits the listener on this recording. Not compression or complex harmonies, rather the sound characterizes this recording. The tone, the sound here is carried by the spirit of internalization. The silence between the notes connects. The album is a search for simplicity and the essential, which looks inward and decelerates the listener.

Forty years have passed since Gidon Kremer created a little musical oasis in the Austrian town of Lockenhaus in 1981. The violinist’s open-minded attitude has left its mark on this event, which has become a must in the concert calendar, and the cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, who took up the torch in 2012, continues the same philosophy. For this fortieth anniversary, he has decided to call on composers who have come to Lockenhaus or had works performed there in the past ten years. Hence the programme contains two premieres – the cello concertos of Raphaël Merlin and Helena Winkelman – but also short pieces by Erkki-Sven Tüür, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Lera Auerbach, Patkop, Maja Ratkje, Matan Porat, Kurt Schwertsik and Johannes Fischer. Musical postcards that celebrate the anniversary while foreshadowing the next forty years!

The twelfth volume in the Haydn2032 series, in which Giovanni Antonini conducts the Kammerorchester Basel, is devoted to ‘games and pleasures’. The symphonies recorded here, nos. 61, 66 and 69, were composed for the daily theatrical performances held at Eszterháza Palace in the spring of 1776. For Haydn they marked the end of a festive period, before he had to return to the serious business of writing operas. The ‘Toy Symphony’, attributed to Haydn for 200 years before it was discovered that it was in all probability composed by a Benedictine monk, completes the programme in a similarly light and cheerful atmosphere.

Jimin Oh-Havenith’s fourth album for audite is dedicated to distinctive masterpieces of Russian piano music, including Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and a selection of etudes and preludes by Scriabin and Rachmaninov.