Mozart died barely 11 months after completing his final piano concerto, No. 27, in January 1791. It’s one of the composer’s most serene concertos, full of wit and beauty, with a piano part that eschews technical difficulty for songlike elegance. Whether, as has been suggested over the years, the piece contains hints of a man resigned to his fate, doesn’t matter. Mozart was at the height of his inventive powers, and the piece is treated here to a performance of lightness and grace by a team of musicians determined never to overstate and risk romanticizing Mozart’s sublime utterings. Even when Mozart veers into minor-key territory, the storm clouds dissipate almost as soon as they gather. Franz Welser-Möst is a master at navigating these mood changes, coaxing exquisite subtleties of phrasing from his Cleveland forces, both stepping aside for and complementing Garrick Ohlsson’s honest playing, itself devoid of histrionics.

There are moments like that: On the path to your own destiny, you meet one of the greats and everything is suddenly - completely different. For the young Robert Kahn, this moment came when he met Johannes Brahms in 1886. The Hanseatic composer was evidently able to set a number of sympathetic strings vibrating in the young man from Mannheim. The result was an oeuvre in which the chamber music, from duo to quintet, often strikes a note that we know from his role model: Without ever copying his mentor, Kahn thrives on full-bodiedness and opulent voice leading, which gives the three piano quartets in particular chamber-symphonic dimensions. The spirited transparency of the Serenade for string trio from 1933, in which the music world congratulated Johannes Brahms on his 100th birthday, stands alongside this. Robert Kahn is not afraid to occasionally take the master at his word.

Following her internationally acclaimed and multi-award-winning 2023 debut, Rising Sun, pianist Shuteen Erdenebaatar returns with Under the Same Stars—an exquisite duo album with the rising ACT Music artist Nils Kugelmann on contra-alto clarinet and upright bass. Meditative, romantic, and daring, this duo paints poetic miniatures with strokes of jazz, classical, and cinematic music. Alto Recorder and Mongolian horsehead fiddle features add soulful mystery.

Joseph Swensen conducts Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with an inner fire that grips all those who have attended one of his concerts; for him it is Beethoven’s ultimate achievement, a celebration of humanity —not the romantic hero, but the truly ordinary individual, musically represented by the chorus. Beethoven begins his epic symphony in the darkness of primordial chaos. The first and second movements are visions of the universe before humanity. The third movement is a celestial dream. The beginning of the finale is our awakening. Beethoven wanted Ode to Joy to be a melody that all can sing. This chorus, a realisation in sound of the ideals of the 18th-century Enlightenment, is neither transcendent, divine, perfect nor impeccable. It is humanity singing of its joy!

Since the creation of their ensemble La Néréide in 2019, the three sopranos Camille Allérat, Julie Roset and Ana Vieira Leite have wanted to tell stories about women, women who are courageous, vulnerable, passionate, powerful, secretive — and sometimes all of these at once. Le Cœur et la Raison imagines the fate of a young noblewoman sent to the Demoiselles de Saint-Cyr, where she received a meticulous education, particularly in music; she took part in services and sang works by its organist Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749) — including his magnificent Miserere — and by Jean-François Lalouette (1651-1728), a pupil of Lully. When she returned to her family, however, she sang the melodies of fashionable court airs, which she then shared with her fellow students at Saint-Cyr, to the great disapproval of the religious authorities. She and her colleagues then rewrote the song texts transforming the declarations of love into statements of faith. Today, these three friends and artists present an emotionally charged programme, accompanied by a first-rate instrumental trio.

The deliciously erotic aspects of the text of the Song of Solomon inspired a great many composers during the 17th century, although it remains curious that even the strictest Lutheran composers could not resist setting it to music. The majority of Hammerschmidt's pieces on this text are written for soprano or tenor voices; these obviously represent the two protagonists, the beloved and the lover. This programme is built around these works, creating an entertainment — a small sacred opera —in which evocations of love or sensual dialogues are framed by dances and instrumental pieces. Works by Andreas Hammerschmidt, Johann Vierdanck, Dieterich Buxtehude, Thomas Strutz and others.

This album presents orchestral works by three French composers who saw Spain as a paradise of warmth, fragrance and colour, whether real or imagined. From the vivid evocations of Debussy’s Images and Ibert’s Escales, to the dances and landscapes that inspired Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole, these masterpieces of Impressionism show the considerable impact Spanish culture had on French composers in the early 20th century.