Spanish Composer Ruperto Chapí was born in 1851 in Villena, Alicante province, where he began his musical studies at an early age. Showing an exceptional talent, he moved to Madrid at the age of sixteen, continuing his studies at the capital’s Conservatorio under the tutelage of Emilio Arrieta. After stints in Rome and Paris (where he met Saint-Saëns), he came back to Spain in 1880, where he began his affiliation with the world of zarzuela (Spanish lyric opera), eventually becoming one of the major exponents of this genre in the history of Spanish music. It is with his zarzuela La Tempestad (1882) that he achieves his first national success. Many more would follow during his lifetime, with over a hundred lyric works, including the one that made Chapí a household name in Spain, La Revoltosa (1897).

Orpheus in the Underworld represents a quantum leap in Offenbach’s operetta output, for it would have been unthinkable to have created a stage work of such opulence and extravagance in Paris prior to that time. Strict regulations dating from the era of Napoleon I assigned to each of the city’s theatres a specific dramatic genre and a proportionate number of employees and performers. For Offenbach this meant writing for no more than three actors on stage at any one time. He openly flouted the regulations, however, ingeniously increasing his dramatic possibilities by adding puppets to his cast list and conveying what he had to say by means of banners held up by mute actors.

Mystical tales, legendary figures, elves, demons, fabulous characters… All compositions of this recording have one thing in common: the supernatural. To trace the underlying legends, stories and mythologies means to give expression to the different character traits and possible ambivalences of the figures with musical means. Thus an elf has a rather light, floating and elegant character, demons can be wild, unpredictable and impetuous, ghosts appear gloomy, cold and lightless, mermaids on the other hand sweet, melancholic and beguiling. The aim of the interpretation is to fill this immensely exciting creative space. Lilja Steininger (flute) plays together with Erika le Roux (piano) works by Friedrich Kuhlau, François Borne, Brett Dean, Carl Reinecke and Philipp Taffanel.

The 2021 New Year's Concert was a New Year's Concert like none before. Due to the current Corona protection measures, it was only allowed to be played in the golden hall of the Vienna Musikverein without an audience. The Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti were alone with the 14 cameras of the ORF. Worldwide, the television broadcast of this traditional concert reached more than 50 million viewers in over 90 countries. It was eagerly awaited to see what the concert would be like without applause, without the traditional interruption of the second encore introduced by clapping, and without clapping along to the Radetzky March.

For the 200th anniversary of Clara Schumann’s birth, Isata Kanneh-Mason takes us on a journey through the composer’s extraordinary life with her stunning debut album on Decca Classics. Isata will be joining forces with an all-female line-up to champion the significance of women musicians throughout the years, and their influence on the classical musical canon. The recording features Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor, written at the age of fourteen, performed by the composer at Leipzig Gewandhaus two years later under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn.

Though it lacks a first movement, the 1944 Karajan Bruckner Eighth is both a notable performance and an astonishing piece of engineering. The finale, which was recorded in the studios of Berlin Radio in September 1944 in experimental 'two channel' sound, has occasionally been available on LP or CD, though never in such spectacular sound. For what we have here, as I understand it, is not the reproduction of a rough dubbing of the original mastertape but a transfer from the 30ips mastertape itself, part of a recently released hoard of tapes the Russians confiscated after the fall of Berlin in 1945. As for the second and third movements, recorded in mono towards the end of June 1944, these have never previously been released.

The “Scala Academy Project” has chosen an opera by Donizetti never before performed on the Scala stage. Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali (Viva la mamma !) is a dramma giocoso which premiered in Naples in 1827. Italian actor, director and writer Antonio Albanese, a true master of wit and satire, made his debut as opera director. The Orchestra is conducted by Marco Guidarini.

The Australian World Orchestra is an orchestra like no other: the finest Australian classical musicians from the leading orchestras around the world, come home to join with the top Australian-based players in one thrillingly talented super-ensemble. With 95 electrifying musicians, representing more than 40 orchestras, together under one roof, the Australian World Orchestra is, in the words of Sir Simon Rattle, 'one of the great orchestras of the world'. Now reissued at a special price, Bruckner's Symphony No. 8 is the perfect choice of repertoire for such a brilliant ensemble: grand in scope, intimate yet profound in its emotional journey, and radiantly beautiful.

Mendelsson | Ravel | Sollima marks Marie Bégin’s inaugural recording as first violin with Quatuor Saguenay. Born after the quartet’s founding, Marie brings a freshness and colour to this album that is particularly well suited to the quartets of Mendelssohn and Ravel, who were in their late twenties when they composed these works. This recording also includes Federico II, the folk-inspired first movement from Giovanni Sollima’s 2000 cycle, “Viaggio in Italia.”

Antonín Dvorák's Stabat Mater, Op. 58, truly merits the adjective "tragic"; it was written after the deaths of two of the composer's children in succession, and his grief rolled out in great, Verdian waves. There are several strong recordings on the market, including an earlier one by conductor Jiří Bělohlávek himself, but for the combination of deep feeling, technical mastery from musicians and singers who have spent their lives getting to know the score, and soloists who not only sound beautiful but are seamlessly integrated into the flow, this Decca release may be the king of them all. To what extent was the strength of the performance motivated by Bělohlávek's likely fatal illness (he died days after the album entered the top levels of classical charts in the spring of 2017)? It's hard to say, although he also delivered top-notch performances of Dvorák's Requiem in his last days. The members of the Prague Philharmonic Choir sing their hearts out in the gigantic, shattering opening chorus, which has rarely if ever had such a mixture of the impassioned and the perfectly controlled. Sample the chorus "Virgo virginium praeclara" to hear the magically suspended quality Bělohlávek brings out of the singers in lightly accompanied passages.

The second half of the 19th century was an erawhen musicians valued the evocation of the fantastic and the expression of passion above all else. They did not hesitate to manipulate and reshape musical frameworks through a wide variety of expressive techniques such as rubato (modifying rhythms and varying pulsation), portamento (expressively sliding between notes), arpeggiation, adding appoggiaturas and trills, and improvising musical transitions. For the recording of Vienna 1840, Pascal Valois set out to rediscover these manners of expression as they existed in the Germanic Romantic period. For this same reason, he used a replica of an 1830 Viennese guitar by luthier Johann Georg Stauffer (1778–1853).

The virtuoso pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, one of the last great figures of Russian Romanticism, was prone throughout his life to painful bouts of depression.

In June and July 1967 the opera ensemble toured North America, with visits to the World Exposition in Montreal (Canada) and New York. In addition to six modern works (including Jenufa and Mathis der Maler) the programme also featured Der Freischütz, which according to Liebermann “was virtually unknown in the United States.” In order to avoid any “stylistic hiatus” with the modern operas, the company decided to perform a concert version of Weber’s work. The tour concept was an enormous success, with tickets being traded at black market prices. In August 1967 the company made the first of 13 recordings for television.