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.

Das Aalborg Symphony Orchestra unter Henrik Vagn Christensen präsentiert hier Königlich-Dänische Konzerte für Blechbläser von Thorvald Hansen (1847-1915), Mogens Andresen (*1945) sowie die Bearbeitung einer Flötensonate von Morten Raehs (1702- 1766) im Stile von Maurice André. Hervorragende Solisten bringen die vorgestellten Werke zum Strahlen und garantieren ein wahrhaft königliches Vergnügen!

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.

Many U2 albums experience a difficult birth, but their 13th studio record underwent a particularly extended labor. Gestating for years, possibly started immediately after 2009's No Line on the Horizon and ushered into existence by many midwives, Songs of Innocence appeared suddenly in September 2014, nearly nine months after "Invisible," the presumptive lead single for the record, flopped. "Invisible" is nowhere to be found on Songs of Innocence, yet its vaguely electronic thrum did indeed turn out to be a taste of where U2 were headed after those endless sessions wound up shepherded by Danger Mouse. Songs of Innocence – its title taken from William Blake, although many music nerds may first think of David Axelrod – does indeed incorporate electronic elements in a way no U2 album since Pop has, weaving samples, loops, and other flourishes within music that otherwise adheres to the self-conscious classicism that has been the band's stock in trade since Y2K. Which is another way of saying that where the U2 of the '90s looked forward, the 2014 U2 are looking back, aware of a legacy that includes decades of arena-filling anthems, the deliberate reinvention of Achtung Baby, and their initial inspiration from the great spark of punk rock.

Cilla Black Who was the second biggest-selling music star to come out of Liverpool after the Beatles? It wasn't Gerry & the Pacemakers or Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, nor was it the Searchers. It was Cilla Black, a onetime coat-check girl from the Cavern Club who was still learning to sing with confidence, forget developing a technique, just about the time that the Beatles were cutting their first EMI record. Cilla Black holds a unique position in the history of pop music, and the British Invasion. As Brian Epstein's discovery and protégée, she was the first and only important female performer to emerge from Liverpool in the heyday of the British beat boom. In conjunction with Epstein's management and George Martin's production skills, she became a formidable ballad singer, her hits lasting longer than any Epstein clients other than the Beatles.

Crosby, Stills & Nash's eponymous debut album marks the point where rock music transitions from the heady explorations of the 1960s into the burnished self-reflections of the '70s. Upon its release in 1969, the album ushered in a new era, one where revolutions turned inward as the music got quieter and softer, creating a soundtrack for a generation easing into adulthood. Maturation looms large in the collective work of David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash, who were occasionally joined by Stills' former Buffalo Springfield bandmate Neil Young, who was added to help fill out the band's sound as they headed out on tour that wound up shattering all previous records for ticket sales. CSN(&Y) made music for grown-ups during their '70s heyday, an aesthetic that eventually evolved from folk-rock into adult contemporary pop in the '80s. The transition wasn't necessarily smooth.

The Moody Blues With the release of 1967's Days of Future Passed, the Moody Blues left behind their R&B origins and emerged as pioneers of Britain's emerging art rock sound. A richly imagined concept album that fused classical music with rock, Days of Future Passed arrived less than six months after the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band to an audience already primed to embrace such a progressive work. What's more, it was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic thanks to its dreamy singles "Nights in White Satin" and "Tuesday Afternoon," establishing the Moodies as both a commercially viable and deeply creative unit. Over subsequent releases like 1968's In Search of the Lost Chord and 1969's On the Threshold of a Dream, they developed into a five-man orchestra of rock mystics, creating music that was challenging enough to please the psychedelic crowd, but still accessible to mainstream radio listeners.

Available for the first time on vinyl is the complete OLYMPIA THEATRE, PARIS, FRANCE 5/3/72 show from the Grateful Dead’s legendary Europe ‘72 Tour. 6-LP, 180-Gram, Limited Edition of 10,000 worldwide.

Cleverly paired with two symphonies by C.P.E. Bach – written in 1755/56 and 1775/76 respectively – Beethoven’s first two contributions to the symphonic genre reveal the bubbling creativity of a thirty-year-old composer determined to go even further in the renewal of the genre than another, very recent reference, Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’. So much is clear from the very first chord of his Symphony no.1! Relive this decisive moment in the company of the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, under the guidance of their Konzertmeister Bernhard Forck.

Johann Joachim Quantz, in his handbook for transverse flute written in 1752, wrote of the composer Georg Philipp Telemann: “I wish to especially recommend Telemann’s trios written in the French style, many of which he had already fashioned thirty or more years ago.” Georg Philipp Telemann not only gained the admiration of Quantz, but his pieces are still frequently performed and recorded today. For this album, his Concerto di camera in G minor, Double Concertos in A minor and E minor, and Suite in A minor have been recorded. Performing these timeless works are three outstanding period instrumentalists, Bolette Roed, Reiko Ichise, and Alexis Kossenko.