Grumiaux and Haskil were close friends and long-time playing partners. This collaborative relationship lasted until a few days before Haskil's death. Their duet gained wide popularity among music lovers through numerous published recordings. This concert in Besançon in 1957 is a legend. The first publication in the world spans time and space with beautiful sound quality, allowing us to immerse ourselves in this happiness.

Janitsch was a superb contrapuntist, so it's fortunate his historically significant compositions are among the surviving manuscripts in the Archive of Berlin's Singakademie. In this recording on CPO, they offer the modern listener a vibrant impression of the cultured and imaginative spirit that animated Janitsch's Musical Academies in Berlin. The members of the chamber music ensemble Epoca Barocca share a passion for the performance of baroque music on original instruments, and their programmes regularly feature unjustly neglected works from the baroque era.

Here is another of Gustav Leonhardt's mixed programmes but this one, unlike the earlier European grand tour ((CD) 426 352-2PH, 4/90), is confined to German repertory and is played not on the harpsichord but on the clavichord. The earliest music is by Christian Ritter, who was born in the mid seventeenth century and who was based mainly in Halle where he was employed as an organist. His Suite in F sharp minor is an appealing work somewhat in the manner of Froberger; the opening Allemande is beautifully written and well sustained and the poignant Sarabande an affecting piece built on a descending octave pattern which gives it the character of a lament.

Bach wrote these sonatas at Cothen between 1717 and 1723, probably to be played by the court virtuoso Carl Friedrich Abel or by Prince Leopold in person. While works for cello were invading Europe, Germany continued to give an important role to the viol throughout the eighteenth century, as can be seen in the works of such composers as Bach, Telemann, Abel, and Schaffrath (honoured by Guido Balestracci's most recent recording).

On the surface, Shostakovich's last symphony is a strange bird. One wonders why the first movement keeps quoting the William Tell overture. Why does the fourth movement incorporate Wagner's fate theme from the Ring? And why the cello and violin solos? The answers, frankly, don't matter. Amidst all these oddities, there is great music to be heard here. This reissue features the American premiere of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15, from 1972–with Eugene Ormandy leading the Philadelphia Orchestra–paired with the composer's second piano sonata performed by Emil Gilels.

In her debut recording for harmonia mundi, Lucile Boulanger explores the facets of Antoine Forqueray’s career as a virtuoso instrumentalist: adept in a wide range of Italian repertoire and skilled at transcribing works originally intended for the violin, he could try it on for size, as it were, before settling on a different medium.

If you like attractive, expertly performed music for plucked strings, then these original compositions and arrangements of Italian renaissance works for chitarrone, chitarra spagnola (five-course Spanish guitar), and arpa doppia (double harp) will surely delight. Every work here is pleasant and tuneful–a few even aspire to greater musical heights. Frescobaldi's Partite Sopra Passacalgli, for example, benefits from Stephen Stubbs and Maxine Eilander's arrangement, which, while sacrificing a measure of the harpsichord's original edge, nonetheless heightens the chromaticism and texture of the evolving fugue.

Domenico Dall’Oglio’s collection of Sonatas for violin and basso continuo, first published in Paris in 1738, reveals itself here as a hither-to-forgotten masterpieces of eighteenth-century violin music. It is only recently that attention has been paid to this composer, highly significant in baroque Russia, yet almost unknown today. Maria Krestinskaya writes: “The investigation of forgotten or unknown masterpieces, especially those written in Russia, has been my passion for many years, and this manuscript is a source of personal inspiration. As a performer, I feel honored to have this opportunity to bring it to worldwide attention in its first-ever recording.”

To describe this as beautiful Mozart playing would be true, but not the whole truth. For what impressed me most was its very positive character. Everything is of crystalline clarity, everything is what can be conveniently summarized as stylish. Yet never is there a single bar's suggestion of note-weaving for its own sake. Ashkenazy always uncovers strong motives for the notes being there. For this reason he is more likely to convert disbelievers (and there are some, in the context of Mozart and the solo keyboard) than Haebler in her recent boxed set.

What little is known of Pietro Migali’s life has been deduced from his will, which gives us his likely dates and some biographical information, as well as from his only extant publication, the Trio Sonatas, Op. 1. Probably born around 1635 and deceased after the will's date of 1715, Migali was a native of the southern Italian city of Lecce, though his musical education is thought to have taken him to Naples or Rome. His role as Maestro di Capella is known from the sonatas' title page, though there is no other information about his career or other works. Yet the high quality of his compositions is evident from this 2017 release by Ensemble BariAntiquA, and judging from the inventiveness of his music, Migali must have mastered his craft through other compositions and assiduous study.

Almost unknown until a few years ago, Berlin composer Johann Gottlieb Janitsch has become more familiar since Notturna began recording a series of his Sonata da quadro on the ATMA label. Janitsch was very active as a composer and contraviolonist at the court of Prussia since 1736, and left over 40 quadro sonatas which display the composer’s complete mastery of counterpoint.

Racha Arodaky was trained in the Russian school of Malinin and Bashkirov then in the subtle interpretative style of Murray Perahia. After the poetic worlds of Mendelssohn (2001) and Scriabin (2003), she now tackles the universe of Domenico Scarlatti: always with the same taste for the miniature, for grasping the musical instant, presenting the full diversity of human feelings, and always with the same 'quivering sensibility' which made her Scriabin such a success.

Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838) was born in Bonn and moved to Vienna in 1801, where his life became closely related to that of Ludwig van Beethoven (also a native of Bonn…). Ries studied piano with him, copied his scores and was the interpreter of several new works, notably the premiere of the Third Piano Concerto. Ries also wrote the first biography of Beethoven, an invaluable source of first-hand information. Ries' style inevitably is modeled on that of his master Beethoven, he was however strong enough to stand on his own. Ries also enjoyed a brilliant career as a virtuoso pianist. "Ries is rightly celebrated as one of the finest piano performers of the present day", a London reviewer declared. "His hand is powerful and his manner confident and often surprising.

All we know about the mysterious Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Meali–as his full name runs–is that he "flourished" at the court of Innsbruck between 1660 and 1669. And we probably wouldn't know even that, save for the fact that two sets of violin sonatas, designated Op. 3 and Op. 4, respectively, and dating from 1660, have somehow survived to the present day. Anyone familiar with the music of this period will realize just what a treasure these works potentially represent, for this was the moment of the emergence of the first great school of violin playing in Italy and Austria, typified by the dazzling music of Biber and his Salzburg contemporaries.

This remarkable program brings together three late works by Ludwig van Beethoven in which the Fugue plays an essential and pivotal part. Beethoven, renowned as a revolutionary, approached the fugue with both reverence and innovation. Especially in his later works he used the form to bridge the classical and romantic eras, transcending traditional boundaries, and infusing the fugue structure with dramatic intensity and emotional depth.