During the first few years of the 17th century, John Dowland received a pavane composed by his patron Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse, in honour of ‘the English Orpheus’. A century later a collection of songs by Henry Purcell was published posthumously with the title Orpheus Britannicus. And although more than three centuries have passed since then, the mythical comparison still rings true. To quote Emma Kirkby’s liner notes for the present disc, these giants in the history of English song ‘share the quality of arresting any listener with a directness and grace that takes our breath away still today, aligning us with the men, animals, plants and stones that were said to weep or dance, or both, when Orpheus sang to his instrument.’ Together with lutenist Jakob Lindberg, Emma Kirkby has devised a programme which takes in a wide spectrum of emotions: from the pastoral joyfulness of 'By a fountain' and that distillate of melancholy which is 'In darkness let me dwell', we are led through the desperation and drama of 'Bess of Bedlam' to the conviction, expressed in 'Music for a while', that music has the power to vanquish even death. Interspersing the songs are lute solos, including Dowland’s immortal Lachrimae.

Released as a boxed set of six discs for the price of two, Gothenburg Symphony's cycle of Tchaikovsky symphonies, conducted by Neeme Järvi, may be described as resolutely unsentimental, with interpretations aiming to rid these popular scores of the melodramatic excesses that have become part of a century-long performance tradition. Symphony No.1 is 'superb...liberated from all the slag of sugary romanticism' (ClassicsToday) while Symphony No.2 ‘Little Russian’ was hailed in Gramophone as ‘an outstanding performance … beautifully played and paced and immaculately recorded’. Besides the six numbered symphonies, this ample selection (more than 7 hours' playing time) includes favourites such as Francesca da Rimini, Capriccio italien and the Serenade for Strings as well as rarities, including extracts from the opera The Voyevoda and the incidental music to Dmitri the Pretender and Vassily Shuisky.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s third recording as a concerto soloist for Chandos follows this year’s highly acclaimed accounts of the piano concertos by Bartók (CHAN10610) and Ravel (CHSA5084). As heard in his award-winning complete Debussy series, Bavouzet is a true master of his native French repertoire. Although no longer a household name, Pierné was in his day a highly respected and prolific composer and conductor, as well as a key figure in the French musical establishment. He received the French Légion d’Honneur in 1900, and in 1910 famously conducted the premiere of Stravinsky’s L’Oiseau de feu. A pupil of Franck and Massenet, he composed music with tremendous fluency and all his works were written with a characteristically light, French touch. His style combines the essence of his two key teachers: a mixture of the seriousness of Franck and the sensuality of Massenet yielding a string of very attractive and tuneful orchestral pieces.

This unique program of intermezzi comprises orchestral mood-painting interludes found in the great Italian operatic repertoire of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, usually connecting acts in the opera. The music is powerfully atmospheric, designed not only to create the right mood for the ensuing action of the opera, but also to provide some respite from the drama itself. The exception is Ponchielli’s famous ballet ‘Dance of the Hours’ from La gioconda, which, like most ballets found in operas, represents a break from the drama by allowing the audience to enjoy an entertaining dance sequence whilst, in this case, listening to some of the catchiest music in all opera. Indeed, this scintillating ballet was immortalised in Walt Disney’s Fantasia and has long been one of the classics of the repertoire. The rest of the items on this CD range from the well-known and haunting Prelude to Act III of La traviata to the sparkling items from Wolf-Ferrari’s I gioielli della Madonna (The Jewels of the Madonna) and I quattro rusteghi. The great verismo composers Leoncavallo, Puccini, Giordano, and Cilea composed some richly romantic intermezzi, and the rarely heard pieces by Catalani are no less enjoyable. Italian maestro Gianandrea Noseda is in his element in this native repertoire.

The late seventeenth century was a period of great change in English music. This was a time when the influences of Italian music were ever-increasing, brought to England by composers such as Draghi, Haym, and Matteis, and by their German contemporaries Pepusch and Handel. In this new release Chandos explores how the English composers Purcell, Weldon, and Croft responded to Italian music and incorporated the style into their own works. The piece by Purcell, Tell me, some pitying angel (or ‘The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation’), written in the style of an Italian cantata, perfectly illustrates his mastery of the florid, dramatic Italian style. This distinctive blend of English and Italian influences also became evident in the works of many European composers in England, as they adopted the native English style and form. In fact, the English legacy can be heard in the music of Draghi, Courteville, Matteis, Handel, Pepusch, and Haym, almost as clearly as in the music of their English contemporaries. The works on this release are performed by Peter Holman’s early music group The Parley of Instruments, one of today's leading exponents of baroque music.

The charm and full-blooded pleasure of Leopold Stokowski’s transcriptions remains undiminished today, some three decades after the dynamic conductor’s death. The Stokowski Sound was well suited to the fledgling possibilities offered with the development of stereo recording of the maestro’s day, a challenge which Glossa’s engineer Manuel Mohino has embraced as much as the Brussels Philharmonic. Leading the way in these opulent transcriptions of Bach, Purcell and Palestrina is conductor Richard Egarr, perhaps better known for his work with the unadorned originals (he is the Music Director of the Academy of Ancient Music, after all), but in reality equally at home in the Stokowski style. Of the transcription of 'Dido's Lament' Egarr says, 'It is still Purcell, even in Stokowski's fur coat'.

‘Mozart reincarnated!’ Fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout, who tours with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in 2011, continues his multi-disc survey of Mozart’s music for solo keyboard. Volume 2 features an instrument by Paul McNulty, modeled on a Viennese original by Anton Walter & Sohn (c.1802). ‘Bezuidenhout is a prince of the fortepiano, making it sing in melodic phrases as no other practitioner of this incredible instrument has done in my experience’ –The Times.

This resolutely elegiac disc of chamber music offers an opportunity to discover the dark side of two composers who are not often associated. Smetana’s primary purpose was to give utterance to a cry of pain at his daughter’s death through the appropriate medium of the piano trio. In the Liszt pieces, elegies and funeral gondolas remind us of the deeply human and tormented nature of a composer haunted by death and who, more than any other, was capable of expressing its icy smile. The Trio Wanderer realises all this in deeply moving performances.

Liszt was born 200 years ago in 1811, and to begin his bicentenary birthday celebration, Hyperion presents a disc of works that have been recorded, and indeed heard here, for the first time. Australian pianist Leslie Howard has long been acknowledged as the foremost Liszt scholar and performer in the world today, and this disc is a perfect example of his tireless work on behalf of the composer. Coming soon: Leslie Howard's complete Liszt in a mammoth 99-CD boxed set!

The Brabant Ensemble under their director Stephen Rice presents a new disc of 16th-century polyphony,  featuring the extraordinary compositional gifts of Clemens non Papa, put to the service of the Requiem Mass and a selection of motets on a penitential theme. Within this general aspect of solemnity can be found countless shades of expression and emotion. Despite the popularity of the composer’s music during his lifetime, Clemens is now a somewhat marginal figure and many of these motets have never been recorded before. Yet, listening to this music today, one is immediately enthralled by its opulence and harmonic lushness, very different from the occasionally sterile polyphony of some of the composer’s contemporaries. The Brabant Ensemble’s fresh, uncluttered and sincere performances truly bring this glorious music to life.

A stunning 2-CD collection of Russian music from Mikhail Pletnev and the Russian National Orchestra that includes a mix of familiar and lesser-known works. Liadov’s exquisite miniature tone poems and Glinka’s effervescent overture to Ruslan and Ludmila rub shoulders with a rare Tchaikovsky overture and two preludes by Tcherepnin. All the composers here had a deep knowledge and respect for the traditional music of Mother Russia, and every work on these discs embraces the unmistakable sound of Russia, irrespective of whether it was composed under the Tsarist or Soviet regime. ‘Pletnev is at his most successful with the more reflective introduction to Semyon Kotko, and with the beautiful evocation of dawn over the Moscow River that opens Khovanshchina.’ -Gramophone, December 1994