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The classical and romantic “Lied” (song) genre finds its origins in the settings of strophic poems by o.a. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. His Odes contain settings of (sometimes rather liberal) secular poems as well as sacred texts, in a combination of recitative and aria, with rich and imaginative accompaniment of the continuo.

The Odes form a fascinating overview of the various styles employed by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who during his long creative life developed from the pure Baroque style of his father Johann Sebastian to the “Sturm und Drang” era, with its pre-romantic outbursts of emotions.

New recording, liner notes and sung texts included.

For the first time complete on CD: substantial, large-scale concert arias, in which a solo instrument plays a counterpart against the voice, a kind of Sinfonia Concertante with an instrument and voice as soloists.

Mozart had great respect for the Johann Christian Bach (the youngest son of J.S.) and even in his youth copies and arranged works of him.The influence therefore is obvious.

Beautiful period-instrument performance by the Solamente Naturali, Didier Talpain, who already made more and highly acclaimed recordings for Brilliant: Hummel: Mathilde and C.P.E. Bach Hamburg Symphonies.

The origin of the dialogue between a solo voice and several obbligati instruments dates from the early baroque period (1600), and probably emerged from the hum drum setting of the market square where a singer would perform to the accompaniment of a few wind instruments. More refined relations of this musical form soon could be found in sacred and operatic works. This CD contains the complete obbligato arias by master and pupil – J.C Bach and Mozart.Therefore we can hear examples of the pre classical (1750-75) and the classical period (1775-1820). There is one undisputed masterpiece here - Mozart’s Ch’io mi scordi di te? K505 for soprano and piano.The aria is an expression of personal sadness. Nancy Storace, the first Susanna in Figaro, had left Mozart and returned to London. This is no operatic love affair gone wrong, but a real life one. Mozart himself is represented by the piano, Nancy by the stunning soprano role.

Mozart’s friend and teacher J.C. Bach has a world premiere recording on this CD. His aria Sventura in van mi lagno of 1773 is an impressive virtuoso work for high soprano with two obbligato horns. One the players J.C Bach wrote for was none other than Giovanni Punto, hence the extremely challenging nature of the horn part for a natural horn.

A true discovery for many western ears: Valentina Levko, star contralto of the Bolshoi!

“In a career of 50 years, I have rarely encountered such a voice, rounded, youthful, with an uncommon timbre and astonishing warmth” , thus said the legendary Sol Hurok, one of the most famous American Impresarios, who introduced Valentina Levko in the New York Met.

Although she frequently toured the world, her real home was Russia, where she reigned for more than 40 years, and 25 years as the star contralto of the Bolshoi Theatre.

This set features Levko in a wide variety of repertoire, ranging from moving Baroque arias by Bach and Handel, through the art songs of Schubert and Brahms, towards great opera scenes from Prince Igor, Ruslan & Ludmilla, Ivan Susanin, Queen of Spades, Rossini, Verdi, the songs of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and a superb collection of Russian folk songs.

An unrivalled breadth of recordings.

Valentina Levko was another in the glorious line of Russian 20th‐century contraltos who in some ways defined the sound of Russian opera for ears, both Eastern and Western, which were often discovering the rich tradition of Russian opera for the first time through recordings. Levko's name, however, unlike compatriots such as Elena Obratzova, never travelled as far or as well. Committed to her contract at the Bolshoi, she spurned several opportunities to make a name for herself in the West, with the lucrative recording contracts that would surely have followed.

And yet hers was, as this important set reveals, a voice and dramatic presence firmly in the mould of greats of the past such as Zara Dolukhanova. The set is carefully curated by themes, thereby revealing Levko's remarkable versatility. Arias from Bolshoi classics by Glinka, Rimsky‐Korsakov and Tchaikovsky sit alongside Western operas by Ponchielli, Verdi and others; her ability to scale her voice to an intimate environment results in warmly idiomatic recordings of art song by Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. The pleasure she took in the popular song of her own country also resulted in many recordings with the Ossipov Folk Orchestra, but her facility extended to folk songs of many languages, as the last CD reveals. Perhaps most remarkably of all, the first CD reveals a natural interpreter of Bach and Handel. An extensive booklet note discusses her life and career; for anyone interested in Russian voices, this set will be essential.

85 CD + CD Rom.

The only complete Beethoven Edition in the market.

Contains some important alterations as compared to the former Edition: Symphonies are played by the superb Staatskapelle Dresden/Herbert Blomstedt and Piano Sonatas by Alfred Brendel.

Big names: Arthur Grumiaux/Clara Haskil, Friedrich Gulda, Guarneri Quartet, Concertgebouw Orchestra/Haitink, Wiener Philharmoniker, Heinrich Schiff and many more.

Free CD-Rom contains bookletnotes, sung texts and biography in English, Italian and Spanish. Award winning set: Diapason d”Or in France.

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique of 1830 was his direct response to hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the first time. He claimed that the work ‘took up music from where Beethoven left it’. There can be no doubt that the revolutionary German composer had a huge influence upon the hot-headed young French composer, who already had a thorough knowledge of Beethoven’s Third, Fifth and Seventh Symphonies from a series of concerts given in Paris conducted by François Antoine Habeneck in 1828. However, Berlioz’s style owes a lot to Cherubini and Spontini as well. These two giants of the Paris Opera were admired by Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner, and the ‘modern’ music they composed captured the feverish and impassioned imagination of the young Berlioz.

At the time of composing the Symphonie fantastique, Berlioz was head over heels in love with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, having seen her in every production of Shakespeare. Berlioz placed himself, the artist, at the centre of the action in his programmatic symphony. Although the five movements or character pieces can be difficult to grasp if one approaches this work as one would a Beethoven symphony, once the events in the composer’s life can be laid over the musical goings-on, the work suddenly gels into a fantastical journey through the mind of a love-obsessed, opium-drugged artist. Strange visions haunt him on his journey, and all these are illustrated in extraordinary scoring and effects. The early cantata Herminie (1828) was written for the Prix de Rome contest, and is one of four that Berlioz composed for the competition. He came second, probably due to the ‘dissident’ way he concluded the work, not in a blaze of glory which the conservative judges (led by Berton, who disliked Spontini intensely) expected, but in a quiet, lengthy diminuendo ending pianissimo for cellos alone. Otherwise the work is efficient and well executed. Berlioz drew on this work when composing his symphony Romeo and Juliet, and one theme from it appears in the Symphonie fantastique.

The only serious Borodin Collection in the market.

Borodin, a member of the “Mighty Handful” (a group of Russian composers with the same creative goals), was a scientist by profession (chemistry), and composed in his spare time. No “amateurish” quality however can be traced in his (relatively small) oeuvre, which abounds in sophisticated, romantic harmonies and melodies, a firm feeling for structure, and a keen sense for “couleur locale”, without too overtly references to Russian folklore.

The set (near complete) presents the 3 symphonies, the complete chamber music, songs, the complete piano music and the famous opera Prince Igor.

Mostly Russian performers: the Moscow Trio, soprano Marianna Tarassova and the great Nikolai Ghiaurov in Prince Igor.

Alexander Porfireyevich Borodin was the illegitimate son of a prince and his mistress, educated at home in St Petersburg by his mother. Although music was an early passion, he discovered his avocation once he matriculated at the city's Medical Surgical Academy. A chemist he became, and a good one, though not without his extracurricular enthusiasms: the head of department once admonished him thus, mid lecture: 'Mr Borodin, busy yourself a little less with songs.

We have left to us a small, eccentrically proportioned body of work which acknowledges the learnt influence of Wagner and Chopin in their respective fields while nonetheless cultivating a personal and nationally inflected voice that was principally nurtured by his fellow member of 'The Mighty Handful', Mily Balakirev.

That voice was first cultivated in abstract orchestral works, which met with mixed acclaim, but the Second Symphony is one of the most popular Russian works of its kind; perhaps less well known these days than half a century ago, but full of Borodin's trademark, lyrical melodies, bending towards a wistfulness and melancholy that never threatens to break into outright hysteria unlike the work of his contemporary Tchaikovsky.

Songs and chamber music are barely known outside his home country, but they are worth discovering, as this unique edition will quickly reveal. And then there's his sprawling, unfinished masterpiece: Prince Igor, work of almost two decades, completed and partly orchestrated by RimskyKorsakov and Glazunov, the brainchild of the Mighty Handful's christener, Vladimir Stasov. This chronicle of a bloody but exuberant period in Russian history makes the most of Borodin's fascination with Russia's outposts, in music of 'oriental' flavour that survives in popular recognition through the bounding energy of the Polovtsian Dances.

Lenneke Ruiten is quickly establishing herself as one of the leading sopranos of her generation. She started her tuition with Maria Rondel en Meinard Kraak in The Hague, and subsequently took lessons with Elle Ameling, Robert Holl, Hans Hotter, Walter Berry and Robert Tear.

Her breakthrough came with winning the International Vocalist Competition of ¡¥s Hertogenbosch. She sang in all the important opera houses of Europe, and with conductors like Gardiner, Bruggen, Biondi, Koopman, Dantone.

In 2011 she made her Salzburger Festspiele debut in Die Frau ohne Schatten conducted by Christian Thielemann. This well chosen selection of Brahms songs shows her warm timbre, her wide range of colours and her complete understanding of the text.

The songs of Brahms span his entire, 60-year creative life, and contain many of his most personal utterances, as well as many of his most charming. From the jolly, openhearted, rustic charm of the Volkslieder to the cool refined beauty of the Sapphische Ode, Brahms’s lyrical gift is everywhere evident, according to each song only the weight of expression that is appropriate to its temper.

Countless babies have been rocked to sleep by the Wiegenlied, but they would quickly be woken again by the soul-searching despair of his last essays in the genre, the Four Serious Songs. Complete sets of this extensive part of Brahms’s output are hard to come by – there is but one other currently available – and this is the only one recorded in entirely modern, digital technology. Many of the individual volumes feature some of the best young singers of their generation, guided by the experienced accompanimental hand of Helmut Deutsch.