Johann Sebastian Bach

On the 100th anniversary of the foundation of his ‘jungle hospital’ at Lambarene, Rondeau Production dedicates a very special Bach recording to Albert Schweitzer.

Ullrich Böhme performs works by Johann Sebastian Back at the Silbermann organ at St Thomas, Strasbourg.

Bonus track features a historic recording of Schweitzer in 1936 performing Adagio in A minor from Bach’s C major Tocccata at the church of Sainte-Aurélie Strasbourg.

This set of Bach cantatas with Pieter Jan Leusink contains the 13 most famous cantatas including Wachte auf, ruft uns die Stimme and Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen. Leusink recorded all of Bachs 200 cantatas in the late nineties and this project became one of the most successful sets ever, selling in the millions!

This welcome set of highlights is presented in an attractive box with 5 cd’s.

This fine and keenly priced 5-CD box set surveys in depth Gould’s recordings from 1955 to 1961, beginning with an account of the Goldberg Variations that remains one of the most celebrated (and best-selling) recordings of the 20th century.

After La Valse à mille temps (FUG 577), Jan Michiels and Inge Spinette (the Yin-Yang Duo) return with a new two-piano programme for Fuga Libera. “This recording pays tribute to Bach, Bartók and Kurtág, and also to two legendary piano duos: Dittá and Béla Bartók, and Márta and György Kurtág. We don’t compose music ourselves; that’s why we have composed . . . a programme; with a “monument” by Bartók – one of the greatest pianists of his time – accompanied by Bach chorales in a Kurtágian landscape . . .” (Jan Michiels). A recording that highlights the strength of the union of two minds, which – like Dittá and Béla Bartók, Márta and György Kurtág, and . . . Inge Spinette and Jan Michiels – can phrase music with a rare degree of intensity and acuity.

George Malcolm performs the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, the Italian Concerto, Toccata in D major, 5th French Suite and the concertos for three and four harpsichords. He collaborates with Eileen Joyce, Thurston Dart, Denis Vaughan and the Pro Arte Orchestra conducted by Boris Ord. There are precious few recordings of Malcolm available in today’s market and this Heritage issue attempts to redress the balance.

The new organ in Cranleigh School Chapel was built by Mander Organs in 2011, and was designed as a solo instrument suitable for the performance of organ music of all schools, as well as for teaching and accompaniment.

It is remarkably versatile with a vast array of colours and sonorities obtainable from a mere thirty-one stops.

Here Cranleigh School organist, and virtuoso recitalist, Philip Scriven, demonstrates the organ in a wide-ranging programme of music from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries.

Moving from the harpsichord to the clavichord or the organ was probably easy enough for Johann Sebastian Bach. The source of the sound didn’t matter, because for the master of Leipzig, what counted were thought and intellect: the form, tonality and melodic contours ere more important than the instrument itself. And indeed, through this work of musical thought, Bach used different keyboards, prefiguring the instruments to come: the piano as a synthesis of the harpsichord, the organ and the clavichord.

Bach was aware of exchanges between the different European schools, which allowed musicians to copy, transcribe and adapt the work of contemporaries. Bach did this with his own scores, as well as those of his colleagues. Over the centuries, Busoni, Siloti, Kempff and Kurtàg amongst other have transformed the magic of the organ, orchestra and choruses of the cantatas to the piano.

And now, Ensemble Contraste presents its own vision of the Cantor: a school of freedom that never betrays his conception and allows the beauty, rigorous construction and triumphant polyphonies to shine through.

"La Dolce Volta, a new French classical music label whose outstanding production values include big, bold sound and cerebral liner notes laid out in cerebral, hip typography" Strings