Johann Sebastian Bach

After several years of research Vittorio Ghielmi together with his viol consort Il Suonar Parlante and Lorenzo Ghielmi, acknowledged Bach interpreter and expert, present a new reading of Bach's masterpiece.The latest musicological studies and Lorenzo Ghielmi' s own research put an end to the Romantic myth of the unfinished opus, reveal a 'solution' of Contrapunctus 14 and present Bach's Art of Fugue in a stirring interpretation, using a Silbermann piano, the only pianoforte Bach used during his lifetime. Ghielmi and Ghielmi present an artistic approach which convincingly unites baroque and contemporary interpretation.

Recorded at Abbey Road Studios in 1956 and 1958, remastered at Abbey Road Studios in 2009 from the original EMI/HMV tapes.

Featuring many tracks never heard before on CD.

Most tracks are issued here in stereo for the first time.

Includes unpublished versions of Chopin Ballade No. 3 & Gershwin Preludes.

All tracks are issued here on CD for the first time in stereo.

Includes, for the first time on CD, Litolff's 'Scherzo' with BBC SO / Sargent.

A significant historical classical piano release to compliment the limited Cherkassky discography.

Substantial two hours worth of music.

"A performance of the greatest virtuosity and elegance" Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 Gramophone, Nov 1957 (original mono version issue)

"[Beethoven, Poulenc, Chasins]…Cherkassky invests every one with enormous panache and wit. These are great performances that have more character in a single bar than the average modernday Wunderkind could find in a whole work…" Classical Source - mono version re-issue

The production presents the complete RIAS recordings with Wilhelm Furtwängler from 1947 to 1954 and is accompanied by a complimentary CD with previously unreleased live recordings of Furtwängler speaking about music interpretation. The majority of the concerts given by Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic between 1947 and 1954 were recorded by the RIAS Berlin; all of these recordings are documented in this boxed set. The original tapes from the RIAS archives have been made available for the first time for this edition so these CDs also offer unsurpassed technical quality. Furthermore, some of the recordings are presented for the very first time, such as the Fortner Violin Concerto with Gerhard Taschner. These RIAS recordings are documents of historical value: they contain a major part of Furtwängler's late oeuvre as a conductor, which was characterised by a high level of focus in different respects. Focus on repertoire which has at its core the symphonic works of Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner and is supplemented by works by Bach and Handel and also by topical composers of the time, including Hindemith, Blacher and Fortner: artists who were counted amongst the members of "moderate modernism" and who were not perceived to have been tainted by the cultural politics of the National Socialists. Focus was also a guiding principle in Furtwängler's concert programmes which always feature a particular idea. His interpretations also demonstrate extremely high levels of focus: concentration and focus for him meant a contemporary decoding, a re-creation, which would express the fundamental content of a work. A number of works - the Third, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven as well as Johannes Brahms' Third Symphony - are included in two interpretations.They reveal how Furtwängler was able to accentuate different aspects of a work whilst maintaining the same, clear basic conception - and how the actual interpretation depended on the context of the particular programme. The production is part of our series 'Legendary Recordings' and bears the sticker '1st Master Release'.This term stands for the excellent quality of archival productions at audite. All historical publications at audite are based, without exception, on original tapes from broadcasting archives. In general these are the original analogue tapes, which attain an astonishingly high quality, even measured by today's standards, with their tape speed of up to 76 cm/sec.The remastering - professionally competent and sensitively applied - also uncovers previously hidden details of the interpretations.Thus, a sound of superior quality results. CD publications based on private recordings from broadcasts or old shellac records cannot be compared with these.

Originally recorded for Denon in 1979 and available on CD for the first time in 15 years. Highly acclaimed performances and the only available Schiff recordings of the Bach Concerti.

“This record had me completely gripped.” Gramophone Magazine

Cassandra Luckhardt is an award winning Viola da Gamba player and Bernardini is also well known as a baroque oboe specialist. The disc includes a world premiere recording of BWV 660a in its presumed original instrumentation.

The new Mander East organ at St Giles Cripplegate was built in 2008.

Here international virtuoso, Thomas Trotter (described by BBC Music Magazine as ‘one of the greatest living organists’), who gave the opening recital on the new organ in April 2008, demonstrates the range of this marvellous new instrument and the astonishing wealth of colour that can be obtained from its mere 15 stops in a programme of music from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries.

‘…Panache to burn…’ BBC Music

‘Trotter’s choice of stops is well nigh perfect, his dexterity formidable’ Andrew Macgregor, BBC Radio 3 CD review

Virgin Classics presents the very first concept album released by Hughes de Courson “Lambarena, Bach to Africa” produced in 1993. After having been distributed by Sony, this album is now under exclusive licence to Virgin Classics and completes the whole Hughes de Courson’s discography.

Born as an hommage to Albert Schweitzer, the project Lambarena - Bach to Africa was the idea of Mariella Berthéas and the foundation “L’espace Afrique”, organized to make this recording possible. Uniting the two integral elements which formed Schweitzer’s “sound world” - the music of Bach and the native melodies and rhythms of his adopted homeland Gabon - Lambarena is the work of two uniquely talented musicians: Hughes de Courson, French composer and producer, who pieced together the classical structure of Lambarena, and Pierre Akendengué, author, philosopher and guitarist from Gabon with more than 12 recordings to his credit.

De Courson and Akendengué began work on Lambarena by linking the traditional harmonies of Bach to various Gabonese ethnic harmonies (there are at least 42 different ethnic backgrounds in a country of one million inhabitants), creating a fascinating fabric of sound woven together from Gabonese chant voices and the classical melodies of Bach, permeated throughout by the underlying rhythms of the African forest.

Following months of preparation, the 10 musical ensembles from Gabon chosen by Pierre Akendengué to participate in Lambarena travelled to Paris to join with Western classical musicians as well as Argentinean tango and Jazz musicians Osvaldo Calo and Tomas Gubitsch, and percussionists Sami Ateba and Nana Vasconcelos for nearly 100 days in the recording studio.

The result of this extraordinary cross-cultural collaboration is Lambarena.

Albert Schweitzer was born on 14 January 1875 in the Upper Alsace region of Germany (now France), the son of a Lutheran pastor. He studied philosophy and theology at Strasbourg, gaining his doctorate in 1899.

During his youth, Schweitzer also developed impressive musical skills, studying the organ with the noted musician Charles-Marie Widor in Paris.

Widor recognized his pupil’s talents as a gifted interpreter of the works of J. S. Bach and encouraged him to undertake a study of the composer’s life and work. The result was the book J. S. Bach “le musicien-poète”, published in 1905, in which Schweitzer viewed Bach as a religious mystic and compared the expressive power of his music to those of the cosmic forces of the natural world.

It was also in 1905 that Schweitzer decided to dedicate his life to service as a mission doctor, gaining his medical degree in 1913. He and his wife, Hélène Bresslau, a trained nurse, then set out for French Equatorial Africa, settling on the banks of the Ogooué (Ogowe) River in Lambaréné in the province of Gabon, where Schweitzer set up a hospital from his own income and savings.

After brief internship as an enemy alien (German) in Gabon and later in France during world War 1, Schweitzer returned to Lambaréné in 1924 to rebuild the hospital, relocating it some two miles up the Ogooué river and adding a leper colony. By 1963 - two years before Schweitzer’s death - the hospital was serving some 350 patients with a staff of 36 doctors, nurses and workers.

Throughout his lifetime, Schweitzer continued his active pursuit of music, giving lectures and organ recitals throughout Europe and in Africa, making recordings, and continuing his project of editing Bach’s works with he had begun with Widor in 1911. As he himself once commented jokingly, “Music is a hereditary disease that I have inevitably acquired and can do nothing about.”

Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 for his efforts in behalf of “the Brotherhood of Nations”. He died on 4 September 1965 in Lambaréné.

“In exultation, rule rediscovers rhythm. In exultation, rhythm rediscovers rule.” In Lambaréné, Albert Schweitzer, through music brought about the meeting of Europe and Africa

Ensemble Sonnerie, under the direction of Monica Huggett, returns to AVIE Records with a new musical view on the Orchestral Suites by J.S.Bach, The recording includes a reconstruction of the ever-popular Second Suite by the leading oboist in the period instrument field, Gonzalo X. Ruiz. A Premiere Recording.