Johann Sebastian Bach

Hansgeorg Schmeiser is a Professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. He makes regular guest appearances with the Vienna Philharmonic and for many years has also been a member of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra as well giving masterclasses throughout the world.

Ingomar Rainer is a harpsichordist, organist, ensemble leader and conductor. He is Professor of Historical Performance Practice at the University of Music in Vienna. His lectures, guest courses and workshops have taken him to places such as Italy and Japan. As a soloist, chamber musician, ensemble leader and accompanist to singers he has given concerts worldwide.

Othmar Müller was born in 1963 in Vienna and studied in Vienna and the USA. As cellist with the Artis Quartet, which he co-founded in 1980, he has performed worldwide in the largest music venues and in the most prominent music festivals. Othmar Müller is Visiting Professor for Chamber Music at the Graz Conservatoire.

These benchmarks in Menuhin’s repertoire are presented on this CD in exemplary interpretations. His take on Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto is structurally clear and striking in its declamation. In Mozart’s D major Concerto he accentuates the tension between formal classicity and expressional subjectivity. Bach’s Chaconne is presented not as a deduction from a theme but as a circling approach towards the fundamental idea.

The recordings are further enhanced by great musical concurrence with the conductors: Ferenc Fricsay, whom Menuhin admired greatly as an artist and as a person, and Karl Böhm, whose ideals in Mozart interpretation he shared.

This CD offers an insight into Yehudi Menuhin’s extensive repertoire and his ideals in musical interpretation.

Since winning the Arthur Rubinstein Competition and the Sidney Piano Competition, Alexander Korsantia’s career has taken him to many of the world’s major concert halls, collaborating with renowned conductors such as Valery Gergiev, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Christoph Eschenbach, Yuri Bashmet and Paavo Jarvi and orchestras as the Chicago Symphony, the Kirov, Israel Philharmonic and Oslo Philharmonic. He has also given many recitals with renowned violinist Vadim Repin. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, Korsantia has lived in the United States since 1992. He now resides in Boston where he is Professor of Piano at the New England Conservatory. Enjoying great popularity in his country of birth, he performed at the inauguration of Georgian President Saakashvili in 2004.

Korsantia’s live recordings, on two discs, present an attractive programme carefully chosen from recitals he has given since 1995 in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Toulouse, Boston and New York. The first CD features arrangements of Bach by Busoni, Egon Petri and Myra Hess’s famous version of the chorale Jesu, Joy of Men's Desiring, two Piano Sonatas by Haydn and Mozart’s Sonata in C major, KV330 and 20th century Russian and Georgian music. Korsantia has rearranged Gwido Agosti’s magnificent 1934 piano transcription of the last three pieces from The Firebird Suite to reflect more of Stravinsky's original orchestral sound. Stravinsky’s Tango is followed by Giya Kancheli’s Instead of Tango originally written in 1996 for violin, piano, bandoneon and double bass. Kancheli’s own piano arrangement is dedicated to three Georgian pianists, one of them Alexander Korsantia. The second disc is devoted to Sergei Prokofiev: his Pastoral Sonatina and Vision Fugitive, No 11, Op 22 bookend the Piano Sonata No 7 in B flat major and the substantial Piano Sonata No 8.

Stradivarius' 1991 studio and live digital recordings of Sviatoslav Richter are now brought together for a new definitive mid-price luxurious digipak box. Sviatoslav Richter is widely regarded as one of the finest pianists of the 20th century.With a career that began in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, listeners in the West had their first opportunity to hear him through recordings made in the 1950s, and his reputation among classical fans grew quickly. Richter's approach to music is best illustrated by the enormous range of his repertoire. In recital and on recordings he played everything from Bach to Stravinsky to George Gershwin as well as championing unknown or unpopular works he thought deserved the public's attention. Richter's performances of Bach are rare and exquisite jewels indeed. He possessed exactly the right degree of intellectual command and technical control to liberate the ghost from the machine and the results are never less than satisfying.The playing is patrician and often miraculous, but the visceral element of showmanship, is almost entirely absent. Instead, there is a tangible sense of communion that seems particularly appropriate for Bach. Richter does not make the mistake of attempting to turn his concert grand into a harpsichord, instead he subtlety uses all the resources at his disposal to delineate and clarify the texture.The possession of one of the most glorious sounds in pianistic history certainly helps too.

The first recording of this new ensemble, for Alpha, under the direction of Raphaël Pichon.Their youthful enthusiasm, coupled with surprising maturity, has led to an interpretation of two of JS Bach's short masses.The integrity and liveliness of Pygmalion's interpretations make them a major player in the Baroque musical landscape.The four Missa Brevis of Johann Sebastian Bach will be completed by a second disc in November 2009.

For many, the opening of JS Bach's Christmas Oratorio (Weihnachtsoratorium) is one of the quintessential signs of the arrival of Christmas. Profil are delighted to present a rare recording of the legendary work performed by one of the most well-known tenors of all time, Fritz Wunderlich.

Wunderlich was a great German tenor who enjoyed a fruitful career until his life was sadly cut short at the age of 35. Recorded in Stuttgart, this recording has never been released before and is a must have for all collectors.

In recent years York Bowen, the composer, has enjoyed a spectacular revival, but until now his talents as pianist (barring a late recording of his own music for Lyrita) have not been heard since the days of 78s. At the height of his success, in the first decades of the 20th century, Bowen was as much known as pianist as composer and frequently performed at the Proms amongst other things. His first recording, a very rare disc on the Marathon label, was released in 1915, but the bulk of his work was done for Vocalion; after they went bankrupt in 1927 he appears to have made no further 78s. Pride of place must go to Bowen’s Beethoven 4th Piano Concerto. This was the very first recording of the work and its neglect has been due to the fact that it was one of the last recordings to be made under the old acoustic process which was superseded the year the work was issued. Bowen’s pianism is extremely fluent and he plays his own cadenzas! Through all the featured works we hear a pianist who plays in the ‘grand manner’ and that, and his preference for romantic repertoire, reveal him as somewhat atypical of the English pianist of his time. Perhaps his nickname ‘the English Rachmaninov’ did indeed hit the nail on the head.

Michelangeli’s first recordings were made for HMV in Milan in 1939, following his win at the Geneva International Piano Competition.

In Granados’s Andaluza Michelangeli uses a soulful singing tone to great advantage, while his phenomenal virtuoso technique can be heard in Marescotti’s Fantasque, one of the test pieces for the Geneva Competition. These and the 1948 recordings of Bach, Galuppi and Brahms demonstrate that as a young man Michelangeli was already a consummate artist.

As a critic wrote about the recording of the Brahms Paganini Variations: “What a pianist! Technically, the playing is astonishing: interpretatively, here is a very great musician…altogether this is the most exciting piano performance and recording I have heard for many a long day.”

“Apollonian stance and awe-inspiring control….. The dynamic range reinforces the Lisztian patina of Michelangeli's conception….[a] ravishing, multi-layered sound world.” Classics Today