Franz Peter Schubert

On these best-selling CDs many classical masterpieces are given an original interpretation for choir. The Accentus Chamber Choir, under the direction of Laurence Equilbey, is unanimously recognised as one of the world’s finest vocal ensembles.

Bonus (audio): Interview with Laurence Equilbey / Recording of Der Doppelgänger (Schubert)

CD + Bonus DVD

Whatever the style or period of the music she is playing, Anne Gastinel always brings out the emotion that underlies the score. Here, with Claire Désert at the keyboard, she gives an inspired performance of works by Schubert, including the Arpeggione Sonata and several lieder transcriptions.

Bonus DVD - Documentary film: Anne Gastinel’s portrait (26 min.)

52-Page Booklet

Nathan Berg is already well known to audiences from his many recordings in operas, cantatas, masses and symphonies working with conductors such as Rene Jacob, William Christie and Robert Shaw. He has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, Telarc, Philips and Erato. On Hyperion he has recently appeared with Marjana Lipovsek in Graham Johnson’s complete Schubert series, and with Sophie Daneman in Mendelssohn. For his debut solo disc on ATMA Nathan Berg has selected a programme covering more than a century of romantic German lieder, including some of the best-loved songs of the genre by Schumann, Brahms, Strauss and Schubert.

Since November 1999, the “Terezin Concerts” have been held on the morning of the last Sunday before Advent in the “Haus am Münchberg” in Merzig, Saarland. As well as the romantic and more well-known composers featured, these concerts always include music by composers who were persecuted and blacklisted by the Nazis. The centrepiece of this concert was a performance of the 3rd String Quartet by Haas, coupled on either side by Mozart’s quartet (K 159) and the famous Rosamunde Quartet D 804 op. 29 by Franz Schubert.

This first volume in the series “Piano Rarities” is guaranteed to thrill questing music lovers. On this CD Cyprien Katsaris visits the vast realm of piano transcriptions and adaptations. Here, you will find well-known and well-loved works like the Lieder of Schumann, Schubert, Wagner and Richard Strauss, Mahler's Fifth Symphony, the Waltz from Coppélia and Rachmaninov's Vocalise : in solo piano interpretation, they lose nothing of the emotional and poetic impact of their originals. A tireless explorer, Cyprien Katsaris challenges our curiosity and unveils true masterpieces, including works by Latin-American and Spanish composers like Tárrega, Barrios Mangoré and Mompou. Who could resist the magnificent transcription of the Prelude and Allegro in the Style of Pugnani by Kreisler which opens the programme, or the sparkling Valse by Reinhold Glière which brings it to its close? Here, through his choices and his interpretations, Cyprien Katsaris emerges once more as a thrilling man of music.

The appeal of this album owes much to the transcriptions of Professor Karol A. Penson, an eminent practising scientist whose contribution to the enrichment of the art and the repertoire of the piano is extraordinary.

John Ardoin writes in his note: "[In 1950] Furtwängler made his only studio version of the Eighth, and its sound is surprisingly harsh (with the Vienna strings more glassy than glossy), and the performance unexpectedly exaggerated in many places. Luckily, this EMI recording is not our principal means of measuring Furtwängler and the Eighth. Offsetting it is the more fluid and spontaneous live performance issued by DG from a live concert in Berlin in 1952. All the qualities that Furtwängler seems to have been reaching for in the score come to fruition here. From the opening, with its freedom of phrase, there is a feeling of being present at the birth of an original and poetic entity. The famous G major melody in particular has a unique, living sway to it, and not once does Furtwängler's imagination flag. During the course of this individual performance, one hears every detail in the score in miraculous balance." As to the major work on this CD, he writes, "Despite the magisterial results [Furtwängler] often achieves, no one performance stands out as ideal, though oddly enough his single studio performance (DG) comes closest to tying up all the work's loose ends and creating a consistently expressive whole."

Both performances have been re-processed with state-of-the-art digital technology.