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They were the two greatest pianists of their time, and friends (of a sort), yet in many ways they could hardly have been more different: Chopin the conservative revolutionary with his heart in the past; Liszt the arch-Romantic who championed the present and wrote for those as yet unborn (hurling his lance, to use his own term, ‘into the indefinite reaches of the future’). Where Chopin – except in his music – was introverted and ill at ease with crowds, Liszt was almost shockingly extroverted, and wowed the crowds in their thousands, frequently driving them near to hysteria. Chopin’s repertoire was small (though it included the complete Well-tempered Clavier of Bach), Liszt’s was apparently limitless, and richly nourished by his 700-plus arrangements of other people’s music. Yet the two men were mutually indebted. In this intriguing, insightful and illuminating recital, Emanuel Ax achieves a fascinating exercise in portraiture, celebrating one of the most ambivalent friendships in musical history (always closer on Liszt’s side than on Chopin’s). The great B minor Sonata of Chopin is permeated by his love and profound understanding of Bach, while the bulk of the Liszt arrangements reflect both his adoration of the then still little-known Schubert and the prodigal generosity and resourcefulness of Liszt’s creative mind.

Though Mendelssohn’s two string quintets sound as if they were written one right after the other, they were actually composed 20 years apart; and a good deal of revising and refining went into them. Overall, Mendelssohn’s approach reveals a very different sense of how music is constructed, certainly compared with the compositional aesthetics of Beethoven’s chamber music. The techniques used are nowhere to be found in Beethoven, least of all in his revered string quartets. Rather they are to be found in the composers who were being rediscovered as part of the growing historical awareness of Mendelssohn’s era. Mendelssohn’s interest in chamber music helped fuel his own compositions, and in a sense forced him to clarify his own understanding; thus in 1842 he wrote a famous letter stating his musical aesthetic and the importance of instrumental music:

‘So many words are uttered about music, and yet so little is said... People complain that music is so open to interpretation and that they don’t know what they are supposed to think. Words, on the other hand, they think, can be understood by everyone. For me it’s exactly the other way around… What music expresses for me… are not ideas that are too indefinite to put into words, but too definite…’ That is the aesthetic embodied in these delightful works; and it is captivatingly articulated here by the original-instrument ensemble L’Archibudelli.

Tchaikovsky wrote The Seasons in 1875–76 for the music magazine Nuvellist, which had commissioned a character piece for every month of the year, to be published in successive issues. The composer – than at the height of his powers and position – did not take the job terribly seriously, and reportedly told his assistant to remind him of the task on a given day every month. Although The Seasons has had admirers over the years, the set as a whole has never attained wide popularity. Nonetheless, two movements were immediately recognised as minor masterpieces: the graceful ‘Barcarolle’ (June) and the evocative, jingly ‘In the Troika’ (November). But there are other lovely sections, notably the perfumed ‘White Nights’ and ringing ‘Christmas’. Mily Balakirev’s ‘oriental fantasy’ Islamey is one of the most technically difficult works in the repertoire. Composed in 1869, the piece is believed to have been conceived as a sketch for a longer, orchestral work. In the decades around the turn of the century, it became a favourite with such leading virtuosi as Anton Rubinstein and, later, Josef Hofmann. As a score that demands the fanciest of finger work, as well as an extraordinary range of tone color and some intensity of conviction, Islamey suits Yefim Bronfman’s big-boned virtuosity to a T.

Although he first learnt the piano, little ‘Janne’ Sibelius showed far greater interest in the violin. Taught in his youth by a military bandmaster, he loved to take the instrument with him on summer trips and improvise in the open air. As he said, ‘The violin carried me away entirely; the wish to become a great violinist was to be my greatest desire, my proudest ambition.’ So Sibelius had no need to consult a professional violinist on technical matters – as Mendelssohn and Brahms had done – when he wrote his Violin Concerto in 1903. But problems with the choice of soloist meant the work had a difficult start in life. The première was not an unqualified success, and Sibelius decided to revise the concerto. The new version was introduced in 1905 in Berlin under Richard Strauss, with Karel Halíř as soloist. Nonetheless, the work was eventually dedicated to the young virtuoso Franz von Vecsey, who went on to perform it in Vienna. The present recording dates from 1992, and couples the concerto with the familiar tone poem En saga and the seldom heard Serenade Op.69 No.2 for violin and orchestra, the bouncing rhythm of its middle section reminiscent of the first theme of the Violin Concerto’s finale.

The string quartets present two distinct faces of Charles Ives. The first shows the young composer, fresh from his studies at Yale, using traditional forms and a clear if sometimes brusque tonal idiom to set themes based on hymn tunes he had been playing as a church organist since he was 14. The second, composed only a few years later, reveals the mature composer: no longer bound by his materials, he tests the metaphor of chamber music as conversation by writing in a contrapuntal, gestural, atonal language. Challenging,

angular and harsh, yet warm, tender and delicate, the quartets brim with youthful energy, yet are suffused with a serene spirituality: in this they embody Ives’s complexities and contradictions just as the songs and piano sonatas do. This reissue of the Juilliard String Quartet’s landmark 1966–67 recordings recalls a time, little more than a decade after Ives’s death, when his works were still astonishing and touching a broader audience than ever before. Their warmth, authority, and clarity established the sound of Ives’s quartets for a generation. Now, almost 40 years after their first release, these performances continue to invite, astonish and enlighten new audiences.

Arnold Schoenberg's Variations on a Recitative were first published in 1943 in an edition which gave very detailed performance instructions based on the 1928 Skinner organ in Princeton University Chapel. A restoration of this organ has made it possible to reconstruct the intentions of this edition, and this recording therefore brings the forensic practices of early music to the 1940s. In addition, there are two amazing pieces by Max Reger. The 'Benedictus' provides a perfect foil to Schoenberg's monumental work and it is followed by Reger's own monumental piece, the 'Introduction, Variations and Fugue'.

The ‘new’ transverse flute experienced an impressive advancement during Bach’s lifetime, giving rise to a more expressive and sophisticated form of flute sonata.

Verena Fischer and Léon Berben are two of the most outstanding artists in their field.

This release sees the continuation of Stenz’s Mahler cycle.

The seventh symphony was completed in only four weeks and is recorded here in a live recording from Cologne, June 2012.

After the success of The Fairies, Oehms Classics is proud to present The Ban on Love. The mini-series is being completed with Rienzi as part of the Frankfurt Opera edition.