New Releases

Murray Perahia is a master interpreter of Beethoven. Here are his recordings of three Piano Sonatas that prompted the Penguin Guide to proclaim Perhaia “an authoritative and sensitive interpreter of Beethoven”.

Eugene Fodor was a pupil of Heifetz pupil who became a 1974 Tchaikovsky Competition prizewinner.

Erich Leinsdorf conducts the Tchaikovsky; Peter Maag conducts the Mendelssohn.

Byron Janis began his extraordinary career as Horowitz’s star pupil.

While Joachim Raff was in Liszt's employ, the older composer encouraged his younger colleague to devote his efforts to creating religous music literature. Raff was rather more interested in keyboard and vocal music in general and the theatre in particular. In July 1853, Raff composed his setting of the Te Deum, a rare consession to Liszt's encouragement on a commission from the Roman Catholic Church in Weimar.

In Roman Catholic liturgy, psalm 130 occurs in the Liber Usualis. Raff's setting of this text could be interpreted as his sole effort at the composition of a Requiem Mass

The first new Czech recording of Janacek’s Sinfonietta and symphonic poems in many years.

Janácek did not write a great quantity of symphonic works. Besides the Lachian Dances and an outline of the symphony Danube, they merely number the four compositions on this CD: three symphonic poems and the celebrated Sinfonietta. The symphonic poems, created within eight years between 1913 and 1920, reflect the turbulent political events and social tensions of the time, as well as Janácek’s keen interest in Czech and Russian literature. The Ballad of Blaník is based on a poem by Jaroslav Vrchlický, while The Fiddler’s Child was written to verses by Svatopluk Èech.

When reading Gogol’s novella Taras Bulba, Janacek was impressed by its hero, a Cossack chieftain, and referred to the author as the “prophet of the Slavs”. Sinfonietta, indisputably the most significant Janacek orchestral piece, was premiered in June 1926 in Prague by Václav Talich with the Czech Philharmonic. Tomáš Netopil, the winner of the Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition and a regular guest of leading orchestras (Berliner Philharmoniker, London Philharmonic, etc.) and prestigious opera stages worldwide, has materialised his singular vision of Janacek’s music in the recording made with the splendid Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra.