LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Beethoven: Complete String Quartets Vol2. "Revelations" op.18 no.2 / op.59 nos. 2 & 3 / opp. 74 & 132 Cuarteto Casals [ Harmonia Mundi / 3 CD Box Set - released 15/Mar/2019 ] "their style, with its wide dynamic extremes, fierce rhythms and intense expressiveness, seems to me profoundly Beethovenian." Sunday Times |
J. S. BACH
Bach: The Art of Fugue Cuarteto Casals [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 9/Jun/2023 ] Notated on four staves, as though intended for some unspecified set of instruments (or even voices? or keyboard?), these thirteen erudite contrapuncti, four canons, and an unfinished triple fugue-incorporating the letters of Bach's name-are often... |
BARTOK / LIGETI / KURTAG
Metamorphosis: Bartok / Kurtag / Ligeti Cuarteto Casals [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 20/Jul/2010 ] It is sometimes said that the essence of 'classical' music lies in the principle of variation; but when the idea of incessant transformation of the musical material irrigates scores like these quartets by three eminent Hungarian composers of the 20th... |
W. A. MOZART
Mozart: String Quartets Cuarteto Casals [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 3/Sep/2021 ] "If you like your Mozart taut and urgent, with no concessions to Mozartian 'charm', you should find these brilliantly executed performances as riveting as I do." Gramophone |
SCHUBERT
String Quartets Nos. 10 and 15 Cuarteto Casals [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 10/Aug/2012 ] these musicians shape the lines to reflect both poetry and youthful spirit. The Casals rightly scale down their their steely resolve that paid dividends in D887 but prefer detachment to ardour, particularly in the slow movement. |
JOSEF HAYDN
String Quartets Op 33 Nos 1 - 6 Cuarteto Casals [ Harmonia Mundi Gold / 2 CD - released 10/Jul/2014 ] "Astonishingly insightful playing, musically captivating and technically blemishless. Each and every phrase rings so completely true that one can't imagine the music being played any other way." (BBC Music Five Stars) |
ENRIQUE GRANADOS / JOAQUIN TURINA
Granados & Turina: Piano Quintets Cuarteto Quiroga & Javier Perianes (piano) [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 15/Aug/2016 ] "This delightful work, flecked with splendid effects and rich moods, can be heard to excellent advantage in a performance that never goes overboard expressively. It never needs to … This is, I think, a unique coupling. I enjoyed the performances very |
ANONYMOUS
"Indiscretions" The Curious Bards [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 1/Sep/2023 ] "The musicians' description of this music as 'new treasures waiting to be unearthed' is indeed warranted...all excellently played, generating the convivial intimacy of performance in a lost age." BBC Music |
RAMEAU / CLERAMBAULT
Orphee Cyril Auvity (tenor) / Pyriade [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 27/Apr/2008 ] Cyril Auvity (tenor) |
W.A. MOZART
Die Zauberflote [The Magic Flute] (Complete opera) Daniel Behle, Marcos Fink, Maris Peterson, Sunhae Im / RIAS-Kammerchor / Freiburger Barockorchester, Rene Jacobs [ Harmonia Mundi / 3 CD Box Set - released 20/Sep/2010 ] "I suspect I shall reach for this new recording as often as any, for its bubbling, crackling theatricality and an eager, yet unforced, sense of fun." Gramophone Award Finalist 2011 - Opera |
W. A. MOZART
Die Zauberflote [The Magic Flute] (highlights) [with FREE Harmonia Mundi catalogue] Daniel Behle, Marcos Fink, Maris Petersen, Sunhae Im / RIAS-Kammerchor / Freiburger Barockorchester, Rene Jacobs [ Harmonia Mundi / CD/Book - released 15/Jan/2015 ] Now reissued with FREE Harmonia Mundi catalogue |
KAIJA SAARIAHO
Saariaho: L'Amour de loin (complete opera) Daniel Belcher, Ekaterina Lekhina, Marie-Ange Todorovitch / Rundfunkchor Berlin & Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Kent Nagano [ Harmonia Mundi SACD / 2 Hybrid SACD - released 20/Aug/2009 ] "Saariaho has declared herself uninterested in the concept of courtly love and prefers to see her work as a more modern, wider meditation on love." Gramophone Awards 2010 Finalist - Opera |
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Brahms: Ein deutsches Requiem Daniel Harding, Matthias Goerne, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 6/Sep/2019 ] Brahms's Requiem, completed in 1868, draws on the legacy of his forerunners, Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach. In setting texts from the German Bible, it deliberately departs from the models of the Catholic liturgy and imposes a sorrowing... |
CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS
Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 'Organ Symphony' / Piano Concerto No. 4 Daniel Roth (organ), Jean-François Heisser (piano) / Les Siècles, François-Xavier Roth [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 19/Nov/2021 ] Camille Saint-Saëns, virtuoso pianist, organist and conductor, was also a great admirer of Liszt. His Symphony no.3, which adds both his chosen keyboard instruments to the orchestra, and his Piano Concerto no.4 utilise the codes of the old master,... |
Daniel Rpo/Gatti
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No 5 [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 9/Feb/2004 ] |
LUDWIG van BEETHOVEN
Beethoven: Violin Sonatas & Piano Trios Daniel Sepec (violin) & Andreas Staier (fortepiano) [ Harmonia Mundi Gold / 2 CD - released 30/Jun/2014 ] "Underpinned by the musicianship of Andreas Staier, these recordings are real classics. Sepec is using Beethoven's own violin." (BBC Music) |
LUDWIG van BEETHOVEN
Beethoven: Sonatas for piano and violin Op.23 & Op.30 no.2 Daniel Sepec (violin) Andreas Staier (piano) [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 1/Sep/2006 ] "Fortunately, the players don't seem in the least bit fazed by the accumulated layers of musical history, and they give admirably dramatic performances, with all the urgency and passion Beethoven's two minor-key violin sonatas demand." *****... |
SCHUMANN
Violin Sonatas / Gesang der Fruhe Daniel Sepec (violin) / Andreas Staier (piano) [ Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 18/Aug/2010 ] After his earlier Hommage à Bach album, played on the same 1837 Érard piano he uses here, Andreas Staier is joined by Daniel Sepec in a programme of considerably later works by Schumann. However, these two violin sonatas and the Gesänge der Frühe of... |
Daniela Barcellona
Scarlatti: Opera Arias [ Deutsche Harmonia Mundi / CD - released 2/May/2011 ] |
Danse Par Le Disque 16
Musica A La Carta [ Harmonia Mundi / CD ] |