"Henryk Szeryng's robust and resonant violin tone at times takes on a dark quality more like a viola–quite different from the bright sound of Heifetz. The result is a certain weighty seriousness to Szeryng's playing, even in the dancing finales of both works. Of the two performances, the Khachaturian is the more memorable, as Szeryng revels in the music's ethnic coloring and exotic sensuality–sounding very much the folk fiddler in the first-movement cadenza, and displaying stunning rhythmic and tonal acuity throughout.

Following her debut release of Baroque works by Vivaldi and Handel earlier this year, Grace Davidson returns to Signum with an intimate album of Dowland’s first book of lute songs, accompanied by David Miller. Blending melancholy with wit in his writing for both lute and voice, John Dowland’s songs have continued to enchant audiences and singers for nearly 400 years. The ‘First Booke’ includes some of Dowland’s less well-known works, and was recorded in the sensitive acoustic of Ascot Priory in Berkshire, UK. “Grace Davidson has one of the most beautiful and pure soprano voices on earth.” (Eric Whitacre, composer) “Grace Davidson sings with gorgeous purity and warmth and hits some extraordinarily ethereal high notes.” (Classic FM)

This album features cello concertos by Witold Lutosławski and Henri Dutilleux performed by the multiple prize-winning German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, conducted by Thomas Søndergård. These works, premiered in 1970, are two of the biggest gems of the twentieth century, the golden age of the cello. While equally virtuosic and engaging, both pieces showcase different aspects of the musical landscape of the late twentieth century.

On this album, the Trondheim Sinfonietta, founded in 1998, has gathered four works from the three decades encompassing the ensemble’s existence. All four seem to be haunted by an even deeper past: Bent Sørensen’s Minnelieder is the composer’s third version of a work originally sparked-off by a book about the 14th century, while Toshio Hosokawa’s Drawing, from a decade later, was inspired by the very start of life.

Sensing a special relationship between Arvo Pärt and J.S. Bach, Jörgen van Rijen on his first recording for BIS Records brings together music by the two composers. It’s a relationship which has several aspects. First, Pärt has readily admitted to his love for the work of Bach, referring to it in titles such as Collage über BACH, but also by using the motif BACH (B flat-A-C-B). In addition, both composers share a fascination for religion, while at the same time composing music that is almost mathematically constructed, possessing an underlying order that forms the basis of its timelessness. In collaboration with the composer, van Rijen has adapted four works by Pärt for the trombone, including the celebrated piece Fratres, which exists in numerous versions, as well as the two religiously themed An den Wassern zu Babel … and Vater unser.

Bach Collegium Japan and Masaaki Suzuki have sung of the wonders of Christmas a number of times, in Bach’s cantatas and Christmas Oratorio as well as in Handel’s Messiah. Here, instead, we hear the choir a cappella in a selection of classic Christmas carols. Masato Suzuki, son of the ensemble’s founder and director, has selected some of the best-loved songs of Christmas, such as Adeste fideles and Silent Night, as well as less familiar hymns, arranging them especially for these singers. A consummate organist, he also performs a number of Louis-Claude Daquin’s noëls variés – keyboard variations on Christmas songs which became a highly popular genre in 18th-century France.

One of the truly iconic works in the repertoire for string quartet, Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden is named after the song which has lent its theme to the second movement. At the end of Matthias Claudius’s poem, which Schubert had set as a 20-year-old in 1817, Death cradles the Maiden in his bony embrace. And her fear, in the first verse, of encountering his tomb-cold touch is mirrored by his desire for her in the second. In Schubert’s life time, death was a constant presence in everyday life and even a young person like himself would have encountered it at close quarters – in fact, his own mother had passed away when he was only 15.

As Jacob Kellermann points out in the liner notes to this disc, there is an unbroken tradition of performing arrangements of Franz Schubert’s music on the guitar. Already in his lifetime some of his most popular songs appeared with simplified guitar accompaniment, marketed by music publishers wanting to exploit the growing market for domestic music-making. Schubert himself composed very little for the instrument, and there are doubts regarding Schubert’s own skills on the instrument.

D'après des enregistrements sonores réalisés par le label new-yorkais Decca Records et édités par Brunswick dans les années 1960, BnF collection sonore propose une collection de dix volumes consacrés au blues. Une série de fichiers audio haute résolution obtenus à partir de la version mono restaurée pour parcourir une histoire singulière du blues.

These performances of Fritz Kreisler's Violin Works by violinist Henryk Szeryng and pianist Charles Reiner are outstanding…! Feature rarely recorded compositions by Leclair, Gluck and Locatelli, which are ever bit as enjoyable as the well-known works by Kreisler!

Theurillat, trained as a classical musician, came to jazz via Wynton Marsalis, whom he met in August 2012 at a concert in Lausanne. Meanwhile, having many contacts with jazz musicians and many concerts later, he feels secure enough in the tradition of jazz that he recorded his first album. Personnel: Olivier Anthony Theurillat, Gérald Bringolf, Bernard Fedi, Denis Vonlanthen.