Anne-Sophie Mutter performs all of Mozart's mature Violin Sonatas in these films from Munich's Gasteig concert hall. "… vital, dynamic playing with a wide range of colours … a real sense of the music's melancholy and intellectual depths … from the great violinist" (Süddeutsche Zeitung). "Such was the ease of Mutter's and Orkis's dispatch of every opening movement that the oasis at the heart of each sonata became a place of real refreshment" (The Times).

Vienna’s music scene at the end of the 18th century was home to many renowned composers, including Paul Wranitzky, who was a respected colleague of Mozart and Haydn and was frequently tasked with providing incidental music for the considerable number of newly written plays. The three pieces heard on this album demonstrate not only Wranitzky’s compositional diversity but a gift for symphonically conceived works featuring battle music, solemn polyphonic elements, and the popular Turkish style with its characteristic janissary percussion.

These are the only concertos that Haydn wrote for himself to play: by his own admission ‘no great wizard’ on any instrument, nonetheless these agreeably tuneful early works show how Haydn’s nascent style was gaining shape and symphonic aspiration beyond the simple charm of Mozart’s superficially similar Church sonatas.

These are both delightful symphonies, even if the Eight is rather thickly scored. However, Alexander Anissimov does his best to make the textures as clear and well ventilated as possible, and pays great attention to details of dynamics and balance. Try the Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony and you will find much lightness of touch and a greater transparency than is often encountered in records of these works. Strongly recommended. –Penguin Guide

With Bitter Sweet Blues, Gaye Adegbalola has produced an album that starts off where her work with Saffire the Uppity Blues Women left off, and jumps into a new, adventurous space. An expanded cast of musicians and more personal lyrics are some of the benefits to going solo, and Adegbalola makes use of both well. Each song has either humor or power, sometimes both. The only thing that seems incongruous is the mixture of songs with wildly varying moods and topics. While satirical woman-power songs like "Big Ovaries" are empowering and funny, when paired with "Nightmare" – a powerful, personal song about child molestation – the effect is somewhat gross. The feminist politics of both songs mesh rather well, but it is difficult for the listener to shift from laughing at bawdy sexuality to somber empathy in just a few tracks. Overall, though, this is a fine first solo effort that resonates with spirit and emotion.

Ferdinand Ries may still be known almost exclusively to the musical world as Beethoven’s friend, pupil, secretary and first biographer, but Brilliant Classics have done much to broaden our understanding of this significant figure in the Vienna of the early 19th century with albums of his own compositions, notably his sonatas for violin, cello and flute and his Piano Quintet.

Rebecca Taio’s choice to programme these well-known pieces from the great repertoire for violin and piano has to do with the technical challenges they pose, both instrumentally and interpretatively. In the flautist’s words: ‘It’s an incredibly fascinating and stimulating idea for me to try out timbres that are different to the ones I’m usually accustomed to, different to those the majority of composers who have written for the flute have been inspired by. In these transcriptions I have aimed for a more romantic and less delicate way of playing the flute, inspired by the long-drawn-out, sustained phrases and intense vibrato so characteristic of string instruments in this sort of repertoire.’