Chamber Music & Recitals

Raaf Hekkema writes of his new release: "Since I started teaching at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, I have become more conscious of my self-chosen mission: to create a place for the saxophone within the classical music tradition. One way to do this...

Published in 1733, Pietro Locatelli's L'Arte del violino for solo violin, strings, and basso continuo took both violin technique and the solo concerto as a genre into a whole new realm. The twelve concertos included in the collection also played a part...

Published in 1604, Dowland's Lachrimae was composed for an ensemble of five viols and a lute. The collection contains seven Pavans based on the air Flow My Tears (which explains the work's subtitle, Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans)...

Program music refers to music explicitly created to evoke a mood or circumstance, or to illuminate occurrences in nature or acts of humanity and while arguably the form was most predominant during the Romantic era, program music has a long history...

Prodigiously gifted, Camille Saint-Sa?ns entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1848, at the age of 13. There he discovered the symphonies of the great German and Austrian composers and soon began to try his own hand at the genre. The Symphony in A major...

Prior to the age of mechanical reproduction, music lovers had two primary ays in which to enjoy music: they could attend concerts, which was fraught with difficulties due to the dilapidated state of the road system and lack of transportation methods, or...

Principal trombonist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, J?rgen van Rijen is also much in demand as a soloist with a special commitment to promoting his instrument. Various composers have written new pieces for him, including James MacMillan and Theo...

Previous releases from the New York-based Escher Quartet include an acclaimed set of Mendelsohn's six string quartets as well as an album with works by Dvork, Tchaikovsky and Borodin. For their latest offering the members have looked closer to home,...

Previous instalments of the Beethoven sonata cycle from Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen have met with wide acclaim. Described as 'conversations by a perfect instrumental pairing' in BBC Music Magazine, the albums have received a Choc in...

Powerful female characters and a woman's powerful voice: MDG listeners are familiar with Mary-Ellen Nesi from several outstanding Handel recordings. In her most recent recital the acclaimed mezzo-soprano turns to dramatic roles from Baroque and classical...

Playing with a fine synthesis of perfectly interlocking elements that can only be forged through years of collaboration, Italy's Ensemble l'Ornamento's second release engages with two of the great masters of the Baroque era, Antonio Vivaldi and George...

Pianist Paolo Giacometti presents a fascinating new recording of music by Maurice Ravel that compares the music's sound when played on modern and authentic instruments. Although trained on modern pianos, Giacometti has long been a proponent of period...