Henri Herz was a phenomenon in 1830s Paris and 1840s America, but today his music is mostly forgotten. He wrote eight piano concertos, one of which was lost. Concertos 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 appear across two previous volumes of the Romantic Piano Concertos series. Here, Howard Shelley and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra put on their finest dancing shoes to complete the cycle with Piano Concerto No. 2 (the one with which Herz conquered America in 1846) and three extended fantasies.

Born in Bonn around 1620 to Veronese parents, Massimiliano Neri was choirmaster at the Ospedaletto and organist at St. Mark's in Venice, where he published his first volume of Sonatas and Canzonas. He presented his second collection of Canzonas and Sonatas to the Emperor Ferdinand III in Vienna in 1651, later becoming Kapellmeister to the Prince-Elector of Cologne in Bonn in 1664. His affections, however, remained Italian: he married the Florentine singer and composer Caterina Giani in 1654. Many of Neri's compositions suffered extensive war damage in various periods; important musicological reconstruction has recovered parts of them that would otherwise have been lost forever.

Johann Jacob Froberger war einer der bekanntesten und zugleich rätselhaftesten Musiker des 17. Jahrhunderts. 1616 in Stuttgart geboren und 1667 im Dienst der verwitweten Herzogin Sybilla aus der Mömpelgarder Nebenlinie des Hauses Württemberg gestorben, bilden sich in seinem Schaffen alle wichtigen Formen, Satzkonzepte und Ausdrucksideale seiner Epoche ab. Froberger fasziniert gerade in der heutigen Zeit, da alles »Europäische« wieder einmal auf dem Prüfstand steht.

2021 sees the 500th anniversary of the death of Josquin Des Pres, the most celebrated composer of his day. Dominique Visse and the Ensemble Clément Janequin are recording a selection of his chansons from one of the most important editions of his works, Tylman Susato’s Septiesme livre de Chansons published in 1545. This edition bear witness to the diversity of Josquin’s chanson writing, but above all to the melancholy and sorrow so present in his works, and is clearly a tribute, as is also evident in the two Déplorations on his death, Musæ Jovis by Nicolas Gombert and O mors inevitabilis by Hieronymus Vinders. This recording endeavours to present a Josquin legacy, a post mortem illustration of his chanson œuvre, in remembrance of his musical genius.

Antonio Florio et son équipe de la Cappella de'Turchini nous ont habitués à de passionnantes découvertes dans le répertoire de leur ville de Naples, au passé musical si riche et pourtant délaissé par la plupart des musiciens.

The infinite cosmos of French organ music is Ben van Oosten's realm, and he now has recordd the complete organ works of Camille Saint-Saëns in a sump-tuous box set. He performs on the Cavaillé Coll organ in Ste. Madeleine in Paris, one of the most beautiful instruments of its kind and an organ with a big orchestral sound on which Saint-Saëns himself left his traces for more than two decades.

As an instrument from Italy, one that was exotic and evocative of Mediterranean atmospheres, the mandolin was very much in fashion in France until the end of the Century of Enlightenment: a fact also confirmed by many iconographic and musical sources. Pizzicar Galante, an ensemble that stands today as a benchmark for the interpretation of the galant literature for mandolin and continuo, has been acclaimed for the "finesse, creativity and spirit" (Olivier Fourés, Diapason) and "communicative energy" of it's performances (Sébastien Llinares, France Musique).

In her first solo album as a singer and harpist, Arianna Savall introduces us to a repertoire from the medieval and Baroque periods performed with seven different historical harps. The music comes from three countries where the harp has held a prominent position in cultural life: Italy, France, and Spain, in which the harp experienced a flowering of unique variety and beauty. Arianna Savall with her crystalline voice and her sweet playing, reaches the depths of these distant but at the same time so timeless music.

Boris Godunov is a work that, with its long, continuous scenes and monumental structure, does not lend itself easily to a highlights disc, especially if the intention is to give a fair cross-section of the opera. The producers of this compilation, drawn from a complete recording originally issued by Erato, wisely concentrate the choice on a few substantial chunks, covering most of Boris’s part. To this they add a couple of snippets that can stand on their own, out of context.

Francois-Xavier Roth and Les Siècles present a fascinating new interpretation of Mahler's Symphony No.1. It features the first period instrument recording of the 1893-94 version, using a performing edition prepared by musicologists Anna Stoll Knecht and Benjamin Garzia, working in collaboration with Universal Edition. Initially presented as a symphonic poem entitled Titan, the work was met with severe criticism as it developed. This fascinating reconstruction using the composer's Hamburg and Weimar manuscripts testifies to the genius of one of the greatest symphonists of the modern era.

En este segundo disco que la clavicembalista y directora valenciana Marian Rosa Montagut y el conjunto Harmonia del Parnàs consagran a rescatar del olvido la obra del veneciano de nacimiento y español de adopción Francesco Corradini (±1690-1769), se nos brinda una selección de arias, algunas con sus recitativos precedentes, tomadas de la “fábula pastoral” La Dorinda, la cual, por iniciativa del capitán general de Valencia, Luis Regio Branciforte (1677-1757), Príncipe de Campoflorido, fue presentada en hoy desaparecido Palacio Real de la ciudad de Turia el 19 de noviembre de 1730 para festejar la onomástica de la reina Isabel de Farnesio (1692-1766), de quién, por cierto, Corradini andando el tiempo acabaría siendo Maestro de Música de Cámara en el Real Sitio de la Granja de San Ildefonso.

Scarlatti et la mandoline : ce disque propose un rapprochement captivant et inattendu entre l’un des plus importants compositeurs du baroque et un instrument originaire de Naples qui a connu un véritable âge d’or à Paris et dans les capitales européennes au xviiie siècle. Le protagoniste de cet enregistrement est l’ensemble Pizzicar Galante, fondé à Paris en 2012 par la mandoliniste Anna Schivazappa et le claveciniste Fabio Antonio Falcone.

All is emotion and refinement in the interpretations of the soprano Raquel Camarinha and the pianist Yoan Héreau. On this disc, they introduce us to an atypical and little-known sector of Chopin’s output, revealing the beauty of his Polish songs, haunted by the torments of exile and love. By placing them alongside the Lieder der Mignon, which include some of Schubert’s finest settings of Goethe, the duo achieves an extremely rare symbiosis between poetry and music.

Anna Lucia Richter returns to PENTATONE after her acclaimed Schubert album Heimweh with Il delirio della passione; a recording full of Monteverdi treasures, from heart-wrenching opera scenes (Lamento d Arianna,Pur ti miro from Poppea and the Prologue of L'orfeo) and religious music (Confitebor) to bucolic songs (Si dolce è il tormento). Richter works together with Ensemble Claudiana and Luca Pianca, one of the most eminent Monteverdi interpreters of our age. They offer a fresh perspective on Monteverdi's music by penetrating deeply into the original sources.

Jean-Marie Leclair's violin sonatas were published in four volumes between 1723 and 1743. David Plantier here presents a selection of sonatas from the final three opus numbers of the collection. The consistent quality of Leclair’s forty-eight sonatas, collected in four volumes, is admirable, whilst the collection as a whole is a monumental contribution to the repertoire and to posterity; few of Leclair’s followers were able to combine innovation in violin technique and wealth of inspiration with so much talent. Leclair’s taste, refinement, skill and refusal of all artifice enabled him to make his mark not merely on his own time but on the history of music as a whole.