This 19th volume of Haydn’s complete symphonies coincides with the 40th anniversary of Il Giardino Armonico – the ensemble created and conducted by Giovanni Antonini, artistic director of the Haydn 2032 series. The Symphony No. 44 in E minor, featured in this volume, was the first work by Haydn performed by the ensemble and Antonini. The title of this symphony, …

The third solo album from German pianist Esther Birringer surveys music by 15 different composers, bringing the masters such as Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and others into dialogue with modern voices like Lera Auerbach, Ludovico Einaudi, and Valentin Silvestrov. “The term spectrum is usually associated with physics: when white light passes through a prism, it breaks into a full rainbow of …

Vienna was in the grip of serious political unrest that forced many Jewish artists into exile when Erich Wolfgang Korngold composed his Second String Quartet in 1933, first performed the following year in the Austrian capital. In it he celebrated, before it faded away, the vitality of a musical school of which Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had been one of the …

Joseph Haydn gave lessons in singing, keyboard instruments, theory, and composition throughout his life. His pupils included Ignaz Pleyel, Sigismund Neukomm and the Pole Franciszek (Franz) Lessel. In October 1805, Lessel received from his teacher the autograph score of his Symphony No. 56, dating from 1774. This symphony forms a pair with Symphony No. 55, known as “The Schoolmaster” and …

The fourth album in Leonidas Kavakos, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax’s Beethoven for Three series features Shai Wosner’s arrangement of the Symphony No. 1, as well as the “Ghost” (Op. 70, No. 1) and “Gassenhauer” (Op. 11) piano trios. In this series, the three beloved artists perform the symphonies on three instruments alongside the composer’s canonical piano trios, giving audiences …

Angela Hewitt’s 50th album for Hyperion Records concludes her Complete Mozart Piano Sonatas project. The 2-CD album ranges from two of the most beloved works – the K545 “Sonata facile” and the charming Variations on “Ah vous dirai-je, maman” – to the composer’s last and most profound piano sonatas. “When you play the complete works of Mozart, you get the …

The 17th volume of the complete Haydn 2032 collection and presents a number of Haydn’s earliest symphonies, composed to display the talent of the musicians who had joined the Esterházy court orchestra during the same period as Haydn himself. The center of the program is the Symphony No. 13 in D major from 1763, whose orchestration includes four horns and …