Ernst von Dohnanyi (Ernő Dohnányi) was for many years a little known and unjustly neglected composer. Chandos' series of recordings of works performed by Matthias Bamert and the BBC Philharmonic significantly increased his profile, and are regarded as best examples of this repertoire.
2010 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Dohnanyi’s death. To commemorate this anniversary, Chandos has packaged the two Piano Concertos on one album, released on the Classics label.

In our era, when large record companies parade good-looking mediocrities before us as major artists, it is good to be reminded of the real thing. Martha Argerich, as this CD demonstrates, had everything: the looks, the temperament, and the technique. By her mid 20s, she already was a phenomenal artist.

Exclusive Sony Classical pianist Murray Perahia releases this collection of the keyboard concertos of J.S Bach. Celebrated by his fans and media alike on first release, several of the concertos have been unavailable for some time and make a welcome return to the catalogue, The set contains some of Perahia’s all-time best-selling recordings. The initial releases of these recordings of the Concertos Nos. 1-7 have sold in excess of 30,000 units in the UK alone, Murray Perahia’s recording of Bach’s Solo Keyboard Partitas 1,5 & 6 (88697565602) won the 2010 BBC Music Magazine Award for Best Instrumental Recording.

Lydia Mordkovitch performs a personal selection of violin and viola works, chosen for their idiom which combines brilliant violin technique and strong expressivity and the theme of Russia. This album has been generously supported by the Royal Academy of Music and is the first time Lydia has recorded a viola performance for Chandos.

Hailed as ‘the Jascha Heifetz of our day’ (The Globe and Mail, Canada), the violinist James Ehnes is widely considered one of the most dynamic and exciting performers in classical music, appearing regularly with the world’s finest orchestras and conductors. Accompanied here by the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda, Ehnes is the soloist in Bartók’s two violin concertos in which he plays the ‘Marsick’ Stradivarius of 1715, as well as in the viola concerto, performing on the ‘Rolla’ Giuseppe Guadagnini viola of 1793, on loan from the Fulton Collection.

George Enescu (1881-1955) was known primarily as one of the great virtuoso violinists of his day, although he was also a celebrated conductor and influential teacher of his instrument – Yehudi Menuhin, Arthur Grumiaux, Ivri Gitlis, and Christian Ferras were just a few of the great violin soloists of the latter half of the 20th century who passed through his classes in Paris. Apart from the First Romanian Rhapsody, it is only recently that Enescu, the composer of a small but substantial catalogue of works, has come to the fore and this set, comprising his three completed symphonies and his best-known Violin Sonata, should further enhance his reputation.

This is the final recording made by Richard Hickox, intended as the first in a cycle devoted to orchestral works by Goossens. Offering the premiere recording of Goossens’s Phantasy Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, and the rarely recorded Symphony No. 1, this disc serves as a tribute to Hickox and his remarkable legacy of recordings on Chandos.

Here the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performs the premiere recording of Symphonies No. 3 and No. 4, coupled with Concerto for Oboe and String Orchestra. Symphony No. 3 was composed in the aftermath of a turbulent 2005. The work is an expression of this anxiety and the result is a chaotic, colourful musical landscape inspired by the Welsh countryside to which he escaped.

This 20-disc box set has been entertaining me for several months. Dutch pianist Ivo Janssen set up his own record label to distribute his 1997 Goldberg Variations, recorded on the hoof over two days in Haarlem. Its success prompted him to tackle Bach’s complete keyboard output. And there’s a sense of fly-by-night impetuosity about some of these performances, all taped in the same venue with the same producer, the cycle finally finished in 2009.

This second volume in Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's Haydn sonata cycle is every bit as outstanding as the first. As previously, he ornaments repeats liberally and observes second-half repeats, playing the codas (if any) only the second time around–a very intelligent decision. Indeed, it works so well that I would be surprised if this doesn't turn out to be one of those "authentic" performance practices that no contemporary sources discuss because it's so obvious on purely musical grounds.

These are outstanding performances, as good or better than the composer's own. Edward Gardner tears into the Four Sea Interludes with uninhibited excitement. It's great to hear the high violins and flutes in "Dawn" swooping and soaring like the gulls that they're supposed to be evoking. "Sunday Morning" has an infectious bounce, while "Moonlight" casts a rapt stillness abruptly shattered by perhaps the most vicious storm on disc.

Expectations ran high in anticipation of this release, and they have not been disappointed. BIS just completed a partially successful Beethoven piano concerto series in which an often inspired Ronald Brautigam was shackled to an expressively challenged and period-pedantic Andrew Parrott. Here, both conductor and soloist are consistently operating on the same exciting wavelength.

Lisa Batiashvili's debut album for Deutsche Grammophon "Echoes of Time" is a matter of the heart - an unusual, very individual and fascinating program by one of the most appreciated young soloists of our days. Lisa focuses her program on composers whose lives and work have been heavily influenced by the political happenings and oppressions in former Soviet Union - like Lisa herself, who went into German exile with her family during the political upheaval in Georgia in 1991.

Celebrating 80 years of vigorous artistic life with Brahms’ expansive and consoling mass for the dead, Ein deutsches Requiem, the hr-Sinfonieorchester (Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra) under its Chief Conductor Paavo Järvi, is joined by soprano Natalie Dessay, baritone Ludovic Tézier and the Swedish Radio Choir in an interpretation described as “exemplary” by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Michael Collins has been recording for Chandos what one might call thematic ‘mood’ albums; virtuosity has been covered and here is lyricism. Burgmüller’s Duo is a single movement, but tripartite piece, dating from 1834. It assuredly lives up to the disc billing, being profusely lyric, but in its central panel cleverly evokes the operatic by means of declamatory piano statements above which the clarinet spins vocalised curlicues of decidedly virtuosic pretension. It hardly aspires to anything especially deep, but makes for a good palette refreshing opener.