Mathias Bamert's 'Contemporaries of Mozart' series now tackles Wesley, an English composer chiefly remembered for his sacred music but who was also quite a dab hand at orchestral writing as is evidenced here. These five symphonies are full of colour and imagination and resemble Ditterdorsf's 'Ovid' Symphonies for their range of flair and advanced orchestration. The Sinfonia obligato' contains a delightfully melodious Andante con moto which although lasting just three minutes is remarkable for what it manages to contain. The Symphony in A major has its final movement marked as Brillante, a strange term but fully in keeping with the boisterous nature of the music.

The highlight of this sunny, consistently delightful disc comes in the form of 26 Variations on "La folia di Spagna", based on one of the most famous tunes in Western civilization. A veritable "concerto for orchestra", this late (1815) masterpiece offers a compendium of orchestral tricks of the trade, with brilliant sectional writing, echo effects, and solos for everyone, including (alongside more traditional strings and winds) trombones, harp, and even snare drum. Why it's not an orchestral staple even today simply defies the imagination, and aside from a less-than-seductive principal violin solo, it's brilliantly played here.

On the release date of our Sir Roger Norrington retrospective boxset, we also release his long-lost instrumental recordings of Brahms. Norrington approached this project after recording his Beethoven cycle, wondering if mid-19th-century would fit with his views on historically informed performance: “Tempos spacious but forthright; tempo modification, sensitive but simple; textures clear, as benefits such polyphonic writing; balance restored in favour of the winds…” A definitively original vision that gives these recordings a unique appeal.

Imitating Haydn symphonies became a European speciality in the last three decades of the 18th century. Literally hundreds were written, by composers from Carlos Baguer in Catalonia to Joseph Martin Kraus in Sweden. Dozens were published under Haydn’s name. It was no wonder that even a cultivated listener in Paris (the centre of the music publishing world at that time) would have found it difficult in 1790 to define Haydn’s symphonic style. Antonio Rosetti (born Franz Anton Rösler in German-speaking Bohemia – it was better business to sport an Italian name) lived from c1750 to 1792 and began to write popular and successful neo-Haydn symphonies in about 1773, when he entered the service of the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein in Germany. He remained there until 1789, when he became Kapellmeister to the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

German-born English composer William Herschel (1738-1822) achieved fame as an astronomer, the discoverer of the planet Uranus; but his formal training was musical, and in the early 1760s he composed a series of symphonies, six of which are featured here. They are attractive works in simple forms, all centered on the keys of C or D, scored for continuo, strings, winds, and occasional brass in various combinations. Each has three movements, and none lasts more than about 12 minutes. Not surprisingly, Nos. 14 and 17, which feature horns and timpani, pack the largest punch, and Herschel wrote some surprisingly memorable tunes (particularly in the allegros), making these slight works easy on the ear and, if a touch formulaic in construction, seldom dull.

The 'Lobgesang' or Hymn of Praise, commissioned by the city of Leipzig from its Kapellmeister Mendelssohn to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the invention of printing in 1840, has elements of all three categories. But, at the opposite pole from Beethoven s Ninth, we have here a symphonic miniature in three movements, intended to act as the overture to the sung part of the work, which is twice as long. Thus this splendid Symphony-Cantata expands into a sweeping vocal and choral epic.

The symphonies of Johann Baptist Vaňhal are among the most important works of the classical period. Bold and imaginative, powerful and lyrical, Vaňhal’s symphonies are only now beginning to win wider recognition as the masterpieces they are. This recording features his early and highly prophetic Symphony in E minor as well as one of his later works, the brilliantly-scored Symphony in C (Bryan C17) which Haydn is known to have admired.

This release from the London Symphony Orchestra's LSO Live series features a program that the orchestra must have played hundreds of times over its long history: Mendelssohn's well-loved Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 ("Scottish"), and Hebrides Overture, Op. 26, with the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54, in between. There are substantial attractions, but they don't necessarily come where some think they might. What truly sets this recording apart is the extraordinarily graceful performance of the Schumann by Portuguese (and now Brazilian) pianist Maria João Pires, with the LSO keeping itself carefully subordinated to her unusually quiet performance.

This disc of five symphonies by François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829) is part of Chandos' Contemporaries of Mozart series. As he was born two years after Haydn and died two years before Schubert, he was also a contemporary of Beethoven as well as many other composers of the Classical and early Romantic periods. Like Haydn, Gossec lead a successful career in music that included composing, performing, teaching and various directorship positions throughout France. (Yes kids, you can make money in music, no matter what your parents say!) As would be expected, Gossec was highly prolific, producing no fewer than thirty works for the stage, a large body of choral and chamber music, and over fifty symphonies.

The best-selling Contemporaries of Mozart series is one of Chandos’ longest-running recording projects and we are delighted to add a selection of symphonies by the Salzburg composer Leopold Mozart to the collection. Conducted by Matthias Bamert and the London Mozart Players, the broad range of Leopold’s symphonic style is on clear display in the charming symphonies recorded here. All the works are recorded for the first time.

Charles Mackerras doesn’t put a foot wrong anywhere. The “Military” Symphony features sprightly tempos in its outer movements, with percussion that’s exciting but never vulgar in the famous Allegretto. In addition to one of the best-ever accounts of its slow movement, the “Drumroll” offers Haydn’s original thoughts on the finale, with its surprising modulations in the closing pages. Fabulous playing, informative booklet notes, and superb sound cap a release that deserves far more acclaim that it has received to date. There’s no point in enumerating the disc’s virtues any further: listen and enjoy them for yourself. You can do “different”, but you can’t do better.

Chelleri is far older than any other symphonist in our series. In his corpus, the symphony (as understood in a modern sense) is the accomplishment of a long path of research and transformation of style. When Chelleri did deal with “modern symphonies”, counting himself among the proponents of the new instrumental music, after having written mainly harpsichord suites as well as old-style symphonies, he no longer resided in the Duchy of Parma, where he was born, but in northern Europe, in Germany and in Sweden. Chelleri was a great imitator, and these “Six new symphonies” are clearly six stylistic studies on the new trends in vogue in Europe in the 1730s and 1740s.

Sir Charles Mackerras is one of the world's finest conductors. It's probably safe to say that he has never made a bad record, and his performances of music of the classical period, in particular, are always full of sparkle and excitement. Here, aided by some very polished and lively playing from the Orchestra of St. Luke's, he turns in super performances of two of Haydn's greatest symphonies. The Clock takes its name from the slow movement, which features a ticktock accompaniment to a graceful tune that rapidly evolves into one of Haydn's wittiest inspirations. The London symphony was the last of the twelve that Haydn wrote for his two visits to the English capital in the 1790s. This is wonderful music with great sound.

Seventy years ago, on the 29th July 1951, Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at a concert marking the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival after seven years of silence following the Second World War. It was a momentous occasion, and the concert was broadcast by Bavarian Radio and trans¬mitted across the world, for instance by Swedish Radio. Using the analogue mono tape as digitized by Swedish Radio, the present disc reproduces the broadcast as it would have been heard by listeners in Sweden: we have chosen to not change anything, not to ‘brush up’ the sound, not to clean and shorten the pauses or omit audience noises within the music, but to keep the original as it was. In this way we hope to recreate the feeling of actually sitting in front of an old radio in 1951, listening to this important concert – a true historical document.