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.

André Grétry's Richard Coeur de Lion, or Richard the Lionhearted, lay neglected until 2019 when a production by the Opéra Royal de Versailles was mounted. This album is taken from that performance, and it's very well recorded indeed. The opera was quite well known in its time and was even performed in the young U.S. (in Boston, in 1796), and it's a great find, a real crowd-pleaser as much today as at the end of the 18th century. The story is based on a probably imaginary tale of an episode during Richard's return from the Crusades, when he was imprisoned in Linz, Austria.

These works share the common key of E flat major but represent two very different stages in the composer’s life. The Piano Concerto No. 0, WoO 4, written when Beethoven was 13 years old, is one of his earliest works. With the orchestral score lost, this extant version for piano solo written in Beethoven’s hand includes the tutti sections reduced for piano. The radiant ‘Emperor’ Concerto shows the 38-year-old Beethoven at the peak of his creative powers, and remains a glorious example of his spirit triumphing over life’s adversities.

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.

His debut recording devoted to Schumann offered a brilliant opportunity to discover the name of Samuel Hasselhorn, a young baritone deeply invested in the art of lieder. With his collaborator Joseph Middleton, he now turns to Schubert, in an insightful programme evoking some of the themes dear to the Viennese master of song: nature, night-time, parting, absence, and death. Both essential and less familiar songs are featured side by side in this poignant depiction of profound self-reflection that can rank among the most moving examples of what the Romantic temperament has ever produced.

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.

Sayaka Shoji (born 30 January 1983) is a Japanese classical violinist. She was the first Japanese and youngest winner at the Paganini Competition in Genoa in 1999.

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.

Michael Schneider ist mit der vorliegenden Produktion des Magnificat von Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach vor allem eine sehr geschmeidige Einspielung gelungen. Der Brückenschlag von der barocken Kontrapunkt-Strenge der Chorfugen zur frühklassischen Kantabilität der Arien gelingt stilsicher - auch die Solisten agieren mit viel Fortune.

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 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.

An oratorio / cantata type composition by a little known eighteenth century musician written when he was only twenty two does not sound too promising. However, with this convincing performance there is much to enjoy.

“This time, I am not only an absolute musician, but also a poet”, wrote Dvořák regarding the Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85, his most extended cycle of lyric character pieces for piano. Concluded in April/ May 1889 at his summer residence in Vysoka, the Poetic Tone Pictures introduced a new tendency in Dvořák’s output: from then on, he started to “poeticize” his musical style. As he wrote to his publisher Fritz Simrock: “Each piece will have its own title and is meant to express something: thus, as it were, this is program music!” This new tendency culminated in 1896-1898 with the five symphonic poems The Water Goblin Op. 107, The Noon Witch Op. 108, The Golden Spinning Wheel Op. 109, The Wild Dove Op. 110, and A Hero’s Song Op. 111.