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A very different set than Teldec's Bach 2000. The Hanssler Bachakademie, supervised by Helmut Rilling, is not HIP (historic instruments performance). The orchestras are warm and lush (but not huge). The soloists are, in general, extraordinary. The tempos are sane. Hanssler has included fragments of some incomplete BWV's that are not included in the Teldec set; a minor plus but appealing. I found I preferred these traditional instruments and the daring using of forte-piano in place of harpsichord on a few of the recordings (flute sonatas). Highlights for me are The Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2, Musical Offering, Flute Sonatas, The Motets. I also found I prefer these Cantatas recordings to any other, including the new Koopman, Suzuki and the well-known Leonhart-Harnoncourt. While not the newest recordings, the sound is warmer which I prefer to the new state-of-the-art HIP recordings. Although most of the Cantatas are older recordings, much of the Hanssler Bachakademie edition is newly recorded for this project and the sound is consistent and excellent. Jan Hanford, J.S. Bach Home Page

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These CDS engraved belong to a friend ... this is not my rip, I’ve got it on loan so...thank you to the real ripper.

Performer: Wolfram Christ, Jean Dupouy, Julia Hamari, José Van Dam, Luciano Pavarotti, Martin Haselböck, Francisco Araiza, Placido Domingo, Yvonne Minton, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Claudine Castagnol, Jules Bastin, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Jessye Norman, Itzhak Perlman, Göran Söllscher, Anne Sofie von Otter, Françoise Pollet, Cord Garben, John Aler, Thomas Allen, Christine Mühlbach, Torleif Thedéen, Bernd Schenk, Thomas Lutz.

Conductor: Myung-Whun Chung, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa, Claudio Abbado, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez.

Orchestra/Ensemble: Bastille Opera Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin RIAS Chamber Chorus, Berlin Radio Chorus, Boston Symphony Orchestra, New England Conservatory Chorus, Ernst Senff Choir, London Symphony Chorus, Southend Boys Choir, London Philharmonic Chorus, Desborough School Choir, St Alban's Church Secondary School Children Choir, European Community Youth Orchestra, Wooburn Singers, Haberdashers' Aske's School Choir, Winnersh Forest School Choir, High Wycombe Parish Church Boys' Choirc, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre de Paris Chorus, Paris Children's Choir, Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, Royal Stockholm Opera Chorus members.

The second son of the great Johann Sebastian Bach by his first wife, C.P.E. Bach was recognised as one of the greatest harpsichordists of his time. After study at university, a privilege denied his father, he became harpsichordist to the Crown Prince of Prussia, later Frederick the Great, and left his service in 1767, after the death of his godfather Telemann, whom he succeeded as director of music of the five city churches of Hamburg. He was greatly respected both as a composer and as a friend of some of the most distinguished writers and thinkers of his time. In 1755 he published his influential Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments. From his very considerable output his sonatas for flute and harpsichord remain an attractive part of chamber music repertoire, with the symphonies written for Baron van Swieten, arbiter elegantium in Vienna, a man whose taste was generally trusted in artistic matters. Music by C.P.E. Bach is often listed with a reference number from the catalogue of his works by Wotquenne (Wq).

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As with a handsome, persuasive architectural plan, this suite of pieces is far from haphazard in its design. The web of associations and connections which have led Michelle Makarski to bring them together is the key to the whole enterprise. Italy is, of course, the common ground, but not the Italy of Rossini and Bellini, nor even of Verdi and Puccini, but rather of Tartini, the true spiritual inheritor of the intellectual musical tradition of the Florentine Camerata. Dallapiccola, Petrassi and Berio are all 20th century avatars of this same tradition, while the Americans Carter and Rochberg, both of them having close personal ties to these three, spent crucial formative time in Italy, absorbing the purity and elegance of its art and culture. The final piece on the program, the anonymous 14th century Lamento di Tristano, is one of the earliest surviving pieces of Italian instrumental music, an unassuming yet highly moving forerunner of the whole corpus of italian music. It is - to return to the architectural analogy - a small, ancient garden now standing in the shade of the villa erected alongside it. from the CD booklet

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Krebs was first and foremost an organist. He was a pupil of Bach at the Thomasschule in Leipzig from 1726 to 1735. Krebs also learned the lute and the violin in Leipzig. Some possible teachers in Leipzig at that time: Johann Caspar Gleditsch (d 1747), Maximillan Nagel (b 1712; d 1748), Maximilian Nagel - in Leipzig to 1744- , and Johann Christian Weyrauch (b 1694; d 1771). Bach regarded Krebs as one of his favourite pupils. From 1735-37 he studied at the University of Leipzig. Simultaneously he was occasionally assisting as a harpsichord player in Bach’s Collegium Musicum. Krebs was later organist in Zwickau (1737-1743), Zeitz (1744) and Altenburg (1755). His instrumental works reflects both the Bachian style and the galant style. It becomes apparent from his two concertos for lute and strings that he must have been a very qualified lutenist

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Pierre Boulez and Anne Sofie von Otter collaborate on this beautiful disc with exceptional works by the most important composers of the Impressionist movement in classical music. The six-movement piano suite Le Tombeau de Couperin was a tribute to the whole of 18th Century French music. Ravel wrote it between 1914 and 1917, during which time he was serving as a lorry driver near the front, and each of the movements is dedicated to a friend killed in the fighting. The exotic formed a notable element of Ravel's musical taste and consequently his well-known song cycle Shéhérazade with Debussyan textures and harmonies is gilded with an oriental glitter - a grateful task for a singer like Anne Sofie von Otter who can show all the colorful shades of her voice.

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Roberto Alagna and Antonio Pappano are two-thirds of the EMI triumvirate (corresponding member, Angela Gheorghiu), which has done well by Puccini on previous discs. Although this one steps outside the operatic canon into the lesser margins of the composer's output, it's all done so eloquently you forget how undistinguished the material sometimes is. Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra are clearly in the middle of a love affair and seem to understand each other's every move. Alagna sails through his three sections, making slightly heavy weather of the "Gratias with worrying signs of a widening vibrato, but happy enough in the oddly amiable Agnus Dei" duet with Thomas Hampson. Ffor a good example of the current all-round health of the LSO after several years of conservative core-repertory craft under its chief conductor, Colin Davis, listen to how beautifully the strings phrase the enlarged string quartet movement Crisantemi, which, together with the Preludio sinfonico, makes a welcome filler. Michael White

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Sharon Bezaly has appeared with leading symphony and chamber orchestras in Japan], China, Israel, Central and Western Europe, England, and Scandinavia. She has also performed at venues including the Vienna Musikverein, Châtelet in Paris, Tokyo's Suntory Hall, and at festivals with Gidon Kremer of the Bartók Quartet. In May 2006, she appeared at Orchestra Hall with Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra.
There have been seven commissioned concertos written for her, including ones by Kalevi Aho, Sofia Gubaidulina, Christian Lindberg, and Zhou Long. As of May 2006, there are currently six more being composed.
Bezaly has released 18 award-winning CDs with the Swedish record company BIS. She is married to Robert von Bahr, the director of the company.