Haydn composed his orchestral version of the Seven Last Words for Good Friday devotions in Cádiz. The task of creating a purely instrumental 'oratorio' consisting of seven contemplative slow movements was by no means an easy one; but the outcome was a work of sublime nobility. In its day, it was quite popular and inspired several transcriptions, including the version for string quartet heard here in a performance by the Barcelona-based Cuarteto Casals that is both stylistically sensitive and emotionally compelling.

Early in the 1780s, Mozart began attending soirees at the home of music patron Baron van Swieten, who owned an extensive collection of Bach and Handel manuscripts. Mozart began copying Bach’s fugues for his own studies and made arrangements of Handel oratorios for performance - both would provide much of the stimulus for the counterpoint in several of his latest works. This album gives a glimpse, though only a narrow one, into Mozart’s Bach studies.

The most ‘profane’ book of the Old Testament was among the favorite biblical texts of the Middle Ages. The composers of the Renaissance made particular use of it as a metaphor of divine love, or in association with the cult of Mary. After their first two extremely successful recordings, the singers of Stile Antico have chosen some of the finest specimens of these musical settings.

Stile Antico’s third recording won the 2009 Gramophone Award for Early Music and reached the top of the US Classical Chart. The beautiful and erotic texts of the Song of Songs, a love-poem traditionally attributed to King Solomon, inspired the great composers of the Continental Renaissance to some of their most ardent music. This rich selection traces an emotional arc from the intensity of the Flemish masters to the most vivid, madrigialian motets by Vivanco and Victoria.

His complete set of the Beethoven sonatas enjoyed extraordinary acclaim in the UK, culminating in the prestigious ‘Recording of the Year' award from Gramophone magazine for the fourth volume in 2008. Encouraged by what has now become a worldwide success, Paul Lewis has chosen to turn his attention to the five piano concertos with these distinguished partners.

We all know that Mozart had an impish sense of humour. Now we know it is shared by the gifted German pianist Andreas Staier, who permits himself authentically Amadean fun with his decorative conceits in these three inter-linked sonatas, especially in the celebrated 'Ronda alla Turca' from the most distinctive, K.331. But he also accords the composer due respect, bringing as much grace and poise to the contemplative slow movements as sprightly mischief to the pyrotechnical passages. In few hands can the fortepiano sound so expressive; at times, it is tempting to wonder if this is much how Mozart played his own works.

There are curiously few complete cycles of Beethoven's five sonatas for cello and piano, given that the five, unlike the violin sonatas, were almost equally distributed among the composer's early, middle, and late periods, and that each one was in its way a formally daring work. The last two sonatas in particular, with their mysteriously lyrical third relations and compact finales, fugal in the case of the Cello Sonata No. 5 in D major, Op. 102/2, might be regarded as having inaugurated Beethoven's late period.

The music on this recital was specifically written or arranged for duo violinists Angela and Jennifer Chun. It highlights the personal and professional connections between Philip Glass and Nico Muhly, a longtime colleague and admirer of Glass's work. Glass's miniaturist works, Mad Rush and In the Summer House, create a maximum effect when paired with Muhly's minimalist Four Studies and Honest Music.

From the overt Romanticism of Saint-Saëns to the nostalgia-laden modernity of Poulenc, Bruno Philippe takes us on a journey through (almost) a century of French cello music.Alongside Tanguy de Williencourt, he also performs the cello version of Franck’s famous Violin Sonata, one of the absolute peaks of nineteenth century chamber music.

Nearly 40 years ago, Djamchid Chemirani made his first recording for Harmonia Mundi. Since then, his career has blossomed, and he performs now with his sons Keyvan and Bijan at his side. Both separately and together, each has explored various universes of sound and honed their craft as musicians. But Trio Chemirani has constantly returned to the shared magnum opus: the elaboration of a universal rhythmic language. "Dawar" fuses the spirituality, diverse cultural experiences and historical sensitivity of these three great artists.

Whatever the elusive truth may be regarding the ‘Englishness' of these 'Six Suittes avec leurs Preludes', there is no denying the imagination of the keyboard writing. Each Suite is headed by a Prelude of substantial proportions, followed by wonderfully varied dance movements, all perfectly suited to showcase the joyful brilliance of Richard Egarr's harpsichord skill.

Paul Lewis is today regarded as one of the leading pianists of his generation, having won the most coveted prizes of the great classical institutions, for both his concert career and his recordings on harmonia mundi, topped by three Gramophone Awards including Record of the Year in 2008. He is also the first pianist in the history of the BBC Proms to have played the complete Beethoven concertos in a single season (2010). Early in 2011, Paul Lewis embarked on a two-year concert tour devoted to the works written by Schubert in the last six years of his life.

Whether we call them ‘Mystery’ or ‘Rosary’ Sonatas, these fifteen pieces, crowned by a sublime passacaglia for unaccompanied violin, form one of the greatest violinistic masterpieces of the Baroque repertory.This version, by Amandine Beyer and Gli Incogniti, derived from a dance project with the Rosas company, leads us into their magical universe through a novel prism: that of movement, to which these pieces are an infinite ode.

Timothy Ridout gives us the opportunity to discover the splendid viola version of Elgar's famous Cello Concerto - an arrangement approved by the composer, who conducted it's premiere in 1930. In addition to this deeply moving work, he gives us a powerful, poetic reading of Bloch's all too rarely performed Suite for Viola and Orchestra, in which the Swiss composer indulged his fascination with the Orient.