Just as Serge Rachmaninoff's piano virtuosity ranked him among the greatest pianists of the twentieth century, his compositions for piano and orchestra won him an important position among modern composers. Among the works that ensure his reputation are the first three piano concertos, reprinted here from the authoritative full-score Russian editions.
Rachmaninoff wrote the stirring Piano Concerto No. 1 in the years 1890–91, while he was still a young student at the Moscow Conservatory, and revised it nearly three decades later in 1917, when he began to devote his life mainly to his international career as a piano virtuoso. The immense and enduring success of the Piano Concerto No. 2, completed in 1901, has made this romantic work one of the most performed and recorded in the concerto literature and one of the most familiar compositions in all of music. The powerful and expressive Piano Concerto No. 3 was composed for a concert tour of America, during which Rachmaninoff appeared with great success as composer, pianist, and conductor. Like the first two concertos, it remains a repertoire favorite in concert halls around the world.
All three acclaimed works are reprinted in this finely made yet remarkably inexpensive Dover edition. Musicians and music lovers will find it a convenient single-volume source from which to study intimately three major works of the twentieth century.
Reprint of the State Music Publishers, Moscow, 1965 edition. / Partitions classique / Ensemble et orchestre / Conducteur / DOVER

Par VANHAL JOHANN BAPTIST. The unbroken popularity of Vanhal's sole double bass concerto in competitions and for practice and concert purposes is reason enough for us to publish the work in Breitkopf Urtext. The new edition profits from Tobias Glöckler's experience of many years. As with the other great double-bass concertos of the classical Viennese repertoire (Dittersdorf, Hoffmeister), Glöckler arrives at convincing solutions. He began by filtering out a solid musical text from the source (which was not always free of contradictions) that was supplied with many additions. The disposition of the solo part required detailed knowledge of performance practice, since the work was written in the historical Viennese double bass tuning, and a few passages cannot be played without difficulty on a modern instrument. As with Dittersdorf and Hoffmeister, the piano reduction makes it possible to use three different double-bass tunings (solo, orchestral and Viennese). Moreover, it contains the editor's virtuoso cadenzas as well./ Répertoire / Conducteur

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra no. 26 in D major K. 537 Coronation Concerto / Partitions classique / Ensemble et orchestre / Conducteur / BARENREITER

'. . .It is a revelation to hear something of the composer's other side. The Viola Concerto featuring Rivka Golani is the real thing: post Walton heartfelt viola writing. . .'Sarah Pope CD Classics December 1992

The surviving second and third acts of Catone in Utica, one of Metastasio's most dramatic libretti, premiered in Verona in the spring of 1737 in a setting by Vivaldi, contain some of his finest, most mature, and most original arias, and are published here for the first time. They evince a potential dramatic intensity that makes us regret all the more the loss of the first act. Only one aria of Act I can be definitely recovered from a surviving opera, but the rest has now also been successfully reconstructed by Alessandro Ciccolini, whose intimate knowledge of Vivaldi's working methods, combined with brilliant stylistic insight won universal acclaim for his work on Vivaldi's Motezuma and Ercole sul Termodoonte. Ciccolini has also composed cadenzas and da capo variations for all the arias, published here in an appendix.A complete recording under the direction of Alan Curtis is available from Naïve Records(OP30545).Press Quotes:'[For his completion,] Alessandro Ciccolini, who, mindful that Vivaldi frequently adapted vocal music for his instrumental works and vice versa, has composed the missing passages using themes from the concertos as his starting point. His arias dovetail beautifully with Vivaldi's scheme of things...' The Guardian'Ciccolini and Curtis deserve enormous credit for transforming an incomplete obscurity into a coherent and compelling opera.'Gramophone'The opera survives incomplete, but this is a fascinating and apt reconstruction and there is some marvellous stuff here.' BBC Music Magazine / Conducteur

Par VIVALDI ANTONIO. Violon Solo - Strings - Basse Continue - Durée: 9/ Répertoire / Conducteur