A survey of keyboard music around Bach's first major biographer
A 'retro' cover in Gothic script provides a strong visual cue for this aural celebration of Bach's first significant life-story: Johann Nikolaus Forkel's On Johann Sebastian Bach's Life, Art and Work, published in 1802. Forkel assembled what amounts to a collection of reminiscences; more revealing are the strong musical statements and reports which he offers, many of them supporting the notion of Bach's supremacy as a keyboard player.

"In a huge, crowded field, this Seasons recording goes to the head of the list.
I’ve reviewed at least 50 recordings of the Four Seasons but none has sounded such a clear ‘wake up’ call as this one. Such recommendations are usually reserved for the end of a review but, no matter how many you may already have, I waste no time in urging you to add this one to their number. If you have none, go straight for this one...The knife-edge unanimity of attack, tone and dynamics of the 14 members of Concerto Italiano is remarkable, and the recording per se is crystal clear, luculent and perfectly balanced. They do not merely play the score, they live it." - GRAMOPHONE

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Paisiello (1740-1816) was the master of Italian opera buffo and a significant influence on Mozart. His orchestral writing and musical characterizations are deft and dramatic, and he was the first to introduce ensemble finales into comic operas. Don Chisciotte is an early work, premiered in Naples (where he spent most of his life) in 1769, and it already shows all the skills that made his work popular throughout Europe. The libretto by Lorenzi is based on a 1719 play that deals with the Don's visit to a noble court and the tricks that are played on him there, drawing in material from elsewhere in Cervantes' novel, including his tilt with the windmills.

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...Symphony No. 15: Another study in contrasts. The first movement is given a light treatment with precise rhythms, heavily personalized solos, and bright, surging tempos, almost as though it were a slightly more decorous sibling to the Ninth Symphony’s opening Allegro. An undercurrent of danger still makes itself felt in bitonal entries and the eerily soft fugal passage, with especially well delineated cross rhythms. Much the same can be said of the Scherzo, taken as marked at an allegretto pace, allowing the soloists to revel in its eccentric yet subdued character. ... FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

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Five ENJOYABLE Stars!! Grammy-nominated, Argentina-born cello virtuoso Sol Gabetta has produced an ambitious project in which she plays Antonio Vivaldi's concertos for cello and two transcribed pieces for violin. To achieve greater authenticity (...) Ms Gabetta had her 1759 Guadagnini cello strung with gut strings and had to master the use of a baroque bow. (...) In this she and the baroque septet from the renowned Sonatori De La Gioiosa Marca ensemble succeed magnificently. (Amazon review)

I never heard such a display of energy, vitality, purely virtuosic demonstration in the interpretation of Antonio Vivaldi's concertos for "Violoncello Obligato". And all this takes place at a phenomenal rate. And what power, what audacity!

Michael Kemp Tippett (London, january 2, 1905 - january 8, 1998), British composer and teacher.
After literary studies, he began to study at Royal College of Music: composition with Charles Wood, counterpoint with R.O.Morris and conducting with Adrian Boult and Malcolm Sargent. Tippett was never a prolific composer, and his works, completed slowly, comprised five string quartets, four concerti, four symphonies, five operas and a number of vocal and choral works.