Ferdinand Ries occupies a remarkable place in the history of music. He was famously a friend and pupil of Beethoven and a virtuoso pianist. His extensive oeuvre opened up the musical aesthetics of... more

Once dubbed 'the French Mendelssohn', Camille Saint-Saëns was a prodigiously gifted composer of sophisticated and appealing music much of which has been unjustly neglected in recent times. His three... more

Revered for his incomparable Lieder, Franz Schubert was also an avid opera-goer who yearned, largely in vain, for success as a composer of stage works.

The versatility of the suite form proved well suited to Johann Sebastian Bach in his instrumental works, and the English Suites are no exception. These are distinct from Bach's other suites with... more

An important marker in Debussy' compositional development, the Fantaisie reflects something of the influence of Cesar Franck' Symphonic Variations yet embodies his own new aesthetic. Unpublished in... more

Antonio Bazzini, born in Brescia in 1818, was one of the great violinist-composers of the 19th century. After encouragement from Paganini following an encounter in 1836, he lived the life of a... more

Of the nine violin concertos at one time ascribed to Haydn only four were genuine, and one of the four is lost. With their considerable use of the relatively higher register of the violin, chains of... more