Vivaldi - Stabat Mater

"Quebec contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux scored a top rating on her earlier Analekta disc of Handel Italian cantatas, and in that review I expressed a desire for more recordings from this sensational young singer... Lemieux continues to impress with her warm, true-contralto tone, fluid legatos, canny phrasing, and total command of the technical aspects of these justifiably popular yet challenging works... Lemieux artfully incorporates the breathing points in her more drawn-out lines--in the Stabat Mater's central Largo, for instance--to enhance the phrasing so that the breaks seem part of the music's natural flow. This is singing of the highest professional and artistic standard, and the spirit and enthusiasm that informs every note keeps us happily involved all the while Lemieux holds center stage... and Tafelmusik's splendid ensemble interplay and impeccable precision leave no doubt that we're hearing Baroque instrumental music at its best. The sound is absolutely ideal, with especially keen definition to the strings and natural, unadulterated treatment of the voice. A must!" --David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Beethoven - Piano Sonata no 31 in A Flat Major, op 110

"The pianist remains thoroughly devoted to microscopic detail and grand clarification... while his soft playing has gained body and luminescence... notice how he builds Op. 110's long-lined Adagio ma non troppo from the bottom up. His rubatos in the latter sonata's Fugue no longer seem artificially tacked on but rather are organically integrated into the music's visionary path... It goes without saying that these works are amply served via recordings from Schnabel to Serkin and Kempff to Kempf, with Hungerford, Goode, Pollini, and Richter for good measure. To this august roster we easily can add the veteran Kuerti." --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Bach - Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord no 5 in F minor, BWV 1018

"The performances abound with beauty, intelligence, and expressivity. Take, for example, the F minor sonata's Adagio. The violin part mainly consists of slow-moving chords, surrounded by faster-moving harpsichord lines that alternate between hands. Many violinists pay no attention to the chords' underlying melody, yet Ehnes not only brings it out but also makes it come alive in a vibrant dialogue with the harpsichord...This cycle, along with the Sonatas and Partitas, ensures James Ehnes' standing as one of the great Bach violinists of our time, or any time for that matter.-- --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com "

Mathieu - Concerto de Québec

"What a fascinating novelty André Mathieu's Concerto de Québec is! A child prodigy of Mozartian facility, Mathieu wrote the work in the early 1940s when he was all of 13 years old(!), on the way to a tragic career in which emotional disturbance and burnout led to a premature death in 1968, age 39. Alain Lefèvre has undertaken some yeoman work collating sources and editing the piece for performance, and a more entertaining pastiche you won't find this side of Hoffnung's Concerto Populare. Imagine the Gallic sensibility of Saint-Säens married to piano writing in the style of Rachmaninov, all at the service of melodies that have their source in everything from Tchaikovsky to Mendelssohn to Poulenc to Mozart's Turkish Rondo, and you'll get the idea. Formally speaking, well, let's just say that there really isn't any, but who cares? The tunes are terrific, the piano writing heedlessly brilliant, the orchestration endearingly over the top (note the arrival of the cymbals, with a vengeance, at the climax of the slow movement), and the whole so much fun that you'll simply be swept up in the youthful enthusiasm of it all. Lefèvre plays the piece as if it were the greatest music in the world, and he gets excellent backing from Yoav Talmi and the Quebec orchestra."

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Scarlatti - Sonatas

"Luc Beauséjour plays a mean harpsichord, and these muscular, vibrant performances exude a level of energy exceptional even in music not known for its sense of repose."

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Mozart - Divertimento

"The Gryphon Trio shows that it understands how to inflect Mozart's lyrical lines without ever losing sight of their ultimate destinations, engaging your attention without disfiguring the music in the process... a first-class achievement in every way."

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Handel - Arrival of the Queen of Sheba

"The Toronto-based Tafelmusik, one of North America's two or three top-rank period-style orchestras, delivers this Baroque staple with interpretive authority and impressive yet thankfully unadorned technique, giving careful attention to line in the slow movements and keeping rhythms and articulation crisp in the fast ones."

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com