The CD “Une Larme” is a tribute to the great Italian guitarist Francesco Corbetta and to Robert De Visée, who is often regarded as his pupil. With the help of the transparent and delicate sounds of the baroque guitar, the emotions of the transience of all beauty are explored – the triumph of time over beauty itself.



Almost all of the works played by Italian lutenist and guitarist Rosario Conte on this CD are taken from Corbetta's La Guitarre Royalle (Paris, Bonneüil, 1671), a book that he published in Paris at the court of the Sun King Louis IX and dedicated to him in a later edition.



In fact, the (baroque) guitar, with its gallant, gentle sound, was a very popular instrument among the French nobility at that time and was also played by the king himself.



The recording was made in an Italian monastery in great silence and seclusion, with the audible space complementing the musical ideas, so to speak.



Rosario Conte perfectly captures the special magic of this music with his highly virtuosic, never strained, yet dynamic playing, giving the compositions, which were first performed over 300 years ago, a very personal and emotional character that is immediately understandable to modern listeners.

Beethoven: Symphonies Nos 5 & 7
Sir John Eliot’s Gardiner’s reading of these familiar pieces highlights their revolutionary origin. Performing on period instruments, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique brings light, clarity and brisk energy, as well as a warm and genuinely thrilling sound. This concert in Carnegie Hall was broadcast live by WQXR, who kindly agreed to make the recording available to us to release on our label.
SDG717 73 minutes 19 seconds
'These are the kind of performances that remind us of what a revolution of reassessment period-instrument bands provoked. The shock of newness in Beethoven prevails' (Gramophone)
BBC Music Magazine
'If you’ve not previously sampled Gardiner’s characteristically thoughtful and sometimes provocative way with Beethoven this disc is an excellent starting point' (MusicWeb International)

Fourth volume of a series that intends to publish all the ballet music composed or arranged for performance by Sergej Diaghilev. This unique series features music from one of the most exciting creative periods of 20th century Europe and first-rate orchestras and conductors including Ernest Bour, Sylvain Cambreling, Michael Gielen, and others.

“Beware! I put on this disc and found myself barely able to move for the 78 minutes of Bach’s masterpiece, so familiar yet suddenly so new. Rana’s playing has a kind of Orphic seductiveness, a transcendent lightness of touch. She yields little to Glenn Gould in mercuriality and fleetness (her toccatas are “brio” at its most devastating), and lacks his tendentiousness. How beautifully she draws the bemused interior phrasing of variation XIII, or the plangent dissonance of the extended “Black Pearl” variation XXV. A supremely intelligent reading”. – The Times
“This recording of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations is Italian pianist Beatrice Rana’s second album for Warner Classics. In 2016 I reviewed her splendid first Warner release of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 2 which made quite an impression
Beatrice Rana is a pianist who makes you sit up and take notice. Her striking recording will sit agreeably alongside my favourite Goldberg recordings: Rosalyn Tureck’s aristocratic 1998 Hamburg account, so full of perception, is on Deutsche Grammophon. Glenn Gould's1981 New York City recording on Sony is very enjoyable too, albeit rather headstrong for some. For those preferring a harpsichord, the 1965 recording on Teldec by early music specialist Gustav Leonhardt is admirable for its directness of approach”. -Michael Cookson
“She’s absolutely extraordinary, she’s totally thought through the music. She has her own take on it without being idiosyncratic, she writes an extraordinary interesting, intellectually probing but very humble note in the booklet. If you think back to when Glenn Gould recorded the 1955, the early fast and joyous, Goldbergs he was a year younger than rana, and I also think of Julia Fischer doing the Sonatas and partitas for Violin at the age of 21. It might be a bit silly to talk about people like Gould and Fischer, but I think Rana is up there, she’s got something really interesting and very personal to say.”- BBC Radio 3 Record Review