English pianist Paul Lewis received great reviews and a Grammophone Award for his recording of the complete Beethoven Sonatas a few years back.  Now he's taking on the 5 Beethoven Concertos with the BBC Orchestra and conductor Jiri Belohlavek. One critic said,  "Lewis paints a portrait of Beethoven full of light and shade." Hear excerpts throughout the week on KDFC and always just after 4pm.

A lovely, relaxing 2-CD set featuring guitarists like Julian Bream, Christopher Parkening, Manuel Barrueco, and Andres Segovia in music ranging from the Renaissance to Rodrigo, Bach to the Beatles.

Marin Alsop became the first female Music Director of a major U.S. orchestra when she signed on with the Baltimore Symphony in 2007. Their latest recording together couples two of Dvorak's great symphonies, the 7th and the 8th. BBC Music Magazine wrote, "It is rare to be able to say that a performance forces one to listen to a work anew but this is exactly what Alsop's reading achieves." Look for Marin Alsop in Santa Cruz beginning this Sunday for the annual Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music.

In her debut recording, Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra leads the New York-based Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas in music celebrating Mexico's Bicentennial. World premieres of rarely-heard music by Mexican composers along with works by Ponce, Revueltas and others highlight this new 2-disc release.  De la Parra leads the SF Symphony at Davies this Thursday and also Sunday at Dolores Park.

Leading into our "You Had Me at Cello" Weekend, this week we feature a big box set of the cello's greatest hits.  On 5 CDs, just about everything of significance written for the cello, performed by Julian Lloyd Webber, Maurice Gendron and Heinrich Schiff.  Included are the Cello Concertos of Dvorak, Saint-Saens and Elgar, the Bach Cello Suites and much more.

La Serenissima is a nickname for the serene city of Venice and the name of this UK group that specializes in the music of Venice's favorite son, Antonio Vivaldi.  Gods, Emperors and Angels features concertos for strings, recorder, and bassoon, some of which were dedicated to the Emperor Charles VI and some of which were written for the "angels" of the La Pieta orphanage where Vivaldi was music master. 

On this perfect CD for Independence Day, the world's most famous brass ensemble salutes its friend and neighbor to the south with a rousing selection of American favorites including Stars and Stripes Forever, America the Beautiful, Battle Hymn of the Republic, Shenendoah, and much more.  They even slipped in "O, Canada"! Interestingly, the disc features replica drums from the Colonial and Civil War eras.

The universal pursuit of peace in our chaotic world is the raison d'etre behind these two new collections from Virgin records.  A ton of super soothing selections are performed by familiar names on each of these 3-CD box sets. Vocal superstars include Natalie Dessay, Barbara Hendricks and Rolando Villazon and the Zen piano set features Leif Ove Andsnes, Stephen Hough, Mikhail Pletnev, and other great pianists.

 

Summertime in Havana.  Our featured CD this week is a collection of Danzas Cubanas from a remarkably gifted 19th-century Cuban composer who is pretty much unknown these days.  Ignacio Cervantes studied with American Louis-Moreau Gottschalk and hung out with the likes of Liszt, Rossini and Paderewski.  Italian pianist Davide Cabassi does the honors. 

 

What would Schumann’s 200th birthday be without a big boxed set? Not everything he wrote, but pretty darned close, and all of the most important works – symphonies, chamber music, vocal works, and, of course, piano – with a few notable rarities. Performers include pianists Maurizio Pollini, Christoph Eschenbach and Vladimir Ashkenazy; the London Symphony, Vienna Philharmonic, and l’Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique; the Beaux Arts Trio; and baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. 35 CDs!

 

The former keyboardist for Deep Purple is back with another disc of melodic and contemplative orchestral music. This time the featured work is a concerto for flute and piano that commemorates his friendship with the late John Mortimer, the barrister and author who created “Rumpole of the Bailey.”

The artist formerly known as Yundi Li has turned to Chopin’s Nocturnes for this 200th anniversary year. (2 Disc Set)

Libera return with their new album Peace. Familiar to audiences across the world, the boys have a stunningly original sound, which is at once both ancient and modern. Their distinctive flowing white robes symbolise the traditional origins of their style - yet their music reaches across the generations to a new mainstream audience. Libera's success in album charts around the world bears witness to the extraordinary appeal of this unique ‘boy band.’

This 6CD set contains 100 tracks from the most familiar and best-loved works by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), performed by many of the world’s leading instrumentalists, singers, orchestras and conductors.

Superstar violinist Gil Shaham teams up with this international, conductorless chamber orchestra for unique chamber versions of two of Haydn’s lyrical violin concertos, and the amazing Octet for Strings by the 16-year-old Mendelssohn.

Clever and virtuosic arrangements of great movie themes from “The Wizard of Oz” to “Psycho,” “Atonement” to “Beauty and the Beast.” Fun for the whole family!

Just in time for Earth Day, it’s a musical aviary from pianist Michael Lewin, including a hummingbird (MacDowell), a cuckoo (Daquin), woodbirds (Hofmann and Jensen), even a turkey (Guion) and, of course, a swan (Saint-Saens). Recorded at Skywalker Sound and beautifully (and ecologically) packaged.