The ne plus ultra of Mozart boxes: with curation like this, Amadeus’s 225th death-day box will be hard to surpass.

Murray's new first fruits: Perahia's Bach sees him jumping from Sony to the Yellow Label.

The Grammy Award-winning French pianist has been recognised for a life devoted to the service of music.

David Shenton says no to playing at the Inauguration, while The Piano Guys provide a laundry list of justifications. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Angela Hewitt wouldn’t be the first Canadian pianist to record Bach’s Goldberg Variations twice and, like Glenn Gould’s second performance, Hewitt takes longer over her remake. Her first, recorded in 1999, had critics throwing superlatives around like confetti: “If you only buy one Bach album in this anniversary year, let it be this one. A desert-island disc!” said the man in London’s Sunday Times. But my tropical island might not seem the perfect paradise if Hewitt’s was the only set of Goldbergs on offer. In a world where John Butt exists and Mahan Esfahani has just recorded an exceptionally nuanced performance on harpsichord, complete with an appropriately juicy tuning temperament, it feels like Hewitt is trying to catch an argument that has long since moved on. Of course, it’s that very dependability that will endear this disc to many and, on its own terms, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Hewitt’s performance. Eyebrows might be raised when she ignores some repeats during the opening Aria – her first version was branded with the strapline “Includes all repeats!” – but otherwise her immaculate voice-leading, rapid-fire articulation and slipstream rhythmic momentum keep the flame burning. Hewitt’s Fazioli is lighter-on-its-feet than the Steinway…

On the eve of his Australian tour, the controversial violinist talks about his greatest musical influences and standing up Yehudi.

A “stunning” hoard of gold artefacts has been discovered in Shropshire.

Newly recovered and recorded, the composer whose life was cut short at the Somme is assuming his rightful place.

The Taiwanese-Australian violinist, formerly part of Sony’s stable, celebrates a new contract with a comical video.

A powerful, immersive soundscape that harnesses the resonant space of the Sydney Town Hall.

German virtuoso thereminist Carolina Eyck made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 15 and never looked back. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Following on from her superb 2008 recording of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin, harpsichordist Winsome Evans also follows in the footsteps of Bach and his contemporaries by devising “keyboard transcriptions of all these solo works emulating Bach’s stylistic textural idioms, compositional procedures and performance practices.” Evans’ copious liner notes demonstrate an extraordinary erudition, an absolute fidelity to Bach’s musical language and an uncompromising attitude towards surmounting every difficulty. She has availed herself of as many 18th-century compositional and performing techniques as she thought necessary to produce a convincing, historically informed realisation of these masterworks, including frequent sharing of melodies “across and between the hands”, composing new bass lines and countermelodies, filling out harmonies and, of course, extensive ornamentation, more often written-out rather than extemporised. And the performances? They are sublime: intimate and urgently expressive, with tasteful use of rubato and colour changes, in the slower movements such as the allemandes and sarabandes; joyful and exuberant in the faster dances such as the courantes and gigues. Together with the performing scores, both sets of recordings comprise a major contribution not just to contemporary Bach scholarship and performance, but to the enjoyment of lovers of Bach’s music everywhere.