This final instalment of the organ compositions of Axel Ruoff (born in Stuttgart in 1957) presents two starkly contrasted sides of his musical personality: three of them, for voice and organ, are concerned with the spiritual – two even addressing head-on the issue of death itself – and are thus solemn and hieratic, whereas the concluding work is a whimsical, tongue-in-cheek set of variations on ‘Happy Birthday’, written as a present for Ruoff’s publisher on his 80th birthday.

Bach’s youth was a vast field of observation. From the years of apprenticeship in Ohrdruf, where his precocious artistic sensibility was dazzlingly demonstrated, to his first major post as organist at Arnstadt, Bach constantly enriched his musical culture, underpinned by a strong family tradition and driven by iconic respect for the old masters, crucial affinities and unfailing curiosity. As the prelude to a complete recording of a new kind, the eloquence and vigilant intelligence of the admirable Benjamin Alard’s playing are the ideal medium to reveal the technical mastery of Bach’s early keyboard works and convey the essence of this young composer’s musical discourse at a time when he was already measuring himself against the yardstick of predecessors and contemporaries alike.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. He is known for instrumental compositions such as the Brandenburg Concertos and the Goldberg Variations, and for vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach Revival, he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time.

SEON (Studio Erichson) is a period music label by the legendary producer Wolf Erichson. Erichson founded the label in 1969 as one of the first labels dedicated only to authentic music. The recordings were made with the best available recording techniques of the time and still deliver a high quality product in line with today's standards. This special boxset offers all SEON CD reissues from the late 90s on 85 CDs in a limited edition boxset.

Joris Verdin plays both the harmonium and the organ in Nancy (France) and Bergen op Zoom (Netherlands) on this unique double CD of religious music by Franz Liszt (1811-1886). From sweet intimacy through intoxicating harmonies and charming melodies to sheer grandeur: Liszt has it all. With the help of top soloists and the fine voices of Psallentes, this is more than two hours of sheer pleasure, nineteenth-century style.

Ton Koopman is not only one of the great fathers of the Baroque-Renaissance revival in the 1970’s, but a true pioneer of our time. After completing the Bach Cantatas survey, was he awarded the Bach Prize 2014 by the Royal Academy of Music. The prize is awarded to outstanding individuals in the performance and scholarship of Bach’s music and none could be more worthy than Koopman, who has been noted as doing ”remarkable work promoting Bach’s music in the last thirty or so years.”