Born in Singapore in 1986, and currently based in Japan, Wong’s career has from the outset seen him darting back and forth between Asia and Europe. His connection with Germany goes especially deep, beginning in Bamberg at the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition, where he won first prize in 2016. His first full-time conducting role was just 40 miles away, at the Nuremberg Symphony, serving as their Chief Conductor from 2018 to 2022. Back on his home continent, since 2021 Wong has been closely associated with the Japan Philharmonic, initially as Principal Guest Conductor, becoming their Chief Conductor this year. (Earlier this summer, Wong was also appointed Principal Conductor of The Hallé in Manchester, beginning in autumn 2024.)

Few musicians were more significantly linked with a single composer than the late Hungarian-American pianist György Sándor with his teacher Béla Bartók. The authoritative recordings of Bartóks music that Sándor made for American Columbia between 1945 and 1955 and decades later for Sony Classical during his golden years. It also contains his justly famed interpretations of composers ranging from Bach to Rachmaninoff.

Over the course of more than half a century, Wolfgang Rübsam has consistently brought new insights to bear on the keyboard music of Bach, firstly in sets of the canonic organ music for Philips, then the same for Naxos. In the last few years, his musicianship and understanding of Bach enriched by those decades of experience, he has turned to the harpsichord/piano repertoire for Brilliant Classics. A series of critically acclaimed albums has shed new light on The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas and Toccatas with Rübsam’s performance of them on a lautenwerk – a ‘lute-harpsichord’ with a distinctive chime and colour which Bach himself would have been familiar with.

Imagining how Bach himself might have transformed the Goldbergs Variations for a chamber group, Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque present a pioneering new arrangement of the Goldberg Variations by Chad Kelly. Employing a variety of instrumental combinations from a typical Bach ensemble of single strings, oboe, flute, bassoon and harpsichord, these newly-crafted Goldbergs illuminate exquisite responses to the various historical genres inherent in Bach’s scores. This beloved masterpiece was composed through a period of personal tumult for Bach; two unsuccessful job applications, the premature death of his son Gottfried, and criticism of his music in a prominent Hamburg publication. Bach’s outpouring of beauty in the Goldberg Variations has long captured audience’s imaginations - Chad Kelly, Rachel Podger and her fleet Brecon Baroque preserve the work’s exquisite intricacy whilst adding breadth, texture and colour to its emotional backdrop. This revisioning of Bach’s Goldberg Variations is a perfect transformation of the work for the modern era.