The recording of Bustijn, a world first release in a original performance by our founder Alessandro Simonetto, has been recently published at onclassical.com.

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The recording attracted the immediate interest of international label Brilliant Classics who acquired the rights in co-exclusive with OnClassical. Since April 2011, in fact, the recording is also part of their catalogue.

In the meantime a first review compares at musicweb-international.com, the prestigious UK review. Musicologist Byzantion Sardegno describes the recording by Alessandro Simonetto as the one to get in spite of (non complete) recordings by Bob van Asperen (Sony Classical Vivarte 46349, 1991), and by Jacques Ogg (Globe 5101, 1993)!
He continues: "Listening to eighty minutes of solo harpsichord is not always recommendable, but many will surely find themselves unwilling to press the Stop button - either that, or time will fly past unnoticed. Only one movement of the 53 in total is three minutes long, and many come in at well under a minute - there is no time to lose interest! Instead the listener is swept along on the tide of Bustijn's imagination.

The disc has been nominated as "Bargain of the month" and also obtained the 'Classic' award from the original reviewer's website). We are very proud of it!

The disc may also be downloaded in high quality here.

We are moving the site into a new server. The modifications should be terminated within hours. We regret for any inconvenience.

Dear customers,

(ZIP files) - OnClassical is currently working to ensure faster album downloads by uploading zip files on our servers. Each file will include all the tracks of an album, so that you will have one file to download rather than many files. Only a few days and our team will be done!

(HD tracks) - Many of our customers are asking to make our master recordings available, rather than CD-quality files. This would be possible, and it was OnClassical's original intention. OnClassical was the first label in Italy to make .wav files available online, so why not be the first label to sell HD tracks? Our current server would allow us to do so, and in the very near future our customers will have some of our hi-fi recordings in 88.2 kHz x 24 bit to download as well.

(Hi-res covers) - Once more, we regret not to have published the cover art-work, but our limited production time only allows us to produce the cover image. However, all covers are made with care by using high quality images purchased within the public domain resources (high resolution images have a cost nonetheless, even when the images are free). For our customer's greater satisfaction, all our covers will soon be available in 1440 x 1440 pixels x 300 dpi (print quality), and will be available as you access each recording's profile.

The team at OnClassical will be away for a few days, April 24-27. For assistance, please contact studio@(ourdomain) or call +39 339 3162931.

We at OnClassical hope that you will enjoy the improvements we have made to our website!

Alessandro Simonetto, founder

We continue our collaboration with the organist and harpsichordist Simone Stella, this time with the harpsichord works by Dietrich Buxtehude in four releases. These works, recorded only a few times in the history of music, include the vast majority of the Suites for harpsichord and the six Arias with Variations, plus some minor works and five "manualiter" organ works.

Simone Stella enriches his interpretation with a refined and charming phrasing and a gentle touch. The harpsichord is exploited in all its combinations of registers for a more coloristic variety.

We start from the 4th album. Coming soon Nos. 1, 3, 2.

Starting April 2011 all productions signed OnClassical will be distributed in more than an hundred online stores like iTunes, Amazon, Virgin, real, last.fm, emusic, Mondadori, fnacmusic, musicload, MediaMarkt, 7digital, mp3.de, vodafone, AOL, Spiral Frog, InProdicon, beatport, MTunes, Telefonica, Cellfish, Nokia, Deejay store, DR, musicnet, musicmatch, mobiVillage, Napster, Telecom, Rhapsody and many other.

This will be possibile thanks to the partnership signed with one of the largest distributors worldwide.

Latest news!

We are happy to announce that an agreement has just been signed for the licensing of the Complete Opera by Chopin performed by Roberto Poli. The twelve-volume opera will be published and physically distributed by a newborn English label which comes under the artistic direction of the international label, Brilliant Classics.

The first release is scheduled for next April.

Soon new details.

A disc entirely devoted to the legend of ragtime and its birth; includes the first ever published ragtime signed by Tom Turpin, the most famous rags by Scott Joplin and James Scott, the one of George Gershwin and the development towards jazz by Bix Beiderbecke.

The pianist we present is one of the leading experts in this field, the Italian Marco Fumo, who for over thirty years has dedicated himself to researching the interpretation of Afro-American music and ragtime in particular.

The recording was made on a 1952 Bluethner grand piano and captured by Neumann mics (Tube M 147 + TLM 103).

The result is something fascinating!

We have just launched a new different version of onclassical.com with some variations. The first one regards the new player (see on the pages dedicated to the album, here); this is entirely programmed in Flash, Javascript and HTML5. All recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Explorer have been tested for it, so, keep your browser up-to-date!

The previews, unlike before, are no longer 64 kbps full-track, but of 35 seconds and high quality (192 kbps MP3) to test the recording quality (which is our main goal). I hope you'll understand the reasons behind this choice: in fact, other than an economic reason, we hope that by hearing such a great sound you will then want to download the entire album. Remember that artists earn 50%, with the only exception of a couple of albums; on the purchase page it will be specified when you are donating half to the artist and when not.

Another implementation is about the art look of our site, which we have "modernized". We have always kept the site very simple so that neither you (nor us) are distracted by anything other than our recordings.

We have further expanded the database adding some useful data for better understanding how the recordings have been made. In fact, on the same table as for the player, there are two other windows: "Album Introduction" and "Info"; in the latter you will find some technical detail about the recordings, including credits and recording location and instruments used.

The third release of Chopin's omnia has now been published. It includes Mazurkas Op. 50, Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat major, Op. 51, Ballade No. 1, 2, 4 and Polonaise Op. 53 'Eroic'.

Roberto Poli's third performance is even more sweet, tragic, thrilling. Enjoy!

Tomorrow, Tuesday 23rd November 2010, at 9.30 am, on the program Primo Movimento, at RadioTre, Valentina Lo Surdo will present Jacopo Salvatori's disc dedicated to Claude Debussy.

This is the second time we've been on RadioTre; so it's a double victory, especially considering that liquid music labels, like us, suffer a certain discrimination since CD's aren't available in shops, but only online.

Hoping in an ever brighter future!