Rachel Podger (violin)
Channel Classics · CCSSA35513 · 78 minutes
Rachel Podger’s Guardian Angel gathers works by Biber, Walther, Westhoff, and others into a program that feels less like a recital and more like a candlelit conversation with the Baroque violin’s wilder, more adventurous side. The playing has that rare quality where every ornament and phrase seems inevitable, like she’s not interpreting the music so much as remembering it. It’s the kind of disc that makes you sit very still.
Awards:
- Gramophone Magazine — November 2013 — Editor’s Choice
- BBC Music Magazine Awards — 2014 — Instrumental Award Winner
“Characteristically unforced and natural, the playing manages to sound endlessly considered yet spontaneous. There’s a sureness to the placing of every note, whether poised or bristling with…”
— BBC Music Magazine, December 2013,5 out of 5 stars
Rachel Podger (violin/director)Brecon Baroque
Channel Classics · CCSSA30910 · 51 minutes
Rachel Podger’s way with Bach feels less like performance and more like breathing — everything flows from a deep understanding of how these concertos balance solo voice against ensemble conversation. Here, with Brecon Baroque playing one-to-a-part, the textures are lean and transparent, so you can actually hear every strand of Bach’s counterpoint doing its work. The BWV 1041 in A minor especially rewards close listening, which might explain why it keeps turning up on BBC Building a Library recommendation lists years after this recording first appeared.
Awards:
- Presto Recording of the Week — 11th October 2010
- Building a Library — November 2019 — Recommended Recording
- Building a Library — March 2020 — Recommended Recording
- Building a Library — November 2023 — Recommended Recording – BWV 1041
“This crack squad of first-rate period-instrument musicians gives lithe, polished and devoted performances that make a convincing case for a one-to-a-part "orchestra". Indeed, so full-bodied…”
— Graham Rogers, bbc.co.uk, 30th November 2010
Rachel Podger (violin), Brecon Baroque
Channel Classics · CCS46324 · 80 minutes
Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque dig into the English consort tradition here with the kind of easy, conversational energy that only comes from musicians who genuinely love playing together. The Muses Restor’d captures that improvisatory spirit of 17th-century English chamber music — melodic lines passed between players like thoughts finishing each other’s sentences. The whole thing feels less like a performance and more like being let into a room where something wonderful is already happening.
Awards:
- Gramophone Magazine — June 2024 — Editor’s Choice
- Presto Recording of the Week — 24th May 2024
- BBC Music Magazine — July 2024 — Chamber Choice
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalists 2024
“The ensemble is a coterie of some of the finest early musicians on the scene today – friends who evidently relish the art of musical conversation, the guiding ethos of the English consort tradition.”
— BBC Music Magazine, July 2024,5 out of 5 stars
Rachel Podger (violin)
Channel Classics · CCSSA41119 · 2 hours 7 minutes
Rachel Podger playing the Cello Suites on violin might sound like a provocation, but it’s actually rooted in solid historical reasoning — Bach himself transposed these works, and the violin opens up a transparency that makes the counterpoint sing in ways a cello’s natural weight can obscure. Podger brings her characteristic clarity and rhythmic intelligence to every suite, so the dances feel genuinely danced rather than simply played through. BBC Music Magazine called it arguably her finest recorded achievement, and after spending time with it, that’s a hard claim to argue against.
Awards:
- Presto Recording of the Week — 26th April 2019
- BBC Music Magazine — July 2019 — Recording of the Month
- Diapason d’Or — September 2019 — Nouveauté
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalist 2019
“A spellbinding set that is arguably Podger’s finest recorded achievement to date…Music that one thinks of instinctively as boldly-etched, deeply (in every sense) introspective and eliciting…”
— BBC Music Magazine, July 2019
Rachel Podger (violin), Brecon Baroque
Channel Classics · CCS48525 · 69 minutes
Heinrich Biber’s 1681 sonatas are genuinely wild music — full of scordatura tunings, dramatic leaps, and an improvisatory energy that feels almost reckless, and Rachel Podger leans right into all of that with Brecon Baroque. There’s a looseness and spontaneity to her playing here that makes the music feel freshly invented rather than carefully reconstructed. The BBC Music Magazine five-star rave and a clutch of other accolades suggest this one’s already making its mark, and honestly, a few minutes with it will tell you exactly why.
Awards:
- Presto Recording of the Week — 4th July 2025
- Gramophone Magazine — August 2025 — Editor’s Choice
- BBC Music Magazine — September 2025 — Recording of the Month
- International Classical Music Awards — 2026 — Nominated – Baroque Instrumental
“Podger one of the finest of today’s Baroque violinists takes up the challenge posed by Biber’s 1681 sonata collection with élan. Her affinity with the material allows a free and spontaneous…”
— BBC Music Magazine, September 2025,5 out of 5 stars
Rachel Podger (violin)Brecon Baroque
Channel Classics · CCSSA40318 · 75 minutes
Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has been recorded so many times that a new version really has to earn its place on the shelf, and Rachel Podger’s with Brecon Baroque absolutely does. The one-to-a-part texture means every voice in the ensemble has real weight and personality, so the music breathes and sparks rather than sitting politely in formation. Podger leads from within rather than in front, and that sense of collective discovery gives the whole thing an energy that feels genuinely alive.
Awards:
- Presto Recording of the Week — 13th April 2018
- Gramophone Magazine — May 2018 — Editor’s Choice
- BBC Music Magazine — June 2018 — Concerto Choice
- Record Review — 21st April 2018 — Recording of the Week
“Part of the freshness stems from the interaction between Podger and her one-to-a-part ensemble. She’s first among equals and the dynamic couldn’t be further removed from the usual notion of…”
— BBC Music Magazine, June 2018,5 out of 5 stars
Rachel Podger (violin)
Channel Classics · CCSSA44422 · 67 minutes
Rachel Podger playing solo violin is always an event, and Tutta sola is one of those recordings that reminds you just how much personality a single instrument can hold. Her range of tone and articulation here goes somewhere most modern players don’t dare, finding textures that feel genuinely improvisatory and alive. It’s 67 minutes of violin that keeps pulling you back in.
Awards:
- Presto Editor’s Choice — October 2022
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalist 2022
- BBC Music Magazine Awards — 2023 — Recording of the Year
- BBC Music Magazine Awards — 2023 — Winner – Instrumental
“the most striking aspects of Podger’s playing throughout this recital (compared to most 20th-century ‘golden-agers’), is her enhanced range of tone and articulation, her vastly more flexible…”
— BBC Music Magazine, December 2022,5 out of 5 stars
Rachel Podger (violin), Marcin Świątkiewicz (harpsichord/organ), Jonathan Manson (cello/viola da gamba), David Miller (theorbo/archlute)
Channel Classics · CCSSA37315 · 2 hours 13 minutes
Biber’s Rosary Sonatas ask the violin to literally retune itself between movements — scordatura tunings that shift the instrument’s entire personality for each mystery — and that technical strangeness is exactly where Rachel Podger thrives. She plays all fifteen sonatas on a single instrument, letting you hear how one violin can be coaxed into sounding almost like different creatures depending on how its strings are strung. Świątkiewicz, Manson, and Miller fill out the continuo with real warmth, so the whole thing feels less like a museum piece and more like a living, breathing conversation.
Awards:
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalist 2015
- Gramophone Awards — 2016 — Winner – Baroque Instrumental
“it stretches the instrument and the violinist to the limit. For this recording Rachel Podger uses the same instrument throughout, putting it through the pain, as part of the fascination for…”
— CD Review, 17th October 2015
