EK-R: Five Stages of Transformation is not simply a recording- it is an immersive musical journey exploring the universal experiences of change, loss, acceptance and renewal. Inspired by Elisabeth Kübler- Ross' influential philosophy, Bergmann's powerful new work combines cello, piano and spoken word to create a deeply personal and moving listening experience. Featuring acclaimed Swiss cellist Raphael Zweifel as performer, narrator and vocalist, and incorporating the profound texts of Winfried Dulisch, the album takes the listener on a journey from uncertainty and reflection toward hope and peace. With music by Bergmann, Bach and Britten, EK- R offers a rare blend of contemporary classical expression, timeless beauty and profound human emotion.
Jeannette Sorrell, the pioneering founder and director of baroque orchestra Apollo's Fire, always has unique vision for her interpretations of the classic repertoire. And so it is with this recording of J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor that draws the listener into an equally fresh, intimate and searing emotional journey - from the anguished opening outcry through to moments of joy, pathos, triumph, and ultimately, a vision of peace. Jeannette explains, 'While music is always an emotional journey, I feel that Bach's Mass is an exceptionally cathartic and healing one for our time'. Aiming to emulate the intimacy of Bach's own performances of the B Minor Mass, which the composer completed in the year prior to his death, Jeannette utilises twenty-four instrumentalists and twenty-two choristers, including the five soloists. As summed up by Chicago Classical Review, which named Sorrell's and Apollo's Fire's live performance one of the Best 10 Concerts of 2025, 'Easily one of the most memorable concerts of recent years the vocal ensemble was inspired throughout The instrumental consort was in brilliant form, playing with unimpeachable balance and intonation and a sensitivity to the dancelike elements of the mass. Presiding over it all was Jeannette Sorrell, who with understated grace led her charges on a moving traversal of Bach's unsurpassed canvas'.
Andrea Bocelli -"Romanza (30th Anniversary)" Andrea Bocelli's Romanza is the album that made him a global star as his most commercially successful to date, and one of the best-selling albums of all time, with worldwide sales exceeding 19 million copies. Romanza celebrates it's 30th anniversary on CD with a never-before-seen photo from the period of the album's recording. The 16 songs include, "Time to Say Goodbye," Bocelli's spine-tingling #1 single with Sarah Brightman, and the global hit "Vivo per Lei (feat Giorgia)." The album also features a previously unreleased extended version of the classic, "Con te Partiro." Verve Label Group; Verve; Classical Crossover; Catalog.
Deutsche Grammophon presents The Poem of Life, a new album by composer, pianist, and producer Yu-Peng Chen. With this release, Chen turns to a more personal project: a symphonic suite for piano and orchestra in 12 movements, exploring different stages of life with a focus on reflection, expression and storytelling. This marks a new direction in his work, bringing together his experience in game music with a more intimate, concert-focused approach. Conceived as a reflective exploration of universal human experience, The Poem of Life traces an emotional and spiritual arc from birth to farewell. Through lyrical melodies and symphonic arrangements, Chen evokes the wonder of childhood, the trials of adulthood, and the serenity of later years - culminating in the final moments of life.
Ian Buckle and Sophie Rosa continue their exploration of violin sonata repertoire which always contain discoveries with ingenious and original programing. This recording features romantic violin sonatas, by three contemporaneous German composers, and one of whom was all but erased from musical history by the Nazis. All the sonatas on this enterprising album are their composer's first essays in this form. Friederich Gernsheim, born in Worms in 1839, studied with a pupil of Spohr, and went on to be praised by Moscheles and Bruch and held major positions in German musical and academic life. A composer of very fine chamber music, several concertos (piano, two for violin, and one for cello), his four symphonies stand at the centre of his output. The first predates the first symphony by his contemporary from Hamburg by several years.
Toward the Sea brings together three works for flute and guitar which explore memory, place and transformation. EMI Ferguson and Michael Poll trace a journey from the dance halls of Buenos Aires in Astor Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango, through the luminous stillness of Elizabeth Ogonek's Altair, to the meditative sound world of Toru Takemitsu's Toward the Sea. Recorded at the Stone Church in rural Massachusetts, the program reflects the duo's artistic partnership, which began through online collaborations during the pandemic before developing into live performances across the United States. Their own arrangement of Ogonek's Altair sits naturally between two landmark works, highlighting the continuing vitality of the flute and guitar repertoire. Ferguson, an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, and Poll, equally active as a guitarist and conductor, approach this repertoire as equal musical partners, allowing the distinctive voices of flute and guitar to emerge across music that ranges from Piazzolla's rhythmic vitality to Takemitsu's suspended, atmospheric sound world.
Fourth release in the Warner Classics series of Herbert von Karajan Hybrid SACDs with a new HD 192/24 remastering from the original tapes. "Karajan is a great master," wrote Jean Sibelius in 1955, while the conductor said that Sibelius "is a composer who cannot really be compared to anyone else". Gramophone added in 1981: "No living conductor has done more for the music of Sibelius than Herbert von Karajan." In the tone poems and the two symphonies in this collection, Karajan explores with the magnificent Berlin Philharmonic the music's mysteries, unfolds it's structures and releases it's exhilarating power.
The Seasons unites two visionary responses to nature across three centuries, pairing Antonio Vivaldi's iconic Le quattro stagioni with Astor Piazzolla's sultry Las cuatro estaciones portenas in Leonid Desyatnikov's electrifying arrangement for violin and strings. Violinist and director Soojin Han leads the English Chamber Orchestra in a vibrant dialogue between Venetian countryside and Buenos Aires nightlife, where birdsong and storms meet smoky tango rhythms and shifting emotional weather. Playful musical quotations blur the boundaries between the two works, with winter appearing in summer and summer in winter, suggesting that the seasons are shaped as much by memory and imagination as by the natural world. Recorded in Studio Two at Abbey Road Studios, this recording reflects the wide-ranging musical perspective Soojin Han has developed through a career spanning solo performance, chamber music and orchestral leadership. It is an approach that allows these familiar masterpieces to unfold with both the freedom of chamber music and the brilliance of a virtuoso performance.
September 15th 2026 will mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the most influential conductors of the 20th century: Bruno Walter (1876-1962). This comprehensive box set brings together his complete HMV and Columbia Graphophone recordings. Spanning the 78-rpm era from 1924 to 1939, this collection also features the landmark 1949 magnetic tape recording of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder featuring Kathleen Ferrier, offering the first release of two previously unpublished takes. To ensure the highest fidelity, the finest available materials have been sourced, including pristine test pressings on vinyl from original metal work and near-mint superior commercial pressings. After undergoing high-definition digitization, the recordings were meticulously restored. This collection finally sheds a truer and more precise light on the artistry and genius of Bruno Walter.
Aleksander Debicz - pianist, composer, arranger, and musical director - is one of the most versatile and innovative artists on the Polish music scene. He is the creator and performer of an original style he himself describes as 'cinematic classical' - a movement that combines the language of classical music with the narrative nature of film music and the space of improvisation. 'I chose to shape these new compositions as a cycle of piano miniatures, referring to a classical tradition. I therefore treat the dream not only as a theme, but also as a form - an equivalent of the Romantic prelude. 12 Dreams is conceived as a complete cycle, yet I also enjoy performing individual dreams as independent pieces.' - Aleksander Debicz
'Heritage', presented by the Fondation Gautier Capucon, is part of the Foundation's annual recording initiative, which spotlights it's laureates and reinforces it's long-term commitment to developing emerging classical talent. This edition features Mirabelle Kajenjeri (violin) and Elias Moncado (piano), offering them a high-visibility platform as rising artists within a structured mentorship and career development ecosystem. The program combines cornerstone repertoire (sonatas by Maurice Ravel and Johannes Brahms) with shorter works by Claude Debussy and Lili Boulanger.
For more than 50 years, Sir Simon Rattle, Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, has devoted himself intensely to the deeply personal, emotional, and autobiographical music of Gustav Mahler. Mahler conceived his symphonies as all-encompassing universes that reflect the full spectrum of human life. He famously said: “To me, a symphony means using every available technical resource to build a world.” To guide both orchestra and audience through these profoundly moving musical worlds, no conductor is better equipped than Sir Simon Rattle.
Mahler's “Resurrection Symphony” explores one of humanity's most profound existential questions: the meaning of life. From the opening movement, originally titled “Totenfeier” (“Funeral Rite”), to the finale, in which the soloists and chorus proclaim “Aufersteh’n wirst du!“ (“You shall rise again!”), Mahler grapples with joy and suffering. The Second Symphony’s dramatic contrasts, emotional intensity, richly coloured orchestration, and crowning choral finale have made it one of his most beloved works.
Now released on CD by BR-Klassik, the Munich performance of the symphony from March 2026 brings together a stellar cast in a superb interpretation of one of the defining masterpieces of the Late Romantic symphonic repertoire. Gustav Mahler wanted his Second Symphony to exceed any known format - and he also wanted it to tackle the key questions of existence: "Why have you lived? Why have you suffered? Is everything just one enormous, terrible joke? We have to solve these questions in some way if we want to carry on living," said the composer. Similar questions preoccupied him throughout his life, and with a special intensity during his time as an opera conductor in Hamburg. The Second Symphony, also referred to as the "Resurrection Symphony", is a complete expression of Mahler’s existential struggle; both its form and its overpowering sound make this utterly clear.
The symphony took several years to compose – it was written between 1888 and 1894. In September 1888, the first movement – which at this point still bore the title "Totenfeier” (“Funeral Rite”) – was already complete. The second and third movements were not written until 1893 and Mahler only completed the entire work in 1894. Like most of Mahler’s symphonies, the work follows a "Per aspera ad astra" pattern (“through difficulties to the stars”). Starting with a funeral march in the main theme of the opening movement - the passing of a life full of vigour, pain, blows of fate, and only a few brief and beautiful moments - the symphony concludes with a triumphant resurrection movement.
The premiere of the complete symphony took place on December 13, 1895 in Berlin under Mahler's direction; previously (on March 4 of that year) he had already performed the first three movements. The premiere of the Second Symphony thus took place after that of the Third. The reactions were initially subdued, but today the work ranks as one of the most popular of Mahler’s symphonies.
Four chapters across generations: 'Danish Resonances' sets accordion works by Hans Abrahamsen, Niels Rosing-Schow and Per Norgard against four newly commissioned world premieres by Anders Skibsted, Loic Destremau, Matias Vestergard and Gustav Bjerre. Accordionist Jose Valente threads them into a single, unfolding journey that moves by turns lyrical, virtuosic, introspective and expansive, revealing the full expressive range of the classical accordion.
With Traces of Light, saxophonist and composer Jan Prax presents a deeply expressive and spiritually charged new album. Known as one of Europe's most distinctive saxophonists and a protege of David Sanborn, Prax draws from jazz tradition, improvisation, and a broad musical imagination to create a sound that is vibrant, soulful, and unmistakably his own. Joined by Carl-Henri Morisset on piano, Riccardo Del Fra on double bass, and Zhitong Xu on drums, Prax leads a quartet built on trust, intuition, and shared musical purpose. Across nine original compositions, the album moves through tension, stillness, searching energy, and lyrical release. From the opening lift of 'Elevation' and the smouldering intensity of 'Cold Flame' to the reflective beauty of 'Hope in Bloom,' 'Reverie,' and the title track, the music breathes, expands, and glows with emotional clarity. At it's heart, Traces of Light is an album about connection, compassion, and presence. It is music shaped by fire and finesse, but also by openness and vulnerability and a journey toward light, shared by kindred spirits.
The only violin concerto written by Richard Strauss, at just 18 years old, is a beautiful, energetic, brilliantly structured work with so many clues and features of his later style., says Alena Baeva. With her long-standing collaborator Paavo Jarvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, she has found the ideal partners to record this relatively rarely performed concerto, as well as another early masterpiece, Bartok's First Violin Concerto, which is essentially a love letter to the violinist Stefi Geyer, nine years his junior. The 'Stefi theme' (D - F? - A - C?) forms the basis of the first movement but she never played it, as she broke up with him a few days before he finished his concerto... Bartok's First Rhapsody for Violin and Orchestra rounds completes this programme. Just a few days after it's premiere, the composer travelled to Bremen for his next concert in the Glockensaal, where, 94 years later, this recording was made.
Canadian-Finnish composer Matthew Whittall's music fuses diverse influences - Old and New World, Western and non-Western, sacred and secular, classical, folk and popular - into a single, rich and varied expressive language. For The World Tree, a work for a cappella choir, Whittall collaborated with Robert Macfarlane, an author internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people and place. The creative impulse behind the work was the illegal felling of the iconic Sycamore Gap tree in northern England in 2023. The result is an hour-long piece in ten movements exploring humanity's relationship with nature. The title refers to Norse mythology, in which the tree Yggdrasil is seen as connecting the visible world to both heaven and the underworld. As well as being a requiem for the Sycamore Gap tree, the work expresses the hope that a forest will be planted in it's place. The World Tree is performed by the Helsinki Chamber Choir under it's artistic director, Nils Schweckendiek - a collaboration that has produced numerous critically acclaimed recordings for BIS, notably the album Reconnaissance (BIS-2662), devoted to works by Kaija Saariaho, which won a Grammy Award in 2024.
Shaped by fragments and moments of improvisation, the Noctunes are the personal take on the tradition of the Nocturnes?. This album contains a series of pieces dedicated to the quiet hours of the night?. Composer and pianist Clemens Christian Poetzsch is recognized for his unique blend of modern classical, jazz, and electronic music. He studied piano at the Hochschule fur Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden, earning his artistic diploma in 2010, followed by composition studies under Thomas Zoller.
