"•Baritone James Rutherford here embarks on a Wagner grand tour, ranging from the three operas that ‘made’ Wagner – Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin – to Parsifal, the composer’s final work. Mr, Rutherford, winner of the first Seattle Opera International Wagner competition in 2006, has since performed in several Wagner productions, and is a noted Hans Sachs of our day.
• He is supported by Bergen Philharmonic under their music director Andrew Litton."

Catalan music comes from Catalonia, one of the most distinctive Spanish regions. This music has little in common with traditional Spanish folklore. +During the resurgence of the Catalan culture in the late 1800s, many outstanding composers and performers rose to fame, including Enric Granados, Ricard Vines, Alicia de Larrocha, and Pau Casals. This album is performed by guitarist Franz Halasz.

Johannes Brahms's Clarinet Quintet is core repertoire, not just for clarinettists but also in the entire chamber music genre. As such, it has been on Martin Fröst's 'to-be-recorded list' for a long time, and when he gathered a dream-team of string players for a concert in Stockholm in February 2013, it was the perfect opportunity for BIS to organize a recording session. Brahms's Quintet was written in 1891 by a composer who only a year previously had renounced composing, but whose creative urge had been reawakened by his encounter with the leading clarinettist of the time, Richard Mühlfeld. Some 120 years later, Fröst - one of today's most highly regarded musicians and the recipient of the 2014 Sonning Prize - steps into Mühlfeld's shoes, in the company of Janine Jansen, Boris Brovtsyn, Maxim Rysanov and Torleif Thedéen. As a complement to this substantial work - with a duration of almost 35 minutes - Martin Fröst has transcribed six much-loved songs by Brahms, performing them with his chamber music partner of long standing, the eminent pianist Roland Pöntinen. The songs, composed between 1866-1886, range from high lyricism (Die Mainacht) to bitter-sweet nostalgia (Wie Melodien...), via the humourous Vergebliches Ständchen. To these new recordings has been added a substantial 'bonus' - Martin Fröst's performance with Pöntinen and Thedéen of the Trio for clarinet, cello and piano, which Brahms composed for Mühlfeld in the same year as the quintet. Originally released in 2005, the recording of the Trio received a warm welcome, including an Editor's Choice in Gramophone, as well as a 'Disc of the Month' on website ClassicsToday.com.

During long periods the flute has been almost synonymous with France, the country from which the music, the great players and the finest instruments all came. The French flute - whether dreamy as in Debussy's Syrinx or sprightly as in Poulenc's Sonata - is simply unmistakeably French, in all its delights. On her new release, renowned flutist Sharon Bezaly - who herself studied in Paris - celebrates this tradition, with a programme consisting of works composed between 1889 and 1946. French Delights is something of a companion piece to a previous Bezaly disc: Café au Lait, a predominantly French flute recital accompanied by Roland Pöntinen. Upon its release that disc, and the artistry of Sharon Bezaly, were highly acclaimed, for instance in French magazine Diapason: 'The flute turns into the voice of enchantment, a lullaby of the senses or an invitation to dreamfulness, into planing light or the glitter of light on water - an instrument almost too beautiful.' Here again, with the support of eminent pianist Love Derwinger, Sharon Bezaly displays her prodigious talent.

Recently released recordings of Mozart's concertos, of three contemporary works for flute and orchestra and of a programme for solo flute have earned Sharon Bezaly epithets such as 'God's gift to the flute', 'an amazingly talented performer' and 'a First Lady among equals'. Here she has turned to some of the central works for flute and piano, and with Ronald Brautigam, familiar from many BIS releases, gives her interpretations of three master-pieces of the 1940s flanking Schubert's great Trockne Blumen variations, composed some 120 years earlier. Though written in the span of two years, Prokofiev's Sonata, Dutilleux's Sonatine and Jolivet's Chant de Linos each show the flute in a different light. Prokofiev was preoccupied with clarity of style and found the instrument a perfect vehicle: 'The sonata should be played with a bright, transparent, classical tone', he wrote. (David Oistrakh later convinced the composer to create a violin version, which quickly became very popular.) A distinctly different approach was taken by Jolivet, who wrote his Chant inspired by the ancient Greek concept of 'linos', a ritual lament punctuated by cries and dancing. It is thus based on musical material associated with Greek modes and explores the extremes of expression. Dutilleux, finally, composed his Sonatine as a set piece for the flute competitions of the Paris Conservatoire. But these academic-sounding origins are belied by the by turns atmospheric and spirited writing, so typical of the multi-faceted Dutilleux. Sharon Bezaly and Ronald Brautigam have previously collaborated on BIS-CD-1439, with violist Nobuko Imai. Upon its release this disc received a number of distinctions and highly favourable reviews, not least because of the superb ensemble playing.