Life meets art Joyce DiDonato stars in a live world-premiere recording of an opera written for her: Great Scott by Jake Heggie In Great Scott, the Kansas-born mezzo-soprano, one of today's best-loved classical singers, creates a role conceived specifically with her in mind. The character she plays, Arden Scott, just happens to be an opera star, and she is the lynchpin of what Fred Plotkin of WQXR, the USA's leading classical music radio station, welcomed as a "deeply moving and musically brilliant work" that "should enter the standard repertory just as Heggie's two previous masterpieces - Dead Man WalkingandMoby-Dick - already have". Jake Heggie, who has been described as US opera's most successful composer, chose the celebrated playwright Terence McNally as his librettist for Great Scott. The two previously collaborated on the gripping Dead Man Walking, which has become something of a modern classic since it's premiere in 2000. Joyce DiDonato first performed it's central role, Sister Helen Prejean, at New York City Opera in 2002 and will do so again in concert stagings in London and Madrid in January/February 2018 coinciding with the album release of Great Scott.

Double vinyl LP pressing. Anna Netrebko's visual album is based on four arias from her latest recordings. Filmed mainly at Teatro alla Scala in Milan right after recording the album, it explores Anna's performative practices to embody different heroines and their stories. Framed by a genuine interview where Anna shares rare insights about herself and the music, the work follows the four arias as they are translated to screen, each with a unique visual language and style.

Renee Fleming explores how music's relationship with nature can be relevant for the age of humans. Looking back to the Romantic era and looking forward with new commissions from Nico Muhly, Caroline Shaw and Kevin Puts. "The music on the album begins in a time almost two centuries ago, when people had a profound connection to the beauty of nature. Now we have reached a moment when we see all too clearly the effects of our own activity, and the fragility of our environment." - Renee Fleming

Schumann: Cello Concerto; Bloch: Schelomo - Mstislav Rostropovich - Other participants: Orchestre Nationale de France, Leonard Bernstein This key recording is being reissued at a special price as part of the celebration of Rostropovich - "Cellist of the Century"

Jackie was always the most exciting cellist," Yo-Yo Ma, Jacqueline du Pre's fellow-cellist, has said. "It would be hard to think of another that took as many risks as she did... always for expressive reasons. There is no other artist who can transfer that sense of excitement onto vinyl." Here, with Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, du Pre performs perhaps the most widely-loved of all cello concertos, Dvorak's lyrical and stirring epic.

Recorded live in June 2017 at the magnificent Liceu Theatre in Barcelona, this DVD is the companion to Joyce DiDonato's award-winning album In War and Peace: Harmony through Music. Seeking answers to the existential question "In the midst of chaos, how do you find peace?", it makes a compelling piece of music theatre as DiDonato journeys through arias by Handel, Purcell, Monteverdi, Leo and Jommelli with Il Pomo d'Oro and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. On stage, In War and Peace: Harmony through Music makes a compelling piece of music theatre. In Barcelona, as on the European and North American tours she made in late 2016, DiDonato was joined by the baroque orchestra Il Pomo d'Oro and it's principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. May and June 2018 bring further performances in Portugal, France, Germany, Turkey and Hungary. Includes Bonuses: Joyce DiDonato presents "In War & Peace" project. Joyce DiDonato in Athens with el Sistema Greece directed by Josh Allott. Video Clip Lascia ch'io pianga directed by James Darrah.

Grammy award-winning violinist Nicola Benedetti presents her new album, Baroque. This is the first album Benedetti has released on a period set-up including gut strings, and she is joined by a leading group of freelance baroque musicians, forming the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra for the very first time. The album features a selection of concerti by Vivaldi plus Geminiani's incredible arrangement of Corelli's 'La Folia.'

With this album, Daniel Hope presents a personal collection of timeless classics by Schubert, Elgar and P"rt, several beloved traditional songs, and a brand new arrangement of the inspiring and spiritual Misa Criolla by Ariel Ram¡rez. "Music has a tremendous power," says Daniel Hope. "This album is my attempt to send out a ray of hope and provide people, including myself, with a sense of support and a feeling of trust."

The Sound of Herbert von Karajan TITLE: The Sound of Herbert von Karajan (3CD) Portrait of an iconic conductor: He was the world's most popular podium idol - Herbert von Karajan, the "mythical Maestro'. And nearly three decades after his death he tops the pantheon of the classical music world with his legendary recordings. This 3-CD edition brings together great moments in his discography with which Karajan wrote recording history. - Herbert von Karajan is the epitome of the conductor. Who could fail to recognize his profile with it's streamlined shock of hair? Even now, almost three decades since he died at the age of 81 in 1989, the charismatic figure remains an icon. His unparalleled career took wing on the momentum of early globalization: the success of the long-playing vinyl disc was the success of Herbert von Karajan. He cut some 800 records and was instrumental in spreading Western classical music to the uttermost parts of the earth. How are we to explain the lasting fascination of the Karajan phenomenon? In musical terms, one factor is surely paramount: among the many elements that constitute an interpretation, Karajan quite clearly gave primacy to just one, namely the sound. For him, beauty and purity of tone were key. No extraneous noise was allowed to distract; there must be nothing to indicate how this ecstasy of sound came into existence. Karajan's orchestral sound has an almost hypnotic effect. Few conductors are so clearly to be recognized on recordings as he is. True, Karajan sometimes had ideas of his own about the composer's tonal language, and that is one of the peculiarities of his enigmatic personality. Any student of his biography will be struck by it's ambivalent features. Not once but twice, we are told, Karajan joined the Nazi party. It did no harm to his career in the "Third Reich", and the highly talented young man rose swiftly from provincial theatres to the Berlin Staatsoper. After the end of the war, the Russian occupying forces banned him from conducting. The constant question about the relationship between art and integrity was answered pragmatically by legendary producer Walter Legge for himself and the EMI record company: he wanted Karajan. So, shortly after the war, he travelled to bombed-out Vienna. A bottle of black-market whisky helped the pair lay the foundation stone of a collaboration that was to shape our appreciation of classical music up to the present day. Karajan's interests ranged far beyond the canon of German symphonic music. Brahms, Bruckner and Strauss were among his household gods, it is true, but so were Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Grieg. He had a marvellous feeling for the luscious sound of Debussy and Ravel. And to Dvorak's Ninth, the "New World" Symphony, he brought a stringency and tragic inevitability that dismissed all sense of complacency and cockiness from this well-loved work. Verena Fischer-ZerninTranslation: texthouse

Three CDs. This limited edition presents three outstanding albums by V¡kingur Olafsson in one box set including additional fan content and deluxe packaging. Including all of V¡kingur's albums with the full scope of repertoire so far: Philip Glass (2017), J. S. Bach (2018) and Claude Debussy - Jean-Philippe Rameau (2020). Featuring the original liner notes by the artist plus exclusive fan content: reprints of hand-written short statements about each album on the album sleeves.

The members of Les Vents Francais, which has been described as "the wind-quintet equivalent of a supergroup" join the Munich Chamber Orchestra and conductor Daniel Giglberger in five examples of the sinfonia concertante. The form flourished in the decades around 1800, particularly in Paris and Mannheim, and the works here are by Parisian luminaries Pleyel and Devienne, Mannheim resident Danzi, and a genius who visited Paris and took inspiration from the music of Mannheim: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Violinist Roman Simovic directs the LSO Chamber Ensemble - a septet featuring veteran principal players from across the LSO including bassoonist Rachel Gough, clarinetist Andrew Marriner, percussionist Neil Percy and trumpet player Philip Cobb - in Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale. This theatrical work, 'to be read, played and danced,' is based on a Russian folk tale about a soldier who trades his fiddle for unparalleled economic gain. British stage and television actor Malcom Sinclair narrates, leading audience members through the soldier's regretful decision.

Faure: Piano, Chamber Music, Orchestral & Requiem TITLE: Faure: Piano Works & Chamber Music (9CD) - Gabriel Faure, whose long and influential life spanned the eras of romanticism and early modernism, enriched a diversity of genres with music of proverbial subtlety. It tantalises and captivates the listener with it's discreet beauty and it's highly personal language and expression. His works are performed in this collection by an array of artists whose credentials in French repertoire are beyond question.

If you see one opera this year, make it The Exterminating Angel, ran the headline in the New York Times after the US premiere of Thomas Ades' "stunningly inventive" opera based on Luis Bunuel's surreal and satirical 1962 film El angel exterminador. Like the British composer's score, Tom Cairns' production is both spectacular and surprising. "Ades keeps the listener on edge," wrote Opera magazine, "because one never knows where his dazzling palette of possibilities will take him next." Thomas Ades TITLE: Ades: The Exterminating Angel (MET)(DVD) Label: PRX/Warner Classics/Parlophone

Double vinyl LP pressing. 2019 release. With this collection, Lang Lang goes back to his first love - to the pieces that made him want to become a musician in the first place. Rediscovering the most popular and accessible pieces written for learners and lovers of the piano, this album is a journey; of inspiration, of discovery, fantasy and learning. It is a moment for Lang Lang to illuminate these classic pieces as the masterworks they truly are. It is also a reflection on the music that influenced him most during his early childhood.

Two CDs. Mozart & Flute in Paris brings together nine captivating works, all with their origins in Paris, which feature a solo flute. Emmanuel Pahud is joined by his colleagues from 'wind supergroup' Les Vents Francais - oboist Francois Leleux (here also conducting the Orchestre de chambre de Paris), clarinettist Paul Meyer, bassoonist Gilbert Audin and horn-player Radovan Vlatkovic - and by Belgian harpist Anneleen Lenaerts. "The pieces on this album represent different golden ages of the flute," says Pahud. The earliest, dating from 1778 are two concertante works that Mozart wrote while visiting Paris. The newest, premiered in 2014 by Pahud and the Orchestre de chambre de Paris, is Dreamtime by Philippe Hersant. The intervening period is represented by pieces by Saint-Saens, Faure, Chaminade and Poulenc, composers whose music embodies France's special relationship with the flute.