• SIGNUM saxophone quartet will release their first album on Berlin Classics
• Feat. Alexej Gerassimez (Percussion) and Eckart Runge (Cello)
• The quartet has made a name for themselves in various exciting projects (e.g. working with Alexej Gerassimez for his solo album on Berlin Classics)
• With Chameleon they show how colorful the sound of the saxophone is with a diverse selection of music from classical (Glazunov, Bloch, Haydn, and more) as well as pop and rock

Daniel Rieppel, a native of Minnesota of Austro-Hungarian descent, performs Mozart’s Fantasy and Sonata in C minor, the Piano Variations of Aaron Copland and Symphonic Etudes by Robert Schumann. Dr. Rieppel performs widely in North and South America and Europe (most recently in Iceland) and has been Professor of Music at Southwest Minnesota State University for over a quarter century. He has international recognition for his research into Schubert’s incomplete sonatas, finishing several that will be the subject of his next recording.

"A beautiful, rich, exciting brass sound...a fine tribute to one of the UK’s best brass bands." -- BBC Radio 3

When the American composer Jack Stamp was appointed International Composer-in-Association to the Grimethorpe Colliery Band in 2019; he conceived a recording project focused on works specifically written for the GCB; including compositions by himself and Liz Lane; the other GCB Composer-in-Association; alongside other pieces which have played a prominent role in the Band’s recent activities. The kaleidoscopic range of styles to be heard here displays the extraordinary virtuosity of one of the world’s best-known brass bands.

A cross-section of the Italian production for cello and piano, conceived during the hazy beginning of the twentieth century, shows us how the most varied influences – coming from all sorts of styles: Gregorian, Monteverdi, operatic, German and French late-romantic, avant-gardist, Franco-Russian impressionist, French symbolist, veristic – are absorbed and remoulded, accepted and rejected, by various personalities of the world of composition. In this cultural ambience, a crucial role was played by the so-called Generation of Eighteen-Eighty, whose components, Casella, Malipiero, Pizzetti, Respighi, friends and collaborators, stood out for their pursuit of innovation and their aim to create a character peculiar to Italian music; this quest was accompanied, at least in their artistic choices, by a certain lack of political commitment. Within this recording, cellist Roberto Trainini and pianist Stella Ala Luce Pontoriero are delivering an anthology of precious musical gems as necessary testimony to the great value of some obscured and forgotten Italian early twentieth century repertoire.

Four-time Grammy-winning sextet, Eighth Blackbird (8BB), "one of the smartest, most dynamic contemporary classical ensembles on the planet" (Chicago Tribune), presents the world premiere recording of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang's composition as explanation, based on Gertrude Stein's seminal 1926 lecture of the same name. Called "Super Chamber Music" by David Lang, this multidisciplinary work incorporates elements of chamber music, theater, and performance art; it has the groundbreaking ensemble not only performing the music, but also speaking and singing Stein's text.

For the performance, the 8BB players committed themselves to a rigorous education process, including lessons in acting, diction, and the art of theater. Musical America praised 8BB's live performance of Lang's work as "every bit as witty, circular, and self-referential as Stein's own prose; it's rare, not to mention utterly satisfying, to hear a work that so completely embodies it's text. To invoke Stein, one suspects Composition as Explanation will be a work of our time for many times to come."

In 2016, 8BB asked David Lang to propose a project that they could perform at the Chicago Arts Club in conjunction with the Club's centennial year. In his research, Lang discovered that Stein had spoken at the Club in 1934; this led him to employ Stein's text as the basis for the piece.

Mary Elizabeth Bowden, praised for her “splendid, brilliant” artistry (Gramophone), celebrates the narrative power of the trumpet with "Storyteller: Contemporary Concertos for Trumpet." Bowden is joined by the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra and conductor Allen Tinkham in a collection of new concertos that redefine the trumpet’s voice in modern classical music. This recording, a testament to Bowden’s commitment to expanding the trumpet repertoire, features world premiere recordings of works by James M. Stephenson, Clarice V. Assad, Vivian Fung, Tyson Gholston Davis, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Reena Esmail, showcasing the richness and versatility of contemporary classical trumpet music.

While Clementi’s sparkling music has been recorded by many celebrated pianists such as Arturo Benedetti MIchelangeli, few of them have paid much attention to the composer’s first published collection. This new recording by Carlo Alberto Bacchi is all the more welcome for being informed by his study of the composer’s complete oeuvre as part of the ‘Clementi Project’ which sees him performing many of the sonatas in concert as well as recording them for Piano Classics.

The inscription on Clementi’s tomb in Westminster Abbey commemorates him as ‘the father of the piano’. Clementi above all was responsible for devising a modern technique, of the kind still recognisable today, which would serve pianists on the larger instruments being manufactured in the early years of the 19th century. This technique is differentiated from harpsichord technique, and trained not just through lessons but through pianistic ‘methods’ and publications such as these sets of sonatas, which are arranged in order of progressive difficulty in order to introduced students to technical challenges step by step. Like Mozart, Clementi also manifested his musical talents at a very early age: at the age of 7, he was already studying organ, singing and counterpoint; he wrote a mass at the age of 11 and an oratorio at the age of 12.

The English nobleman and eccentric Sir Peter Beckford effectively bought the young Clementi on a seven-year contract and kept him at his West Country pile. When the contract with Beckford expired in 1774, Clementi moved to London and took off on a career that brought him fame across Europe – as a touring virtuoso, a teacher, publisher – and even sometimes composer. The six Op.1 sonatas were published in 1771, during Clementi’s period in service to Beckford. Although he was not yet 20 and almost completely self-taught, they show his mastery of material and his irrepressible invention. All the sonatas have a simple, playful and light-hearted character, and a two-movement form. The five Sonatas of Opus 1a, on the other hand, date from a decade later, even after the Op.6 Sonatas. They were published in Paris around 1781, and here we sense the stirrings of Clementi as ‘father of the piano’ in the cascades and doublings and expanded imagination.

Through this exciting recording, the violinist Fabio Biondi pursues his exploration of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century repertoire for solo violin. Two years after his complete recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s solo Sonatas and Partitas (V 5467), he lands on entirely unknown territory, the Assaggi by the Swedish composer Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758). Rarely lasting more than twelve minutes, the Assaggi is thus a fascinating melting-pot of multiple aesthetics in vogue in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Fabio Biondi champions this little-known territory of the European late baroque with a voracious generosity and highly eloquent sense of phrase.

In his own time, Roman was an important figure in the violin world. His career led him to the four corners of Europe, affording him the opportunity to meet many crucially important figures on the German and more southern musical stages, composers as well as renowned performers, especially when he was in Italy, where he visited Tartini. He also played with Handel. In Dresden, he met Pisendel, then dazzling everyone with his playing. In Hamburg, he probably met Telemann, whose Fantasias for Solo Violin, a highly creative and secret aspect of the great North German baroque master’s work, he studied intensely.

All of these encounters had a long-term influence on Johan Helmich Roman’s style, a different and important take on les goûts réunis. If the highly polyphonic structures of the Assaggi naturally remind us of the Swede’s Saxon origins (BeRI 314), if their study-like nature willingly brings to mind the twenty-four Fantasias of Telemann, works as much intended for professional musicians as for accomplished amateurs (the last movement of BeRI 310), the harmonies, which like the melodic outlines in Roman’s work are subtly tinged with an Italianate flavour, clearly recall contrasting works by Tartini (the second part of BeRI 320 for instance, or again the Andante of BeRI 324).

For her 10th anniversary with Berlin Classics, the US pianist Claire Huangci presents herself and her label with a weighty recording project, Schubert's late sonatas D 894, D 958, D 959, and D 960, as well as the Three Piano Pieces D 946 and a selection of songs from Schwanengesang. She accompanies the baritone Thomas E. Bauer in four of the songs and plays two in an arrangement by Franz Liszt. To be heard in a box with three albums under the title META.

META stands for the importance of Schubert's music in Claire Huangci's personal and musical life. Schubert's compositions, which she has played since her earliest youth, "show my development, that reflects unconscious emotions," as she writes in the booklet. Schubert's music is "the music I would like to take with me to a desert island...Schubert has accompanied me through all times", especially the late sonatas, which are at the center of the META box.

A unique and imaginative collection newly recorded by a recent star of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition. Anna Geniushene’s fresh; layered; and powerful interpretations won her a worldwide following at the 2022 edition of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition; where she took Silver Medal with a stunning account of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto which the critic for Gramophone compared in its power and nuance to Van Cliburn himself.

Born in Moscow; Anna Geniushene pursued graduate studies in London and now lives in Lithuania with her husband; the pianist Lukas Geniusas. In her own booklet introduction; she explains the inspiration for this quirky collection of instrumental lullabies. The Berceuse is ‘associated with tenderness; care; purest love; and the most sensitive moments in our lives.’ She dedicates the album to her two young sons. Perhaps the most celebrated Berceuse of all; by Chopin; is missing; because it was Anna Geniushene’s particular wish to find and share neglected examples of the genre; even by well-known composers. Debussy composed the Berceuse heroique during the First World War as a tribute to the soldiers on the Western Front. The Berceuse Elegiaque of Busoni is better known in its orchestral guise. The brief Berceuse by Hindemith; unpublished in his lifetime; ‘draws listeners’ attention by its utterly eloquent and typically sarcastic character; which has nothing in common with traditional lullabies.’ The sheer diversity of composers makes for a continually varied sequence. George Crumb evokes a magical night-time stillness with a minimum of notes. Mompou’s Berceuse is likewise remarkable for its distilled serenity; whereas the examples by Granados; John Field and Liszt bring comfort with more Romantically moulded melodies in the tradition of Chopin. Anna Geniushene closes the album with two Russian Berceuses; by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky; lyrical; simple and utterly beguiling in her hands.

As a composer Hummel stood between different eras. His compositions span all the contemporary forms of music except for the symphony. He was foremost among the composers who sought to preserve the classical style and refused to tread the new paths opened by Beethoven.

For the present-day listener the various musical currents prevalent in Beethoven‘s day need no longer exclude each other. Unhampered by strong emotions or the obligation to take sides, we can – depending on expertise or mood – savor his music either in a totally unprejudiced way or with the detachment with which one views events long past. And to let oneself be captivated by Hummel‘s chamber music can be a singularly agreeable and rewarding experience no matter whether one is motivated by a desire to gain a deeper understanding of historical connections or by the wish to simply enjoy good music.

Hummel left us eight works written for the piano trio group. A first work has not been included in this selection, as only the works which the composer himself described as “piano trios” were chosen for this recording. With the exception of one piece we do not know when these works were composed. For chronological information we must therefore rely on the dates of the first editions or of reviews.