In this third volume of his acclaimed Beethoven fortepiano cycle, Roberto Prosseda explores four early piano sonatas composed between 1796 and 1799, including the iconic Pathetique Sonata, the expansive Op. 7, and the intimate Op. 49 sonatas. Performing on an original 1820 Conrad Graf fortepiano, Prosseda reveals a Beethoven who is bold, unpredictable, and deeply theatrical - an improviser whose music breathes with rhetorical power, expressive contrasts, and remarkable spontaneity. Rather than seeking historical reconstruction, this recording offers a fresh rediscovery of Beethoven's creative imagination through the distinctive colours and responsiveness of one of the finest surviving instruments of it's kind. Recorded at the renowned Musicafelix Studio in Prato, Italy, this album benefits from an exceptional acoustic environment that beautifully captures the fortepiano's unique palette of transparent bass, eloquent middle register, and crystalline treble. Together, Prosseda's insightful interpretation and the studio's natural sound create an immersive listening experience that brings Beethoven's early masterpieces vividly to life, balancing architectural grandeur with poetic intimacy. 'I continue to perceive a remarkably living presence: a Beethoven who improvises, experiments, and takes risks.' - Roberto Prosseda

The very first notes of this CD are enchanting: the delicate sounds that Kanahi Yamashita draws from the strings of her guitar immediately transport us to a world filled with sounds and songs that illuminate the various facets between night and dream. In the songs by John Dowland and the variations by Segei Rudnev, the darkness and depth of the night allude to death and it's eternal silence. Frank Martin's composition, Quatre pieces breves, reflects both the tranquility and the restlessness of the darkness, much like Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal after John Dowland. The journey through the night concludes with the 1953 piece Alba by Swiss composer Hans Haug, whose gentle string sounds herald the dawn - the night ends and a new day begins. Full of hope, tenderness, and melancholy, qualities so characteristic of Kanahi Yamashita's playing. Kanahi Yamashita was born in Nagasaki in 1997 and received her musical training from her parents, the renowned - and recently deceased - guitarist Kazuhito Yamashita and composer Keiko Fujiie. From a young age, she performed worldwide in a duo with her father. At the age of 13, she made her solo debut in Turin. She has lived in Berlin since 2015, where she studied at the Berlin University of the Arts with Prof. Thomas Muller-Pering and at the Nuremberg University of Music with Prof. Bjorn Colell, graduating with honors in 2026.

This recording explores Brahms' masterpieces through the lens of historical performance practice, restoring lost expressive technical traditions such as rubato, portamento and tempo flexibility. Performed on period instruments by the Nieuwe Philharmonie Utrecht led by specialist Johannes Leertouwer, the album reveals a sound world of striking contrasts, dramatic freedom and orchestral transparency going far beyond modern conventions.

Granville Bantock was born into a wealthy family (his father was a highly respected gynaecologist) in central London in 1868. Poor health scuppered his parents plans for a career in the Indian Civil service, and eventually Bantock gravitated to music, studying at both Trinity College and at the Royal Academy of Music. Early conducting engagements took him around the world with a musical comedy troupe, before he was appointed as conductor of the New Brighton Tower concerts in Cheshire. He very quickly expanded the scope of the orchestra, and stage concerts featuring works by Joseph Holbrooke, Frederic Hymen Cowen, Charles Steggall, Edward German, Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford, Corder and others, frequently devoting whole concerts to a single composer. Edward Elgar commented that Bantock had 'the most fertile musical brain of our time', On Elgar's recommendation, he became the first Principal of the new Midland Institute School of Music, in Birmingham, and within seven years had succeeded Elgar as Peyton Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham, a post he held until 1934. His unique musical style combines the romanticism of Wagner with influences of English and Scottish Folk Music, as well as the exoticism of eastern music. He had many champions of his work, including Sibelius, who became the first president of the Bantock society formed after the composer's death in 1946.

Bebop Riddle V is by turns sprightly, spry, energetic, and spirited. In this work, Thomas crafted animated, travelling, flexible, versatile, changing, fluid, and buoyant sonic adventures, a bit like two hummingbirds darting around a field of wildflowers. Iridescent, bold, and scintillating, the carefully sculpted and fashioned musical materials of Bebop Riddle V are agile and vivacious, and their flexibility allows pathways to braid harmonic, rhythmic, and contrapuntal elements that are constantly transformed - variously whimsical, jazzy and bebop-like, layered, and reverberating, with lyrical resonance, pirouettes, fulcrum points, and vitality. The two equally virtuosic parts - requiring highly characterized dynamics and articulations, as well as fast fingering changes - sparkle forth for 8 minutes, unfolding fourteen continuously developing phrases, each lasting between 15 and 50 seconds. The music is organic and concerned with transformations and connections at every level. Poetically speaking, this composition has a kind of fractal quality to it - each part has a similar flair, twirl, whirl, pivot, and character as the whole. There are seven additional alternative instrumentation versions for Bebop Riddle V which can be purchased separately.

As an endless source of inspiration, Ovid's Metamorphoses have left a lasting mark on our culture for over two thousand years. Combining some of it's episodes with music by Antonio Vivaldi, Stage Director Barrie Kosky creates a pasticcio for our times, a fascinating new work of rich imagination and breathless narratives. With a leading cast of singers assembled by Cecilia Bartoli, and with the participation of actor Angela Winkler, Hotel Metamorphosis stands out as 'a panopticon of human emotions'. Vivaldi expert Gianluca Capuano conducts Les Musiciens du Prince - Monaco, presenting a unique variety of Vivaldi's arias, ensembles and choruses, music with a particularly powerful emotional charge. 'What a brilliant evening of theatre.' (BR Klassik) / 'Checking into this hotel guarantees a luxury stay.' (Kurier) / 'the musical Champions League.' (Deutschlandfunk Kultur)

Henry Purcell Reimagined: Baroque Songs of Fate and Freedom In this recording, the Vox Orchestra, conductor Lorenzo Ghirlanda and soprano Marie-Sophie Pollak explore some of Henry Purcell's most captivating songs from King Arthur, The Fairy Queen, and Dido and Aeneas. At the heart of the programme lies a theme that remains strikingly relevant today: the confrontation with the inevitable-war, love, duty, and loss. Rather than presenting these works solely as excerpts from Baroque stage music, the performers highlight their original character as songs. Purcell's memorable melodies emerge with remarkable directness and emotional immediacy, while instrumental interludes function like modern introductions and codas. Bold string playing, expressive continuo, and vivid contrasts of tempo create a sound world that feels both historically informed and surprisingly contemporary. Marie-Sophie Pollak brings the diverse characters to life with exceptional expressive clarity, favouring direct communication over excessive ornamentation. The result is a fresh and compelling interpretation that reveals Purcell's theatre music as a timeless collection of songs, bridging the distance between the seventeenth century and today's listener.

A proliferation of programmatic music infuses Winter Night, composer Elena Ruehr's seventh release on AVIE, the result of a particularly close collaboration with the international members of the Boston Trio - violinist Irina Muresanu and cellist Mihai Marica, both Romanians, and Korean pianist Heng-Jin Park -who are joined by native New Yorker violist Marcus Thompson in Elena's piano quartet. Emotions, energy and the natural world abound in the world premiere recordings of the album's four works. The title track, Elena's Piano Trio No. 3, is a four-movement narrative that is by turns lyrical, graceful and melodic. The joyful Piano Trio No. 4, subtitled 'Ski, Kayak, Bike', recalls childhood sports enjoyed with her father, the work's dedicatee. The three movements of Piano Trio No. 5, 'Troubled Times', confront emotional responses to challenging personal circumstances, yet also seem especially appropriate now given the state of the world's current events. Piano Quartet No. 2, 'Maple', is an homage to an ancient tree that has stood the tests of time, much like the Stradivarius instruments that were made using the beautiful, dense wood. Elena's music appropriately references composers working at the same time as the famed luthier, Bach, Pachelbel and Vivaldi.

Introducing Jiaxin Min in her debut album, this recording marks the arrival of a compelling new voice on the international piano scene. Emerging as an audience favourite from the Queen Elisabeth Competition she combines expressive intensity, clarity of thought and a deeply personal artistic vision. Centred around the idea of farewell and reunion, the programme brings together Beethoven's intimate Sonata Lebewohl ('Les Adieux'), Liszt's dramatic Ballade No. 2, and Barber's powerful Piano Sonata. Through these landmark works, Jiaxin Min explores themes of absence, transformation and rediscovery, drawing on her own personal journey through music and returns to the stage. Balancing virtuosity with introspection and emotional depth, this first album reveals an artist of rare maturity and personality.

As an endless source of inspiration, Ovid's Metamorphoses have left a lasting mark on our culture for over two thousand years. Combining some of it's episodes with music by Antonio Vivaldi, Stage Director Barrie Kosky creates a pasticcio for our times, a fascinating new work of rich imagination and breathless narratives. With a leading cast of singers assembled by Cecilia Bartoli, and with the participation of actor Angela Winkler, Hotel Metamorphosis stands out as 'a panopticon of human emotions'. Vivaldi expert Gianluca Capuano conducts Les Musiciens du Prince - Monaco, presenting a unique variety of Vivaldi's arias, ensembles and choruses, music with a particularly powerful emotional charge. 'What a brilliant evening of theatre.' (BR Klassik) / 'Checking into this hotel guarantees a luxury stay.' (Kurier) / 'the musical Champions League.' (Deutschlandfunk Kultur)

In 1785, Antonin Reicha went to Bonn with his unchle Joseph to play flute in the court orchestra there. There he met Ludwig van Beethoven, ten months his junior. Soon they started a friendship that survived despite the long distance. Whilst Beethoven established himself in Vienna, Reicha achieved the highest acclaim in Paris as a composer and above all as a teacher. Cesar Franck, Hector Berlioz, Louise Farrenc and Friedrich von Flotow are only a few of his illustrious pupils who learned their trade with the help of Reicha's astute technical prowess. It is not easy to sum up what he achieved. He wrote dozens of wind quintets, string quartets, other works of chamber music, highly original piano works as well as four symphonies and several overtures. His experimentation most likely evoked "Homeric laughter" from his famous Viennese friend. And how could it be otherwise, when pieces such as the overture - which can be heard on the first CD of our complete symphonic recording - throw even modern sensibilities off balance with their constant disruptions of metre without one being able to say why one keeps losing count... Only repeated listening helps!

Handel's Baroque opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto unfolds here as a high-stakes drama of power, passion and survival. Dmitri Tcherniakov's powerful production strips the story to it's psychological core, placing political rivalry and a fiery love story within the claustrophobic setting of an underground bunker. Christophe Dumaux delivers a compelling Cesare, while Olga Kulchynska shines as a 'lyrical' Cleopatra in her Salzburg debut. With a superb supporting cast, above all Lucile Richardot as Cornelia 'with her smouldering mezzo' (BR Klassik) and Federico Fiorio as Sesto, Emmanuelle Haim conducts Le Concert d'Astree from the harpsichord, shaping 'a perfect whole' (Kurier) of musical brilliance and electrifying theatre.

With a spectacular cast and the staging direction of Stefano Poda, this production of Verdi's Nabucco presents the Arena di Verona in a postmodern aesthetic brought to light through a futuristic vision, cosmic symbolism and absolute abstraction. Anna Netrebko gifts the festival's audience with a powerful interpretation of one of Verdi's most demanding roles: her Abigaille is 'beautiful, vivacious, magnetic' (La Stampa) and 'tackles this formidable challenge with great confidence' (Rivista Musica). Amartuvshin Enkhbat is 'a marvellous performer of Nabucco, deeply moving' (Forum Opera). 'Pinchas Steinberg conducts the choir and orchestra of the Arena di Verona with verve, power, brio and fire' (Der Merker), a magnificent performance that culminated in a rendition of 'Va' pensiero' brimming with pathos and intensity.

(summary) In October 2024, the Orchestre National de France under the baton of music director Cristian Macelaru, immersed itself in one of the great symphonic works of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): his extraordinary Resurrection Symphony. On this new recording, the epic journey unfolds serenely, bathed in warm pastoral colours. (complete blurb) Over two evenings on 24 and 25 October 2024, the Orchestre National de France under it's music director Cristian Macelaru immersed themselves in the extraordinary symphonic epic that Gustav Mahler wrote in the 1890s: his utterly unrestrained Symphony No. 2, the Resurrection. What a baptism of fire! The Romanian conductor, not known for his Mahler until now, boldly takes up, in Paris, the very same score that the legendary Leonard Bernstein conducted at his first great Parisian triumph on 13 November 1958-which as it happens was also with the Orchestre National. More than 70 years after Bernstein, Cristian Macelaru offers a vision that is the complete opposite, with a chamber-like approach of delicacy and pastoral warmth, in contrast to his illustrious predecessor's grandiose and solemn take. The textures are therefore amazingly light: the magnificent transparency of the strings is answered by woodwinds brimming with freshness, discreetly revealing the roots of a composer born not far from Prague who was passionately drawn to new sonorities and unexpected instrumental blends. Under the Romanian conductor's direction, joined here by the luminous soprano of Hanna-Elisabeth Muller and the amber-toned mezzo of Karen Cargill, the passionate journey of Resurrection becomes one of profound serenity. The architecture of the work remains consistently natural and supple, and the symphony finds it's unity effortlessly despite the remarkable diversity of soundscapes of which it is made. It was in 1888 that Gustav Mahler first conceived the large-scale symphonic piece he called Todtenfeier (Funeral Rites), in which he portrays, from the height of a steep promontory, the entire life of the hero of his First Symphony, the Titan. Slightly revised, this became the introductory Allegro maestoso of the Second Symphony, to which Mahler later added four more movements. The second takes the form of a shimmering Landler, deceptively gracious, with interwoven motifs. The third is a scherzo based on his song Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt ('St. Anthony of Padua preaching to the fishes', No. 6 from Des Knaben Wunderhorn). For the fourth movement, the composer draws on another song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, No. 12, Urlicht ('Primeval Light'), preserving the vocal line while altering some of the orchestration and harmonic progressions. Gustav Mahler searched a long time for inspiration for the Finale, finding it eventually while listening to a choir sing a hymn during the funeral of the great conductor Hans von Bulow. The hymn was based on words by the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, and Mahler resolved then and there to conclude his work with this hymn to resurrection, supplementing Klopstock's text with several verses of his own. Overall, then, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 opens with a meditation on death, and moves steadily through earthly life in all it's tenderness and irony to a proclamation of faith in the resurrection-the sole subject of the Finale-in which soloists, chorus and orchestra come together in a glorious gesture of reconciliation.

Northern Dawn reveals the music of Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707) through the intimate voice of the Baroque lute. In his transcriptions of keyboard and instrumental music, Elias Conrad traces a five-part, cantata-like journey of seeking, longing, pleading, hoping, and trusting. Emerging from the darkness of a war-torn century, this programme becomes a quiet, luminous counterpoint to the noise of our own time and casts Dieterich Buxtehude as a radiant light.

With a spectacular cast and the staging direction of Stefano Poda, this production of Verdi's Nabucco presents the Arena di Verona in a postmodern aesthetic brought to light through a futuristic vision, cosmic symbolism and absolute abstraction. Anna Netrebko gifts the festival's audience with a powerful interpretation of one of Verdi's most demanding roles: her Abigaille is 'beautiful, vivacious, magnetic' (La Stampa) and 'tackles this formidable challenge with great confidence' (Rivista Musica). Amartuvshin Enkhbat is 'a marvellous performer of Nabucco, deeply moving' (Forum Opera). 'Pinchas Steinberg conducts the choir and orchestra of the Arena di Verona with verve, power, brio and fire' (Der Merker), a magnificent performance that culminated in a rendition of 'Va' pensiero' brimming with pathos and intensity.

The King's Singers: Live at Christmas captures the celebrated vocal sextet in a live performance recorded at Temple Church, London, on 16 January 2026. Spanning nine centuries of music, the programme moves from medieval plainchant and O Antiphons through Renaissance polyphony to beloved modern carols and seasonal pop, including world premiere recordings of newly commissioned arrangements. Throughout the concert, the singers perform from several different areas of the church, creating varied acoustic effects. Contributions from both longstanding collaborators and the singers themselves reflect the group's ongoing commitment to expanding the choral repertoire.

Even at a young age, Bernhard Romberg and his cousin Andreas, ten months his senior, caused a sensation - as a violinist and cellist nonpareil respectively. They conquered Paris's Concerts spirituels, performed with Ludwig van Beethoven in the Bonn Court Orchestra starting in 1790 and remained virtually inseparable, though this did not prevent them from pursuing their own separate careers. After holding various posts, Andreas spent the final years of his life (until 1821) as a member of the Gotha court orchestra. His cousin rose to prominence becoming a virtuoso hailed as the Paganini of his instrument. It is only natural that the cello plays a central role in his compositions (he wrote a dozen solo concertos alone), but the instrument is also reflected favourably in his numerous chamber music works. Romberg was certainly not content to restrict himself to providing simple bass accompaniment for a demanding upper voice, but ensured that he and his circle of colleagues were given roles of equal importance. The result is a series of compositions that are as musically beautiful as they are structurally intriguing, some of which have a symphonic character - and which serve as wonderful complementary additions to the work of the "avant-gardist" Beethoven, with whom Romberg shared a long-standing friendship.

A BBC New Generation Artist in 2022-24, violinist Geneva Lewis is also the recipient of a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant, a 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and has been Musical America's New Artist of the Month. For her recording debut on Delos, she revels in a high-flying all-American program, accompanied by Gemma New conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Starting with Samuel Barber's neo-Romantic violin Concerto - the notorious finale provides hardly any respite to the soloist - it is followed by the first recording of John Zorn's Partita for the Firebird, a solo violin work in which 'every note burns and demands your entire self' (Geneva's own words), and Philip Glass's Violin Concerto No. 1. Written to please his father, the work is less symphonic than operatic, befitting a composer then in the full flight of operatic composition. Recipient of the prestigious 2021 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Gemma New conducts the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in both concertos.

Giuseppe Cambini, born in Italy in 1746 and based for most of his life in Paris, left so much fine music - over 600 compositions - that it is surprising that the year and place of his death remain uncertain. Among that huge output are over 100 string quintets using a second cello rather than another viola, giving them an unusually rich sonority. Cambini's elegant melodic manner and his spontaneous counterpoint help explain why his chamber music was so popular during his lifetime - but not why it has been forgotten since then: it's refreshingly natural style has something of Mozart's tunefulness and Haydn's bright craftsmanship, and it's more thoughtful moments occasionally look ahead to Beethoven.