The prolific Finnish composer Kalevi Aho periodically undertakes large-scale compositions that showcase the full breadth of his artistic abilities. The Symphony No. 17 exemplifies this tendency, representing his most ambitious orchestral work to date. The symphony requires a substantial orchestra, incorporating less common instruments such as the lupophone, a variation of the baritone oboe, and the contraforte, an acoustically enhanced contrabassoon. The first movement, "From the Deep", which can also be performed as an independent symphonic poem, establishes a somber and profound atmosphere. The second movement, "Scherzo macabre", suggests a macabre dance of death. The finale, "Distant Songs", features musical shifts that evoke distant times, dances, and songs, before ultimately returning to the present. Following it's triumphant première in 2019, the symphony was immediately hailed as a magnum opus within Kalevi Aho's oeuvre.

Hugo Alfvén was an accomplished writer and painter as well as musician and composer. Born in Stockholm in 1872, he studied first at Kungliga Musikhögskolan (the Royal College of Music) and then in Berlin, Dresden, Paris, and Brussels. Influenced by Wagner and Richard Strauss, Alfvén's style is also permeated with the influence of Swedish folk music. Festspel (Festival Play) was commissioned to inaugurate the new art nouveau building for Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern (the Royal Dramatic Theatre) in Stockholm, in 1908, the work is suitably rousing and celebratory for such an occasion. Alfvén was asked in 1932 to write incidental music for a play by Ludvig Nordström, to commemorate the 300-year anniversary of the death of the protestant Swedish monarch at the battle of Lützen, at the end of the Thirty Years War, the suite that he subsequently extracted is a substantial work in it's own right. Cantus arcticus is perhaps Rautavaara's best-known work, and was commissioned by the University of Oulu, in northern Finland, to honour it's first formal doctoral graduation ceremony, in 1972, Rautavaara instead took his inspiration from the natural environment of the region, incorporating two-channel tape recordings of birdsong as part of the orchestral texture.

Claudio Santoro's late works are marked by great concision and considerable emotional density. The music on this album was written in the last months of his life. The Viola Concerto and the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra juxtapose restless energy and expansive - if at times desolate - lyricism. The powerful Symphony No. 13 shows Santoro's mastery of orchestration and form at it's peak, and the compact Symphony No. 14 was to be the last in a cycle widely acclaimed as the most significant of it's kind ever composed in Brazil.

Rumon Gamba directs the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for the third instalment of his exploration of Overtures from the British Isles. As in the case of the previous volumes, the recorded repertoire is rarely played, and the album includes three world premiere recordings. All the works were composed in a period of eleven years, between 1938 and 1949, against the background of the horrific world events of that era. Presenting an eclectic mix of musical styles, the album, like it's predecessors, sheds light on some wonderful discoveries, passionately and enthusiastically performed by orchestra and conductor.

FLORENCE B. PRICE. A composer advocates for the exchange of different traditions and cultures. Florence B. Price's works combine a fascinating spectrum of intense emotion, buoyant lightness, and playful charm, which captivated me from the very first moment. In particular, her songs, which bear witness to great sensitivity and melodic ingenuity, have made a lasting impression on me in terms of their expressiveness and complexity. However, it is not only her music that touches me; I also feel profoundly moved by her life story. Florence B. Price was a single mother of two children after separating from her husband. Tragically, she had to cope with the loss of one of her children at an early age-a fate that is sure to have shaped her life profoundly. As an African-American artist, she also had to assert herself in an era characterised by deep-seated racism, and in a world where women in classical music rarely found recognition. Astonishingly, her works have not yet been fully published or featured in the standard repertoire. Her music, culturally rich, full of history, and brimming with emotion, deserves to be elevated to it's rightful rank due to it's artistic quality. The apparent lack of widespread recognition of Price's oeuvre cannot be explained by a lack of compositional quality, but rather by socio-historical circumstances that marginalised artists like her. It is very surprising that her works have not yet been published in their entirety...(Excerpt from the liner notes by Sascha EL Mouissi)

Prize-winning composer Gregory Fritze has written over a hundred compositions for a variety of forces, and is also a greatly admired teacher. The four works on this album share programmatic perspectives. The city of London is evoked in a celebratory overture full of vitality, diversity, and pageantry; the two symphonies reflect Fritze's immersion in the warmth, landscape, and festive excitement of the city of Valencia; and the overture Waterplace Park, a popular meeting place in Providence, Rhode Island, is a jovial piece that features five unusual instrumental soloists.

An award-winning English composer of international standing, and one of the leading composers of his generation, whose music has been performed, recorded, and broadcast in many countries, Edward Gregson celebrates his eightieth birthday in 2025. He continues to compose and perform as actively as ever. This album presents three major concertos, interspersed with two shorter works for piano and orchestra. A Song for Bram was written in memory of his great friend and advocate, the conductor Bramwell Tovey. A Song for Sue, re-working the central Nocturne from his Concertante for Piano and Brass Band (1966), is a 2024 tribute to his wife. One of the most performed of all his works, the Tuba Concerto was written for John Fletcher, who gave the first performance in 1977. Gregson's Concerto for Viola and String Orchestra 'Three Goddesses' was given it's first performance in 2023 by Rachel Roberts. The goddesses depicted in the three movements are Morrigan (Celtic warrior queen and earth mother), Aphrodite (Greek goddess of love and beauty), and Diana (Roman goddess of the hunt). First performed by these forces in 2020, the Oboe Concerto 'A Vision in a Dream' is inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan. In following the narrative, Gregson comes closest in his series of concertos to producing a descriptive symphonic poem.

Since relaunching Sinfonia of London in 2018, John Wilson's hand-picked orchestra has attracted the highest critical acclaim from both national and international press, performed at the BBC Proms every year since 2021 (their live début), and made their international début at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam in 2025. Regularly touring in the UK, they have also released 25 albums (this is the 26th), covering a wide range of repertoire, including works by Korngold, Respighi, Ravel, Strauss, Rachmaninoff, Britten, Walton, Bliss, and Rodgers & Hammerstein. The album opens with Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, followed by Debussy's Clair de lune (orchestrated by John Wilson). Chabrier's Joyeuse Marche and Ravel's Une Barque sur l'océan (orchestrated by their composers) are followed by Saint-Saëns' symphonic poem Danse macabre. The programme ends with all of the movements from Bizet's two Carmen Suites, but in John Wilson's preferred order!

The Estonian composer Mihkel Kerem - born in Tallinn in 1981 and Joint Assistant Leader in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra since 2015 - used the Covid lockdown to produce no fewer than four symphonies, two of them, his Seventh and Eighth, conceived as a contrasting pair. Kerem's dark and ominous Seventh Symphony, like that of Sibelius, plots a huge sonata-form arch, growing from and back into it's opening material. It's soundworld sits somewhere between Sibelius and Schnittke, combining a sense of natural symphonic growth with dramatic twists of kaleidoscopic textural variety. No. 8, which also nods to Sibelius' Seventh by quoting it's celebrated trombone theme, is a vast, unhurried accelerando, it's three linked movements tapping into the Nordic-Baltic tradition of using the controlled power of the orchestra to suggest the vastness of nature.

This fifth volume of the orchestral works of the late-Romantic Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896-1967) brings two works deeply bound up with his native Solothurn, in the north-west of the country. His Fastnachts-Sinfonie, or 'Carnival Symphony', is an expansive symphonic poem predicated on local legend and folk tradition, embracing both frolic and feeling. The Third Symphony - in which one can hear traces of Bruckner, and Richard Strauss - celebrates the rolling hills and endless skies of the Bucheggberg, where he loved to go walking, and where, the freewheeling music would suggest, his heart found freedom.

This album celebrates a warm and close musical relationship between composer, conductor, and orchestra - and the extraordinary impact the Covid pandemic had on British cultural life. Sir Mark and the Hallé commissioned and premiered the works on this album between 2020 and 2025, with Huw Watkins writing with the specific sound of the Hallé in mind. Symphony No. 2 and Fanfare for the Hallé were born of the pandemic. The symphony was composed during Covid lockdown, and Watkins said this influenced the work's character, with a determination that it should end positively. This is uplifting music, crafted in a symphonic tradition whilst offering a fresh voice and skilful use of instrumental writing. The performance was awarded the South Bank Sky Arts Classical Music Award for 2022. The Fanfare for the Hallé was commissioned by the Hallé to celebrate the return of the orchestra to the concert platform following the first Covid lockdown. Scored for 11 brass instruments, the work moves from a tentative beginning to a confident and defiant conclusion - arguably reflecting much of the national mood during the pandemic. Following almost a quarter of a century as Music Director of the Hallé, Sir Mark premiered Watkins' Concerto for Orchestra in his first concert as Conductor Emeritus. The piece particularly reflects the qualities of the orchestra and it's musicians, and their longstanding relationship with Sir Mark. The work exudes positivity, with rhythmic deftness and highly effective orchestral colourations, displaying the musical strengths of all sections of the orchestra, in writing that is beguiling and joyous.

Since 2010, Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra have embarked on a unique and ambitious project: a complete performance and recording cycle of the orchestral works of Allan Pettersson, the Swedish master symphonist renowned for his deeply personal and emotionally charged compositions. Premiered in 1956, Symphony No. 3 is distinctive within Pettersson's extensive symphonic output as his only symphony in four movements, adhering to a more traditional structure. While an early work reflecting influences of Shostakovich, Sibelius, and Mahler, it is far from a minor achievement. Though the lyrical passages that would later define his style are not yet fully developed, the symphony offers a concise and sharply etched musical landscape, both impressive and strikingly original. Symphony No. 8, premiered in 1972, is arguably Pettersson's most celebrated and frequently performed symphony. It's extended, often described as "free" or "never-ending," melodies create an impression of boundless continuation, yet the work is far from tranquil. As is characteristic of Pettersson, the symphony possesses a strong autobiographical element. In his own words: "The work I am working on is my own life, the one that is blessed, the one that is cursed: I devote myself to it in order to rediscover the song that the soul once sang."

The two composers heard on this album, Giovanni Gabrieli (1553-1612) and Giovanni Bonato (born in 1961) have more in common than their first names: both hail from the Veneto in north-east Italy - there is no documentation of Gabrieli's birth, but he was probably Venetian, and Bonato was born in nearby Schio. Their music, too, is conceived in terms of it's sound in space, with Gabrieli using the cori spezzati that sang from the opposing galleries of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, and Bonato employing cori spazzializati to build a spatial dimension into the music itself. Juxtaposed, their styles offer a striking contrast, with Gabrieli's bold declamations set against Bonato's shifting, timeless suspensions.

Paul Büttner was born in Dresden in 1870 and studied violin and oboe there at the Conservatory. Over the years, Büttner increasingly established himself as a fantastic musician in Dresden. But he stayed virtually completely unknown before 1915, when the famous Arthur Nikisch premiered his Symphony No. 3. Since then, Büttner was named one of the greatest and most important contemporary symphonists in succession to Brahms and Bruckner. His Symphony No. 4 from 1917 continued the success and was performed by many different orchestras. In 1933, his music was marked as "unwanted," and the regime deleted him completely from the public music culture.

Puccini is renowned as one of the greatest opera composers of all time, and his early works - before Manon Lescaut catapulted him to international fame - offer a fascinating insight into his development as a composer. John Wilson and Sinfonia of London explore this repertoire with characteristic style and commitment, leading us on a journey through student compositions and orchestral extracts from his earliest operas. Studying under Amilcare Ponchielli at the Milan Conservatory from 1880 to 1883, he created the Preludio sinfonico (loosely based on Wagner's Prelude to Lohengrin), the Scherzo, Trio, and Adagetto, and Capriccio sinfonico, his graduation piece, which famously pre-echoes the opening of La bohème by a decade. The one-act opera Le villi was composed for a competition launched by the publisher Sonzogno (Puccini didn't win), whilst themes from the contemporaneous Tre minuetti and Crisantemi (both for string quartet) were subsequently re-cycled in Manon Lescaut. Verdi's publisher, Ricordi, bought the rights to Le villi, and commissioned a new work at the same time: Edgar, which, largely owing to the absurd plot, is arguably Puccini's only failure, despite some fully mature music easily the match of the more celebrated scores.

The First Symphony was largely inspired by the composer's tempestuous love affair with the widowed Baroness Imma von Doernberg, whom Walton met in 1929 and with whom he was living on the Continent in the early 1930s. Although the work was long in gestation, with a particular delay in the composition of the finale, the result was universally acclaimed as an outstanding success, with John Ireland commenting "unlike any other English symphony, this is in the real line of symphonic tradition. It is simply colossal, grand, original, and moving to the emotions to the most extreme degree... It has established you as the most vital and original genius in Europe". Walton's star was in the descendent through the 1950's, with a poor reception to his opera Troilus & Cressida, and equally negative comments for his Cello Concerto, which was widely considered to be embarrassingly old-fashioned in it's essentially neo-romantic idiom. Commissioned by Gregor Piatigorsky (at the suggestion of Heifetz), the work was first performed in Boston under Charles Munch in January 1957, with the UK premiere under Sir Malcolm Sargent following a month later. Walton was unable to attend that concert as he was hospitalised following a car accident on the journey to London from his home in Italy. Now widely perceived as one of Walton's most important late scores, the work is performed here by Sinfonia of London's principal cellist Jonathan Aasgaard.

One of Saxony-Anhalt's oldest and most tradition-rich orchestras presents a compelling combination of two major orchestral works on GENUIN, marking the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus's relocation from Weimar to Dessau: the Anhaltische Philharmonie of the Bauhaus city Dessau, under it's general music director Markus L. Frank, pairs Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (in Ravel's orchestration) with Feininger Fractals by Eisenach-born composer Thomas Buchholz (b. 1961) - two orchestral works closely connected to visual art. The finely spun textures of Buchholz, who in this work engages with Bauhaus master Lyonel Feininger, and the endless colors of Mussorgsky/Ravel are in the best hands with this Dessau ensemble. Magnificent but not pompous, virtuosic yet full of meaning, the orchestra plays with intelligence and nuance under it's chief conductor.

The Ninth Symphony, which Antonin Dvorak himself titled 'From the New World', was a huge success when it premiered on 16 December 1893 at Carnegie Hall in New York: 'The newspapers say that never before has a composer enjoyed such a triumph.' However, it was by no means uncontroversial - Dvorak had been invited to the USA and given the task of creating an American national music. He therefore studied the music of the indigenous population, the descendants of slaves and various other inhabitants, and created the symphony with all these sources in mind. Though many critics did not consider that the goal of an authentic American national music had been achieved, the work itself belongs until today to the most popular symphonies ever written. Much earlier, Dvorak had composed the Serenade for Wind Instruments, Violoncello and Double Bass in D minor. He was probably inspired by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 'Gran Partita', and the unusual instrumentation of Op. 44 - with two oboes, clarinets and bassoons, a contrabassoon, three horns, two cellos and double basses - is a strong indication of this. Finnish conductor Pietari lnkinen has been principal conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie since 2017. He will step down from this position in the summer of 2025 to focus more on his international commitments. He has received numerous awards, including the Franco Abbiati Prize. In October 2023, the film portrait 'A Baton and a Passport - Pietari lnkinen Conductor' was released.

Commissioned by the Propaganda Department of the Soviet State Music Publishing House to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, the Symphonic Dedication to October eventually became Shostakovich's Second Symphony, and was first performed, in Leningrad, in 1927. It is a short, through-composed work of around twenty minutes, it's structure involving four sections. It opens with a Largo meant to portray the primordial chaos from which order emerged, and ends with a choral setting of To October, a poem by Alexander Bezymensky, praising Lenin and the October Revolution. The symphony shows a marked departure in style from Shostakovich's first symphony, and is far more modernist and avant-garde. The Second Symphony made little impression, in Russia or the West, and is rarely performed. In contrast, the Fifth Symphony received a standing ovation at it's première, one that lasted for over half an hour, and was acclaimed both by state officials (for delivering everything that they had asked of Shostakovich) and by the public (who heard it as an expression of the suffering to which it had been subjected by Stalin). The Fifth Symphony is one of Shostakovich's best-known and most performed works, and has become standard repertoire for orchestras around the globe.

After a 'spellbinding' album for Alpha devoted to her American roots (Alpha1071), pianist Claire Huangci now celebrates female composers, acknowledging: 'The realities these women faced are difficult to imagine for any modern woman in the field.' Clara Wieck (who became Schumann after her marriage to Robert in 1840) was a mother of eight and the main breadwinner, constantly on tour. Fanny Hensel composed largely in private. Often publishing under her brother's name. Amy Beach's career was practically silenced during her marriage; only upon her husband's death did she return to the stage. Florence Price faced both racial and gender discrimination and later raised two children alone. Across the centuries, the voices of these women reach us thanks to musicians like Claire: 'In their music, we don't just hear history. We hear transformation. Heroines is my way of listening back-and adding my voice to theirs.'