Andrea Bocelli -"Romanza (30th Anniversary)" Andrea Bocelli's Romanza is the album that made him a global star as his most commercially successful to date, and one of the best-selling albums of all time, with worldwide sales exceeding 19 million copies. Romanza celebrates it's 30th anniversary on CD with a never-before-seen photo from the period of the album's recording. The 16 songs include, "Time to Say Goodbye," Bocelli's spine-tingling #1 single with Sarah Brightman, and the global hit "Vivo per Lei (feat Giorgia)." The album also features a previously unreleased extended version of the classic, "Con te Partiro." Verve Label Group; Verve; Classical Crossover; Catalog.
Ian Buckle and Sophie Rosa continue their exploration of violin sonata repertoire which always contain discoveries with ingenious and original programing. This recording features romantic violin sonatas, by three contemporaneous German composers, and one of whom was all but erased from musical history by the Nazis. All the sonatas on this enterprising album are their composer's first essays in this form. Friederich Gernsheim, born in Worms in 1839, studied with a pupil of Spohr, and went on to be praised by Moscheles and Bruch and held major positions in German musical and academic life. A composer of very fine chamber music, several concertos (piano, two for violin, and one for cello), his four symphonies stand at the centre of his output. The first predates the first symphony by his contemporary from Hamburg by several years.
Toward the Sea brings together three works for flute and guitar which explore memory, place and transformation. EMI Ferguson and Michael Poll trace a journey from the dance halls of Buenos Aires in Astor Piazzolla's Histoire du Tango, through the luminous stillness of Elizabeth Ogonek's Altair, to the meditative sound world of Toru Takemitsu's Toward the Sea. Recorded at the Stone Church in rural Massachusetts, the program reflects the duo's artistic partnership, which began through online collaborations during the pandemic before developing into live performances across the United States. Their own arrangement of Ogonek's Altair sits naturally between two landmark works, highlighting the continuing vitality of the flute and guitar repertoire. Ferguson, an Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient, and Poll, equally active as a guitarist and conductor, approach this repertoire as equal musical partners, allowing the distinctive voices of flute and guitar to emerge across music that ranges from Piazzolla's rhythmic vitality to Takemitsu's suspended, atmospheric sound world.
Fourth release in the Warner Classics series of Herbert von Karajan Hybrid SACDs with a new HD 192/24 remastering from the original tapes. "Karajan is a great master," wrote Jean Sibelius in 1955, while the conductor said that Sibelius "is a composer who cannot really be compared to anyone else". Gramophone added in 1981: "No living conductor has done more for the music of Sibelius than Herbert von Karajan." In the tone poems and the two symphonies in this collection, Karajan explores with the magnificent Berlin Philharmonic the music's mysteries, unfolds it's structures and releases it's exhilarating power.
The Seasons unites two visionary responses to nature across three centuries, pairing Antonio Vivaldi's iconic Le quattro stagioni with Astor Piazzolla's sultry Las cuatro estaciones portenas in Leonid Desyatnikov's electrifying arrangement for violin and strings. Violinist and director Soojin Han leads the English Chamber Orchestra in a vibrant dialogue between Venetian countryside and Buenos Aires nightlife, where birdsong and storms meet smoky tango rhythms and shifting emotional weather. Playful musical quotations blur the boundaries between the two works, with winter appearing in summer and summer in winter, suggesting that the seasons are shaped as much by memory and imagination as by the natural world. Recorded in Studio Two at Abbey Road Studios, this recording reflects the wide-ranging musical perspective Soojin Han has developed through a career spanning solo performance, chamber music and orchestral leadership. It is an approach that allows these familiar masterpieces to unfold with both the freedom of chamber music and the brilliance of a virtuoso performance.
September 15th 2026 will mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the most influential conductors of the 20th century: Bruno Walter (1876-1962). This comprehensive box set brings together his complete HMV and Columbia Graphophone recordings. Spanning the 78-rpm era from 1924 to 1939, this collection also features the landmark 1949 magnetic tape recording of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder featuring Kathleen Ferrier, offering the first release of two previously unpublished takes. To ensure the highest fidelity, the finest available materials have been sourced, including pristine test pressings on vinyl from original metal work and near-mint superior commercial pressings. After undergoing high-definition digitization, the recordings were meticulously restored. This collection finally sheds a truer and more precise light on the artistry and genius of Bruno Walter.
Aleksander Debicz - pianist, composer, arranger, and musical director - is one of the most versatile and innovative artists on the Polish music scene. He is the creator and performer of an original style he himself describes as 'cinematic classical' - a movement that combines the language of classical music with the narrative nature of film music and the space of improvisation. 'I chose to shape these new compositions as a cycle of piano miniatures, referring to a classical tradition. I therefore treat the dream not only as a theme, but also as a form - an equivalent of the Romantic prelude. 12 Dreams is conceived as a complete cycle, yet I also enjoy performing individual dreams as independent pieces.' - Aleksander Debicz
'Heritage', presented by the Fondation Gautier Capucon, is part of the Foundation's annual recording initiative, which spotlights it's laureates and reinforces it's long-term commitment to developing emerging classical talent. This edition features Mirabelle Kajenjeri (violin) and Elias Moncado (piano), offering them a high-visibility platform as rising artists within a structured mentorship and career development ecosystem. The program combines cornerstone repertoire (sonatas by Maurice Ravel and Johannes Brahms) with shorter works by Claude Debussy and Lili Boulanger.
Composed between 2010 and 2014, as commissions from orchestras such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, the works recorded here testify to the widespread international interest in the music of the Swedish composer Anders Hillborg. Two purely orchestral works, Beast Sampler and Cold Heat, frame the brief and emotionally concentrated song O dessa ögon for soprano and strings, and demonstrate Hillborg's expert handling of the forces of the large symphony orchestra, often described by him as a 'sound animal'. They also illustrate one of his trademark compositional techniques, namely his use of a number of particular 'sonic objects' such as string glissandi, flutter-tongued flute counterpoint and dense textures of rapid and overlapping ascending scales. These, and many others, recur throughout his production in ever-changing contexts and new combinations. Sirens, the closing and culminating work on this disc, is also Hillborg’s largest work to date in terms of both scoring and duration, and its emotional depth is unmatched in his output. Inspired by the dangerous yet alluring sirens in Homer's Odyssey, Hillborg has constructed a score and libretto in which the sirens – two soprano soloists and a large mixed choir – with increasing desperation attempt to manipulate Ulysses. Performing this colourful programme is the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, one of Hillborg's faithful musical companions, joined by the sopranos Ida Falk Winland and Hannah Holgersson and two of Sweden's foremost choirs, the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and the Swedish Radio Choir. As on a previous disc of Hillborg's music, the acclaimed Eleven Gates (BIS-1406), the performances are led by three different conductors: the eminent trio of Sakari Oramo, David Zinman and Esa-Pekka Salonen, dedicatees of the works they conduct here.
American Classics - Copland: The Tender Land Suite, Piano Concerto, Etc / Pasternack, Hanson
Naxos
CD
$19.99May 27, 2008
This is another collection of American classics that deserves the highest praise. With exemplary playing, singing and an acoustic to match this is plainly indispensable.
Thankfully this isn’t the umpteenth recording of Appalachian Spring but a collection of lesser-known Copland. As always this music is quintessentially American, the suite from his opera The Tender Land, the bluesy piano concerto and the Old American Songs, the latter in choral arrangements. Appropriately enough the orchestra is the Illinois-based Elgin Symphony, which has embarked on an ambitious project called In Search of Our American Voice. Helping them in this endeavour are the St. Charles Singers, a multi-talented chamber choir founded in 1984.
Speaking of voices, Copland has a unique, instantly recognisable ‘voice’ of his own and that is clear from the first bars of The Tender Land suite. In his illuminating liner-notes Joseph Horowitz reminds us that although this has a Depression-era rural setting one could argue that, in part at least, it’s also Copland’s response to the McCarthyist witch hunt of the 1950s.
Interestingly the suite, arranged after the opera’s premiere in 1954, starts with the introduction to Act 3 and the love duet between the farm girl Laurie Moss and her drifter beau, Martin. The second movement is based on the party in Act II and the final movement comes from the quintet,’ ‘The Promise of Living’, at the end of Act I.
Whatever Copland’s intentions the music is not far removed from the Pennsylvanian hills of Appalachia, with its open, unpretentious scoring. The usual epithets ‘folksy’ and ‘homespun’ apply but there is also a degree of disquiet reflected in the brass at the start of this movement. The ensuing harp melodies are most affecting in their simplicity and directness, Robert Hanson securing warm, idiomatic playing from his orchestra.
The recording is clear and detailed, notably in the vigorous party music, and there’s no sign of strain or grain in the climaxes. Indeed, it’s an almost perfect acoustic for such a lucid score, the surging music of the last movement lovingly shaped and projected. This is vintage Copland and hearing this music may spur you to try the opera itself.
Horowitz makes the point that Copland’s piano concerto was somewhat eclipsed by Gershwin’s much better known effort, written the year before. It doesn’t have the latter’s Broadway-inspired razzamatazz but what it does have is a more sophisticated, cosmopolitan feel to it. The insouciant, bluesy first movement – introduced with the usual fanfare – has the pianist doodling quietly at the keyboard. Benjamin Pasternack captures the languor of this movement very well indeed, the piano ideally placed and faithfully recorded. Copland’s detailed scoring is wonderfully realised too, the more expansive moments thrillingly intense but never overheated.
The doodler is back in the second movement, his random notes followed by raucous music that has a real swing to it. The drums and percussion are certainly reminiscent of Gershwin but there is a fresh, individual quality to this concerto. Pasternack is suitably foot-stompin’ in those repeated jazzy phrases and the Elgin players give him wonderful support throughout. But it’s the final minute or so that’s the real tour de force, with the splendid percussion chasing the pianist all the way to the finish line.
This is exhilarating stuff and quite possibly the most enjoyable item on the disc – go on, give it another whirl – so the choral arrangements of the Old American Songs needs to be pretty special to top that. Most listeners probably know these pieces in their original scoring for voice and piano; if that’s the version you want do try Willard White on Chandos CHAN 8960.
Alas, first impressions of the choral arrangements aren’t very encouraging, baritone Nathaniel Stampley’s rather wide vibrato spoiling ‘The Boatmen’s Dance’. The St. Charles singers are another matter entirely; they are clear and nimble and, to be fair, Stampley does improve in ‘The Dodger’. Those who have heard Willard White in this repertoire will know just how much character and personality he brings to bear in these songs. Well worth seeking out.
The Elgin Symphony is never less than excellent and the chorus sing eloquently in the ballad ‘Long Time Ago’. Diction could be clearer but with such heartfelt singing it seems churlish to complain. And then there’s ‘Simple Gifts’, the Shaker hymn we know from Appalachian Spring, essayed here with a wonderful sense of innocence and optimism. They even manage the farmyard onomatopoeia of ’I Bought Me a Cat’ which, if you don’t mind this kind of silliness, will probably put a smile on your face.
Really it’s the chorus that makes these arrangements stand out; their bright, focused sound is invariably pleasing, even if the music doesn’t always sound like Copland. They are also suitably impassioned – febrile, even – in the Revivalist hymn ‘Zion’s Walls’. Then Stampley and tenor Jeffrey Hunt join them for a spirited rendition of ’The Golden Willow Tree’. Both soloists acquit themselves well here and for once the quirky orchestration actually sounds like authentic Copland.
Of the two remaining songs the hymn tune ‘At The River’ could have been penned by Charles Ives, such is its mix of devotional text and strange harmonies. Hanson and his band bring this music to a stirring close before launching into the utterly delightful ‘Ching-a-ring Chaw’. If you haven’t smiled so far then this will surely do the trick, the singing and playing pin-sharp and full of fun. An upbeat finale to an enchanting disc.
Minor caveats about the baritone aside this is another collection of American classics that deserves the highest praise. With exemplary playing, singing and an acoustic to match this is plainly indispensable. And the song texts are included as well, which is a welcome bonus. Buy it and enjoy.
Naxos has released a second collection of Russian tenor arias by Vladimir Grishko. Like the first volume, we have a beautiful tenor voice treating us to some rarely heard arias from operas not often performed outside of Russia. Probably the only familiar pieces to non-Russian listeners would be the brief orchestral excerpts from Glinka's A Life For Tsar and Polovtsian March from Borodin's Prince Igor so listening is a treat in and of itself.
