Theobald Böhm, who was born in Munich on 9 April 1794, was among the most accomplished German flautists of his age and was a composer and an ingenious inventor who perfected the construction of the flute.

Over and above his commitment to scientific and organological research, Böhm pursued activities as a composer for his instrument and continued to make transcriptions of celebrated works by the Classical and Romantic masters right up until his death on 25 November 1881. In both his pieces based on original themes and the series of variations on melodies drawn either from popular operas or from well-known popular tunes, the stylistic techniques distinguishing his compositions were fully in line with the fashions of his day.

Of a very different nature, on the other hand, is the sophistication displayed in his search for an elevated and musically complex idiomatic language for the flute in his transcriptions of works by the great composers, including Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the two near-contemporaries Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert. The decision to make transcribed versions of celebrated vocal or instrumental pieces was an eloquent way of stressing that the 'new flute' Böhm had invented could perform works that posed audacious challenges, without any expressive awkwardness. Indeed, the formulas chosen by Böhm to arrange, vary and adapt these celebrated melodies to the flute can be counted among the most original, and in many respects unique, achievements of the age.

What emerges, therefore, is a sort of catalogue of the expressive possibilities of the 'new flute' and an invitation to explore the quality of sound, an aspect which he considered to be his 'primary interest as an artist.'

The first disc in this two-CD set contains Sardinian composer Cristiano Porqueddu’s first three sonatas for solo guitar, written between 2013 and 2019 and performed here by his compatriot Riccardo D’Alò. ‘Des couleurs sur la toile’, in three movements, pays homage to the painter Gesuino Curreli, the composer’s maternal uncle, who paints landscapes of contemporary Oliena, a town in northern Sardinia. ‘Sonata di Picerno’ – completed in 2015 and dedicated to Italian guitarist Christian Saggese – is a musical portrait of the distinctive town of Picerno in the beautiful Basilicata region of Italy. All three of its movements narrate an entirely fictional leyenda (legend). Sonata No.3, ‘Il rito del fuoco’, is based on an ancient Sardinian legend that tells of Saint Anthony and his pig stealing fire from hell to give to humanity. It is a cyclical composition, which remains anchored in the harmonic and thematic elements introduced in the first section throughout.

The recordings on disc two – performed by Lorenzo Micheli Pucci, a guitarist from Piedmont in northern Italy – were written by Porqueddu between 2011 and 2020. Díptico de la oscuridad is a homage to Pablo Neruda’s poetic atmospheres and is dedicated to Italo-Australian guitarist Ermanno Brignolo. Metamórfosis de la soledad, dedicated to Italian guitarist Alberto Mesirca, stems directly from observing the artistic solitude glimpsed by the composer in artwork by Gastone Cecconello on a personal visit to his studio. It takes the form of a series of short movements based on Angelo Gilardino’s study ‘Soledad’ from his collection Studi di Virtuosità e di Trascendenza. These movements offer a prismatic vision of the material from the introduction to the study, heavily abridged to allow it to be used as a theme for a cycle of variations. In 2019 and 2020, Porqueddu’s figurative art studies led him to discover the wonderful ancient Chinese artwork Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a set of eight parchments dating from the Song Dynasty, approximately 1150 AD. Porqueddu wrote the solo Studies from Eight Views from Xiaoxiang while studying Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s 21 Greeting Cards for guitar. They are built on clearly identifiable melodic sketches, and alternate between demanding technical skill and a capacity for introspection from the performer.

Within the extensive repertoire of the German composer Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), music for cello and piano occupies a considerable position in terms of both quantity and quality. Hindemith was primarily a violist and conductor, but his wide-ranging interests led him to experiment with a great variety of instruments both as a composer and a player, making him a de facto multi-instrumentalist. Among his favorite instruments, the cello always occupied a special place in his activities, partly due to his collaboration with his brother Rudolf, an excellent cellist.

His original compositions for the specific duo of cello and piano are varied and numerous, offering a synthetic vision of the different stylistic instances of an author who never tired of rethinking and redefining his language. This recording brings together and offers the listener this entire wonderful portion of Hindemith’s catalogue.

The Drei Stücke Op. 8 (1917) are undoubtedly among the most important pieces of the composer’s youthful phase. The later Sonata Op. 11 No. 3, a composition of considerable constructive commitment and complex genesis, is recorded here for the first time in both versions: one from 1919 (lost piano parts reconstructed by Fazil Say), the other from 1921. The delicate and expressive Drei leichte Stücke ‘Cello in first position’, composed in April 1938, are intended for the didactic sphere, without renouncing the peculiarities of the harmonic language of the composer. The same can be said of the brief and melancholic Meditation, a transcription of a movement from Hindemith’s orchestral ballet Nobilissima Visione. More complex is A Frog he went a-courting. Despite its brevity, it is one of the finest pieces on this program. A dozen concise variations, framed by the initial exposition and the concluding return of the traditional English theme, present a wealth of instrumental, timbral, expressive, and dynamic solutions in a small, dense, brilliant display of Hindemith’s compositional mastery. Do not be deceived by the title Kleine Sonate (1942), which is small in size but not in terms of compositional complexity. The imposing Cello Sonata (1948) was written for Gregor Piatigorsky and premiered by him in New York in the year it was composed. Comparing this Sonata to the Sonata Op. 11 No. 3 conveys a sense of the stylistic evolution across some 30 years.

A significant number of women were active as professional composers in inter-war France. Although they worked alongside their male peers and were accepted by concert organizers, performers, critics, and audiences alike, they are little known today, and their works are rarely performed in concert or recorded.

Composer, conductor, pianist, and teacher Marcelle de Manziarly is one of these forgotten musicians. After studying composition with Nadia Boulanger, who became her mentor, and conducting with Felix Weingartner, she pursued a career on both sides of the Atlantic, in France and the United States. Her large and varied oeuvre spans virtually the whole of the 20th century and reflects her constant stylistic evolution and transformation. This recording, which contains a number of discographic premieres, brings together works composed at different points in her long career, from the Violin Sonata, an early work that already shows exceptional maturity with its harmonies typical of French music at the turn of the century, to the Trilogue with its dissonances and minimalism.

Performed by first-rate chamber musicians, these works demonstrate that it is high time to rediscover Marcelle de Manziarly.

The legendary Syrinx Quintet performs wind quintets by Françaix, Hindemith, Ibert, and Taffanel on this critically acclaimed recording. The individual instruments merge with a rarely heard homogeneity to create an ensemble sound that is unrivaled.