Mozart composed the concerto for two pianos in 1779, and performed it with his sister Nannerl. It is a less adventurous work than the previous concerto, No.9 K271, but it is an altogether more successful work than No.7 for three pianos K242, which the composer arranged for two pianos. It is brilliant in nature, especially the finale. It foreshadows in places the great Sinfonia Concertante K364, but does not match the grandeur of that work. No.24 K491 from 1786 is one of the greatest of Mozart's concertos. The dark, turbulent and tragic mood undoubtedly had an influence on Beethoven's C minor concerto.

Venezuelan trumpet virtuoso Pacho Florez wowed the packed Royal Albert Hall at the BBC Proms concert given by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under their chief conductor Domingo Hindoyan last year. Pacho and Domingo have a real chemistry on stage, they are old friends going back to their time in the Simon Bolivar Orchestra. This album showcases Pacho as composer as well as soloist - his own brilliant concerto Albares is vibrant, rhythmic and wonderfully written for the instrument. It, like the two other concertos on the album by Sierra and Ortiz have more than their fair share of ear worm tunes, and you won't be able to resist smiling and swaying to the infectious music.

Little is known about Johann Sebastian Bach's sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord. Are they early works or products of his late period? Do they form a cycle, or are they a collection of independent pieces? Long-time musical partners Atsushi Sakai and Christophe Rousset set out to record these enigmatic works, in which the gamba, as so often in Bach, becomes at once the voice of lamentation and an instrument of dialogue with the divine.

Northern Flowers presents two of the cello repertoire's most beloved masterworks receive authoritative, deeply felt performances from one of Russia's most distinguished cellists in this new studio recording from Moscow's "Palace on the Yauza." The album leads with Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, written to represent the atmosphere and styles of what Tchaikovsky believed to be the less complicated age of the 18th century. The work pays homage to Mozartian classical styles throughout the series of charming variations. Dvor�k's Cello Concerto in B minor was composed during his last year in New York City during his famous American trip, though, he wrote in the manuscript, "I finished the Concerto in New York, but when I returned home to Bohemia I changed the end completely as it stands here now." And the melodies certainly reflect the Bohemian countryside he loved so much. Together they make an ideal programme, contrasting Dvor�k's sweeping Bohemian passion with the refined wit and tenderness of Tchaikovsky's tribute to the rococo era. At the centre of it all is Marina Tarasova, a winner of International Competitions in Prague, Florence and Paris and a laureate of Moscow's Tchaikovsky International Competition. Partnering her is the Orpheus Radio Symphony Orchestra under it's principal conductor Sergey Kondrashev, a graduate of the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory who trained under the legendary Mark Ermler and Gennady Rozhdestvensky.

Parnassus is proud to present a new collection of first commercial releases of spectacular live performances from pianist Sviatoslav Richter. Taken from recordings made by audience members and live broadcast sources, and now remastered and restored by Gene Gaudette of Urlicht Audiovisual, Richter Supreme is a must-have collection for Richter fans. Devotees of Richter know that even he had those supreme moments in which he exceeded his extremely high standards. When producer Leslie Gerber listened to the centerpiece of this recording, a recital at Hunter College, New York in 1965, he was convinced that this performance qualified as "Richter Supreme". Throughout the performance of works by Schubert, Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, Prokofieff, and Rachmaninoff, the listener experiences Richter at the very height of his powers, technical prowess allied to the most penetrating musical interpretation. This concert may not introduce any new Richter repertoire, but gives us the opportunity to listen in on a master musician at the height of his powers. Completing the set are two further rarities: a 1988 Tokyo performance of Hindemith's ferocious Suite '1922', which shows Richter bringing out all the music's challenging qualities, and building the finale to an apocalyptic frenzy unlike his earlier studio recordings, and an early 1958 Budapest broadcast of the Bart�k Second Piano Concerto with the Hungarian State Orchestra under J�nos Ferencsik. A treasurable document of greatness.

Elsa Barraine, a notable and politically intrepid figure in her lifetime (1910-1999), is a composer whose distinctive voice is being heard again. Under it's music director Cristian Macelaru, the Orchestre national de France performs four works by Barraine: the Symphony No 1, completed in Italy in 1931; the compact, but powerful Symphony No 2, composed in 1938 and ominously subtitled 'Vo�na', the French transliteration of the Russian word for 'war'; Song-Ko� (Le Fleuve rouge) - an eight-movement evocation of the Red River which flows through Vietnam, composed in 1945, the year Vietnam declared it's independence from France, and, dating from 1959, Les Tziganes, which, as it's name implies, takes inspiration from gypsy culture. Rooted in tonality, Barraine's music is confidently and soberly crafted, it's orchestral palette both clearly defined and subtly shaded as it reflects it's times and the composer's philosophical and spiritual concerns.

MOUNT ANALOGUE

BERNHARD LANG: HERMETIKA IX

MADLI MARJE GILDEMANN: DREAM SEQUENCE OF AN

The album includes premier recordings of six Holliger compositions written between 2018 and 2020, as well as strongly contrasting pieces dedicated to him by fellow composers over the years. The earliest of these are J�rg Wyttenbach's Sonate (1961) and Jacques Wildberger's Rondeau (1962), and the most recent are Gy�rgy Kurt�g's aphoristic con slancio, largamente and Toshio Hosokawa's evocative Musubi (Knots), both written to celebrate Holliger's 80th birthday in 2019.

In this third volume of the series, A Life in Music, Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants take us to C�then (1717-1723) where Bach enjoyed one of the happiest times of his life. With a group of distinguished soloists, they help us rediscover some of the outstanding works of these inspiring years, including the famous Cantata the composer dedicated to his patron and friend, Prince Leopold.

Sometime in 2020 I listened to Canto Ostinato for the first time, and my enthrallment with the piece had begun. I was transfixed by it's particular amalgam of harmony, repetition, and pacing. By the spring of 2023 I had constructed and released my own solo interpretation, and I assumed at that point my working relationship with the composition had run it's course. But I underestimated it's magnetism. The following year I was back in it's grips, having been invited by Metropolis Ensemble's Andrew Cyr to expand on the foundation I had laid with the piece. Soon I was in Brooklyn, on a team of six with Cyr and the members of Sandbox Percussion, humbled and thrilled to be helping architect a brand new large ensemble arrangement of Canto Ostinato for a summer solstice performance at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We did so, our cohort growing to include the students of The New School's Sandbox Percussion Summer Seminar, as well as composers David Leon, Ben Wallace, and Ledah Finck and the Bergamot Quartet. It was a day we will all remember-sweeping, dreamlike, and what felt like a quintessential culmination. But even then... The piece still beckoned, and it became clear this new orchestration called for the embarkment on a studio album. A permanent document of our now collective ardor. Refined over a year and recorded in New York, 2025, this performance recasts the piece anew in a towering framework of mallet percussion, woodwinds, strings, and piano. It is our truest attempt at conveying Canto's beauty and magnitude in all it's kaleidoscopic harmony, dynamism, tension, and release. I stand once again in awe of Simeon ten Holt's monumental creation; to be a thread in it's sonic fabric is one of the great honors of my musical life. I don't assume we might be so fortunate again... but who knows.

Unspoken explores the piano-duet repertoire as a space of intimacy and shared imagination. Pianists Wu Qian and Juho Pohjonen present a program that moves between intimate lyricism and virtuosic display, centred on works for piano four hands. At it's heart are the two major duets by Felix Mendelssohn, framed by a striking rediscovery: the Sonata in F major by Sophia Maria Westenholz, whose bold harmonic language and orchestral sweep bridge Classical clarity and early Romantic ambition. The program is completed by the characterful four-hand writing of C�cile Chaminade and Amy Beach, offering contrasting worlds of colour, scene and poetic miniature. Recorded with warmth and clarity, Unspoken reflects the piano duet at it's most intimate: two musicians sharing a single instrument.

Wolfgang Kogert - Friedrich Cerha: Complete Works For Organ - Appearing in Cerha's jubilee year, this album pays tribute to an extraordinary late oeuvre by an extraordinary composer. / One of the central figures of European modernism, Friedrich Cerha is known for his monumental Spiegel cycle and his distinctive contribution to postwar music. This album presents his complete works for organ, composed between 2011 and 2020, marking a surprising late turn toward the instrument. Recorded by Wolfgang Kogert in close collaboration with the composer, these pieces reveal Cerha's characteristic clarity, concision, and expressive precision. Appearing in Cerha's jubilee year, this album pays tribute to an extraordinary late oeuvre by an extraordinary composer.

Maksimal brings together three major works by Daniel Temkin, music shaped by vivid physical images and a search for the forces that connect experience, memory, and place. At it's center is the violin concerto Maksimal, written for and performed here by Francisco Fullana with Ryan McAdams and the Maksimal Ensemble. Bright, agile, and rhythmically charged, the three movements balance solo virtuosity with quicksilver ensemble dialogue, nodding to Baroque concerto principles while stretching them into larger, continuous arcs. Dreamed Landscapes turns to the piano, with Ryan MacEvoy McCullough tracing three impressionistic studies inspired by galaxies, glaciers, and canyon horizons. Rather than literal depiction, the music focuses on colour, resonance, and the inner sensation of inhabiting these spaces. Completing the program is Ocean's Call, performed by the Aizuri Quartet, a work inspired by California's Pacific coast. From misty harmonics and brittle wind textures to expansive, storm-driven waves, the piece unfolds as a meditation on nature's power and calm. Recorded across Houston and New York, Maksimal is Temkin's second solo album on Orchid Classics: a focused, immersive portrait of a composer drawn to sound as landscape, motion, and shared human experience.

After 'Oylam' in 2010, Judith Berkson (mezzo-soprano, pianist, composer and improviser) returns with another unclassifiable, and strangely compelling, artistic statement. On 'Thee They Thy,' she leads a trio with Trevor Dunn and Gerald Cleaver through a radically changing program addressing new settings for prayer, original songs, vocal experimentation, improvised piano and more. 'Thee They Thy' was recorded at Oktavaen Audio Studio, Mt. Vernon, New York. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

The myth of Orlando Furioso, conceived by Ludovico Ariosto in the 16th century, is one of the most fertile for dramatic and musical imagination. Between chivalrous heroism, romantic torment and psychological turmoil, it explores the limits of passion and the fractures of the human soul, offering Baroque composers an ideal terrain for expressing the tension between reason and madness, order and chaos. This program bears witness to this, traversing the many faces of Orlando through excerpts from operas by Vivaldi, Handel, Steffani, Fux and Porpora, where recitatives, arias and instrumental movements mirror his inner world.

GERSHWIN IN VIENNA

Sometime in 2020 I listened to Canto Ostinato for the first time, and my enthrallment with the piece had begun. I was transfixed by it's particular amalgam of harmony, repetition, and pacing. By the spring of 2023 I had constructed and released my own solo interpretation, and I assumed at that point my working relationship with the composition had run it's course. But I underestimated it's magnetism. The following year I was back in it's grips, having been invited by Metropolis Ensemble's Andrew Cyr to expand on the foundation I had laid with the piece. Soon I was in Brooklyn, on a team of six with Cyr and the members of Sandbox Percussion, humbled and thrilled to be helping architect a brand new large ensemble arrangement of Canto Ostinato for a summer solstice performance at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We did so, our cohort growing to include the students of The New School's Sandbox Percussion Summer Seminar, as well as composers David Leon, Ben Wallace, and Ledah Finck and the Bergamot Quartet. It was a day we will all remember-sweeping, dreamlike, and what felt like a quintessential culmination. But even then... The piece still beckoned, and it became clear this new orchestration called for the embarkment on a studio album. A permanent document of our now collective ardor. Refined over a year and recorded in New York, 2025, this performance recasts the piece anew in a towering framework of mallet percussion, woodwinds, strings, and piano. It is our truest attempt at conveying Canto's beauty and magnitude in all it's kaleidoscopic harmony, dynamism, tension, and release. I stand once again in awe of Simeon ten Holt's monumental creation; to be a thread in it's sonic fabric is one of the great honors of my musical life. I don't assume we might be so fortunate again... but who knows.

For the third volume of their Schubert 200 series, Samuel Hasselhorn and Ammiel Bushakevitz celebrate the composer's refound exuberance. After the sunlit summer of 1825, 1826 was a year of renewal for Schubert, bringing an astounding rush of artistic energy. These Lieder, pitched between nostalgia and quiet confidence, sing of a hope transcending the vagaries of life.