Isata has a longstanding love for the music of Prokofiev and performed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her solo debut at the BBC Proms in 2023. Now she explores the music of this great composer further, on this electrifying new album. As with her last solo album, celebrating Mendelssohn, here Isata offers a rounded portrait of Prokofiev: original solo piano compositions, piano transcriptions by the composer of his most beloved ballets scores - Romeo & Juliet and Cinderella - as well as the opera 'The Love for Three Oranges' with it's famous March.

Verismo, meaning "realism," was a late-19th century movement in Italian opera that shifted the focus from kings and myths to ordinary people living vivid, emotionally charged lives. These operas confront love, jealousy, betrayal, and longing with unfiltered immediacy. The arias on this album are direct, lyrical, and often explosive, demanding a singer who can deliver both technical brilliance and raw human truth. Originally released in 1971, this reissue comes with new remastered HD audio for the first time. These were taken freshly from the pre-master tapes in the Decca vaults and bring a fresh and beautiful perspective to these historic recordings.

Luciano Pavarotti is captured at the height of his expressive power, interpreting the arias that made him a legend. From the soaring lyricism of Verdi to the heartfelt passion of Puccini, this definitive collection reveals Pavarotti's unparalleled gift for shaping a melody, illuminating a character, and touching the soul. Each track glows with renewed depth and presence, drawing listeners closer than ever to the unmistakable warmth and brilliance of the world's most beloved tenor. The album is reissued with newly remastered HD audio for the very first time. These were taken freshly from the pre-master tapes in the Decca vaults and bring a fresh and beautiful perspective to these historic recordings.

The Viennese-born Carl Czerny (1791-1857) is best remembered for his countless pedagogical studies, hundreds and hundreds of them. But his astonishing fecundity - his opus numbers go up to 861, and there is much more music than that - has obscured the fact that he was an important composer in his own right, his works forming a link between Beethoven (his teacher) and Liszt (his student), between the Classical and Romantic eras. The four pieces recorded here - two for two pianos and two for piano four-hands - were intended to impress the salons of Biedermeier Vienna. The titles of three of them contain the word 'brillant': Czerny's intention was to dazzle and entertain, and that's just what this sparkling music does.

The composer and pianist Livia Teodorescu-Ciocanea, born in Galati, eastern Romania, in 1959, brings together ancient and modern in her music: echoes of the modal sounds of Romanian folk music blend with an openness to timbre to generate a palette of colours that is both contemporary and ageless. All three works here use the voice - solo and in chorus - to touch on aspects of the human condition, suggesting both drama and ritual.

With this volume, Dobromir Tsenov completes his survey of the solo piano music of his compatriot Lubomir Pipkov (1904-74), one of the leading members of the 'second generation' of Bulgarian composers who helped establish a national tradition of classical music, blending western forms with the rhythms of local folksong and folk-dances. The first complete recording of the piano music of his father, Panayot Pipkov (1871-1942), one of the 'first generation', sets it in context, in it's mix of folk roots and Lisztian bravura.

The Swedish composer Moses Pergament (1893-1977) - Finnish-born of Lithuanian-Jewish stock - chose the poems he set to music from a wide range of sources: those heard in this first-ever recording of his songs are mostly in Swedish but also in a variety of other languages. They likewise cover the gamut of human emotion, from buoyant folksongs and children's verses via lyrical expressions of love and loss to stark meditations on suffering and death. Many of Pergament's poets evoke the natural world in their expression of emotion, but his music never yields to sentimentality: he treats each song as a microcosm, expressed with drama and dignity. Time was when Pergament's songs were performed by singers of the calibre of Birgit Nilsson, Elisabeth S�derstr�m and Nicolai Gedda; it is high time they were rediscovered.

The Hamburg-born Ferdinand Thieriot (1838-1919) not only shared a teacher - Eduard Marxsen - with Brahms; both composers, who remained friends in later years, use a very similar musical language, one which is richly melodic and effortlessly contrapuntal. The musicologist Wilhelm Altmann wrote that 'Thieriot's chamber music is without exception noble and pure. He writes with perfect command of form and expression' - as the works on this fourth Toccata Classics volume prove, in their exquisite balance of depth and beauty, of Brahmsian richness and Schubertian spontaneity.

Toivo Kuula (1883-1918) is one of the many composers who died at a tragically young age - 34 in his case: he was hit by a bullet fired after a brawl at a victory celebration at the end of the Finnish Civil War. The immediacy of the music he wrote during his short life points to the immensity of the loss not only to Finnish culture but to music more generally - as this second album of two, presenting his entire output of songs for solo voice and piano, makes abundantly clear. The range of moods captured here is striking; the most passionate of these songs generate an operatic intensity in their short span, in a style that balances directness of expression and rich late-Romantic harmonies.

David Matthews and Peter Sheppard Skaerved have been collaborating on a series of works for violin and viola for many years now, with Matthews setting Sheppard Skaerved formidable technical challenges, and Sheppard Skaerved surprising Matthews by finding a way to overcome the difficulties in his path. Behind all the pyrotechnics, this partnership is generating one of the largest, and most musically rewarding, body of compositions for violin and viola by any living composer. Many of Matthews' pieces record his experience of nature or offer tributes to friends, with the works heard in this third volume also tracing a journey from darkness to light.

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.

Spanish Renaissance polyphony has a reputation for florid, intricate contrapuntal textures and dark colours. Sebasti�n de Vivanco (c. 1551-1622), born in �vila but active for most of his life in Salamanca, stands apart from his contemporaries: his music explores a much wider range of colours and techniques than that of, say, Victoria. In his more experimental and dramatic motets, some of which are heard here, he points the way towards the new Baroque. But, in the calm sobriety of his Requiem, now reconstructed and recorded for the first time, he honours the Iberian tradition of unhurried chant-driven polyphony, all the more moving for it's uncluttered clarity and exquisitely lovely chordal sequences.

The largest part of the output of the Hamburg-born composer and writer Walter Niemann (1876-1953), a student of both Humperdinck and Reinecke, is piano music: an astonishing 1,000 or so pieces, divided into 189 opus numbers. Most of them are lyrical miniatures in a warm and approachable late-Romantic style, some evoking the music of the past - often with a touching degree of dignity and restraint, but also with an occasional flash of good humour. The range of moods here is surprisingly wide, from pieces recalling late Brahms, and a barcarolle evoking Offenbach, via light-hearted character-sketches, and evocative picture-postcards, to a warm-hearted and tender piano sonata.

Charles Harford Lloyd (1849-1919) - organist of Gloucester Cathedral and the Chapel Royal, Oxford theologian and concert-organiser, music master at Eton and much more - was one of the most distinguished musicians of Victorian England. The largest part of his output is vocal music, mostly for the church; he composed only a handful of chamber works, often involving the clarinet. He wrote in a light Romantic idiom, where the influence of Brahms is often audible, as with his close friend, Hubert Parry. Lloyd knew how to make the clarinet sing, with one lovely, long-limbed melody after another. This first-ever album of his chamber music rescues a long-forgotten figure from the shadows.

The compositional career of Robin Stevens, Welsh-born (in 1958), and Manchester-based, is divided into two periods, separated by a period of illness. The first mainly produced chamber music and works for the church that employed him; restored to health, he found an appetite for larger forms, writing three substantial concertos and a number of other orchestral works - all now recorded for Toccata Classics. This first album sets his expansive Bassoon Concerto, amid three shorter works, each of them revealing how his command of orchestral colour and melodic line can suggest landscapes and narratives. In the slow movement of the Concerto in particular, there are passages of deep feeling and intensity, but Stevens also has a healthy sense of fun, which often emerges unexpectedly to energise his music.

21st Mazurkas

This album features four compositions created over the past eight years, drawn from the rich catalog of Pawel Hendrich, a composer recognized by festivals, ensembles, and musical institutions worldwide. These works demonstrate the composer's consistent development of his unique style, with a particular focus on the architecture of musical form. The title, Fractals, perfectly encapsulates the essence of their structure, highlighting the limitations of material means, yet framed within diverse time and spatial scales. This is music that is deeply contemporary in it's expression, where robotic elements-requiring near-superhuman technical skill-are intertwined with the omnipresent spirit of improvisation, a domain that can only be fully realized by the human performer. The composer leaves the decision of which element will dominate to the performers each time they take the stage. The album is a live recording of brilliant interpretations by soloists and ensembles specializing in contemporary music performance, hailing from Poland, Austria, and Switzerland. These performances, recorded during Polish contemporary music festivals, feature the composer himself creating the electronic layer, bringing the compositions to life in an electrifying and dynamic way.

This album features a stunning collection of works, including compositions from the past few decades that highlight the extraordinary talents of the Flaubinette Trio. One standout piece is by Roman Czura, written exclusively for the trio, with a title that directly references their name. It's the only work on the album that incorporates contemporary techniques, blending aleatoric elements with striking motifs, all expertly structured in a classical three-part form. The rest of the repertoire is equally captivating, with an uplifting character and harmonies that dance around an expanded tonality, avoiding harsh dissonances. Influences from dance music, burlesque, and impressionism subtly emerge throughout, creating a unique, engaging sound. Each composition is an opportunity to experience the rich timbre and dynamic range of the wind instruments, showcasing their expressive capabilities in every note. The varied textures, intricate melodies, and sophisticated dialogues between instruments offer a platform for virtuoso performances by the Flaubinette Trio and pianist Magdalena Dus, who joins them in the final track. Passionate about chamber music, the Flaubinette Trio has earned numerous international accolades and maintains an exceptional level of musical synergy. Their longstanding collaboration is palpable, delivering an unforgettable listening experience that celebrates both technical mastery and musical intimacy.

This album features a unique recording of Die sch�ne M�llerin (The Beautiful Maid of the Mill), one that stands apart from most interpretations. It is the first performance of this song cycle in Poland-and one of the first worldwide-by a countertenor, accompanied by a historical piano. The high register of the countertenor amplifies the sense of innocence and the intensity of the protagonist's emotions-a young miller tragically in love. Written by the 26-year-old Franz Schubert, Die sch�ne M�llerin is now regarded as one of the pinnacles of the Romantic lieder tradition. The music is not merely an accompaniment to the text, but a complete entity in itself, responding to the subtlest shifts in the character's emotions while masterfully painting the backdrop for the unfolding drama. Although the love story does not have a happy ending, the overall tone of the work remains surprisingly light-hearted, perhaps reflecting the bittersweet nature of the narrative. It is in this delicate balance that the secret to the enduring popularity of Die sch�ne M�llerin lies. The cycle offers a brief escape, allowing listeners and performers alike to immerse themselves in a world that no longer exists, yet still moves the imagination with equal power.

As a Japanese cellist, Michiaki Ueno wishes to introduce the world to the remarkable body of music composed in his homeland. At first glance, this might seem like a conventional statement - something anyone might say. Yet, when we consider his background, the words take on a different weight. Born in Paraguay (1995) and raised in Spain during his early years, Michiaki Ueno was captivated at the age of four by a video of Yo-Yo Ma. He received his first cello as a Christmas gift when he was five - marking the beginning of his musical journey. For someone like Ueno, Japan was both his homeland and a distant, unfamiliar place. "I never really thought deeply about Japanese culture," he reflects. "When Europeans spoke kindly about Japan, I was embarrassed to realize how little I actually knew." As he matured, Ueno found himself increasingly compelled to confront and contemplate his cultural identity. Unlike those who grow up immersed in Japan and take it's environment for granted, Ueno approached it as something external something to be consciously examined, understood, and deliberately chosen. It is perhaps through the very act of performing works by Japanese composers that he engages in this thoughtful process of selection.