At just ten years old, Helene Liebmann, nee Riese, made her public debut as a pianist in Berlin, marking the beginning of a remarkable career. Soon thereafter, her first compositions followed - understandably, works primarily dedicated to her own instrument. Shortly after her marriage in 1814, the young artist relocated to London with her husband, where she studied under Ferdinand Ries, a friend and student of Beethoven. During this time, her earliest chamber music works came into being, followed by additional compositions while in Britain, including the two duo sonatas and the first of two piano trios recorded here. These are all elegant and distinctive works, shifting from the spirit of late Classicism toward the Biedermeier era with a delicate Romantic touch, making them both accessible and enduringly appealing to listeners.

This recording opens up a lyrically dense world of sound that moves between quiet intimacy and lucid emotional depth. It contains a selection of songs in which the theme of alienation is dealt with on a multidimensional level: geographically, emotionally, and existentially. At the centre of this is the song oeuvre of Alexander Grechaninov, a master of late Russian Romanticism, whose work strikes an unmistakable tone in it's emotional complexity, it's compositional balance, and it's structural clarity.

As a symphonist, the British composer, pianist, conductor, and pedagogue Philip Cipriani Hambly Potter works at the height of his era. He employs an opulent orchestra, drawing his colors from it's palette with a remarkably bold brushstroke: Where heavy brass just now steered through breaking waves, delicate flutes and tender strings sound forth the next moment; through dreamy scenes suddenly marches heavy footwork, and when it comes to bringing works to an applause-worthy conclusion, all participants must push to the limits of endurance... This attitude is as fascinating as it is entertaining-precisely the right middle ground between symphonic earnestness and nonchalant playfulness, a welcome facet of early Romantic literature, much like the spirited concert piece that tastefully separates the two symphonies.

In this recital, prize-winning Canadian pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko explores the evolving language, dramatic breadth and technical daring of Alexander Scriabin's piano works. The album charts the remarkable evolution of Scriabin's musical language from his earliest pieces, to the sensual, volatile Piano Sonata No. 5, which stands at the summit of Scriabin's creative trajectory. As a resonant counterpart, Izik-Dzurko plays Rachmaninov's brooding Piano Sonata No. 1 in D minor. A digital-only release of four early piano works by Scriabin is also available on 9.70408.

Son of the better-known Georg Muffat, Gottlieb was also hawked around the courts of Europe by his father as a boy wonder of music, anticipating the course of Mozart's early years under the self-interested care of Leopold. However, when at home, Gottlieb Muffat grew up in Vienna under the careful tutelage of Johann Joseph Fux, master of music at the Hofkapelle, a relationship which deepened once Georg died in 1704, when Gottlieb was just 14 years old. In due course Fux pulled strings to get his talented pupil an official post, and this album of keyboard partitas offers ample proof that his faith in Gottlieb Muffat was justified. Their date is uncertain: during his lifetime, only two collections of his music were published, and after 1739 he seems to have broken off composition, focusing his energies on performing and teaching at the Hofkapelle. Listeners familiar with the keyboard partitas by JS Bach will find a certain degree of common ground in the elegant sequence of French-style dances which are headed by a more exploratory Prelude. Muffat's counterpoint may not be so rigorous, but his ear for a well-turned melody offers satisfying reward in it's own right. The use of French, English and even Spanish titles to individual movements underlines the imaginative and fanciful qualities of the collection: see for example Postillon in the Suite in F major; Coquette in the Suite in A major; a Hornpipe in the Suite in D minor and the Intrada to the Suite in F. As well as enthusiastically received albums of Pasquini, Gabrieli, Vivaldi and above all Frescobaldi, Roberto Loreggian has previously recorded the 1739 collection of Componimenti Musicali to which this new recording forms a sequel. Of his collection of Partitas by Telemann, Fanfare commented: 'Without seeming driven, his playing is lively and well-articulated, and he is always sensitive to Telemann's stylistic variety, whether it is tending, at any given moment, to the courtly or to the common.'

This album combines pieces for the core quintet of Onyx Brass with works for extended brass forces, plus piano in the case of Florence Price's Octet for Brasses and Piano. The majority of the pieces here receive their first commercial recording, the two Britten premieres bringing two long-forgotten pieces out of the Britten Pears Archive, in Aldeburgh, into the sunlight. Alongside these new discoveries are performances of established favourites by Sir Malcolm Arnold and Joseph Horovitz, staples of the brass chamber repertoire for more than half a century. The selection of composers spanning most of the twentieth century, and from both sides of the Atlantic, gives the album a refreshing contrast of musical traditions and styles. Founded in 1993, and initially inspired by the pioneering early years of the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, Onyx Brass remains a leading light in cementing the place of the brass quintet as a medium for serious chamber music. To this end, the group has commissioned and performed the world premieres of more than 200 new works; many more are in the pipeline for performance and recording.

Explore the power and depth of Shostakovich's cello concertos with Alexander Kniazev and Kazuki Yamada. Kniazev's profound understanding of Shostakovich's music brings out the intricate layers of anguish, irony, and resilience that define the composer's voice. Yamada's energetic and insightful conducting adds a vivid dimension to the orchestral textures. Together, they deliver a recording that captures the dark intensity and emotional richness of Shostakovich's music, offering a compelling listening experience.

For this, the fifth instalment of his Shostakovich symphony cycle, John Storgards turns to some of the earliest of the composer's orchestral output, works which Shostakovich largely wrote during his student years. The orchestral scherzo was a favourite task set by composition tutors of the time: the relatively simple form still demands that the student produce contrasting material for the outer and central sections, and manage the transitions effectively. Unsurprisingly, the form looms large in the early works of Shostakovich, as well as Stravinsky, Bartok, and many others. The two examples recorded here show the young composer's ability and style, although not yet perhaps a distinct compositional voice. They do both share links with the later First Symphony, however, which was composed as a graduation test in composition from the Petrograd Conservatoire. Shostakovich spent two years working on it, but the Symphony he eventually produced was an instant success, marking him out as a Boy Wonder among Soviet composers. Written four years later, the Third Symphony evidences not only the rapid development of Shostakovich as a composer, but the equally rapid change in the world he inhabited. He passed the newly required examination in Marxist ideology in December 1926, and managed to extend his registration as a postgraduate student at Leningrad Conservatoire until early 1930. He submitted the symphony with the explanation that it 'expresses the festive spirit of peaceful construction'. At this early stage of the first of Stalin's Five-Year Plans, he already demonstrated his realisation that political spin would be crucial to his creative survival.

I will always remember Johannes Martin Kranzle�s and Hilko Dumno's Winterreise journey as the most vivid I have experienced. A Winterreise of the now, where one had the feeling of actually accompanying the journey. A Winterreise in which one had the distinct feeling of walking arm in arm with the artists, in which the boundary between stage and auditorium had been removed - not through contrived pathos or deliberate artistry but through the sheer authenticity and forthright passion of these two supremely generous artists. Victor Medem, Director of the Schubertiada Vilabertran

Recorded in Perugia between 2023 and 2025, a major new set of Schumann's song output for mixed voices - vocal duets, trios and quartets - by a fine team of Italian singers, and led by the pianist Filippo Farinelli. In recording previous, adventurous surveys of the songs and chamber music by Ravel, Berg, Dallapiccola, Hindemith and others, the pianist Filippo Farinelli has demonstrated his deep knowledge of and affinity for a wide range of chamber music. As he does here, he has gathered together a carefully selected cast of singers in order to present both rarities and established masterpieces within the catalogues of these composers, shedding new light on their evolution as creative thinkers and musicians. The solo song output of Robert Schumann is well established among the peaks of the rich heritage of German Lieder. But alongside cycles such as Dichterliebe and Frauen-liebe und -leben, Schumann often returned to the combination of mixed voices, and these cycles are much less familiar to most listeners. Many of them catch the composer at his most genial and Biedermeier in tone, such as the female Duets Op.43 and the Madchenlieder Op.103. The Spanisches Liederspiel Op.74 and the Spanische Liebeslieder Op.138 are strikingly under-rated precursor to Hugo Wolf's Spanisches Liederbuch, in which a group of singers take turns their individual turns (in solo or duet) to outline 'sketches of Spain' from a German perspective (and from one who had never been there), full of charm and grace. The Op.79 Liederalbum fur die Jugend likewise reminds us of Schumann's genius for song-melody at it's most artless, a vocal counterpart to piano cycles such as Kinderszenen. The poet Emanuel Geibel had adapted many of the 'Spanish' texts, and Schumann's Op.29 trio of songs based on texts by Geibel catch the authentic spirit of the German wanderer. Here and elsewhere throughout the set we find Schumann's affinity for the world of fantasy and fairy tale. Lieder collectors will find this new set an essential acquisition, but anyone new to Schumann's song writing will find much to delight them. - Robert Schumann (1810-1856) devoted himself to composing Lieder at different periods of his life, especially in the 1840s, the so-called Liederjahr, and in his later years, starting in 1849. Alongside Lieder for solo voice and piano, he composed numerous duets and some Lieder for three and four voices, either in homogeneous collections, or by including a few songs for several voices in collections of solo Lieder. - This highly valuable 4-CD set of new recordings contains the complete songs for multiple voice and piano, on poems by Geibel, Heine and Ruckert, but also a substantial part of folk songs, drawn from the rich German culture of folk literature and poetry. - Sung by Elisabetta Lombardi (mezzo-soprano), Elisabetta Pallucchi (contralto), Valentina Valente, (Mark Milhofer tenor) and Mauro Borgioni, accompanied on the piano by Filippo Farinelli, the indefatigable champion of important song projects of lesser known repertoire.

Josef Bohuslav Foerster was a pivotal figure in Czech musical history and a lifelong friend of fellow German-speaking Bohemian, Gustav Mahler. Foerster's Symphony No. 2, dedicated to the memory of his sister, Marie, achieves a satisfying unity, with it's sombre qualities eloquently transformed into a fervent apotheosis. Cyrano de Bergerac was Foerster's most successful orchestral piece and is a perfect example of his late-Romantic finesse. Conceived as an autonomous work not intended as incidental music, it's 'five symphonic images' each relates to a specific place in the drama.

When Johann Heinrich Rolle was born, Bach was 31 years old; when he died, Mozart, then in Vienna, was nearing his 30th birthday. In retrospect, it is tempting to count him among the countless "transitional" musicians who distanced themselves from the Baroque, embraced the fashionable galanteries of the time, and thus helped pave the way for the Classical era-as if they had foreseen what was to come. Rolle's career was indeed typical of his era: organist in Magdeburg, student of law, later active in Berlin-first as a legal advisor, then as a violinist and violist in the service of Frederick the Great-before returning to Magdeburg as organist, cantor, and municipal music director. In addition to a wealth of oratorios and cantatas, he produced a substantial body of instrumental music which, as this symphonic-concertante selection shows, places him firmly within the stylistic currents of his time: light-footed, elegant, spirited, and transparent-in short, so galant that the listener is delightfully engaged from start to finish.

For fifteen exciting years the manuscripts of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's keyboard concertos have held me in their thrall. Both delightful and challenging at the same time, a hitherto unpublished and therefore completely unknown world revealed it's hidden beauties. With an eighth CD, my series comprising around half of all the available keyboard concertos now comes to an end. This musical form - according to Emanuel Bach himself his 'most personal' - occupied the composer repeatedly throughout his lifetime. From the astonishingly self-confident concerto Wq1 by a 19-year-old to the cheerfully ironic Wq47 from the year of his death, a long and very fruitful career is illustrated by the search for distinctive new means of expression. As later with the symphonies composed in Hamburg, Emanuel Bach here also took 'all the liberties he needed'. We find bold innovation as well as exuberant kinetic joy, exquisite chromaticism and demanding virtuosity alongside profound contemplation. Michael Rische

This album is inspired by the fantastic physicality and variety of dance forms in which composers from Granados to Shostakovich excelled. There are some hidden gems as well as pieces that will be familiar to all - and they have the novelty, as transcriptions, of all having been 'stolen' from the original. These arrangements are creative, fun and often virtuosic. -Includes Shostakovich's 'Three Fantastic Dances' released in the composer's 50th death anniversary year -Includes Ravel 'Piece en forme de habanera' released in the composer's 150th birth anniversary year

Had Alberto Ginastera not been born just three years after the scandalous premiere of The Rite of Spring, he could easily have been considered one of the earliest followers of the "pagan" Stravinsky. Although wild rhythms of ancient dances, volcanic eruptions of complex sound layers, and martyrs of all kinds permeate his works, they are never random in form. His First String Quartet from 1948, for example, follows a traditional path, with some bows losing a bit of horsehair during performance - not unlike his Piano Quintet, premiered in Venice in 1963, which explores the limits of what is possible in seven extremely concise sections that the composer described as "neo-expressionistic". Maurice Ravel's unique String Quartet acts as an "impressionist" antipode and delicate counterpoint in this context.

This symphony is the creation of a giant, and it surpasses all of the master's other symphonies in terms of it's spiritual dimension, it's fearsomeness, and it's grandeur. It's success is almost unprecedented, despite the most ominous warnings of a variety of Cassandras, and that includes several close colleagues. The work was a complete victory of light over darkness, and the storm of enthusiasm which broke out with elemental force when the individual movements had faded away was mighty. In short, it was a triumph that a Roman emperor could not have wished for more beautifully. (Hugo Wolf)

English mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately presents an album of songs by Madeleine Dring. Born in 1923 to a theatrical family, Dring was admitted to the Royal College of Music at the age of nine. She went on to study composition with Herbert Howells, also taking lessons from Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams. She made her career in the theatre, earning a reputation for being able to create catchy numbers at short notice. Sadly, she died at the early age of fifty-three, of a brain aneurysm. The disparate nature of her musical legacy is often attributed to the piecemeal nature of her career; consequently, resurgence of interest in her work has lagged behind that of her contemporaries Elizabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, Grace Williams, and Ruth Gipps. Kitty Whately and Julius Drake have chosen widely from among her output, and end with Dring's version of Cole Porter's 'In the Still of the Night'.

Continuity. The piece "October" from Tchaikovsky's "Seasons" op. 37 comes from an older recording by Evgeni Koroliov from 1992 (TACET 25). That was the time of the Yugoslav Wars and the collapse of the Soviet Union. I remember that Evgeni Koroliov, who was born in Moscow, spoke during a break in his gentle manner about how this music was for him a reminder of irretrievable times before the Russian revolution. 33 years later, Koroliov speaks as he did then, he has remained true to himself and his playing, the times are just as confused and uncertain. Even the sound is similar. Accordingly, the new recordings on this "Russian" CD are permeated by a similar longing for a better world, which never existed as beautifully as in this music. I am happy and grateful to have been able to accompany this quiet and expressive artist, who enriches the music world so lastingly, on TACET for such a long time. This is already his 26th recording on TACET and the second CD this year, the second of three!

Volume 68 in the Liszt Complete Piano Music series features transcriptions of dance works by illustrious colleagues such as Smetana, Weber and Raff, amongst others. The pianist on this volume, Steinway Artist Wenting Shi, has received numerous prestigious awards and accolades throughout her career.

Luigi Gordigiani was a prominent figure in 19th-century Florence who became known as the "Italian Schubert." Like his Viennese counterpart, Gordigiani's creativity found it's best expression in songs for voice and piano that earned him international renown in a period when opera reigned supreme in Italy. Gordigiani's style found a balance between brilliant, almost operatic drawing-room writing, and a deliberately regional vernacular language that gave his songs an honest and innocent character. All of his songs are graceful and delightful, and at the heart of his output are the Popular Tuscan Songs, which captivated the likes of Rossini, Meyerbeer, and Chopin.