Schubert's influence, the spirit of fantasy, and pictures from fairy tales are the common themes in this fifth volume of the Schumann Collection. For this great journey across the Schumannian realm, which starts off with one of his early works, the expansive Quartet for Piano and Strings WoO 32, and concludes with the twilight miniatures of Marchenerzahlungen (Fairytale Narrations), brothers Pierre and Theo Fouchenneret are still at the head of a fine team of chamber musicians bringing together long-time collaborators and great talents of the young generation.

Founded ten years ago, Ensemble Ouranos is now one of the best French wind quintets in the world. For this new recording, their first for Alpha Classics, Mathilde, Arnaud, Amaury, Philibert, Rafael and Nicolas have brought together composers and works that are particularly close to their hearts: Le Tombeau de Couperin glorifies the French wind school, and Shostakovich is their passion, so recording this transcription (by David Walter) of the famous quartet for the first time was at the top of their wish list. The two works have one thing in common: homage, since Ravel composed in tribute to his friends who died in the war, and Shostakovich to the victims of the Second World War. Another tribute - a lighter one - is paid to summer with Barber's superb Summer Music, the only original piece for wind quintet on this album. Added to this are�Ravel's famous Pavane and an arrangement by Nicolas Ramez of the poignant Elegy from Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk

Victor Julien-laferriere and his Consuelo Orchestra continue their complete works of Beethoven's symphonies with a second volume devoted to the famous diptych premiered on 22 December 1808: the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, so contrasting and yet so close. They have added the Eighth, premiered five years later and sometimes considered the little sister of the 'Pastoral', whose key is F major.

When was the last time you were really furious? With baroque orchestra La Sfera Armoniosa led by Mike Fentross, soprano Channa Malkin explores the raw power of anger through the intense and heart-wrenching music of Antonio Vivaldi. From hidden operatic gems to the fierce�In furore iustissimae irae, this album channels rage into beauty. Inspired by Channa's journey as a woman and mother, it reveals how moving through intense emotion can open the door to compassion, clarity, and catharsis.

Suffering in an unhappy marriage, Woman yearns for a world beyond the boundaries of flesh and an existence outside of the conventions of human society. A secret young Lover's desire instigates an explosive metamorphosis, and Woman finds perfect release as a tree. Sivan Eldar composes with Like Flesh her first opera on a libretto by Cordelia Lynn, a poetic saga inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses. A new eco-feminist myth about our broken relationship with an environment in crisis, interpreted by Maxime Pascal and Le Balcon, and recorded by b records at Opera de Lille.

Darkness explores the symbolic depth of the bass and baritone voice as a vessel for humanity's most profound questions. Across works by Schumann, Wolf, Strauss, Martin and Brahms, the album traces a wide emotional and spiritual landscape shaped by themes of death, transience, loneliness, melancholy and, ultimately, transcendence. The programme opens with Schumann's Requiem, added as a tribute to Nikolaus Lenau and placed at the beginning as a motto: a union of heaviness, longing and gentle, affirmative melancholy. From there, the journey unfolds through composers often writing at pivotal or final stages of their lives. Wolf's Michelangelo Songs, composed shortly before his mental collapse, meditate on love, devotion and artistic melancholy; Strauss's dark-hued songs reflect retreat, solitude and a wistful dissolution into nature; and Frank Martin's Six Monologues from Jedermann plunge into the raw confrontation with death, charting a moral and spiritual transformation from terror to humility and faith. Together, these works reveal darkness not as mere despair, but as a space in which existential truth is sought.� Yet this album is not confined to shadow alone. In both Wolf and Brahms, the selected works bear witness to late creative phases in which despair is counterbalanced by reconciliation. Brahms's Vier ernste Gesange, written in anticipation of loss and drawing on biblical texts, move from stark reflections on mortality toward a final affirmation of love as the greatest human force, closing the circle begun with Schumann's Requiem. Throughout the programme, sorrow is repeatedly transformed into acceptance, and fear into insight, illuminated by what the liner notes describe as a "gentle compositional light." Darkness thus becomes a deeply human meditation: an artistic passage through emotional abysses toward consolation, spiritual clarity and an enduring sense of love that transcends life and death.

Thibault Noally and his ensemble here reaffirm their love for and expertise in Alessandro Scarlatti's music as they celebrate his anniversary year with his famous and yet mysterious Stabat mater, a work that displays Scarlatti's more intimate side. In Noally's own words, "this is an extreme example of his stylistic eclecticism. The piece juxtaposes duets in passionate counterpoint with arias in the Neapolitan style, echoes of what he heard around him, as if they formed part of a mosaic. There is no synthesis between the different musical languages; what is most mysterious is that the motets are the musical illustration of a text or an emotion, whilst the Stabat mater requires a completely different approach. The music is no longer directly related to the text. It's as if it had become a world in itself." Noally also presents two Mottetti sacri and a Sonata a quattro, all in the da chiesa style. His collaborators here are soprano Emmanuelle de Negri, a long-time colleague, and Paul Figuier, a highly promising countertenor.

On Spiegel i'm Spiegel, Amsterdam Sinfonietta, the Netherlands Chamber Choir, Candida Thompson, Martina Batic, H�lya Keser and Tim Posner, perform a program of Baltic and English compositions, wherein space and time blur. The title of this album is from Arvo P�rt's meditative work of the same name, Spiegel i'm Spiegel, which is performed in two separate versions bookending the album, embracing the concept of the mirror. Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis mirrors the Renaissance in the 20th century, works by Estonian composers Veljo Tormis and Lepo Sumera have yet another spiritual essence, as shamanistic primal cries resound in Tormis' epic choir work Curse upon Iron, Latvian composer Peteris Vasks' Plainscapes evokes the vast expanses of the Baltic plains.

For a long time, the fact that three of J.S. Bach's harpsichord concertos are arrangements of earlier violin concertos led scholars to suspect that the remaining concertos were also adaptations of lost works for strings or winds, prompting several musicologists to attempt reconstructions. However, recent research has shown that they are more likely arrangements of earlier keyboard works. But what would Bach have done if he had to perform one of these pieces again and wished to showcase a different solo instrument? Ensemble Odyssee explores this question with three brand-new arrangements, presented alongside Bach's own arrangement of his Fourth Brandenburg Concerto, each piece showcasing the virtuosity of the ensemble's four core members.

Although Israel in Egypt was first performed on 4 April 1739 in tripartite form, Handel probably first composed this oratorio without a complete text. Herve Niquet has chosen to record the version in two parts that Berlioz and the whole of the 19th century considered definitive, these being the Exodus and the Song of Moses. Produced just after the Covid pandemic, this recording also shows the joy of Le Concert Spirituel's singers and instrumentalists at making music together again: Herve Niquet says the final chorus "is a cry of happiness in unison" and sees an "almost palpable drama in these works: the two choruses face each other on either side of the orchestra and respond to each other in violent retaliations and monumental unisons. Their interweaving in diabolical movements is like a theatrical staging before our very eyes."

Joseph Swensen offers an intimate and cosmic symphonic fresco in the form of the Saga Trilogy, captured on this b-records disc. Composed in the wake of the pandemic, this trilogy explores the composer's inner world like an ancestral legend waiting to be discovered. Performed by the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, the music draws on reminiscences of Messiaen and the poetic spirit of Hafiz. From the cosmic pulsation of Primordial Cosmos to the mythological clamour of the SAGA concerto and the spiritual light of Song of Infinity, allow yourself to be swept away by this vibrant and deeply rooted work, which exists on the border between the visible and the invisible.

La Blancheur des Cygnes is a poetic and reflective musical project that celebrates feminine energy, beauty, and strength through the timeless art of the French chanson. Historian Els Kloek's liner notes frame the album as a continuation of the conversation started by Simone de Beauvoir - exploring how women have evolved from "the other" to agents of their own expression. Through Haesen's evocative voice and the refined strings of the Caf� des Chansons quartet, the album traverses nearly a century of song - from Charles Trenet's joyful optimism to modern interpretations by artists like Zaho de Sagazan and Solann - weaving themes of love, self-acceptance, vulnerability, and empowerment. At the heart of this collection lies a reclamation of beauty as a feminine right: no longer dictated by the male gaze but redefined as a source of power and authenticity. The title, La Blancheur des Cygnes ("The Whiteness of Swans"), alludes both to Baudelaire's poem La Beaut� and to Andersen's tale of The Ugly Duckling, reflecting transformation, grace, and the freedom to be seen. Through these fourteen chansons, Charlotte Haesen and the ensemble offer a moving counterpoint to the enduring dominance of masculine energy - proposing empathy, love, and artistic sensitivity as the true instruments of balance in our modern world.

Ning Feng, together with the Konzerthausorchester Berlin conducted by Antony Hermus, releases the violin concertos of Johannes Brahms and Carl Goldmark. This pairing is particularly apt as these works were both written in 1877, and the composers were dear friends. In Goldmark's lyrical Violin Concerto, Ning Feng plays the original 5-minute cadenza which is seldom heard in it's entirety. Written only a few months after the Goldmark, Brahms' famous Violin Concerto in D, Op.77 needs little introduction. Ning Feng has long been associated with this concerto, having played it when he won First Prize in the International Paganini Competition 2006 as well as First Prize in the 2005 Michael Hill International Violin Competition.

Please, enjoy one of the most appealing and thought-provoking Baroque discs of the year. It contains a selection of the sonatas drawn from Pisendel's library, the best of Italian and German violin schools. This is the debut album of an outstanding baroque violinist coming from the renowned Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. The recording is the fruit of an in-depth scholar work, of a virtuoso violinist accompanied by a raising star of the harpsichord - to which the expertise of a top sound engineer and producer is added.

Reflections Op. 28: Mallorca preludes marks the debut album of classical concert pianist Egle Andrejevaite. In 2016, the Chopin Festival of Valldemossa commissioned 24 esteemed contemporary Spanish composers to create responses to Chopin's 24 preludes. The strength of this recording project lies in reconnecting the essence of �these "sublime" and intense inspirations within the contemporary context.�The goal was to foster a�rigorous comparison between historical inspiration and modern creativity.? ?

This recording is the first of a collaboration between Rene Jacobs, the Kammerorchester Basel, the Zurcher Sing-Akademie and Alpha Classics and will involve the release of four albums between 2025 and 2028; the first of these is the Missa Cellensis, then three albums devoted to Haydn's last six masses. Haydn was commissioned in 1766 to write a Missa Solemnis, the Latin term for a fully scored mass with trumpets and timpani; it is the third and largest of Haydn's fourteen masses. It was under this erroneous name that the 1766 Missa Cellensis remained known until 1975, when a fragment of the autograph score containing the title page, Kyrie I and Christe was found in Bucharest and revealed that Haydn had in fact composed two Miss� Cellenses. It is the first of these (1766) that is recorded here. Rene Jacobs puts all his expertise and enthusiasm at the service of this music that he loves so much, in collaboration with soloists with whom he works regularly, an orchestra that is also a longstanding partner, and the remarkable choir of the Sing-Akademie of Zurich.

The music of multi-award-winning composer Vincent Ho has been described by The New York Times as 'brilliant and compelling', not least for his music's beauty and expressive breadth. Ho wrote The Twelve Chinese Zodiac Animals as a gift for his eight-year-old daughter, to enrich her musical education as she learned the piano and to introduce her to Chinese cultural themes and performance practices in pianistic form. The cycle presents the musical spirits of the animals with captivating musical caricatures in two books, the second of which is a selection of preludes and fugues for more advanced players. They are performed by Tony Yike Yang, one of Canada's finest young pianists and the youngest laureate in the history of the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw.

The 'American dream' is the thread that connects these three works. Amy Beach was born in New Hampshire in 1867 and composed more than three hundred works, including a monumental suite for two pianos inspired by the Romantic tradition and based on ancient Irish melodies. Nadine Dana Suesse nicknamed the "Gershwin Girl" was born in Kansas City in 1909. She played her own compositions on the radio from the age of thirteen and composed hit songs, notably for Bing Crosby. She refused the attractions of Hollywood and studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Her works disappeared from the repertory after her death, although the Berlinskaya Ancelle duo are keen to revive her music with this 1943 concerto, described as "romantic, but mixed with modern harmonies and chords straight from jazz". Victor Babin was born in Moscow in 1908 and emigrated to the United States with his wife Viktoria Vronskaya in 1937. Their piano duo was very successful there: they gave the first performance of Babin's virtuosic Second Concerto under the direction of George SzelI in Cleveland in 1957.

First volume of a complete survey of Brahms' music with viola. It includes the Sonatas op.120 anf the Trio op.40. There is a special connection between Brahms's musical world and the sonority of the viola.�Acclaimed and experienced violist Mikhail Zemtsov can count on the collaboration of two distinguished soloists as Hanna Shybayeva and Daniel Rowland. A version of Brahms' chamber music masterpieces infused with Russian ardour and drive.

World premiere recordings of beguiling flute sonatas written on the cusp of the early-Romantic era in Germany. Almost completely forgotten in our own time, Johann Christian Friedrich Schneider (1786-1853) once enjoyed substantial fame as a pianist, composer, teacher and musical organiser. He was born in 1786, 16 years after Beethoven, in the same year as Weber and the Brothers Grimm, and received his first musical education from his father. His talent was evident from an early age, as he learnt the piano and several other instruments. Breitkopf & Hartel published his Op.1, a set of piano sonatas, in 1804; he went to study in Leipzig, where he became organist of the Thomaskirche, and settled there for his 20s, giving the local premiere of Beethoven's 'Emperor' Concerto in 1811. A standard German work of reference from 1838 cites Schneider 'among the living German masters of music'. From the evidence of these four sonatas for flute and piano, it is hard to see why his name should have so comprehensively vanished from view. Schneider composed the first of them, his Op.18, in 1808, and it follows the same Classical exemplar as Beethoven's first eight violin sonatas, and all of Mozart's in being written for a pianist with an accompanying melody instrument rather than the other way around. Over the course of the following three sonatas, the flautist becomes more independent, and his Op.61 Sonata of 1827 requires a virtuoso. Schneider wrote the first three sonatas in a four-movement form, breaking ground in this way by elevating the flute sonata from it's previous association with pretty variation sets and pot-pourris of operatic themes. This originality extends to the finales of all four sonatas - notably the Second, which is cast in G minor against the prevailing G major tonality (foreshadowing in this way the 'Italian' Symphony of Mendelssohn). In his booklet essay for this new recording, the flautist Daniele Ruggeri pays tribute to the 'simple but bewitching' trios of each sonata, and to Schneider's 'profound understanding of the expressive character of the different registers of the flute' in the slow movements. Based in Venice, Ruggeri has played across the world and recorded for many major labels. With this album of Schneider he revives an unjustly neglected contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert, and does so on an instrument of the period. - Johann Christian Friedrich Schneider was a German composer, conductor, organist, and pianist of the early Romantic period. Born in Saxony, he was a highly respected musician during his lifetime, known for his contributions to church music, orchestral works, and chamber compositions. He earned his place in history as the pianist premiering Beethoven's 5th piano concerto. - Schneider's flute sonatas are elegant and expressive works that reflect the stylistic transition from the Classical to the Romantic era. Blending lyrical melodies with intricate harmonic textures, the sonatas are technically challenging and musically rewarding for performers. The flute sonatas follow the traditional sonata form, typically structured in three or four movements, combining virtuosic passages with expressive slow sections. - Played by Italian flutist Daniele Ruggieri and pianist Luigi Caselli.