Schat: de Hemel (The Heavens)

Camille Saint-Saens was only fifteen years old when he composed his first symphony in 1850, which is known as his Symphony No. 0 - his official Symphony No. 1 would not arrive for another three years. Gounod was thirty-seven years old when his La nonne sanglante was removed from the repertoire of the Paris Opera by a new director; he swiftly restored his spirits by composing a symphony for the Societe des Jeunes Artistes in March 1855. Bizet, aged seventeen, began work on his Symphony in C major that same year. Gounod's symphony clearly influenced Bizet's work, as Bizet had just completed a transcription of it for piano four hands. This recording marks the beginning of a collaboration between the Alpha Classics label, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and it's music director Kazuki Yamada, a great lover of the French symphonic repertoire and also music director of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and principal guest conductor of the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and the Seiji Ozawa International Academy.

Acknowledged as one of the most exciting lyric tenors of his generation, Liparit Avetisyan releases his first solo album on Delos: a crowd-pleasing programme of celebrated arias which the Armenian has performed in major opera houses including the Royal Opera House, Wiener Staatsoper, Zurich Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Semperoper Dresden, Seattle Opera, and Teatro Colon. Accompanied by the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra under the helm of conductor Constantine Orbelian, Liparit gives a superb account of iconic roles - in turn passionate, tragic and haunting - ranging from Donizetti's Una furtiva lagrima to Verdi's La donna e mobile by way of Puccini's Che gelida manina and Gounod's Salut ! demeure chaste et pure. As a homage to Liparit's home country, this varied program concludes with Sayat-Nova's folk-inspired Qamancha.

According to The Telegraph 'Ingrid Fliter was born to play Chopin', such is her profound musicianship and affinity with the Polish composer. Here, the Gilmore Artist Award winner continues her highly acclaimed Chopin odyssey, which began over a decade ago, with the complete mazurkas. This, the first of two volumes to be released on Linn, includes the early Opp. 6 and 7, the Op. 24 as well as the later sets, Opp. 50, 59 and 63. The programme reflects on the composer's evolving style, from simple folk-inspired dances to brilliantly sophisticated, intimate works whose intricate counterpoint and harmonies often push the boundaries of the form and serve as a benchmark for the genre. Also included are some posthumous mazurkas which transverse Chopin's entire compositional career.

North and South The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic, the 17th century, may have been full of splendour in the fields of trade, painting and literature, but in music the situation was far from rosy. The epicentre of musical innovation lay in Italy, whose composers were admired as supreme across Europe. While this will have hurt the pride of composers in Northern Europe and elsewhere, who disputed this supremacy publicly, in private most of them sought to benefit from their Mediterranean contemporaries, studying the latest Italian music or apprenticing themselves to Italian masters. In the Netherlands, the style of Monteverdi and other Italian composers had a profound influence on the music of Jan Baptist Verrijt, who was probably born around 1600 in Oirschot and died in Rotterdam in 1650. Together with Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Verrijt is perhaps the most important Dutch composer of the 17th century, an assessment based his only surviving opus: the Flammae divinae, Op.5. It consists of 6 two-part and 12 three-part motets along with 2 three-part Mass settings. The work is believed to have been intended for use both in Roman Catholic churches in the Southern Netherlands and in clandestine Roman Catholic churches in the predominantly protestant Republic. The high level of vocal technique demanded by Verrijt would seem at first to exclude the possibility of performance by non-professional singers. However, it's known that Verrijt's Opp. 4 & 5 could be found in the library of Groningen's collegium musicum, a group consisting almost entirely of amateur musicians. In the Flammae divinae Verrijt displays consummate mastery in combining the liveliness of the new, Italian stile concertato with the polyphonic techniques of the old Franco-Flemish school. The music sounds imaginative and dramatic, but is simultaneously balanced and controlled. Like Claudio Monteverdi and Alessandro Grandi, for example, Verrijt enlivens his complex multi-part church music with techniques borrowed from the madrigal and from opera. For this reason, Verrijt's Opus 5 is not only of interest as an unusual expression of Roman Catholic culture in the northern Netherlands, but also as a musically intriguing opus on an international level. Other information: - Recorded May 2000, Rotterdam - Trilingual Booklet in English, Dutch and German contains liner notes by Kees Vlaardingerbroek - Jan Baptist Verrijt was, together with Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, perhaps the most important Dutch composer of the seventeenth century. His most important surviving work, Flammae divinae, Opus 5, consists of six two-part and twelve three-part motets along with two three-part settings for Mass, and was published in the period when Verrijt was employed as an organist by the Great Church of St Laurens in Rotterdam (1644-50). - In this work Verrijt displays consummate mastery in combining the liveliness of the new Italian stile concertato with the polyphonic techniques of the old Franco-Flemish school. The music sounds imaginative and dramatic, but is simultaneously balanced and controlled. Like Claudia Monteverdi Verrijt enlivens his complex multi-part church music with techniques borrowed from the madrigal and from opera, employing the old imitative techniques in a new way to achieve a strong emotional effect. - Performed by one of the most prominent and pioneering Early Music vocal ensembles of the 20-th century, The Consort of Musicke, featuring Emma Kirkby, and directed by Anthony Rooley. - A reissue from the NM Classics label, the label for music from The Netherlands.

In the shadows of history, the works of Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Erich Korngold emerge as profound testaments to the resilience of the human spirit. Both composers, deeply affected by the tumultuous tides of the twentieth century, faced the harrowing realities of persecution. Their music, rich in emotion and complexity, serves not only as a reflection of their personal trials but as an enduring legacy of hope and beauty amid despair. Driven by a passion for meaningful projects, cellist Kristina Reiko Cooper gave the New York premiere of Weinberg's Fantasia for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 52 and Korngold's Cello Concerto in C major in 2025. She is rejoined by her concert partner, conductor Constantine Orbelian, and the Kaunas City Symphony Orchestra to record these works, together with Weinberg's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra. Three extraordinary works for solo cello and orchestra by two leading composers of the twentieth century.

Songs and Chamber Music brings together two powerful musical voices separated by generations yet united by emotional depth and lyrical intensity. Roman Ryterband's rarely heard works trace a life marked by exile, loss, and cultural memory-from intimate Hebrew songs and elegiac chamber pieces to German Lieder and American-inspired songs shaped by war, displacement, and longing. His music blends late-Romantic richness with Jewish musical echoes, revealing a composer of striking melodic invention and human sensitivity. Alongside Ryterband's rediscovered legacy, Wojciech Stepien offers contemporary reflections on solitude, love, and memory. Drawn from his opera A Single Man and song cycles inspired by James Joyce, Stepien's works evoke California landscapes, inner monologues, and haunting emotional shadows. Together, these recordings form a moving dialogue between past and present-music that speaks quietly, intensely, and with enduring relevance.

In the summer of 1717, after performing his Water Music during a royal cruise on the Thames, Handel began composing for James Brydges (1674-1744), who became the first Duke of Chandos and created the Cannons Concert at his estate in Cannons (near Edgware), with ten instrumentalists and three singers. Handel composed eleven anthems and a Te Deum for him from August 1717 onwards, as well as transposing and revising As pants the hart (HWV 251b). O sing unto the Lord a new song (HWV 249b) is an adaptation of an anthem written three years earlier for the Chapel Royal. The anthem Have mercy upon me, O God (HWV 248) was composed in 1717 and is a paraphrase of the Miserere. The Alleluia of Let God arise (HWV 256a) prefigures the famous Hallelujah chorus from Messiah (1741). Arcangelo and Jonathan Cohen now revive these four Chandos anthems composed for Cannons with eight singers and eleven excellent instrumentalists.

The enduring appeal of opera in the 19th century found a new and intimate expression in the realm of solo piano music. This recording reveals how the grandeur and expressive range of operas by Bellini and Verdi was brought from the theatre into private parlours and salons. The composers featured on this album preserve the spirit of the original works while reimagining the famous melodies and dramatic scenes as paraphrases, fantasies and variations. Awardwinning Italian pianist, Ruben Micieli, performs these dazzling pieces in his own unique way, making musical and structural adjustments to each transcription after studying the scores by Bellini and Verdi.

Following critical acclaim from The New York Times, Gramophone, and BBC Music Magazine for his album Forgotten Sounds, clarinetist Graeme Steele Johnson returns to Delos with Windsync. "A major force in the American chamber music landscape," the wind quintet has performed throughout the United States and abroad, presenting largely self-generated repertoire - commissioned by the group or arranged in-house. On this album, the musicians trace the stylistic diversity of American music back to a single source: not a founding father but a French mademoiselle, Nadia Boulanger. The composer, conductor, music theorist, and legendary composition pedagogue wielded immense influence over American music and musicians. The formidable roster of Boulanger students featured on this album bear witness to this: Philip Glass, Elliott Carter, Quincy Jones, and Marion Bauer, whose Woodwind Quintet has been revived and recorded here for the first time. On Nadia, Windsync hopes to humanize Mademoiselle, as she was known by her pupils, by telling her story through a century's worth of music written by teacher and students - a legacy of dizzyingly varied American music that reverberates to this day.

The song cycle A Screenshot of Now is a new work by guitarist and composer Giacomo Susani on words by the poet, lyricist, author, and physician Chinwe D. John. Receiving it's premiere recording on this album, the collection is a series of 14 poems in which Susani's music-for voice and guitar-aims to act as a conduit of the lyrics' deepest symbolic meanings, in such a way that sounds and words become indivisible. Each poem reflects on various aspects of modern life: the corrupting nature of global politics, family dysfunction, freedom, the beauty and seduction of nature, romance amid chaos, escape from tyranny, and satire of modern 'pirates'. The cycle concludes with a reminder that simple pleasures still hold meaning despite technological change. Three leading voices share the spotlight: Alexander Chance, Tim Mead, and Daniel Norman, with Giacomo Susani accompanying on the guitar.

Ei paesi di lingua tedesca, la musica per flauto solo ha una lunghissima tradizione, che ha il suo capostipite nella celeberrima Partita in La minore BWV 1013 di Johann Sebastian Bach, capolavoro inarrivabile e, in un certo senso, mai pi� eguagliato. All'epoca in cui Bach scriveva la sua Partita in La minore, intorno al 1720, il flauto traversiere (che gli inglesi all'epoca chiamavano anche German Flute) era praticamente all'inizio della sua travolgente carriera, che ne avrebbe fatto, nel volgere di poco tempo, uno degli strumenti pi� popolari al mondo. Era fatto quasi esclusivamente di legno, ed era uno strumento molto diverso da quello odierno, costruito in metallo prezioso (argento o, meglio ancora, oro), Relativamente facile da suonare, il flauto traverso si e arricchito nel tempo di una copiosa letteratura e ha avuto i suoi eccellenti virtuosi che ne hanno incrementato la popolarit� (nel secondo Novecento, per citare solo alcuni dei pi� noti, Jean-Pierre Rampal, James Galway e, in Italia, Severino Gazzelloni) e hanno direttamente o indirettamente sollecitato gli autori a scrivere per loro. La letteratura per flauto e effettivamente sterminata. Il nostro album ci offre una scelta di sei composizioni per flauto solo, scritte da cinque autori diversi, appartenenti in larga maggioranza all'area musicale di lingua tedesca; la sola eccezione e costituita dall'olandese Rudolf Escher, mentre Willy Burkhard era svizzero-tedesco. Gli altri tre, Karg-Elert, Paul Hindemith e Gunter Raphael, erano tedeschi.

Delos is thrilled to embark on a new journey with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and it's Music Director Stephane Deneve. What better statement of intent for their first album on the label than releasing the world premiere recording of three works by native St. Louisan and Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy�-winning composer Kevin Puts? Dedicated to the SLSO and Stephane, Concerto for Orchestra was written in response to the horrific school shooting that occurred in Uvalde in 2022. Silent Night Elegy is drawn from Kevin's acclaimed opera, which adapts Joyeux Noel, the award-winning film that tells the story of the spontaneous ceasefires along the Western Front on the first Christmas Eve of World War I. Inspired by Guillaume de Machaut, Virelai was commissioned for the opening concert of Stephane's tenure as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. This album celebrates the SLSO's dynamic partnership with Stephane and demonstrates the orchestra's commitment to artistic excellence and inclusive musical experiences.

Argentina has been a very prosperous nation specially in the first half of the XX Century when in Argentina there was an excellent standard of life even better than Europe where two world wars were fought. Consequentially even the the guitar studies and culture have benefited of these period of prosperity and great cultural vitality. It was in the historical phase that lots of important guitarist reached international success. IDIS release, the seventh of the serie Master of guitar " present an accurate selection of these performers many of these are nowadays rare and very difficult to find. In our anthology are present and stand out some female guitarists among them the greatest of all Maria Luisa Anido 1907 -1996 and with her there others may be less known but lot talented as Maria Angelica Funes 1916-1998 and Nelly Ezcaray 1920-1975. Roberto Lara worked not only as performer but also as as arranger and duo made by Graciela Pomponio 1927-2007 and Jorge Mart�nez Zarate 1923-1993 can be considered as a different and valid otion to the one formed by Ida Presti and Alexandre Lagoya.

This is the definitive collection of Charles Mackerras's Mozart recordings for Linn, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Comprising nine symphonies plus the Requiem, this boxed set exemplifies why Mackerras was acclaimed as one of the world's greatest Mozartians and the SCO is internationally recognised as one of the world's finest chamber orchestras. Mackerras's recording of Mozart's four late symphonies (Nos. 38-41) won multiple awards: the 2009 Classical BRITs Critics' Award and the 2009 BBC Music Magazine Disc of the Year and Orchestral Awards, whilst his recording of symphonies Nos. 29, 31 ('Paris'), 32, 35 ('Haffner') & 36 ('Linz') was named Symphonic Recording of the Year at the 2011 ECHO Klassik Awards. Completing the collection is Mackerras's recording of the Mozart Requiem, boasting stellar soloists led by soprano Susan Gritton and mezzo Catherine Wyn-Rogers. The score, prepared by the renowned American academic Robert Levin, aims for a more historically authentic performance of the choral masterpiece. It was named a benchmark recording by BBC Music Magazine amongst other accolades.

Alpha Classics proudly presents "Baroque Stories", a new series of recordings devoted to young talents in early music; it's first recording introduces Louise Acabo, a French harpsichordist and winner of several international competitions who divides her time between Paris and Basel. She has chosen to devote her debut recording to Jacques Champion de Chambonnieres (ca1601-1672), composer of more than 150 harpsichord pieces and the first French musician of the 17th century to publish volumes of works for harpsichord. "Once you have heard the harpsichord played by the Sieur de Chambonnieres, you need hear nothing else", stated the Harmonie universelle of 1636. It was this unique relationship with sound that appealed to Louise Acabo: "his writing, eminently vocal, demands that the player transcend the mechanical aspect of the instrument and approach it's strength and fragility with suppleness". Although Chambonnieres never left France, his work crossed borders and influenced composers abroad, the English in particular. Louise Acabo has constructed her own list of works from available sources, alternating works by Chambonnieres with compositions by Locke, Preston and Bryne.

Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos, the AVIE debut by leading New York City early music ensemble Sonnambula, traverses music by several Renaissance composers who were forced to conceal their identities for social, religious or ethnic reasons. Yet their music transcended the disorder surrounding them, flourishing in the intersection of beliefs and styles. Disruption and displacement wasn't uncommon in 16th-and 17th-centuries Europe. During the Reformation, creative individuals, including composers, were often forced to conceal their identities - for reasons social, religious, ethnic, racial or otherwise. Yet despite - or perhaps due to - the disorder, musical styles and forms flourished, earning the era it's Renaissance designation and thus creating "Beauty in a Moment of Chaos". Sonnambula, an ensemble of New York City-based early music luminaries, bestow beauty on their AVIE debut, traversing an aural intersection of beliefs with northern and southern European styles. Here is the beauty of William Byrd and Richard Dering, two Catholics composing in Protestant England; of Leonora Duarte, a Portuguese-Jewish woman forced to live as a converso ("New Christian"), in Antwerp, and Parisian Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, whose lost works have re-emerged with a vengeance in our own time; of the Bolognese Alfonso Ferrabosco the elder who emigrated to England, and Salomone Rossi who unusually set Hebrew texts to Western-style polyphony from his relatively tolerant position in the court of Mantua. The release of Passing Fancy: Beauty in a Moment of Chaos coincides with Sonnambula's taking up residency at New York City's newly-renovated premiere museum, The Frick Collection.

For her debut solo album of music by J. S. Bach's contemporary Gottlieb Muffat, Gramophone praised pianist and harpsichordist Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya as "an ideal advocate for the music". Now, for her second solo recording for Linn, she turns to Johann Sebastian Bach in Transformations, revealing him as the supreme reinventor who continually refashioned existing material into striking new creations. The recital includes Bach's brilliant reworkings of concertos by Vivaldi and Marcello, expanded with a colour and vitality well beyond the originals. The other works on the programme are extraordinary arrangements of Bach's own music (Adagio in G major and Sonata in D minor), pieces initially written for a different instrument (Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-flat major) and a concerto without orchestra (the Italian Concerto).

Sandrine Piau admits that she has always been fascinated not only by Schubert's music but also by the genre of the string quartet. "The endless quest for the pure gesture in which we lose ourselves in order to become one with each other reminds me of the aquatic ballets in old-fashioned musicals, when female swimmers formed images of perfect flowers". Thanks to the Psophos Quartet, her dream has now been realised; together they present a magnificent programme of transcriptions. "Between the hair of the bows and the texture of the voice, our instruments blend and form an imaginary Schubert quintet".

Francois d'Agincour (1684-1758) was a French composer, organist, and harpsichordist. Though overshadowed by contemporaries such as Francois Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau his surviving keyboard works offer a fascinating glimpse into the refined and ornate French classical organ tradition of the early 18th century. D'Agincour served as organist at the Rouen Cathedral for over 40 years and held royal positions as well, which afforded him access to France's finest instruments and a cultured musical environment. His sole surviving organ collection, Premier livre d'orgue (1733), contains a series of pieces organized into suites according to church modes, consistent with the liturgical practices of the time. Each suite contains various movements - including Plein jeux, Fugues, Recits, and Dialogues - that correspond to specific parts of the Catholic mass. His music reflects the elegance and clarity characteristic of the French classical organ school, with it's emphasis on ornamentation, color, and registration. D'Agincour skillfully exploits the tonal possibilities of the French classical organ, composing pieces that call for distinctive solo stops such as the Cromorne, Tierce, and Cornet. While structurally conservative, his music reveals a personal voice marked by harmonic finesse, rhythmic vitality, and melodic inventiveness. Though his output is modest compared to others, d'Agincour's organ works exemplify the culmination of the French classical style just before it began to yield to the more galant and Classical idioms. Modern interest in historical performance practices has led to a renewed appreciation of his music. Recorded by Chikako Nishikawa at the Andrea Zeni tribune organ in the Chiesa Parrocchiale dei SS. Giuseppe e Lucia, Italy After her studies in her Native Japan Chikako Nishikawa went to Europe to study in Zurich, Fribourg and The Hague, meanwhile receiving top prizes at international competitions. Lately she studied organ, with a focus on early music, with Federico Del Sordo at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome (Post-Gradum course).