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.

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 takes the listener deep into the heart of late-seventeenth-century Naples, where brothers Rocco and Gaetano Greco were central figures in the city's thriving musical life. Their works, grounded in the practice of partimento - an improvisational method built around a given bass line - showcase the cello's emancipation from a purely accompanying role into a fully expressive solo voice. Through vivid dialogues between lower string instruments and harpsichord, I Mastricelli revives a forgotten musical language in which virtuosity, counterpoint, and improvisation converge. The result is a rare glimpse into the creative processes that shaped the Neapolitan cello school and it's lasting influence across Europe. The second part of the programme focuses on Gaetano Greco's pedagogical legacy, presenting short dances, toccatas, and improvisations drawn from early-eighteenth-century student notebooks, alongside music by Francesco Mancini. I Mastricelli highlights the diversity of Neapolitan musical culture - from the earthy energy of the tarantella to the refined contrapuntal art of the keyboard. The ensemble's instrumentation - including cellos, bass viols, bass violins, theorbo, lute, guitar, and harpsichord - evokes the rich timbral world of Baroque Naples. Combining scholarly research with living performance, this debut album offers both an artistic rediscovery and a celebration of the improvisatory freedom at the core of the partimento tradition.

Alain Altinoglu and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra have begun to record the complete symphonies of Shostakovich, starting with his Fourth and Fifth symphonies. Shostakovich dared to express human suffering, passion, fear and catastrophe in his music, but always asking the same nagging question: what is man? In this sense, these two symphonies open with a question - an idea of martyrdom that was to become one of the central ideas of his later symphonies and, of course, of his Lady MacBeth of Mzensk. Both symphonies are dated between 1935-1937 when Shostakovich was in his thirties; this was one of the darkest and most difficult phases of his life, marked as it was by the repercussions of some of his writings and the arrest of many people close to him, including members of his family.

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.

Martin Helmchen embarks on a complete recording of Schubert's piano sonatas, with four double albums to be released between now and 2028, the bicentenary of the composer's death. He has waited until he was in his forties to embark on this adventure because, in his view, an artist needs maturity to meet the challenges posed by the radical contrasts in Schubert's sonatas: "constant virtuosity that is never needlessly complex, set against sober interiority, the exuberant joy of the Landler, and bouts of dramatic madness". Recording a complete body of work also meant studying the scores carefully and tackling the question of the movements left unfinished by the composer, should we stop at the precise point where Schubert stopped composing simply because Schubert either ran out of time or did not have enough money to buy music manuscript paper? Helmchen has chosen to complete these movements, inspired by the recordings and above all the analyses of the eminent pianist Paul Badura-Skoda. This first volume presents sonatas composed between 1815 (Schubert was 18) and 1825. The entire cycle has been recorded on a Bosendorfer piano at the Kronberg Academy.

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.

EVERYTHING CHANGED ON JANUARY 7, 2025 I never imagined we would evacuate our home in the Palisades-a place alive with laughter, music, and the joyful chaos of my husband, our two young daughters, and crazy rescue dog-never to return. So many dear friends lost everything: cherished family heirlooms, photographs, instruments, and music libraries that had taken a lifetime to build-all vanished in moments. That evening, from our hotel window, I watched the fires rage through the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains and sobbed, completely helpless. Yet from the ash and destruction, something profoundly beautiful emerged-much like the glowing fairy at the end of Fantasia, rising from Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. I commissioned Eric Whitacre to write a new work for violin and orchestra, and as the world changed, so did his composition. Little did I know that The Pacific Has No Memory would be born from these epic tragedies. This music has become salve for the soul-a warm, healing embrace for my broken heart. Tender and profound, it radiates love, hope, and renewal. I am eternally grateful to Eric Whitacre for creating this musical prayer and to the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra for breathing life into it together. This recording is dedicated to all who were affected by the Los Angeles fires, and to the brave first responders who risked everything to save lives. - Anne Akiko Meyers

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

This album presents two exceptional chamber works by French composer George Onslow (1784-1853): the String Quintets Op. 72 in G minor and Op. 61 in F minor. Though celebrated in his time and often called the "French Beethoven," Onslow's music fell into obscurity until recent decades. These quintets, from the height of his career, reveal his gift for melodic invention, structural clarity, and expressive depth. The Op. 61 Quintet appears here in it's world premiere recording, following Ensemble Tamuz's discovery of the original manuscript in a private collection linked to the 19th-century cellist Adrien-Francois Servais. Ensemble Tamuz performs on period instruments and brings a historically informed yet vividly expressive approach to Onslow's music. With insight drawn from 19th-century performance practices, they illuminate the subtle freedoms ornamentation, rubato, melodic nuance that bring Romantic chamber music to life. This recording offers a fresh and compelling encounter with two masterful yet underappreciated works of the Romantic repertoire.

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.

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.

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.

Accordionist Theo Ould describes this new album as "my most personal�-�I had never allowed myself to feature the music of Astor Piazzolla. I wanted to raise the accordion above the cliches to concentrate on more classical repertoire". Theo's vocation became evident, however, when he heard Piazzolla's Libertango at the age of 6. Now, 20 years later, this Frenchman from Marseille tackles this music with fervour and exaltation through tailor-made arrangements performed alongside the Bilitis quartet and the double bass player Blanche Stromboni, as well as mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti, who appears in a beautiful and heart-warming rendition of Balada para un loco, Piazzolla's setting of a poem by Horacio Ferrer. Theo Ould is passionate about this music, inviting us to share in his enthusiasm by joining in Ferrer's Balada: "Climb up into my madman's tenderness, Put a wig of larks on your head, Fly with me now! Come! Fly! Come!"

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.

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.