The acclaimed Danish jazz trio Ginmanblachmandahl, consisting of pianist Carsten Dahl, bassist Lennart Ginman, and drummer Thomas Blachman, return with the album Play Ballads, a collection of fifteen jazz standards rendered in their signature, contemplative style on Storyville Records. The trio's deep musical rapport is immediately apparent. Each note and silence is measured with care, revealing a rare comfort and understanding cultivated over decades of collaboration. Play Ballads is distinguished by it's contemplative approach to well-known standards such as Matt Dennis' Angel Eyes, Vernon Duke's Autumn in New York, Billy Strayhorn's Take the "A" Train, Thelonious Monk's Blue Monk, and Duke Ellington's Satin Doll. Each track is performed at deliberately slow tempos, allowing the trio to explore the subtle beauty and emotional depth of each melody. Dahl's piano often leads with sensitive, improvisational statements, while Ginman's bass and Blachman's drums provide understated yet essential commentary. Highlights include a sparse and intimate Angel Eyes, the reflective melancholy of Gone with the Wind, and a subtle reinterpretation of Ellington's Things Ain't What They Used to Be. The album reveals new facets of these standards, balancing tradition with innovation and showcasing the trio's ability to make each melody their own. Their shared history stretches back to the late 1980s, encompassing projects with Page One, Thomas Agergaard, Claus Hempler, and numerous individual recordings. Separately, they have worked with American jazz luminaries including Ed Thigpen, Joe Lovano, and Eddie Gomez, and together they have explored standards and original compositions across multiple albums since 2004. Play Ballads is a testament to the trio's mastery, musical intuition, and their ability to make every note and every silence count. This album is not only a must-listen for longtime jazz aficionados but also an invitation for new audiences to experience the artistry of three of Denmark's finest jazz musicians at the height of their powers.

The ongoing Schubert + series, produced by pianist Can �akmur, has revealed an exceptional Schubertian. Now in it's sixth instalment, the series juxtaposes Schubert's works with those of composers he inspired. This latest program shines a spotlight on Robert Schumann. Schumann held Schubert in the highest esteem and was one of the first to recognise him as one of the most visionary composers to have ever lived, and this alone would have justified this coupling. However, �akmur delves deeper, using the program as a springboard for a philosophical discussion about naturalism within German Romanticism. The program features Schubert's brilliant Sonata in D major, D. 850, composed in 1825 in the spa town of Bad Gastein. It's composition amidst the Alpine scenery likely sparked his imagination, echoing the themes of millers, hunters, forests, and mountains prevalent in his songs. Robert Schumann's Waldszenen (Forest Scenes) continues this thread of inspiration. In these nine miniatures, Schumann returns to the happy and simple lyricism reminiscent of early works like Kinderszenen. The program concludes with Schumann's Three Phantasiest�cke, Op. 111, included, according to �akmur, for the uncanny similarity between it's second piece and the slow movement of Schubert's Sonata. This program promises a compelling journey into the heart of German Romanticism, guided by Can �akmur through the works of two of it's most pivotal figures.

A special selection from Ludwig van Beethoven's late period works: folk song variations for piano with optional flute part. Framing the monumental "Hammerklavier Sonata", they form an impressive contrast and show a rarely illuminated facet of the composer. This release marks the beginning of a two-part series which will subsequently be dedicated to Beethoven's early works for flute and piano.

For the fifth instalment of the critically acclaimed Schubert+ series, Can Cakmur juxtaposes the Viennese composer with his illustrious elder Ludwig van Beethoven, for the first time in this series. After establishing his mastery of the lied genre, Schubert still had to show his full potential in the realm of piano sonatas, a quintessentially Beethovenian form. In his Sonata in A major, D 664, he abandons the traditionally oppositional nature of the sonata in favour of a melody- based narrative in which landscapes appear to change gradually, as if seen from a traveller's perspective, thus offering a conception that is as new as it is personal. Beethoven is represented here by a series of variations, a genre in which he also excelled. The 32 Variations in C minor range from tender yearning to an emotional turmoil reminiscent of the 'Appassionata' Sonata. In the Sonata in C minor, D 958, composed in 1828, the first of his towering final trilogy, Schubert staked his claim to be seen as Beethoven's successor as a writer of piano sonatas. In a work that Can Cakmur sees as a tribute to Beethoven, Schubert achieves a synthesis of the master's influence and the lyricism of his own early sonatas. Just weeks before his death, the younger composer finally sits beside the older master and converses with him on equal terms.

A selection of Lieder, however broad, focuses perforce on the German language, as dictated by the theoretical, historical, and technical definition of the word "Lied," of the genre "Lieder." What is more, this particular selection of Lieder, though broad, gravitates around a strong poetic inspiration which, entrusted here to Sara Mingardo, is oriented towards the evocation of moonlit nights, of mysterious nocturnal scents, of that contemplative solitude that quivers between the two extremes of eros and nostalgia. The Lieder of Brahms and Mahler promise cosmic dimensions in the sphere of the sublime. In these, too, the listener also moves, but in ascent or descent: (s)he "moves his (her) steps" not here and there, but into the depths which, when inverted, lead to the heights of heaven, in a sphere almost independent of time and space. At this point our reconnaissance brings us to the music presented for our enjoyment on this CD. Here again, one senses the air and the motion of the passeggiata, of an easy, informal stroll. This apparently unlikely association is prompted by the metaphorical image of music in the open air as a leisure pursuit, as entertainment. And here is the nub: this image, which implies the idea of "movement" in space and time (the brief space of a public garden, the brief space of a spring afternoon, or that between summer and autumn), takes on much broader ramifications as soon as we establish a logical connection between the democratic social and cultural function of the "Proms" and the mature self-analysis of the kind of lofty, profound music, intimately bound up with a poetic text of similar spiritual level, that was such a feature of Austro-German culture between 1860 and 1914, between the national (or even "nationalistic") undertones of the said culture and the First World War. The historical parallel is not negligible. Between the phenomenon of the provision of music in a social and urban context-typically but not exclusively British-and an inspiration that can be discerned in the work of two supreme composers who shared the same German language and culture, Brahms and Mahler, we seek to trace an element of continuity. Additionally, we might note, however, how any and every possible concert programme (including every recording and every conceivable form of electronic reproduction) is always a journey, a path; and how music, too, always and in any case, is a language that would not exist if it did not move in space and time, forwards or backwards, towards the "before" or towards the "after," up into the highest heavens or down into the unfathomable depths, emphasised on occasion by the very notion of walking, as in Musorgsky's Pictures, or driven by the desperation of a headlong flight from oneself, as in Schubert's Winterreise. And now, without further ado, let us listen!

For her second recital with piano, mezzo-soprano Adele Charvet reunites with Florian Caroubi, who has been her regular duo partner since 2015. Together they celebrate the belle epoque of the great French melodists (Massenet, Debussy, Faure) and their proteges,�including Chausson, Hahn, Koechlin, Aubert, Caplet, Messager, Enesco, Albeniz, Madeleine Dubois and Nadia Boulanger, as well as the much less known�Xavier Leroux and Ernest Moret. This is a programme about lines of descent and musical transmission, energised by the texts of great poets such as Verlaine, Mallarme, Maeterlinck, Banville, Leconte de Lisle, Lou�s and Toussaint.

World-premiere recordings of early works that shed new light on a foundational figure in Mexican classical music. Until recently, it was widely believed that Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940) only began composing in his thirties-during the final decade of a life tragically cut short by alcoholism and pneumonia. By the age of 39, he had already secured his place as the most important Mexican composer of his generation, with orchestral masterpieces such as Sensemay� and La noche de los Mayos: works notably less indebted to European models than those of his elders and contemporaries, including Carlos Ch�vez. The rediscovery of these manuscripts, as recently as 2024, reveals that Revueltas had in fact been composing from his teenage years, and that he was an accomplished pianist as well as a violinist. This pioneering album presents 24 piano pieces, none exceeding four minutes except for a two-movement Sonatina, with the longest being a Lento doloroso. Most date from 1915, when Revueltas studied at the National Conservatoire, though later works stem from his years in Chicago (1919) and 1924, when he wrote his final piano piece, a Satie-like caprice titled Tragedia en forma de r�bano (Tragedy in the Form of a Radish). Together, these works form a kind of musical diary, reflecting both the influence of his teachers, Manuel Ponce and Felipe Villanueva, and the emergence of a distinctly Mexican voice evolving between romanticism and modernism. Of Mexican and German heritage, pianist Rodolfo Ritter-professor at the Conservatoire in Mexico City-is a leading advocate for the music of his homeland. As performer, editor, and musicologist, he has premiered numerous works by Mexican composers while also performing the concerto repertoire from Chopin to Bart�k. His combination of scholarship and artistry makes him the ideal interpreter to bring these long-forgotten piano works by Revueltas to international attention.

This recording is the result of my encounter with the Stephen Paulello Opus 102. From the very first notes, I was captivated by the sound of this piano. I had the wonderful feeling that I could shape the sound, dig into it, and discover it's richness-so that, little by little, it's beauty and depth unfolded beneath my fingers. Rich, transparent, and warm all at once, the Stephen Paulello Opus 102 struck me as the ideal instrument to reveal the essence of J.S. Bach's Art of Fugue.

With this recording, Violetta Khachikyan releases her third solo album, dedicating herself to rarely performed works from the Renaissance, early Baroque and Classical periods, which take on new timbres and vitality on the grand piano of the 21st century. Particular mention should be made of the three composers Marianne von Martinez, elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre and Yekaterina Alexeyevna Vorontsova. Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin seems like a retrospective and at the same time an innovative creation from old dances and forms, complemented by new harmonies and technical inventions of the modern instrument.

In this debut album, baritone Jonas Muller and the Tomasi Musso Guitar Duo have recorded Schubert's Winterreise. The arrangement for two guitars creates a special new three-dimensional chamber music constellation, which certainly demands a different approach to singing from the singer, who must now internalise what the piano used to bring out. This is particularly in keeping with the idea that Winterreise is not simply a collection of songs composed by a travelling French horn player, but that the existential encounter between the stranger and the hurdy-gurdy man gives rise to new songs that have never been heard before and can only be sung together.

The latest volume in an ongoing series by an acclaimed Bach specialist on the modern piano. With recordings of the French Suites, Partitas and Goldberg Variations on Piano Classics, the Chinese pianist Yuan Sheng has placed himself among the most searching of present-day Bach pianists. As Jed Distler remarked in Gramophone, reviewing the Goldbergs, 'Yuan Sheng's disciplined, scrupulously terraced style often reflects his mentor Rosalyn Tureck.' In a new and illuminating booklet essay for this album, the musicologist and pianist Raymond Erickson remarks that the 15 two-part Inventions and the 15 three-part Sinfonias played an important role in Bach's teaching. These pieces, although today mainly associated with basic piano training, are not at all easy and in fact are sophisticated, small-scale masterpieces. 'They were not composed simply to provide technical training in keyboard playing but, perhaps more important, to teach keyboard players how to compose.' In 1720 Bach's oldest son Wilhelm Friedemann (1710-84) was already of an age appropriate for introducing him into the family trade of musician. So Bach started for him a music notebook: a Clavierbuchlein which included these Inventions and Sinfonias. Bach revised them shortly before moving to Leipzig in the spring of 1720, to take up his new post as Thomaskantor, and copied them out with a preface. In learning and playing these works, Bach affirmed, a diligent student would be taught 'a clear manner for playing not only in two voices but also in three obbligato parts and, furthermore, not only how to invent good musical ideas [inventiones] but also how to develop these well. And above all, how to achieve a cantabile manner of playing, and additionally to obtain a strong foretaste of Composition.' So it is that the Inventions and Sinfonias have given much pleasure to both performers and listeners throughout the subsequent two centuries. Brief as they are, each one of these 30 works elegantly outlines a distinct and often playful world of it's own. They reward intensive listening both on their own and in sequence. And Yuan Sheng's performances draw on all the coloristic possibilities and varieties of articulation available on the modern piano, without seeking to exceed the bounds of style which the works themselves inhabit.

A Due Liuti (Thierry Meunier and Jean-Marie Poirier) offer a selection of pieces from the Elizabethan period and beyond. A good number of theses duets are unpublished and recorded here for the first time.

Among the notable musicians born in the city of Pavia, Franco Vittadini is undoubtedly one of the most significant. The city's Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali is named in his honor, and he served as it's director from 1924 until his death. Maria Cecilia Farina uses historical organs on which to perform the author's organ music in a precise and philological manner. Rarely - and always in deference to the liturgical context - does Vittadini employ a grand and solemn language, using organo pleno sonorities or indulging in virtuosic displays. His stylistic hallmark is instead a gentle melancholy: a crepuscular atmosphere - comparable to the poetry of Guido Gozzano or Sergio Corazzini - and a contemplative, idyllic/nostalgic attitude pervade his pages, expressing his sense of faith.

The renowned Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo celebrates it's 30th anniversary in 2025. The duo has been honoured with numerous international awards and recordings. With the recording of all of Debussy's works in three volumes for piano duo, the Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo is now appearing on the Oehms label. The programme includes both well-known and lesser-known works, some of which are versions of orchestral works such as the famous Trois Nocturnes. The recording was made in co-operation with WDR Broadcast.

Following his first album of French lute music, Alban Tixier invites us to join him as he explores the byways of European music dating from the 13th to the 15th century.

Serie Bianca by Tactus offers this double CD encompassing the historic recordings of two monumental piano sonatas by Carlo Alessandro Landini (recently awarded for the Missa Novem Vocum, published in 2021, tc 951202). Sonatas No. 1 and No. 2 are in fact in their mighty dimensions (each composed in a single 74-minute movement) in which the composer seamlessly explores and utilises the relationship between sounds and their primordial harmonics, overcoming both the tripartite form and other formal structures. Performing the two works on the piano is Maestro Carlo Levi Minzi, internationally renowned concert artist and full professor at the "Giuseppe Verdi" Conservatory in Milan.

While the solo piano output of Dmitri Shostakovich is smaller than one might anticipate from a composer who was himself a gifted (albeit erratic) pianist, there is more to it than the monumental sequence of 24 preludes and fugues which he composed shortly after the Second World War for the pianist Tatiana Nikolaeva, and in emulation of The Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach. Indeed some of the composer's earliest surviving music is a set of Eight Preludes, Op.2, several of which were long presumed lost. Composed between 1919 and 1921, they demonstrate the teenage composer's grasp of pianistic idioms from Chopin to Scriabin as well as the melodic facility which, it would seem, was his native gift. Towards the other end of his career, another rarity: the contributions he made in 1957 for a portmanteau set of variations on a theme of Glinka commissioned from eight different composers. In complement to Shostakovich's Preludes, Fernanda Damiano presents a gentle Berceuse from the pen of the 16-year-old Mieczyslaw Weinberg. Conceived on a much more epic scale is the Second Piano Sonata which Weinberg wrote in 1942, the year before he first met Shostakovich and became in time one of his closest confidants. Dating from two years later, and thus still very much marked by conflict, is the sonata by Gyorgy Sviridov: a ferocious and too-rarely known work in one movement (but several sections) breathing the same combative air as the 'War' Sonatas by Prokofiev. By the side of these two sonatas, the Sonatina of Revol Bunin is relatively slight, but as the work of a fluent 15-year-old, it already shows signs of the talent which caught the ear of Shostakovich before long, when he took Bunin on as his only composition pupil at the time (between 1943 and 1945). Thus, although only Sviridov's Sonata was composed under the influence of the older composer, Damiano's recital presents a compelling sketch of mid-war and mid-century Soviet culture, through the prism of both the piano and of four gifted composers, each with their own distinctive voice. 'Fernanda Damiano plays. With intelligence, conviction and. #appreciation of the music's flavour.' (Fanfare review of Volume 1)

The renowned Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo celebrates it's 30th anniversary in 2025. The duo has been honoured with numerous international awards and recordings. With the recording of all of Debussy's works in three volumes for piano duo, the Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo is now appearing on the Oehms label. The programme includes both well-known and lesser-known works, some of which are versions of orchestral works such as the famous La Mer. The recording was made in co-operation with WDR Broadcast.

Carlo Mazzoli and Silvia Rambaldi, passionate scholars of historical instruments and performance practice of early music, were teachers for many years - respectively of Piano and Harpsichord - at the Conservatorio "G.B. Martini" in Bologna, where they realised numerous teaching and concert projects. They have had a constant point of reference in Maestro Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, with whom they have collaborated assiduously in the activities of the San Colombano Museum in Bologna, which has housed it's collection of historical instruments since 2010; they are both present with some performances, both solo and in duo, in the DVD Il vibrar dell'aria dedicated to the Museum. It was precisely with performances on these ancient instruments that the study of Clementi's works for duo began, leading to this first complete recording.

Following acclaimed recordings devoted to English music for viol consort, notably that of Christopher Simpson (BIS-2153), Henry Purcell (BIS-2583) and William Byrd (BIS-2663), the Chelys Consort now presents a programme that explores the kind of music that might have been played in France in the 16th and 17th centuries. The works presented here include arrangements and fantasies on popular songs, dances and a suite, demonstrating the extreme versatility of the viola da gamba, which, alone or in a group, could adapt to all musical genres. Although the French golden age of said instrument was between the mid-17th and mid-18th centuries - represented here with works by Charpentier, Metru and Lully - the programme also gives prominence to earlier compositions, with dances and fantasies by Caroubel, Le Jeune, Moulinie, Du Caurroy, Louis Couperin and Du Mont. Finally, the programme also includes three pieces for solo guitar by Francois Campion, performed by guest musician James Akers. These pieces remind us that the baroque guitar, depicted foreshadowingly in paintings by Vermeer and Watteau, was to replace the lute as the most widespread domestic musical instrument. A programme that emphasises elegance, refined melancholy, beautiful sound and a subtle dialogue between the different instruments.