In 1938, at the Reichsmusiktage in Düsseldorf, the Nazi regime opened an exhibition around music with the theme: 'Entartete Musik'. They collected examples of what they considered degenerate music. Gustav Mahler, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Mischa Spoliansky; these were just a few names on the long list of depraved composers. On this album, this music and more.

This second and final volume of Chopin’s Mazurkas by Peter Jablonski includes the composer's Mazurkas Nos. 30-51 alongside six posthumous mazurkas. For Chopin, the Mazurkas became a deeply personal, intimate statement of his feelings as an émigré Polish composer living in Paris. From some of his very first compositions to his last, it is the only form that Chopin composed regularly throughout his life. Similarly, Chopin’s Mazurkas have followed Peter Jablonski throughout his entire career as a pianist in nearly every solo recital. This album also includes Chopin’s final composition that was written just few weeks before his death, the Mazurka No. 49 in F minor (1849).

This album is dedicated to the compositions of Federico Mompou, a composer and pianist of profound sensitivity. He exhibited an early inclination for the piano but, inspired by a Gabriel Fauré concert, he shifted his focus to composition, making his way to Paris to further his study. Mompou’s compositional approach was channelled through the piano, which he considered a fundamental tool for connecting with music’s essence, so he composed primarily on and for the instrument. There are some exceptions, however: notably his guitar compositions Suite Compostelana (1962) and Cançon i Dansa No.13 (1972).

In the guitar’s melancholic and evocative timbre, Mompou discovered an ideal medium to express his contemplative and gentle poetic world. The guitar becomes the canvas where sound and silence intertwine, evoking emotionscapable of transporting the listener to archaic places suspended in time.

In 2018, Brilliant Classics released Ramelli’s recording of Mompou’s original guitar compositions. This new album furthers his exploration of the composer’s works, taking his piano compositions and reimagining them for the guitar. The collaboration between the guitarist and James Beneteau, who presented Ramelli with these exquisite transcriptions of Mompou’s pieces, has been profound.

Throughout the transcription journey, Ramelli and Beneteau followed Mompou’s scores as a map, transmuting each piece through the lens of contact with the geography of the guitar’s unique resonance. Decisions about transcription, instrumentaltechnique, tempo, and dynamics are all intertwined with this listening to the instrument itself. Playing Mompou’s music transcribed for guitar is a journey aimed at heightened listening and sensitivity, exploring the spaces between notes through tactile contact with the instrument. This recording captures this creative process and marks the beginning of this ongoing artistic journey.

Daniel Rieppel, a native of Minnesota of Austro-Hungarian descent, performs Mozart’s Fantasy and Sonata in C minor, the Piano Variations of Aaron Copland and Symphonic Etudes by Robert Schumann. Dr. Rieppel performs widely in North and South America and Europe (most recently in Iceland) and has been Professor of Music at Southwest Minnesota State University for over a quarter century. He has international recognition for his research into Schubert’s incomplete sonatas, finishing several that will be the subject of his next recording.

The idea for this album came about during the recording of its predecessor Cinema Suites (BBC Music Magazine’s “Screen Choice”, Album of the Week on WDR3 etc.), when the Morricone family sent Marco Serino a number of rarities that they hoped could also be recorded, particularly “Dedicated to Maria” (from the film The Sleeping Wife) that the composer had dedicated to his wife. These works, along with others that Serino rediscovered in his own archives, make up the backbone of Cinema Rarities, an ideal sequel to the previous recording.

After twenty years as Ennio Morricone’s chosen violinist, Serino continues his exploration of the compositions for violin and orchestra, but this time with a particular focus on pieces that, besides being less well known to the wider public, all share a degree of “Italianness”.

The main nucleus of the program consists of three suites named after three Italian film directors (Silvano Agosti, Mauro Bolognini and the Taviani brothers), with whom Morricone worked closely. Although the respective films did not achieve the international acclaim of those directed by Sergio Leone or Giuseppe Tornatore, which featured in the previous recording, they inspired the composer to come up with new and distinctive solutions, such as “Love Remembered” from The Inheritance, considered by Marco Serino to be one of the most beautiful.

Equally quintessentially Italian are the two extracts from the scores for The Lady Caliph directed by Alberto Bevilacqua, including the lovely “Nocturne” and the brief “Quasi un Vivaldi” (from Sergio Sollima’s film Revolver), which herald by almost a decade remakes like Gian Piero Reverberi’s Rondò Veneziano. A unique place is occupied by Four Adagios, a collection of four pieces chosen by the composer himself (including the iconic “Whoever” and “Deborah’s Theme”), which in this arrangement for violin cites the main theme of the first movement of the Beethoven Concerto. Dedicated to Serino and performed worldwide under the baton of Morricone, Four Adagios speaks to the artistic partnership between composer and violinist, their mutual professional respect and deep friendship.

The city of Petersburg has a complex history, merging diverse cultural influences into a distinct profile. The forces generated amid the constant interplay of repression and the yearning for freedom find expression in experimentation. This led the Günter-Kim duo to explore the cosmopolitan city in search of traces. In the process, the cello-piano duo has discovered various compositions related to Dmitri Shostakovich: Boris Goltz, Galina Ustvolskaya, Boris Arapov… and, as a world premiere recording, Leonid Gorokhov. The duo's arrangements of Shostakovich's Spanish and Jewish songs symbolize a thoughtful approach to foreign cultures. This stands in stark contrast to the current somber reality: Petersburg, once the gateway to Europe, is on the brink of closing itself off.