On the Bach and Sauer organs of St. Thomas Church Leipzig, the outstanding young organist Julian Emanuel Becker has recorded his new GENUIN album. On this album, works by Johann Sebastian Bach stand alongside Julius Reubke's 'Sonata on the 94th Psalm' (1857) and Tilo Medek's haunting 'Broken Wings' (1975). Thoughtfully conceived and compellingly interpreted, the program explores expectation, hope, and redemption at one of the most important places in the Bach tradition.

The Portuguese composer Fernando Lopes Graca (1906-94) was one of the thousands of victims of Salazar's right-wing dictatorship: his works were confiscated, and he was prohibited from teaching. He responded in music, with a prolific output inspired by both folk-music and the evolving musical language of his European contemporaries, marrying tradition and modernism. His songs for voice and piano set texts from both popular and 'high' culture, unified by his ardent humanist outlook and the dignified manner in which he expressed it.

Martin Eastick (b. 1957) has a reputation as an authority on some of the most obscure piano music of the nineteenth century: his south London home is a repository of a vast number of rare scores. But even those who consult him for advice on repertoire are generally unaware that he is himself a composer, his handful of compositions reflecting his fondness for the music of the 'Golden Age' pianist-composers whom he admires, from Chopin and Czerny to Godowsky and Paderewski, just sometimes with a hint of jazz - it's overt and timeless charm belying it's fearsome difficulty.

On the occasion of it's 40th anniversary, Tactus presents a monumental 8-CD box set that gathers for the first time the Complete Keyboard Works by Alessandro Scarlatti, one of the most influential composers of the Italian Baroque. Famous above all for his more than 600 cantatas and numerous operas, Scarlatti was also a refined and prolific author of keyboard music, a repertoire still little explored today that reveals a composer in constant dialogue between contrapuntal tradition and new expressive demands. This box set brings together the complete compositions for harpsichord and organ, including toccatas, fugues, variations, sonatas, and liturgical pieces, testifying to the extraordinary stylistic variety of the Neapolitan master. His pages, rich in virtuosity, bold harmonies, and deep expressiveness, build a bridge between the strict counterpoint of the Roman school and the emerging galant sonorities that anticipate his son Domenico. Interpreting this vast and fascinating corpus is Francesco Tasini, one of the greatest specialists in the Italian keyboard repertoire, who performs the pieces on historical instruments (organ and harpsichord) faithfully reconstructed, thus restoring the authentic colour and original sonority of these pages. The result is a total immersion in the sound universe of one of the fathers of Western music. The fruit of rigorous philological work, this edition includes numerous world premiere recordings and represents a recording event of extraordinary historical and artistic value. A unique opportunity to rediscover Scarlatti's genius beyond melodrama and to celebrate four decades of Tactus's commitment to enhancing the Italian musical heritage.

Gian Carlo Menotti was born in Italy in 1911, the sixth of ten children. A child prodigy, he started composing at the age of seven, and was encouraged and supported by his mother, who was a keen and talented amateur musician. Following the unexpected death of his father, Menotti's mother moved the family to Colombia to help with their coffee importing business, and sent Giancarlo to the Curtis Institute of Music, in Philadelphia. The composer made his life in America, although he never gave up his Italian citizenship. Best known for his twenty-seven operas, Menotti also composed a good deal of orchestral music, as featured on this album. The Lewisohn Stadium, the athletic field of the City College of New York, was also used as an outdoor arena for the summer concerts season of the New York Philharmonic, and Menotti's Fanfare was commissioned to open the forty-seventh season, and is recorded here for the first time. Also receiving it's first recording is the original score of Menotti's first (and only) symphony. The programme is completed by suites from the ballet Sebastian and the opera Goya, a third world premiere recording.

Glosas, diminutions, passaggi': so many terms to describe the garlands of ornamentation that keyboard musicians added to the polyphonic vocal works of their peers as they transformed them into true keyboard pieces between the 16th century and the dawn of the 17th. This album offers an extensive array of these intabulations of vocal works and shows their pan-European scope by illustrating how keyboard players appropriated the music of madrigalists from distant courts.

Three gems of 19th-century Romantic music played by the Smetana Trio The Smetana Trio's new album presents three compositions that capture the diverse forms of 19th-century Romantic chamber music. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy wrote his Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66, during his artistic maturity. It combines the dramatic energy of the outer movements with the tender lyricism and delicate poetic character of the central movements. Alongside the virtuosic piano part, the work stands out for it's finely balanced dialogue among the three instruments and it's refined motivic development. The second composition on the album is Zdenek Fibich's early Piano Trio in F minor, the work of a young composer inspired by the legacy of Robert Schumann. It combines the ardour of Romanticism and lyrical warmth with a carefully conceived formal design and a sensitive interplay between the piano and the strings. The album concludes with the Fantasy Pieces by Walter Rabl, a composer who today remains on the fringes of the concert repertoire. This cycle of brief character pieces delights listeners with it's melodic freshness, tender lyricism, and cultivated, Brahmsian sound. In all three works, the Smetana Trio reaffirms it's exceptional standing among Czech chamber ensembles. Jitka Cechova, Marketa Janouskova, and Jan Palenícek offer an interpretation combining technical mastery, stylistic refinement, and profound comprehension of the Romantic musical style.

Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic present two of Dmitri Shostakovich's most powerful symphonic statements: the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies. For Bychkov, no music is more essential or closer to the bone than that of Shostakovich. He and the composer share a home city (Leningrad/St Petersburg); Bychkov grew up surrounded by people who had known the composer; and he was obsessed with Shostakovich's music from an early age. Bychkov has been conducting Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 he was a student at the Leningrad Conservatory in the early 70's. He first conducted it with the Czech Philharmonic in 2022 and, subsequently took the work on tour with the Orchestra conducting concerts in London, Amsterdam, Vienna and Paris. Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 also has special resonance for Bychkov, whose mother lived through the 900 days of the siege of Leningrad, still ravaging the city at the time of the second performance in the city. Bychkov first conducted the work with the Czech Philharmonic to open the 2021-22 season. This release continues the acclaimed partnership between the Czech Philharmonic and PENTATONE. Previous recordings with Semyon Bychkov include Mahler's Symphonies Nos. 1-5, released individually between 2022 and 2026 before being joined by the remaining symphonies in a complete Mahler box set; as well as the acclaimed recordings of Smetana's Ma vlast and Dvorak's Symphonies Nos. 7, 8 & 9 (2024).

Composer Miya Masaoka's Botanical Life: The Complete String Quartets consists of six string quartets composed from 2013-2026. These works span a wide range of approaches, from episodic and meditative forms to motivic structures, highly experimental, and other compositional strategies, all performed by the Mivos String Quartet.

Joseph Woelfl (1773-1812), a friend of the Mozart family from childhood, was one of the bestknown musicians of his day: he was regarded as a rival of Beethoven in Vienna and a worthy successor to Haydn in the musical life of London. When the invention of the pedal harp around 1800 allowed it to be used in combination with the piano, Woelfl was one of the many composers who took advantage of the new sonorities now made possible, in a series of works noteworthy for their elegance and charm, in a style which bridges the Classical and Romantic.

The success these pieces enjoyed at court over several years during the late King's private concerts, and above all the high regard in which they were held by that great sovereign, ultimately prompted me to present them to the public in printed form. The acclaim they have already received gives me hope that they will be well received.' With these words, Robert de Visee introduces his collection Pieces de Theorbe et de Luth mises en partition, Dessus et Basse, published in 1716. It represents a significant innovation, as works for lute, theorbo and guitar were published for the first time in full score with treble and bass parts. This meant that Louis XIV's favourite pieces could now be performed not only as solo works but also in a chamber music setting. The album by Marion Treupel-Franck and Axel Wolf combines de Visee's lute suites with Michel Pignolet de Monteclair's Brunetes anciennes et modernes appropriees a la flute traversiere avec une basse d'accompagnement. This collection of popular melodies was inspired by songs that opera-goers would sing on their way home.

Jean-Sigismond Cousser, born Johann Sigismund Kusser in Hungary and died John Sigismond Cousser in Ireland, began his career in Stuttgart, held various positions at several German courts before being appointed director of the famous Opera am Gansemarkt in Hamburg, then formed his own travelling opera troupe, settled in London as an independent musician, and ended his life as 'Chief-Composer and Music Master' in Dublin. Praised by the musical elite of his time, he is now considered one of the overlooked composers-those who, due to their fragmented careers, do not fit into the categories established by 19th-century musicology. Throughout his life, Cousser kept a Commonplace Book, in which he took notes on music theory, instruments, and performance practices; compiled an address book, recipes and remedies-in German, English, Italian, French, Latin, Dutch and Irish Gaelic-but above all, it contains over a thousand references to works by French, English, German and Italian composers spanning an impressive range of forms, attesting to Cousser's vast musical culture and the diversity of his interests.

Not only did Wilhelm Berger, the son of a music storeowner from Bremen, suffer a premature death (he died barely fifty years old in the same year as Gustav Mahler). The student of Ernst Rudorff, Friedrich Kiel and Woldemar Bargiel, who became court conductor in Meiningen, went in a considerably more conservative direction than contemporaries such as Richard Strauss. Soon after his death, he was no longer en vogue and due to their similarity in names, he was for decades obscured by the Swede Wilhelm Peterson-Berger. In terms of their music, they were nothing alike and could not be confused with one another. Whether in his orchestral works, vocal music or chamber music, Berger's style always strikes a familiar tone, yet one that goes beyond his models. Johannes Brahms served as an inspiration in many respects (not least in the instrumentation of the works recorded here); yet neither the youthful, rapturous sonata nor the exceptionally beautiful trio, composed some two decades later, leave the slightest doubt that Wilhelm Berger was able to make the most of his own talents.

This Pure Analogue Vinyl Edition combines Richard Strauss's An Alpine Symphony with a consistently analogue production process. The live performance by the Wiener Symphoniker under their Chief Conductor Petr Popelka, recorded in the Golden Hall of the Musikverein Vienna on 26 February 2026, was captured on analogue tape using a reel-to-reel process and mastered directly from tape to vinyl without any digital intervention. The result is an exceptionally authentic listening experience, preserving the natural dynamics, spatial depth, and tonal warmth of the live performance in all it's immediacy. Strauss's monumental tone poem unfolds in all it's orchestral splendour-from the mysterious colours of night and the ascent to the summit to the elemental force of the storm and the serenity of the closing pages. With commanding musical insight and a finely judged sense of the work's architecture, the Wiener Symphoniker and Petr Popelka guide the listener through a musical journey that reaches far beyond the depiction of Alpine landscapes, emerging as a profound reflection on the human experience. An insightful essay on the work by Thomas Leibnitz offers fresh perspectives on Strauss's final tone poem. The edition is further enriched by Martin Hoffmeister's specially commissioned essay, "Melancholy, Contemplation, and Quiet Happiness: Vinyl as a Mark of Distinction", an exploration of the long-playing record as a cultural artefact, a collector's object, and a uniquely mindful way of experiencing music.

The common denominator of nineteenth-century Italian music was the search for freedom and the need to rework the absolute principles that had dominated society and musical culture, seeking models that were opposed to traditional patterns. However, this revolution was often influenced by sentimentality and creative ferment from beyond the Alps. Italy experienced it's Romanticism by identifying it with the fervent aspirations of it's national Risorgimento; it's field of expression was music, particularly melodrama, a Romanticism that was popular rather than elitist. It is logical that these ideals were also expressed by the organ, which at that time, together with the marching band, was widespread in every locality, while the orchestra was still the privilege of a select few in the big cities. The romantic organ in Italy opened up to the influence of melodramatic compositions, faded shadows of the forms made famous by the great opera composers. At the same time, some musicians were making an admirable effort to break out of the geographical and cultural boundaries of a politically fragmented territory. However, the composers' desire to adhere to the stylistic features of organ builders, as opposed to the blatant operatic taste of the public frequenting sacred places, appears noteworthy. The quality and quantity of Italian organ creativity attested to the nobility of the musicians' endeavours, even in comparison with the European international music scene.

Reference Recordings proudly presents American Triad, with works of Felix Borowski, Ernest Bloch and Beryl Rubinstein. Each composer in the 'triad' has a distinctive credo and style, and each wrote major works for piano and orchestra which are presented on this new album of rarely heard masterpieces - four of which receive their first commercial recordings. Piano soloist Daniel Glover has performed in 42 states and in 25 countries throughout Europe, Asia, North and South America and the Caribbean. He holds a master's degree from the Julliard School, and trained with luminaries including Thomas LaRatta, Nancy Bachus, Jerome Lowenthal, Abbey Simon and Eugene List. He has numerous competition awards including first prize in the prestigious Liederkranz Competition in 1990. Mr. Glover has served on the faculties of New York University, University of the Virgin Islands, University of San Francisco, Notre Dame de Namur University and the Summer Piano Workshop of Kent State University. He has recorded eleven previous albums. He resides in San Francisco and frequently performs locally. The San Francisco Classical Voice remarked, 'The elegance and civility of Glover's approach were musically unimpeachable.' 'Dazzling... a flawless sense of Lisztian style incorporating it's emotional depth.' American Triad was recorded March 31-April 4, 2025 with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, in beautiful and historic Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall in Vilnius, Lithuania. It was conducted by the GRAMMY award-winning American orchestral conductor and multi-GRAMMY-nominated violinist, John McLaughlin Williams. This release was recorded and mastered by the superb engineering team of Baltic Mobile Recordings: Vilius Keras and Aleksandra Keriene. It was produced by the GRAMMY-winning producing team Encore Consultants LLC (Victor and Marina Ledin).

It is certainly not just Jacob's Ladder, the burning bush, the fiery Elijah or Ezekiel's chariot that have made the Tanakh, the Old Testament, a treasure trove for creative minds of all persuasions. At every turn in this voluminous book, we learn of dramatic adventures, exciting encounters between earthly and higher beings, passionate battle scenes and inexplicable miracles - which, not least since the 'invention' of the oratorio, have been literally crying out for musical interpretation. Bernardo Pasquini, the highly praised musician in the service of the Borghese family of Rome, dedicated one of his nearly twenty oratorios to an episode from Exodus. During the festival of joy, held to thank the God of Israel for the liberation from Egyptian slavery, the various stages of the journey were being commemorated. Suddenly, the clang of weapons were heard, and the enemy troops of Amalek advanced. Joshua led his people into battle, as Moses tried to influence the outcome of the battle with his prayers. The more fervently he prayed, the more favourable Israel's fortunes. But as soon as he faltered, the page was turned. In the end, however, victory is assured, celebrated by a magnificent, resounding final chorus.

This recording highlights the early organ works of Joseph Jongen, a major figure in Belgian music at the turn of the 20th century. Composed during a period of profound transformation in the aesthetics of organ music, these pieces demonstrate the composer's keen attention to the evolution of the instrument and it's musical language. Rooted in the Belgian Romantic tradition, they draw upon the legacy of Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens and Alphonse Mailly, while already revealing a strong artistic personality. The influence of Cesar Franck is particularly evident in the harmonic richness and expressiveness of the musical discourse. The Pastorale from Opus 5 especially illustrates this sonic exploration and hints at the impressionistic colors that would characterize the composer's mature works. Through this program, the listener discovers the beginnings of a refined musical language that would fully blossom in Jongen's later output.

The final volume of this groundbreaking Thomas Jensen series encapsulates the series as a whole. New remasterings of rare studio recordings from the 1940s complement first-ever releases for live broadcasts from the 1950s and 60s. The repertoire demonstrates Jensen's excellence as a sympathetic concerto partner; an insightful interpreter of Sibelius; and a devoted advocate for the composers of his native Denmark. Note! ALL are first ever releases and all from unpublished radio broadcasts All the previous volumes are available and in stock.

Paul Wranitzky was born on 30 December 1756 in Neureisch in Moravia. He was almost exactly eleven months younger than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was, who he survived by seventeen years. The obvious comparison between the two contemporaries does, of course, yield some astonishing results. Among other things, this may be because the older of the two was a child prodigy, whereas Wranitzky only became a composer after a circuitous route and had to learn much of what came so naturally to the Mozart. He applied this approach with great ingenuity, however, as his four dozen symphonies alone reveal. Although he had some of them published in volumes in the traditional manner, their style suggests they serve more as a missing link between his teacher, Joseph Haydn, and the 'man of the future' - Ludwig van Beethoven. The three pieces published as Opus 35 in April 1800, though composed in the previous decade, are no exception. Original, full of formal surprises and musically progressive, they evoke a faint suspicion. Josef Martin Kraus, the Swedish court conductor who was in Vienna around 1783, may have imparted to Wranitzky some of his audacity.