To Anatolia is Turkish/American pianist Beyza Yazgan's passionately played collection of Turkish classical piano repertoire from a group of composers known as “The Turkish Five” (Cemal Resit Rey (1904-1985), Ferid Alnar (1906-1978), Ulvi Cemal Erkin (1906-1972), Adnan Saygun (1907-1991), and Necil Kazim Akses (1908-1999). The music was composed between 1931-1976 with most of the pieces inspired by Anatolian folksongs, stories, dances, dirges, and lullabies. Though the compositions were all written for piano, the colors and influences of eastern instruments are present throughout.

This series explores China’s rich and diverse musical heritage. The songs featured in this recording are folk songs of four of the minority ethnic groups of Guangxi province – Zhuang, Bouyei, Mulao, Maonan. As with Chinese traditional visual arts, the song titles explain their mood and origin. It is noteworthy that the music of the Dong-Tai language speakers presents a common feature of incorporating polyphonic or heterophonic songs. Although this feature is present in the music of more than 20 minorities in China, it is rare that the speakers of a whole language family all incorporate multi-voice songs in their music. The performance forms of these multi-voice songs include nearly all the types found in folk music. The number of harmonic intervals is limited because the songs usually employ only one octave. Aside from pentatonic scales, the folk music of the Dong-Tai language speakers also incorporates the scales of three or four notes.

Lisa Friend leads this collection of original works and transcriptions for flute and guitars, joined by Craig Ogden and the Aquarelle Guitar Quartet. The wide-ranging programme includes Fauré’s Pavane and Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise. Lisa Friend (Flautist) has appeared as a soloist with the Philharmonia Orchestra, City of Prague Philharmonic, Virtuosi Pragenses Chamber Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Oxford Philharmonic and has toured throughout much of Europe, Asia and the USA. Lisa has recorded as a solo/chamber artist for Silva Screen, Universal, Chandos, Champs Hill and Signum Records. Her previous album 'Essence' has been aired on Classic FM, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio London, WQXR Classical Radio, New York and WFMT Radio, Chicago.

John Rutter writes: “Revisiting this 1993 Cambridge Singers recording, I realize I should never have withdrawn it from the Collegium catalogue – and all because of an obscure musicological question in my mind over a Gregorian chant, long since resolved. We assembled a stellar team of forty voices, offering a sumptuous programme of music for multiple choirs, with the dazzling Tallis 40-part motet as the centerpiece. Allegri’s Miserere, now a firmer audience favorite than ever, and the most magnificent of Bach’s six motets, Singet dem Herrn, are among the other choral masterpieces featured on an album that truly is a banquet of voices. For the first time, modern digital sound restoration has allowed the music to be heard in its full sonic splendor, and we are confident the album will once again take its place in the treasured family of Cambridge Singers recordings.”

After their successful first album ‘Old Tunes, Dusted Down’ – a concept album devoted to the impressive fieldwork of folklorist Hubert Boone – MANdolinMAN dug even deeper into Flemish folk music with the album ‘Unfolding the Roots’. Played on four mandolins, the music took on new forms and the historic melodies were injected with a modern and contemporary vigor. Instrumental Flemish Folk music had never sounded so exotic! For their next project, they decided to again breathe new life into tradition, but this time looking a little further afield than Flemish Brabant and Flanders. With this new album – ‘MANdolinMAN plays Bossa Nova’ - the foursome explores the bossa style of Brazil and gives the sound of South America a new original touch.

The collection of madrigals "I Diporti della villa in ogni stagione” (The Pastimes of the villa in each season), consists of poems that are chained like episodes of a story marked by the seasons, like details of a larger fresco praising the pleasures of life in the countryside in the alternation of the different moments of the year and illustrating, in a succession of lively images, the occupations and amusements to which those who live far from the urban glamour dedicate themselves in the various months. Fields, rivers, flowers, trees, a varied fauna, shepherds, farmers, wine, fruits, fishing, hunting, bathing, dancing of the nymphs appearing, as it were before the eyes of the listeners: a colorful world full of that idyllic beauty longed for by intellectuals, in which echoes of the Arcadian world are felt, as already exalted in the Trionfo di Dori [Tactus, TC590003] and in many other madrigal productions of the time. Tony Corradini leads the Àrsi & Tèsi Vocal Ensemble in the performance of the madrigals dedicated to the seasons, set to music by some of the greatest composers of the Renaissance era.

A vibrant mix of creole heritage. The music of Sakili is from the island Rodrigues, a small volcanic island just east of Mauritius. The island’s European and African influences - waltzes, polka, mazurka, Scottish - all blend harmoniously with the ségadrum rhythms to intertwine the past musical traditions of African slaves with the western world. The three members of Sakili (Francis Prosper, Vallen Pierre Louis and Ricardo Legentil) had their own solo careers and were put together in 2019 by Mauritian artistic director Percy Yip Tong. The purpose of the group’s formation was for a European tour to introduce the rarely heard music of the Rodrigues island.