Busra Kayikci on Places: Places is a continuation of my solo piano album Eskizler (Sketches), which was the result of my first compositional endeavours, studies written in early 2019. Those experiments in music reminded me of the sketches I would make in my work as an interior architect, at the start of a new project. I was profoundly influenced by the way these two disciplines - architecture and music - work with the same principles, one addressing the ear and the other the eye. It was inevitable, therefore, that I would follow an architect's process when writing music. I devised my musical templates using methods I derived from architecture. And with this new album, Places, I feel I have taken those sketches a step further. I can hear them evolving, in a way. Sometimes I'll try to construct a specific place I have in mind, one that I miss, but sometimes it's just about an emotion. There are moments in life that make me believe places are also spaces in which we take refuge, and that we find shelter in our emotions, too. Those emotions become a shield, a roof over our heads protecting our inner peace.

This enthralling recital by the young American pianist George LI, silver medallist at the 2015 International Tchaikovsky Competition, marks his recording debut and launches a new relationship with Warner Classics. Captured at a live performance in the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St Petersburg, it presents a dramatically conceived programme of works by Haydn, Chopin, Rachmaninov and Liszt: a descent into deep darkness; re-emergence into the light, and a concluding, boisterous celebration. LI, now 21 years old, was born in Boston to music-loving parents who came to the USA from China. He started taking part in music competitions as a child and experienced something of an epiphany when, as a young teenager, he performed a Beethoven concerto with orchestra. As he told Pianist magazine: "All of a sudden I felt like I had entered a different world... It was a unique and amazing experience: for the first time I was feeling music a lot more emotionally, rather than just remembering the right notes and where to come in. Afterwards people were coming up to me and saying that listening to me had changed their lives. I was shocked. I didn't know before that music had that kind of power. After that, I just wanted to be able to find that feeling again."

A towering figure in French music of the later 19th century, Cesar Franck created a distinctive fusion of German Romanticism and French Classicism, enriching the symphonic, chamber, instrumental, vocal and sacred repertoires. As a teacher and mentor he gained admiration for his modesty and generosity while exercising a powerful influence on younger disciples such as Vincent d'Indy, Henri Duparc and Ernest Chausson. The Cesar Franck Edition gathers together all his masterworks - among them the Symphony in D, Violin Sonata, Prelude, Fugue et Variation and, of course, 'Panis Angelicus' - in enthralling performances by musicians of the first rank. Running to 16 CDs, the collection includes a CD of transcriptions and arrangements, proving their fascination for a still greater diversity of interpreters than Franck might have imagined. The five CDs of historical recordings - dating back as far as 1907 - testify to the continuing growth of his reputation after his death in 1890, and to the vibrant performing tradition engendered by his genius.

This album presents the core of the violin repertoire - Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Kreutzer Sonata," says Nemanja Radulovic. While these Beethoven masterpieces have been recorded countless times, Radulovic's approach to each of them has an element of innovation. For the concerto, he has expanded Double Sens, the chamber ensemble he founded in 2008. "I wanted to retain the special character of Double Sens as an ensemble which plays without a conductor and explores new ways of interpretation... In our recording of the concerto, we wanted to convey a range of emotions - courage, risk, joy, love, rage, sadness, nostalgia, and magical serenity and tenderness." Rather than playing the grandly scaled Kreutzer Sonata in partnership with a pianist, he performs it here in his own arrangement for solo violin and five-part string ensemble. "While remaining faithful to Beethoven, I allowed myself to exercise my imagination.

Probably the best recent version available of Aida with the finest possible cast of singers and a wonderful conductor. It was previously available in deluxe casebound 3CD original version (0825646106639) which was too expensive to remanufacture. In addition the total number of CDs was reduced from 3 to 2 by combining the first two which were short. The original cover remains unchanged, but the rest of the artwork is designed according to the Home of Opera Series. 'Who needs elephants when the music sounds this good?' declared The Times of this milestone recording event in Rome with it's 'luxurious, surely never-to-be-repeated cast'. Once again proving his mastery of Italian opera, Sir Antonio Pappano moves between sumptuous grandeur and touching intimacy.

This is as fine a recorded account... as I've heard for some time, both in terms of Lahav Shani's conception of the music and it's realisation on the orchestra. It's a performance that grows movement by movement, stable of pulse, yet flexible and free-flowing within the boundaries of the larger whole." Gramophone was full of praise for the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra's recording, released in 2023, of Bruckner's epic Symphony No 7. Now the Dutch orchestra and it's chief conductor have recorded Bruckner's Symphony No 5. As Lahav Shani told Gramophone in an interview devoted to Bruckner: "His music has a sense not only of looking back and encompassing the history of music, but also very much looking forward and seeing the future... One can talk about Bruckner's relationship with religion, with God, and with spirituality - and perhaps this has the most influence on the atmosphere of the music - but there are also beautiful melodic lines and a sense of cantabile and continuation... I never try to impose a specific interpretation... I much prefer to let the music flow and develop and change... There is no right or wrong. Bruckner is not here for us to ask if he meant this or if he meant something else. He wrote music that is so much beyond these things, music that conveys such deep human emotion.

Maxence Cyrin's second album for Warner Classics, presenting piano compositions with synthetic layers on some tracks. Contemplative, imaginative, an invitation to travel - this album is inspired by a trip Maxence made to the south of Portugal. The pieces refer to the sea (Faro Bay, Varech, The Island) as well as to the passing of time (Dust, Seasons, Antica).

With Roots, his first Warner Classics album, violinist Nemanja Radulovic draws on a diversity of cultures in a musical tour of the world. Roots has it's roots in the pandemic. "Throughout this period I had the time to think profoundly about music... When the lockdown started I tried to create music, tried to practise, but I couldn't." As a listener, the music that really made Serbian-born Nemanja feel alive - in addition to Mozart - was music that reflected the traditions of it's place of origin. "I realised how much music could connect people, through it's sheer joy," he says. "I realised that there was one thing I could offer to a world that lockdowns had forced behind new borders. And that was to reconnect it all through music... through world music, which is the basis of classical music." He takes his journey in the company of his own ensemble, Double Sens, whose members come from both France and the Balkans. "The pieces selected for this album are very personal. My wish is that each of you discovers a world without borders through this music."

Paques a Notre-Dame is an album of choral music for Easter, performed by members of the Maitrise Notre-Dame de Paris, which offers training and performance opportunities to talented children, teenagers and adults. Spanning six centuries and the musical cultures of France, Italy and Germany, the album includes the last polyphonic work to be performed at Notre-Dame before fire devastated the great cathedral amidst preparations for Easter in 2019. The conductor is Henri Chalet, director of the Maitrise, and the organist is Yves Castagnet, who also composed three of the works on the programme, recorded in the basilica of Sainte-Clotilde, another major church in Paris. As Henri Chalet says: "We know that Notre-Dame will rise again."

AUGUSTIN HADELICH / RECUERDOS - wARNER CLASSICS - A subtle and profound Spanish theme runs through Recuerdos - 'Memories'. Violinist Augustin Hadelich has conceived an album that unites three works for violin and orchestra and a piece originally written for solo guitar. For Britten's Violin Concerto, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 2 and Sarasate's Carmen Fantasy he is joined by the WDR Sinfonieorchester and it's Chief Conductor, Cristian Macelaru; he remains alone for Ruggero Ricci's arrangement of Tarrega's shimmering Recuerdos de la Alhambra. "For years, I've been thinking about how to tell the story of the Britten violin concerto," says Hadelich. Written in 1938, the work expresses the pacifist composer's anguish at the Spanish Civil War, which broke out just months after Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No 2 was premiered in Madrid.

Piotr Anderszewski TITLE: Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 25 & 27 This pairing of concertos Nos 25 and 27, recorded with Chamber Orchestra of Europe, is Piotr Anderszewski's third Warner Classics album of Mozart concertos. "In Mozart I tend to prefer to direct from the keyboard," he explains, "His concertos are like chamber works... The piano is in dialogue with the orchestra, conversing and interacting all the time. The two works are very different... No 25 is very grand, complex and sophisticated; No 27, Mozart's final piano concerto, is in a major key, but underneath it I sense an incredible sadness... It always amazes me how deep this music is."

The Japanese-born pianist Kenji Miura, winner of the 2019 Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition in Paris, ponders on the issue of identity, combining music of the French school with two pieces by Toru Takemitsu, a Japanese composer strongly influenced by French composers and by the Second Viennese School. The main works on the album are Franck's Prelude, Fugue et Variation, Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales and Debussy's Six epigraphes antiques. Born in Kobe in 1993, Kenji Miura studied in the UK and in Berlin, where he is now based. "This album is a reflection of my own personal struggle with identity," he writes. "We live in an increasingly multi-ethnic and multicultural society - my torn-between-worlds feeling is shared by many around the world. This is my small musical letter to all those struggling with the many aspects of identity - a concept that should help us embrace who we are and our complicated, beautiful lives."

Kyung Wha Chung - Beau Soir (Faure, Franck, Debussy, Elgar, works for violin & piano) The centrepiece of this French-themed recital by Kyung Wha Chung and Kevin Kenner is the splendid violin sonata by Cesar Franck. It is a work long associated with Chung, described by the Financial Times as "one of the greatest violinists of the last half-century". Newer to Chung's repertoire is Faure's Sonata No 1. As she told Strings magazine, each of the works constitutes "a whole portrait of life itself," and she drew a comparison with Monet's paintings: "The reflection of light has endless possibility. The same thing applies to the texture and the sound when you're playing. There are millions of sounds."

For his debut on Warner Classics, Samoan tenor Pene Pati matches favourite showpiece arias with rarer operatic gems in a programme of Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Gounod and Benjamin Godard. Pati has been called "a revelation... stunning for his generosity of voice, top notes of apparently invincible power, and alluring timbre, " (Forum Opera) and praised for his "gleaming, sensuous stream of sound" (San Francisco Chronicle). A singer of glowing lyricism who establishes an immediate rapport with his audience, Pati hopes that the album will leave listeners with a sense of "warmth, tenderness, and the sincerity of storytelling. To me, this is the essence of opera and the reason why I sing." He is joined by conductor Emmanuel Villaume and the Orchestre national Bordeaux Aquitaine.

Bliss is a state of being where fear does not exist. Bliss is perfect happiness and joy. To record this album, I wanted to place myself in this state, physically and mentally. I meditated daily. Silence, nature, beauty and peace help me to alter my state of consciousness, to escape from daily reality and express myself through music. That is my vision of Bliss.

Maria Ioudenitch presents her debut album with Warner Classics, a collection of short pieces of Russian and German repertoire. The Daily Journal calls it "phenomenally musical". In 2021, Maria Ioudenitch won the prestigious International Joseph Joachim Violin Competition and the Warner Classics prize associated with it.