2019 release. Sporting a truly international career, Conrad has appeared as soloist in the United States with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra, and the Baltimore, Dallas, Detroit, and San Francisco Symphonies, among others. He has made multiple tours of Europe, giving solo recitals in Paris, London, Munich, Berlin, and Verbier, and performed with orchestras in Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Moscow, and Singapore. Conrad currently attends the Columbia University/Juilliard School joint degree program and studies piano with Professors Yoheved Kaplinsky and Choong Mo Kang at Juilliard. He studies composition with Professor Christopher Theofanidis of Yale University, and studied violin with Ms. Catherine Cho for five years at Juilliard's Pre-College Division.

Janusz Wawrowski's album Phoenix pairs two life-affirming violin concertos written during difficult periods in their composers' lives: Tchaikovsky was recovering from his disastrous marriage and Ludomir Rozycki was enduring the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Wawrowski spent several years reconstructing Rozycki's concerto from long-lost fragments. "This wonderful work spoke to me immediately... Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, it should be reborn and enjoyed by audiences around the world. To me, the concerto is full of the energy and life of Warsaw before the war, and I think Rozycki was trying to conjure up this positive energy as he wrote it in 1944... It reminds me of Gershwin or Korngold, yet retaining at the same time a distinct Slavic flavour." Wawrowski is joined for this recording by London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and it's Polish-born Permanent Associate Conductor, Grzegorz Nowak.

2018 release. November 11th brings the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Marking this momentous occasion, Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano, well-established as a masterly tenor-piano duo on Warner Classics, have assembled Requiem. This program of 19 songs spans almost 50 years, from the final decade of the 19th century to the height of World War II. Gustav Mahler and Kurt Weill are joined by two composers of both promise and achievement whose lives were cut short by the Great War, the Englishman George Butterworth (1885-1916) and the German Rudi Stephan (1887-1915). Ian Bostridge points out that the songs in Requiem were not directly inspired by the First World War. Some of them deal with the subject of war, while others take up such poetic themes as erotic love and the passing of time.

2019 release. The centerpiece of this album of piano works by Fazil Say is his Troy Sonata. Say gave it's premiere in August 2018 in the Turkish city of Canakkale, near the historical site of Troy itself. "There are not many purely musical works on the subject of Troy," explains Say, "so I have endeavored to express all the dramatic features of this magical legend through the language of music." As the Turkish magazine Andante wrote, the 10-movement sonata "is composed around a structure just as epic as it's subject".

Whoever has had the privilege of hearing a concert conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov at least once in his life has had the absolute musical Dionysian experience, that of the hurricane, of the breath-taking overflow, the quasi-mystical experience of a ritual trance in which the music becomes the sacred, the keystone of the entire universe! Jean-Marie Brohm, Repertoire, 2002

¨It is about evolution. Our evolution as human beings, going towards a shift of life and of light. Tree of light / a call to arms, the first track of the album, is a call to humanity about what we have become and what we can become, on high alert for our survival as a specie as described by climate change towards the quest of happiness, wisdom and peace. The title, tree of light as a concept of moving towards the 5th density, the density of light or wisdom, through the 4th density, which is the density of love and understanding. These densities are like the keys of a piano, from 1st to 7th and the 8th density is the next octave, and so son - The tree of light is powered by the music and act as a catalyst for evolution¨ - Riopy

Limited 91 CD box set. Passion, precision and fidelity to the score have always been hallmarks of Riccardo Muti's interpretations. After studies in Naples, where he was born in 1941, and in Milan he rapidly built a major international reputation. His 1967 victory in the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition soon led to an appointment as Music Director of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. In 1971, at Herbert von Karajan's invitation, he made his debut with the Wiener Philharmoniker at the Salzburg Festival, and 1973 ushered in his decade as Principal Conductor and Music Director of London's Philharmonia Orchestra (known as the New Philharmonia Orchestra when he assumed the post). Lengthy tenures as Music Director followed with The Philadelphia Orchestra (1980-1992) and the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala, Milano (1986-2005). This collection bears witness to all these notable musical relationships, and to Muti's status as an honoured guest with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. His illustrious career has encompassed both concert hall and opera house, but this landmark 91CD set focuses on his recordings of orchestral, choral and vocal works. Spanning the years from 1973 to 2007 and encompassing a rich and varied repertoire, it also features an audio documentary, made in 2020, celebrating his outstandingly productive period with the Philharmonia.

Quiet City - Alison Balsom, Scott Stroman, Britten Sinfonia - "This album has been an utter joy to make [...] The concept of this project began decades ago, when I decided that Copland's Quiet City was a work that everyone needed to hear - especially so as Copland reveals the scene so brilliantly via the solo trumpet and cor. There is a true melancholy in this work that only a certain type of trumpet playing can achieve, and across the collection on the album I've tried to show that through the unique lens of the trumpet, the wonderful bridge and mutual respect between the classical composers and arrangers, and the jazz greats can be seen. For many of us, the sentiment behind Quiet City is pertinent at the moment, as we emerge from the loneliness of the pandemic and into another chapter of darkness in today's turbulent world." Warner Classics

Limited 30 CD set. A violinist of outstanding accomplishment and integrity, Frank Peter Zimmermann has for decades sustained achievement at the highest level as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. As the New York Times has written, "Mr. Zimmermann's style is based on an absolutely clean technique and a true ability to let music unfold and develop at a natural pace." Before recording any work in his repertoire, from essential masterpieces to intriguing rarities, Zimmermann has taken time to understand and define the meaning of every note in the context of his interpretation. As a consequence, each of these 30 albums - originally the fruit of his long collaboration with EMI Classics (and Teldec) - bears witness to the grace, insight and authority of his playing.

Vaughan Williams: New Collector Edition (150th Anniversary. Of Birth Oct 12) - WARNER CLASSICS - Celebrated as the musical poet of the English landscape, Vaughan Williams was also a visionary composer of enormous range: from the pastoral lyricism of The Lark Ascending and the still melancholy of Silent Noon to the violence of the Fourth Symphony and the grand ceremonial of All people that on earth do dwell, he assumed the mantle of Elgar as our national composer. This edition presents all the major orchestral, chamber, vocal and stage works, as well as many lesser pieces and rarities, in the finest interpretations. All your favourite Vaughan Williams is here, in over 34 hours of music on 30 CDs.

Winner of the Leeds Piano Competition at the age of just twenty, Rafael Orozco exemplified a new generation of virtuoso pianists who favoured musical expression over spectacular display. His Chopin interpretations were truly revelatory, finding poetry not only in the Preludes but also in the Etudes. Remastered from the original tapes in 24-bit/192kHz, this double album captures the rare occurrence of a Spanish pianist tackling two all-encompassing collections in which the essence of Romanticism is distilled - a precious souvenir of the impeccable artistry of a star of late twentieth-century pianism.

Piazzolla - what a journey! His music has so many sides to it. Throughout his life he was exposed to such a rich and varied stream of influences. This homage to Piazzolla, while of course including compositions by him, also references those influences (here I'm thinking of Nadia Boulanger and Alberto Ginastera, with whom he studied). Piazzolla's output is rich not only in terms of the styles he explored but also the different instrumental ensembles he played with. I was keen to reflect this eclecticism by way of a number of different line-ups: trumpet solo, with orchestra, with string quartet, and as duet partner." (...) I would also like to thank my two guest artists: Thibaut Garcia, for his wonderful guitar playing and his friendship and the great Richard Galliano for being with us. It was very moving to perform his Tango pour Claude alongside him.

Alain Lefevre is a story-teller. A story-teller who uses the piano to play a multitude of roles. These characters perform the chapters of an imaginary novel set to music in which the author let's us discover for ourselves how the story ends.

This recording of the BBC's broadcast of the coronation service from Westminster Abbey was taken by means of a direct line to Abbey Road Studios in St John's Wood, London. The splendid ritual of the coronation rite has offered to composers of succeeding generations an opportunity to provide music of fitting beauty and to the choirs taking part an incentive to excel in presenting music in which Britain has a rich and unique tradition. Some of this music had been heard in earlier coronations, some was composed especially for this occasion. Old and new were woven into the fabric of the ceremony with great skill, and the recording provides a sound-picture representing some five centuries of the finest of English church music. The Coronation Choir was a large one of over four hundred singers, the voices, with the exception of a few sopranos and contraltos from the Commonwealth, being those of men and boys. Certain famous choirs were present in full force, having a prescriptive right to sing at the coronation. Among these were the choirs of Westminster Abbey, HM Chapel Royal, St George's Chapel, Windsor, and St Paul's Cathedral; the remaining singers were drawn from choirs throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland with a considerable number of 'additional' altos, tenors, and basses who were well known soloists or who at some time had been members of famous choirs. As each member of these choirs was thoroughly at home with church music of every degree of difficulty, the resultant tone was of singular beauty: rich, majestic and of great flexibility. The accompaniments were shared by the fine organ of the abbey and a full orchestra made up of eminent soloists and of players nominated from leading orchestras. The special fanfares, composed by Sir Ernest Bullock, were played by massed trumpeters from the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, under their conductor Lt-Col Meredith Roberts MBE MVO. The choral music was conducted by Dr William McKie, organist and choirmaster of Westminster Abbey, assisted by Dr John Dykes Bower and Dr W.H. Harris, and the organ was played by Dr Osborne. H. Peasgood.

ROMANTIC PIANO MASTERS - MARIAM BATSASHVILI - WARNER CLASSICS - "Through Batsashvili, Liszt speaks to a new generation," Pianist magazine has written. Liszt takes pride of place on Mariam Batsashvili's second Warner Classics album, primarily devoted to evocative, technically formidable piano transcriptions of opera, song and organ music. Among the works are Liszt's realisations of the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, a spectacular take on Bellini's opera La sonnambula from Liszt's great rival, Sigismund Thalberg, and Harold Bauer's adaptation of Cesar Franck's Prelude, Fugue et Variation. Speaking of Liszt, Mariam Batsashvili says: "Whether he was making transcriptions of operatic arias or art songs, he set out to evoke the feelings of the original work's dramatic and poetic worlds without any exaggeration, and in my view he succeeded in this with great strength and truth."

Each of the five members of wind 'supergroup' Les Vent Francais, partnered by pianist Eric le Sage, plays a sonata written by Paul Hindemith in the dramatic years between 1936 and 1943 - compact, lucid and engaging works for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and alto horn. "These Hindemith sonatas are a great asset to the wind repertory," says oboist Francois Leleux. "Hindemith took a very particular approach to each instrument, with a wonderful sense for it's individual sound."

Shaped by pianist Andrew von Oeyen's experience of lockdown, this solo recital comprises Bach's eight-movement Overture in the French Style BWV 831, Beethoven's Piano Sonatas No 13 in E flat and No 23 in F minor, 'Appassionata', and arrangements by Wilhelm Kempff of two movements that Bach wrote for accompanied flute. "Perhaps more than any other composer, Bach expresses the clearest sense of order in a chaotic world," says von Oeyen. "If Bach served as my first musical mooring in confinement, I returned to Beethoven for second-wave pandemic relief... I was now ready to weigh anchor and face the storm in the company of stalwart and indestructible 19th century sonatas. Crises, for all their destructiveness, can also lead to renewal and discovery."

Nicholas Angelich's new album is dedicated to Prokofiev, the so-called unclassifiable artist- considered revolutionary by some, neo-classical by others. Came to public attention as a virtuoso pianist, Sergei Prokofiev left a fascinating body of work, that of a composer torn between two societies, between the culture of his homeland and the unchallenged culture of the West.

In their first Warner Classics release of symphonic repertoire, the players of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and their Chief Conductor Michael Sanderling perform the four Brahms Symphonies and Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor. Founded in 1805, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (Luzerner Sinfonieorchester) is Switzerland's oldest orchestra. As Sanderling points out, Brahms made two visits to Lucerne.The location of Switzerland's central city, creates a link with Brahms," says Sanderling.It's proximity to the mountains, it's position on beautiful Lake Lucerne.. I can hear that in Brahms' symphonic music. I can hear his love for nature.. The purity of the air. And in his Symphony No 1, I think we can all hear the sound of the alphorn, which Brahms heard for the first time in Switzerland and which inspired the gorgeous theme [of the symphony's fourth movement]." Sanderling feels that, more than 200 years into it's existence, new vistas -especially in the symphonic repertoire of late Romanticism - are opening up for the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. He and the players are looking forward to further voyages of discovery.