Having worked extensively with period instrument ensembles throughout my career, I was intrigued and fascinated about the possibility on this album of a delicious colliding of the two worlds. Alison Balsom. On this new recording Alison Balsom and her long term friend and conductor Trevor Pinnock bring alive works from Telemann, Handel, Vivaldi, Albinoni and Marcello. A baroque album, confronting the period instruments of the Pinnock Players and Alison's use of a modern instrument: a rotary valve piccolo trumpet. Alison comments: "The piccolo trumpet is a modern invention - something that Bach and his contemporaries could not have known was to come - it's power, it's gleaming bright tone and it's 20th century engineering technology. And this instrument is a world away from the subtle multifaceted sounds of the natural trumpet of the Baroque era. That said, the opportunity to perform much more chromatic and virtuosic music such as that originally written for solo violin or oboe, has seduced me and my trumpet colleagues since the days of the great Maurice Andre. He showed the world how intensely sweet the piccolo trumpet could be in it's upper register".

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."

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

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.