20th Century (1900–1970)
Modernism, serialism, neoclassicism. Stravinsky, Bartók, Shostakovich, Britten.
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Respighi: Maria Egiziaca
$19.99CDNaxos
Jan 30, 20268660591 -
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Shostakovich: Symphony No. 2 "to October"; Symphony No. 5
$21.99SACDChandos
Apr 03, 2026CHSA 5378 -
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Chamber Music
$18.99CDCPO
Mar 20, 2026555721-2 -
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Mystics & Cynics
$19.99CDHERESY RECORDS
Nov 21, 2025Heresy 032 -
Piazzolla: Arrangements for Guitar
$14.99CDBrilliant Classics
Nov 07, 2025BRI96248
Rachmaninoff: Liturgy of St John Chrysostom / Putninš, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir
The music of the Russian Orthodox Church was an essential part of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s musical background. As a boy he was deeply moved by the sound of St Petersburg’s cathedral choirs, and phrases reminiscent of liturgical chant permeate his music. His Vespers has long been admired as a summit of Russian liturgical music. It has unfortunately tended to overshadow the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, his earlier large-scale sacred composition. Named after the fourth-century Archbishop of Constantinople and Church Father, the Liturgy consists of a sequence of prayers, psalms and hymns, which are sung or chanted by the different participants in the service. Rachmaninoff did not make use of any existing chants (as he would later do in his Vespers), but chose to reflect their style and spirit with music entirely of his own. The sonorities he creates is rarely achieved by plain four-part writing: instead the voices are frequently divided, solos emerge from the choir, and the range of textures shows great imagination. The Liturgy is here performed in the warm acoustics of the Niguliste Church in Tallinn by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir – listed among the ten best choirs in the world by the BBC Music Magazine in 2020 – conducted by Kaspars Putninš.
REVIEW:
Rachmaninoff himself esteemed this work highly, and when it receives the careful performance it gets here, it is indeed lovely. Choral music in the Baltic countries maintains a very high level of quality, and this small choir is arguably the jewel in the crown. Note that some online sources designate this as a reading of "excerpts," but it is not; Putniņš omits only some short responsorial sections, including one short movement, in accordance with the preference of modern editors. A wonderful performance of this Rachmaninoff masterwork.
-- AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)
Hungarian Pictures / Salaputia Brass
When we consider the great musical nations of the world, Hungary perhaps does not come to mind first. But the more we think about it, the higher the country rises in such a ranking. For Salaputia Brass, Hungary has played a leading role since the 20th century. It has established itself not only as a goldmine for instrumentalists, but has also produced many (contemporary) compositions for the developing genre of brass chamber music. This album brings together an overview of contemporary Hungarian music.
Respighi: Maria Egiziaca
Piazzolla 100 on Vinyl / Turku, Württemberg Chamber Orchestra of Heilbronn
There is one phrase that Rudens Turku uses repeatedly whenever he is discussing his work: “to sink into the note.” The German-Albanian violinist employs it to underscore his principal concern, which is to feel his way into the deeper layers of a composition and at the same time to be aware of the story of its composer’s life and of the way in which that life is embedded in a particular period and its political background. He finds an almost ideal opportunity to do this in the music of Astor Piazzolla - concert music by a cosmopolitan Argentine musician of Italian ancestry who grew up in the United States.
Italian Sonatas
Schoenberg: String Quartets Nos. 1 & 3 / Gringolts
Turina: Piano Trios (Complete)
This integral represents a great journey through the artistic career of the distinguished Andalusian composer Joaquín Turina. From the romantic flavor of the Trio in F, a youthful work, but it already shows a commendable panache. The Trio no.1, dedicated to Her Royal Highness the Infanta Dña. Isabel de Borbón, awarded at the Spanish National Music Competition. The Trio No. 2 was composed in 1933. Its premiere took place on November 17, 1933 at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) by the Dutch Trio. And the last, Trio Círculo, a work that has always conquered both the public and the performers: it describes the evolution of the day from dawn to twilight. The players are international soloists, as well as members of RTVE Orchestra, professor in Conservatory Superior of Sevilla and Musikene.
Respighi: Maria Egiziaca
Violin Unlimited - Baiba Skride plays Solo Sonatas
On her first album for solo violin, internationally acclaimed and renowned Latvian violinist Baiba Skride interprets selected sonatas by Erwin Schulhoff, Paul Hindemith, Philipp Jarnach and Eduard Erdmann. Although Johann Sebastian Bach’s sonatas and partitas for violin solo are regarded as the measure of every violinist’s technical skill and maturity, compositions for unaccompanied violin became increasingly rare in subsequent epochs (the classical and the romantic era). It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that Max Reger made a conspicuous contribution in this field with altogether eleven sonatas. His example was an impetus that very plausibly inspired his contemporaries and successors to come up with the four contributions to this genre from the 1920s on this album.
REVIEW:
Skride starts with Schulhoff in the very resonant acoustic of the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, Berlin. Daniel Hope on Nimbus and Antonín Novák on Praga have approached this sonata on their own terms, too, but I like Skride’s way with it, notably the serious and darkly-voiced slow movement at its heart. She plays the Hindemith with considerable purity of expression, enjoying the droll pizzicato episodes of the third movement and the charming Mozart variations that form the finale.
Jarnach’s 1922 sonata makes for a marvelously balanced work. The opening movement, which Skride dispatches with fluidity and expressive freedom, is followed by the urgency of the Prestissimo which she subtly allows to slow before picking up the intensity of the earlier material. The finale has abrasive dialogues but clear lines—a tribute to her refinement. For many years Erdmann’s sonata had the reputation of being a doughty and unapproachable work. It was composed for the Flesch student, Alma Moodie, who never made a recording. It’s a highly abstract work, and freely tonal, but Skride plays it with the kind of appeal she’d bring to much more popular repertoire and so rides over any concerns about its unapproachability. In truth Brunnert dealt with those concerns too, but Skride has a way with its slow, uneasy elements and its quietly, wintry finale that are most impressive too.
All four works were composed between 1921 (the Erdmann) and 1927 (Schulhoff) and offer contrasting and complementary evidence of solo violin works in this period. Each has its own character and imperatives, well drawn on by Baiba Skride in this well-programmed disc.
-- MusicWeb International
Piazzolla: Variations on Buenos Aires / dkn, Isabelle van Keulen Ensemble
The Isabelle van Keulen Ensemble was initiated in 2011 by the internationally well established violinist and violist Isabelle van Keulen, following her Carte Blanche concert series in the Concertgebouw Haarlem, the Netherlands, with the purpose to perform Astor Piazzolla’s Tango Nuevo masterworks to the highest technical and musical standards.
Together with bandoneonist Christian Gerber, he himself one of the leading performers of his generation, and winner of several prizes such as the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, pianist Ulrike Payer, well known for her versatility and sensibility in all musical genres and double bass player Rüdiger Ludwig, a charismatic musician and Co-Principal of the NDR Orchestra Hanover, they overwhelmed their audience on their first appearance. The present release features Piazzolla’s Variations on Buenos Aires, in collaboration with dkn, the Deutsches Kammerakademie Neuss, van Keulen's string orchestra.
REVIEWS:
For the Dutch violinist Isabelle van Keulen, this recording, released by Berlin Classics, is a matter of the heart: in 2011, together with the bandoneonist Christian Gerber, the double bassist Rüdiger Ludwig and the pianist Ulrike Payer, she founded the Isabelle van Keulen Ensemble, with which she focused on tango nuevo and, above all, music by Astor Piazzolla. The classically trained violinist had always enjoyed crossing supposed genre boundaries, thus leaving the comfort zone of a classically trained and renowned violinist, at home on the concert stages of the world. Since 2019, she has also been artistic director of the German Chamber Academy Neuss, where she combines solo playing and direction from the concertmaster's podium.
So now a little homage to Astor Piazzolla. On the CD, “Piazzolla: Variations on Buenos Aires” she brings her two ensembles together. It is easy to imagine that this is not easy to implement - especially for classical musicians - since tango is not exactly part of the repertoire of orchestral musicians in training and everyday practice. But here the musicians of the German Chamber Academy Neuss surprise, or are simply strongly influenced by their artistic director. With the combination of a typical tango ensemble and a classical string orchestra, van Keulen shows through the line-up what was also typical of Astor Piazzolla and his music: although influenced by the tango from birth, the composer felt deeply attracted by so-called Western classical music. These references can also be heard in the pieces recorded here: Tres minutos con la realidad reveals echoes of Stravinsky, and his suite Silfo y Ondina shows his admiration for Bach.
The arrangements that can be heard here were created by bandoneonist Christian Gerber, taking into account the special requirements of the larger line-up. So he sometimes distributes the music only to the extended voices, or to added opposing voices; he even precedes the very well-known Oblivion with a bandoneon introduction. With this type of editing, Gerber and thus this recording are entirely in the tradition of Piazzolla, who in turn repeatedly adapted his own works to suit possible changing needs.
The selection of Piazzolla's pieces ranges from relatively unknown ones such as the above-mentioned Bach-like suite, but also such catchy tunes as Oblivion or the touching Adiós Nonino can be found on the CD. The successful collaboration of Isabelle van Keulen's two ensembles creates a successful combination between classical music and tango - something that Piazzolla always strived for. Thanks to the brilliant playing of the typical tango ensemble, this slightly different version of the works loses nothing of the typical tango sound.
-- Klassik Heute
Hindemith, Kirsch, Koechlin & Perrino: Maria Lindo - English Horn Recital
Charles Koechlin had a very personal style and was inspired by a wide variety of motifs, as nature, the mysterious Orient, French folk songs ... Sometimes, he came close to musical Impressionism, as in Au Loin. Hindemith’s composed the Sonata for the english horn in 1941, by which time he had moved to the United States, where he was teaching at Yale University. The Sonata for cor anglais and piano of Dirk Michael Kirsch is a very intimate homage to the composer’s homeland (Westerland/Sylt, Germany), in which he musically evokes colourful images of landscapes and souls. The work of Ander Perrino combines several ideas that I wanted to try out and that has a very strong connection to popular music. Following the initial idea, each movement is independent as if it were a story, hence the name of Five short stories. Maria Lindo collaborated with symphony and opera orchestras such as the Kammerakademie Potsdam, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Budapest Festival Orchestra. María is the artistic director of the company Linien Soundkraft, which realises projects fusing music with other art forms.
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 2 "to October"; Symphony No. 5
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 / Lojendio, Muñoz, Camerata Gala
Mahler’s 4th Symphony and the lieder of Des knaben Wunderhorn are symphonic scores with a hue similar to that which can be found in chamber music. This is due to the fact that Mahler’s orchestration is not too dense. Domínguez-Nieto’s conception of the work, recorded here for the first time, exploits, with utmost respect for the composer’s original orchestration, its chamber music overtones to its maximum. Gustav Mahler’s 4th Symphony, as well as the song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn), is based on Arnim and Brentano’s collection of children’s stories of the same name. The fantasy that emanates from this piece of literature finds in Mahler a natural catalyst, who manages, with each musical impulse, articulation, nuance, glissando, harmonic or any other of the myriad of details that inhabit his scores, to transport us to the dreamy and magical world of children’s stories, thus developing a fragile balance between utter fiction and overwhelming reality. With his 4th Symphony, Mahler brings to an end his so-called Wunderhorn period, marked by the reverie and imagination which can be found in such tales.
Richard Strauss: Elektra
Coronation - Music for Royal Occasions / Christophers, The Sixteen
Coronation – Music for Royal Occasions spans 500 years of royal music – for celebration, for prayer and for commemoration – varying in scale from private devotion to full state coronation. The collection, featuring Tallis, Byrd, Gibbons, Purcell, Tippett and Britten, looks forward to the coronation of Charles III, and back to the ancient rituals of royal ceremonial. It also presents a new work, commissioned by the Genesis Foundation, from celebrated composer Cecilia McDowall commemorating the life of Queen Elizabeth II and celebrating her remarkable reign. Of course no such collection would be complete without examples from the four anthems Handel wrote for the coronation of George II at Westminster Abbey in 1727, of which Zadok the Priest has been performed at the coronation of every British monarch since. Much has changed since their first performance almost 300 years ago. Yet their dramatic impact and grandeur, underlined by mighty choral acclamations and regal trumpets and drums, remains supremely fit for the coronation of a new king.
Elektra - Op. 58, Gesamtaufnahme
Shostakovich: Works Unveiled / Nicolas Stavy
This release is the fruit of the French pianist Nicolas Stavy’s efforts to uncover unknown works by Dmitri Shostakovich. Spanning some fifty years of the composer’s career, these rarities include early piano pieces influenced by Chopin and the fragment of an unfinished violin sonata, but is bookended by arrangements of symphonic music, by Shostakovich himself and by Mahler, a constant influence.
The album opens with the most substantial work on the disc, Shostakovich’s arrangement of his late, great Fourteenth Symphony (1969) for soprano, bass, string orchestra and percussion. With texts by poets including Guillaume Apollinaire, Federico García Lorca and Rainer Maria Rilke, the work evokes death, reaching great emotional depths. Rather than ‘just’ making a piano transcription for rehearsal purposes, Shostakovich included a percussion part as well as one for celesta, in order to reproduce sounds that would be impossible to imitate on the piano alone. This is followed by the substantial fragment of a sonata for violin and piano dated 1945 and four short piano pieces composed around 1917-1919, which reveal a very young composer and demonstrate his surprising individuality and maturity. The final work on the disc is an arrangement of the opening 95 bars of Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony which Shostakovich probably made during the 1920s for personal study purposes and to demonstrate the work to his fellow members in one of Leningrad’s two Mahler Societies. In Shostakovich’s transcription for piano four hands, Stavy is joined by Cédric Tiberghien.
REVIEW:
Nicolas Stavy’s painstaking trawl through the Shostakovich Archives has brought together some completely unknown works from the composer’s vast output with a major masterpiece recorded for the first time in a completely different guise. Admittedly, not everything here is of the highest quality. For instance, the earliest music, a collection of four short piano pieces composed during Shostakovich’s teenage years, is fluent but largely derivative.
Yet the rest of the album has much to offer. From the 1920s, we get a deftly scored arrangement of the first 95 bars to the Adagio of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony for piano duet, which is beautifully performed by Stavy and Cédric Tiberghien. Another tantalisingly brief fragment is the large-scale opening section of an unfinished Violin Sonata dating from 1945 which is given a powerfully committed performance by Stavy and Sueye Park.
However, the most substantial discovery is undoubtedly the composer’s reduction for piano and percussion of the orchestral score to his 14th Symphony. Whether or not Shostakovich conceived this arrangement as a viable performing alternative to the original, rather than a useful vehicle for helping the vocal soloists learn their parts, its intimate scoring works particularly effectively in the more reflective settings such as the opening ‘De profundis’, ‘O Delvig, Delvig!’ and ‘The Poet’s Death’. Elsewhere, despite Stavy’s phenomenal mastery of the enormously tricky piano writing, I miss some of the cut and thrust of Shostakovich’s pungent string writing, especially in the frenzied musical argument of ‘Loreley’ and in the furious outburst of anger unleashed at the end of ‘The Zaporozhian Cossacks’ Answer to the Sultan of Constantinople’.
-- BBC Music Magazine
Vaughan Williams: Works / Bebbington, Wetton, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams, pianist Mark Bebbington, members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Hilary Davan Wetton, present a recording of the composer’s almost totally neglected orchestral work, Fantasia on the ‘Old 104th’ Psalm Tune, for solo piano, choir and orchestra premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in 1950. The album also features the Romance for viola and piano; the ever popular The Lark Ascending in the original 1914 version for solo violin and piano; and the early but ambitious Piano Quintet of 1903, which was embargoed until as late as the 1990s and scored for the same combination of instruments as Schubert’s ‘Trout’ Quintet.
Poulenc: La Voix Humaine / Gens, Bloch, Orchestre National de Lille
Véronique Gens’s version of La Voix humaine has been eagerly awaited! This ‘lyric tragedy in one act’ might have been written for her, so ideally suited are her feeling for language and her dramatic intensity to Poulenc’s monologue on a text by Jean Cocteau, composed in 1958. This is a far cry from the ‘light’ Poulenc of the 1920s. Cocteau paid him the highest compliment: ‘Dear Francis, you have fixed, once and for all, the way to speak my text.’ Véronique Gens confesses that she had always wanted to perform and record this piece; now she has achieved her ambition, in close partnership with the Orchestre National de Lille under its music director Alexandre Bloch. Also featured on the album is the Sinfonietta: this is in fact a genuine symphony, but, as Nicolas Southon writes, ‘there is no denying that the work – commissioned by the BBC in 1947 – has a freshness and a freedom of tone that justify its title’.
REVIEW:
La voix humaine is a monodrama. Gens had long wished to sing and record the piece, and was asked to perform it many times. She waited till she was ready for such a demanding piece, a work she must carry for forty minutes of, at times, very intense solo singing. Poulenc’s favourite soprano Denise Duval performed it first. She almost co-composed the piece.
It is clear that Madame Gens has really thought through the work and what it requires. Her decision to wait to be certain before she was ready to tackle this piece would seem to have paid off handsomely. This is an outstanding interpretation, the right artist recording the right work at the right time. That top C is nailed alright, and at the few other moments of “real singing” her familiar sound and line are as eloquent as usual. But the rest, the ‘heightened talking’, is equally persuasive, realistic and moving. Of course, that realism is also distressing, as we eavesdrop on deep personal anguish. At one point, Elle confesses to a suicide attempt. Some listeners will surely find the work rather harrowing, not one for everyday listening. But if one of the duties of art is to portray life in all its grimness as well as all its glory, then La voix humaine should be heard.
-- MusicWeb International
Richard Strauss: Salome
Ravel: Masterworks for the Piano / Stephanie Shih-yu Cheng
This is an album featuring favorite piano works by Ravel, performed beautifully by Taiwanese-American pianist Stephanie Shih-yu Cheng. She currently is Chair of the Keyboard department at the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver.
Chamber Music
Mahler: Symphony No. 2 / Bychkov, Czech Philharmonic
After critically-acclaimed recordings of Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth Symphony, the Czech Philharmonic and Semyon Bychkov continue their Pentatone Mahler cycle with a rendition of the composer’s Second, nicknamed “The Resurrection”. They are joined by soprano Christiane Karg, alto Elisabeth Kulman and the Prague Philharmonic Choir.
Starting with a funeral march, passing through the introspective alto song “Urlicht” and ending in choral bliss and euphoria, Mahler’s Second is a deeply spiritual and personal contemplation on the secret of life and the possibility of overcoming death. For Bychkov, the symphony “shows the life cycle in all its struggles: suffering, joy, irony, humour, love and doubt.” The Czech Philharmonic is one of the world’s most acclaimed orchestras, with a rich tradition of performing Czech masters and music from Central Europe.
Semyon Bychkov has led the greatest orchestras of the world, and is Chief Conductor and Music Director of the Czech Philharmonic as of the 2018/2019 season. Orchestra and maestro released recordings of Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth Symphony (both 2022) on Pentatone, kicking off a complete Mahler cycle. Elisabeth Kulman has participated on several Pentatone releases, while Christiane Karg makes her Pentatone debut.
REVIEW:
You marvel at the fresh depth and breadth that Bychkov and his players find within this towering work. The Russian-American conductor doesn’t labor over the funeral march, and in the shattering final movement he draws performances of exquisite balance, control and stillness. This is turning out to be one of the truly great Mahler sets.
-- The Sunday Times (U.K.)
Rachmaninoff: Nocturne - Vespers & Byzantine Hymns
Simon-Pierre Bestion writes: “I discovered Rachmaninoff’s ‘Vespers’ singing in a choir, and the work made a genuine emotional impact on me! This music gives off an impression of naturalness and ‘simplicity’, yet in fact its architecture is complex and innovative for its time in the quasi-orchestral treatment of the voices. I wanted to place the work in a liturgical context that I conceived by drawing my inspiration from the Orthodox ceremonies I have been lucky enough to attend in Russia and Romania. The special characteristic and the beauty of this Vigil service (which in the Orthodox churches includes both Vespers and Matins) is that it accompanies the prayers of the faithful from dusk until sunrise.”
Respighi: The Birds; Ancient Airs & Dances / Neschling, Liège Royal Philharmonic
With the present album, the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège and John Neschling bring us the sixth and last instalment in a series that has been called ‘the finest-ever survey of the composer’s orchestral output undertaken by a single conductor’ (BBC Music Magazine). The immense popularity of the Roman Trilogy has had the effect of obscuring many parts of Respighi’s oeuvre, including arrangements of pieces from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. These arrangements, a genuine declaration of love for this music, were less an attempt at musicological reconstruction than ‘free transcriptions for orchestra’ as the composer described them.
The four suites on this album, Gli Uccelli (The Birds) and the three entitled Ancient Dances and Airs, bear witness to this art. Gli Uccelli consists of five pieces originally written for harpsichord or lute which, as the title suggests, evoke birds set in colourful soundscapes. The Ancient Dances and Airs are suites each made of four pieces for lute or guitar from the Italian and French repertoire of the late 16th and early 17th centuries adorned with new orchestral colours. The success of these suites owes much to their orchestration: subtle and sober with timbres of rare sophistication. A refined treat from the Italian master of orchestration.
REVIEWS:
The conductor must have put an extra teaspoon of baking soda in the batter, because these performances are uncommonly airy. Much of this music is suffused with an autumnal melancholy, and Neschling and his orchestra capture that very well. For example, try the Villanella from Suite No. 1 of the Ancient Airs and Dances, where several members of the orchestra take turns stepping into the spotlight, which they do most atmospherically. In the same suite’s Gagliarda, there is a sense of lively occasion, but Neschling does not allow it to become starchy or pompous.
I think this is a winner on all counts.
-- Fanfare
In more instances than I can count on this Neschling recording, I find myself sitting up straight, having heard him do something that brings the music to life in a way that I had not heard before on other recordings. He knows how to “read between the lines” and to bring out that extra “something” that separates the great conductors from the mere kapellmeisters.
-- MusicWeb International
Piazzolla: Tango / Butt, Sonic Art Saxophone Quartet
Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 1; Symphonic Dances
Mystics & Cynics
Scriabin: Vers la flamme
