20th Century (1900–1970)
Modernism, serialism, neoclassicism. Stravinsky, Bartók, Shostakovich, Britten.
2959 products
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Pierre Monteux - A 150th Anniversary Tribute
$18.99CDSOMM Recordings
Aug 15, 2025ARIADNE 5042 -
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Nielsen: Helios; Clarinet Concerto; Symphony No. 5
$21.99SACDChandos
Sep 05, 2025CHSA 5314 -
Poulenc Plays Poulenc and Satie
$18.99CDSOMM Recordings
Jul 18, 2025ARIADNE 5041 -
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Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Piano Quintets
$19.99CDNaxos
Feb 13, 20268574692 -
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History of the Russian Piano Trio, Vol. 10
$19.99CDNaxos
Feb 27, 20268574691 -
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Unendliche Liebe
$20.99CDHaenssler Classic
Apr 17, 2026HC25057
Pierre Monteux - A 150th Anniversary Tribute
Mahler: Symphony No. 9 / Vänskä, Minnesota Orchestra
For the latest instalment in their Mahler series, the Minnesota Orchestra under the direction of Osmo Vänskä presents what many consider to be the pinnacle of the Austrian composer’s entire work, the Ninth Symphony, his last completed symphony. After a vast and emotionally intense first movement that shows an astonishing fluidity of form, theme, texture and tonality, ‘the most glorious thing Mahler has written’ according to Alban Berg, the second movement brings joy and playfulness and seems to evoke both an urban Straussian world and folk music cultures. To the bitter irony and anger of the third movement the last movement, a mystical Adagio, seems to respond with ineffable tenderness. Often regarded as the composer’s monumental – both in terms of scale and emotional scope – leave-taking of the world, the Ninth Symphony can also be understood as a requiem for his daughter who died a few years before, an acknowledgment of the transience of life, a memorial to Vienna, an evocation of fading Austrian and Bohemian landscapes, a homage to a vanishing European cultural world.
Nielsen: Helios; Clarinet Concerto; Symphony No. 5
Poulenc Plays Poulenc and Satie
Martinů, Pichl, Vanhal & Leistner-Mayer: Bohemian String Trios / German String Trio
“From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields” – this is how we might sum up the shared roots of these four composers. Vaclav Pichl (World Premiere Recording) and Johann Baptist Vanhal penned their works in an early classical style, while Bohuslav Martinu and Roland Leistner-Meyer deployed the aesthetic means of expression of their own period to enrich the repertoire while still invoking the ideals of the classical era. This program is the perfect treat for listeners who enjoy discovering new works and expanding their musical horizons!
Holst: Beni Mora, Op. 29 No. 1 & Choral Symphony, Op. 41
Nielsen: Violin Concerto; Symphony No. 4 / Ehnes, Gardner, Bergen Philharmonic
Nielsen’s epic Violin Concerto was premiered in Copenhagen in February 1912, by violinist Peder Møller. Nominally the work is set in two movements; both open with a slow section and move to a faster one. Whilst unusual, this could be seen as a more usual fast – slow – fast three movement form, but with an extensive slow introduction to the first movement. The music moves quickly from one idea to the next, and overall has a bold, playful and optimistic feel. In stark contrast, although written only a few years later, the fourth symphony is more cohesive and unified as a work.
Written against the background of the first world war, the work is a celebration of life itself. Just before the premier in 1916, Nielsen described it as: ‘Music is Life, and, like it, inextinguishable.’ Composed in the usual four movement form, each movement continues from the last without a break. The final movement features two sets of timpani battling each other across the orchestra. The recording was made in Bergen’s Grieghallen, in Surround Sound, and is available as a hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.
REVIEWS:
Nielsen's Violin Concerto couldn’t have a better advocate than James Ehnes: strong in his lyricism when he needs to be, alert to all dynamics and a sense of fantasy which is outstanding in the two cadenzas.
-- BBC Music Magazine
James Ehnes – that most elegant and unflashy of players – seems to relish all that is unexpected about the piece...Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic give it real backbone and play like its greatest champions.
-- Gramophone
In Nielsen's Fourth Symphony, Gardner succeeds handily. The orchestra plays outstandingly well for him in all departments and he keeps the symphony moving. This is appropriate because all the movements are connected. I found his slightly quicker tempo for the second movement convincing with the woodwinds as delectable as one would expect and the dynamics quieter than in some recordings.
-- MusicWeb International
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 14; Six Verses of Marina Tsvetayeva / Storgards, BBC Phil
John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic continue their survey of Shostakovich’s late symphonies with this recoding of the 14th, with Elizabeth Atherton and Peter Rose as soloists. Completed in the spring of 1969, and premiered later that year, the symphony is written for soprano, bass and small string orchestra with percussion, setting eleven linked setting of poems by four authors. Most of the poems deal with the theme of death, particularly that of unjust or early death, and indeed all four of the poets had died prematurely and / or in unnatural circumstances – Wilhelm Küchelbecker in Siberian exile for his part in the 1825 Decembrist uprising, Federico García Lorca assassinated during the Spanish Civil War, in 1936, Rainer Maria Rilke of blood poisoning following an accident in 1926 and Guillaume Apollinaire in 1918 during the Spanish influenza pandemic. The Six Verses of Marina Tsvetayeva were composed in 1973, originally for contralto and piano, and subsequently arranged for chamber orchestra (the version we hear here, with Jess Dandy as soloist). The recording was made at Media City in Salford, Manchester, in Surround Sound, and is available as a hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.
Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Piano Quintets
Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11 / Rozhdestvensky, Orchestras of the BBC
Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018) was one of Russia’s greatest conductors along with Evgeny Mravinsky and Kirill Kondrashin. His close personal and musical relationship with Shostakovich began in the 1950s and continued until the composer’s death in 1975. Rozhdestvensky said at the time, ‘It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of my relations with Dmitri Shostakovich since he opened before me a musical universe like a gigantic magnifying glass reflecting our fragile world’.
Rozhdestvensky conducted the first western premiere of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.4 in Edinburgh in 1962 and after many subsequent performances internationally, it was also the inaugural piece in his tenure as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1979-81). Composed in 1936 but condemned by the Soviet authorities, it did not receive its first performance until 1961 in Moscow. The epic Symphony No.11, given a dramatic performance by the BBC Philharmonic in 1997, is based on revolutionary folksongs relating to the 1905 Russian Revolution, and received the Lenin Prize in 1958. Despite this, questions arose as to whether Shostakovich was denouncing the Soviet regime’s brutal treatment of its opponents in it, specifically the 1956 invasion of Hungary or the Tsarist tyranny and oppression of 1905, to which there are no conclusive answers.
Gal: Works for Viola, Piano, Violin & Oboe
Composer Hans Gál was born near Vienna in 1890. He rose to fame in the 1920s as a composer and scholar. His compositional style was considered more traditional than other composers, but his music is nonetheless fresh and infused with chromaticism and counterpoint. He was an extremely successful composer of all genres, especially opera.
Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2 / Wilson, Sinfonia of London
John Wilson and Sinfonia of London release their second album of Rachmaninoff. The Second Symphony was mostly composed in Dresden – where Rachmaninoff was escaping the political and professional pressures of Russia – in 1906 – 07. An hour’s worth of music, the symphony is one of his largest works after the operas, and is widely viewed as one of his greatest works. It was possibly of some significance to the composer, following the less than auspicious début of his First Symphony (which he withdrew after the première). First performed in St Petersburg and Moscow, conducted by the composer, the Second Symphony was an immediate success with audiences and critics alike, and remains a mainstay of the orchestral repertoire to this day. Rachmaninoff dedicated the score to his teacher Sergei Taneyev, who was a pupil of Tchaikovsky. Rachmaninoff composed the Prélude in C sharp minor in 1892, originally for piano, at the beginning of his career. Stokowski’s orchestration, performed here, whilst not the only one in existence, is certainly the best known and arguably the most successful.
History of the Russian Piano Trio, Vol. 10
Vaughan Williams: Complete Symphonies / Hickox, A. Davis, LSO, Bergen Philharmonic
To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vaughan Williams, we are proud to reissue this outstanding symphony cycle. Started in 1999 by Richard Hickox and the London Symphony Orchestra, this was the first Vaughan Williams symphony cycle to be recorded in Surround Sound and released on Hybrid SACD. Tragically, Richard Hickox died before he was able to complete the project – a task that was undertaken by Sir Andrew Davis and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. This reissue is priced at 6 discs for the price of 2, and features almost an hour of bonus material – broadcast interviews with Sir Adrian Boult and Sir John Barbirolli, and reminiscences from both Ursula Vaughan Williams and the composer himself.
Praise for previously released recordings included in this set:
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 2 / Hickox, London Symphony
Richard Hickox gives us the chance to hear VW's original, hour-long canvas – and riveting listening it makes too! Sprawling it may be, but this epic conception evinces a prodigal inventiveness, poetry, mystery, and vitality that do not pall with repeated hearings. An essential purchase for anyone remotely interested in British music.
-- Gramophone (2001 Recording of the Year)
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 5 / Hickox, London Symphony
This is an exceptionally powerful yet deeply moving account of the Fifth. Aided by glowing, wide-ranging engineering, Hickox's is an urgently communicative reading. The first and third movements in particular emerge with an effortless architectural splendour and rapt authority, the climaxes built and resolved with mastery.
-- Gramophone
Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 8, "Sinfonia Antartica" / Davis, Bergen Philharmonic
The Bergen Phil finds a clear affinity with the Sinfonia Antartica...There’s an inexorability about this performance and a strong tragic undertow that makes it a compelling listen throughout. Davis authoritatively builds up the tension without any fussiness.
-- The Sunday Times (UK)
J.S. Bach: Complete Orchestral Works, Vol. 3
Debussy & L.P. Woolf: Vagues et ombres / Collectif9
Ravel: La Valse / Oramo, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra
Maurice Ravel composed many works which stand as classics for both solo piano and for orchestra. On this disc, all except one work were first conceived for piano, which raises the question how it is possible to transfer such pianistic music to the orchestra without making it sound like a mere ‘colorized’ version. Ravel’s orchestral writing was the result of a long apprenticeship and careful study. Although his skills as an orchestrator are much admired today, his ability to coax new sounds out of the orchestra wasn't always appreciated in his own time, however – in 1907 the critic Pierre Lalo complained that ‘in Ravel’s orchestra, no instrument retains its natural sound…’!
Among the works performed here by Sakari Oramo and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra are some of Ravel’s earliest compositions, including the much-loved Pavane pour une infante défunte, but the album closes with a later work: La Valse, written in 1920 as one of only four works by Ravel originally conceived for orchestra. The idea of composing a tribute to Johann Strauss had pursued Ravel since 1906, but it took a commission from Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes for him to return to the project. When Diaghilev found it unsuited for ballet, Ravel gave it the subtitle ‘choreographic poem’. It was premiered in concert in 1920 and enjoyed immediate success.
REVIEW:
The ostensible title of this disc is “La Valse,” which is actually the least interesting performance on it. Oramo delivers a quick, lithe and lean interpretation of a work that ought to sound like a decadent, high cholesterol indulgence that explodes in a giant orchestral aneurism at the end. Here, he leaves the music no room to increase in urgency through the apocalyptic closing pages, although the playing is excellent and the sonics, as usual, first class. No, the real treat here is Le Tombeau de Couperin, here given with the two movements of the piano original that Ravel left off the orchestral version (Fugue and Toccata) very idiomatically arranged by Kenneth Hesketh. I particularly like Oramo’s decision not to take the opening too quickly, so that we get to savor the melody as well as Ravel’s gorgeous harmonies. It’s a splendid performance all around.
After Le Tombeau, the highlight of the program must be Une barque sur l’océan, still something of a rarity (even the score used to be hard to find), and I suppose a work that seems to fail next to Debussy’s La mer. The truth is that it’s a totally different beast, mostly dark and mysterious, and that’s just how Oramo plays it. The remaining works are mostly good. The inevitable Pavane for a Dead Princess and the Minuet antique are unkillable, but Alborada del gracioso needs more swagger towards the end. Why doesn’t Oramo give the trombones a chance to inject a little healthy vulgarity into the concluding bars? Of course, it’s not as if we’re short of worthy alternatives in most of this music, but the excellence (and novelty) of Le Tombeau and Une barque make this release impossible to dismiss.
-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)
Medtner: Wandrers Nachtlied - Complete Songs, Vol. 4 / Levental, Peters
New recordings of Goethe and Heine settings by a master Russian song-writer, by performers thoroughly versed in the composer’s complex harmony and heritage. While Nikolai Medtner only emigrated from Moscow to Berlin in 1921, eventually settling in London, the Russian composer traced a deep connection to German culture through the ancestry of his mother. He was familiar with the German language and culture from his childhood, and made his first visit to Berlin in the winter of 1904-5, then returned for most of 1907 and the summer of 1909. It can be no coincidence that these original-language settings of two of Germany’s greatest poets date from this period in Medtner’s life. In his mid-20s at this point, Medtner had become internationally known as a pianist of formidable technical and interpretative gifts, but he continued to compose and to teach, taking up a post at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1909. While Medtner’s pianism often lends the quicker songs a scintillating brilliance, such as the Elfenliedchen which is third in the Opus 6 collection of Goethe’s songs, the overall mood of the collection is imbued with the feelings of love and longing which are key-signatures of Romanticism (German or Russian). Medtner was always drawn towards musical contemplation of life’s deeper themes, and he accordingly sets both poets at their most philosophical and visionary, in the Wandrers Nachtlied of Goethe and the Bergstimme of Heine.
On this album, recorded in 2022, Ekaterina Levental and Frank Peters couple the Opp 6, 15 and 18 settings of Goethe with the three Op 12 settings of Heine: a unique but natural pairing on record. The booklet includes both original texts and English translations.
History of the Russian Piano Trio, Vol. 6 - Rachmaninoff: Tr
Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6 / Boult, BBC Symphony
Sir Adrian Boult began his long association with the music of Vaughan Williams in 1918 when he conducted A London Symphony earning praise from the composer. Thereafter Boult gave many first performances of Vaughan Williams’s works including the 3rd, 4th and 6th symphonies and Job was dedicated to him. Boult also recorded all the symphonies extensively in the studio for Decca and EMI during the 1950s and late 1960s.
The pastoral 5th symphony (1938-43) is considered a masterpiece based on Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress which some critics have suggested was a vision of peace for a war-weary nation, whereas the angry 6th symphony (1944-47) bears the marks of the war years in the opposite extreme, a portrait of a world laid to waste by a nuclear holocaust. Boult’s performances here, caught live at London’s Royal Albert Hall Promenade Concerts in 1972 and 1975, have even more adrenaline and excitement compared to their studio equivalents. Anthony Payne (Daily Telegraph) described the 1975 Prom performance of Symphony No.5: “one of the most taut and concentrated interpretations I have ever heard of the work”. When it comes to Symphony No.6, Martin Cotton, the music critic and writer wrote: “what Boult achieves in the four linked movements of Symphony No.6 is a sense of overall direction, and as he did in Symphony No.5, a strong feeling for the structure and emotional depth of the work’.
Medtner: Angel - Complete Songs, Vol. 3 / Levental, Peters
Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Greeting Cards / Cristiano Porqueddu
Between 1953 and 1967, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895–1968) wrote 53 works for various instrumental ensembles that were collected together as Opus 170 and given the title Greeting Cards. Castelnuovo-Tedesco described them as ‘alphabetic pieces’: he derived their musical themes derived from ascending and descending chromatic scales, in which each note is combined with a letter of the alphabet. On this new album, Cristiano Porqueddu plays the 21 Greeting Cards composed for the guitar. They are small, unexpected homages that Castelnuovo-Tedesco liked to give his friends, to musicians who played his works, to his pupils and occasionally also to people who were not musicians. He later declared them to be minor works, but each of them is filled with affection, regardless of the professional status of the subject. In this imaginary gallery there are thus portrayals of legendary musicians such as Jascha Heifetz and Andrés Segovia alongside several of his students, including André Previn, Christopher Parkening and Eugene Robin Escovado. Castelnuovo-Tedesco made each Greeting Card a vivid portrait of the dedicatee, usually by combining rhythms and atmospheres that reflected nationality, as with the Tonadilla sul nome di Andrés Segovia or the Canción venezolana sul nome di Alirio Díaz. However, there are also more abstract references, such as the Rondel on the name of Siegfried Behrend (No.6) or evocations generated by the name itself: the Fantasia sul nome di Henry e Ronald Purcell (No.38), for instance, or the Volo d’Angeli sul nome di Angelo Gilardino (No.47). What they all have in common is a depth of feeling that transcends their superficial status as ‘occasional’ pieces.
REVIEW:
Intermezzo
George Enescu Edition
Sibelius: Complete Symphonies / Berglund, Chamber Orchestra of Europe
Alchemy of the Piano
Scriabin: Poems of Ecstasy & Fire / Sudbin, Shui, Singapore Symphony Orchestra
One of the boldest and most radical composers of all time, Alexander Scriabin had a lifelong obsession with occult and mystical ideas. Initially under the influence of Chopin, Wagner, and Liszt, his music later became more complex, taking on an expressive power which provoked extreme reactions from audiences – of adulation as well as repulsion. Not shying away from hyperbole, Scriabin once declared: ‘I am the apotheosis of creation – I am the aim of all aims – I am the end of all ends.’
The three works featured on this release belong to Scriabin’s final compositional period where the music seems to veer between voluptuous languor and striving energy. Composed back-to-back, the Poem of Ecstasy and the Fifth Piano Sonata are drenched in bitter-sweet harmonies and carefully constructed dissonances. The scores of both works make reference to the same poem – by Scriabin himself – which ends with the lines ‘thus the universe resounds with the joyful cry: I AM!’. In his last symphonic poem, Prometheus — The Poem of Fire, Scriabin aims even higher. Here he expresses the evolution of the world from formless chaos, through the appearance of mankind, fertilized by the divine spark, towards spiritual liberation and ultimate transcendence. The unusually large orchestra and a wordless choir produces a kaleidoscope of contrasts, colors and sounds caught up in an ecstatic whirl.
REVIEWS:
In Scriabin’s work, the Prometheus myth is focused less on the creative element of Prometheus and more on the theft of fire, which allows the composer to create ‘light-filled’ images. Lan Shui creates a very great tension from the very first bars, giving expression to the fantasy nature of the composition. We thus hear music with those detaching particles of sound that, like the flock of birds in flight, create effects from ever-changing forms. Shui thus proves to be an imaginative conductor who spurs his orchestra and choir on to an outstanding performance. Evgeny Sudbin blends perfectly into this feverish sound...A great performance!
-- Pizzicato
Lan Shui and his Singapore Symphony Orchestra...inflame the subject; they delight in lascivious sensualities, the better to suddenly cause volcanoes to burst. All this is of a dizzying control and a sonic refinement...
The pianist is none other than Yevgeny Sudbin...He touches on genius in Prometheus, but you also have to hear him burn his keyboard, all hammers and iron, for a 5th Sonata that sounds as if it had just come out of the forge. A great album - totally unexpected, and recorded with striking fidelity.
-- Artamag'
Enescu: Impressions d'enfance / Ketler, Bezrodny, Apap, Ensemble Raro
Ireland: Orchestral Works / Wilson, Sinfonia of London
The Forgotten Rite, from 1913, is one of Ireland's earliest orchestral compositions. The symphonic rhapsody Mai-Dun was inspired by the Dorset countryside – Thomas Hardy Country – a landscape that exerted a lifelong influence on Ireland. While it was commissioned for the national Brass Band Championships in 1932, Ireland later arranged the central two movements of A Downland Suite for strings. The first and last movements were later arranged by his pupil Geoffrey Bush. The overture Satyricon was one of Ireland’s final large-scale works, and is based upon texts by the Roman writer Gaius (or, in some sources, Titus) Petronius Arbiter, a courtier of Nero. A London Overture and the Epic March were both commissioned by the BBC – the latter as a morale-booster during World War II. It was during this period that Ireland orchestrated The Holy Boy – a piano piece composed on Christmas Day in 1913. John Wilson and Sinfonia of London present these works with care and conviction, revealing the great quality of this unjustly neglected composer.
REVIEW:
I am very enthusiastic about the recorded quality we get here. A mildly reverberant acoustic gives a perfect cushion for the orchestra, and the strings in A Downland Suite are splendid in their unanimity and fullness of tone. The rest of the very fine orchestra play as expertly as one would expect given that the Sinfonia was re-established in 2018 as a recording orchestra, staffed by top players from British and international ensembles. It has also given public performances, and is scheduled to appear at the BBC Proms on July 16th, in an all-English program of Elgar, Vaughan Wlliams and Bax, amongst others.
I am also enthusiastic about the performances, conducted with the necessary verve or gentleness as appropriate.
The presentation is up to Chandos’s normal high standards, with a very detailed analysis of each work and a history of the orchestra, accompanying a brief biography of John Wilson, all in English, French and German."
--MusicWeb International (Jim Westhead)
