Bicinia and Love Villancicos in the Uppsala Songbook. "Villancicos (songs) by various composers for two, three, four and five voices, now freshly revised..." (Venice, 1556) - this is the name under which the Duke of Calabria's Songbook (or the Uppsala Songbook) was printed. The selection of�villancicos�it contains is grouped under three themes: popular songs and pastoral songs; Christmas carols, and love songs. In this album we can listen to a selection from this songbook of works for two and three voices, some of them instrumental works under the title 'Polyphonic song themes", which are structured as exercises in composition around Gregorian techniques.

Aleksandra Vrebalov's The Sea Ranch Songs was commissioned for the Kronos Quartet by the community of The Sea Ranch in celebration of the California retreat's fiftieth birthday. The music does a magnificent job of connecting with the nature, spirit, and architecture of this magical landscape. This music is more like a multimedia work. The music features rarely documented sounds from the Northern California coastal community and it's nature. The work is paired with a cinematic exploration on a bonus DVD directed by videographer Andrew Lyndon. "The Sea Ranch idea on a global scale might be utopian, but through music, we praise it's beauty and affirm it's urgent relevance in our wounded world, so much in need of healing." (Aleksandra Vrebalov) Kronos Quartet consists of violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt, and cellist Sunny Yang. The group has a west coast performance schedule to be announced following this release.

Alen Bonde: Sound Spectrum

Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Olegario Diaz moved to USA at age 17 to study jazz at the Berklee College of Music and then furthered his studies at New York’s Manhattan School of Music where he earned the master’s degree. Currently in Venezuela, Diaz leads an active life as performer and renowned author of several instructional books. He travels frequently to New York to record and perform. “Diaz wrote seven of the tunes here and that seems logical as he appears to be one of the best jazz composers today…. He is more than a fresh breath of air in the classical post-bebop tradition.” (Ole Nimand – Jazz Special on SCCD31774 Basquiat By Night/Day)

A fascinating instrument, with a warm and intimate timbre, the viola began relatively late to arouse the interest of composers and musicians. Long the recipient of accompaniment lines within orchestral ensembles, it was only in the classical period that the viola took it's first steps in the instrument repertoire for soloist with orchestra as well as for solo instrument. Although some masterpieces still widely performed today stand out (think of Mozart's famous Sinfonia Concertante), this type of repertoire remains meagre and at times unexplored. The two compositions offered here for the first recording are precisely among these hidden treasures to be rediscovered: the Musica Ridotta BI. 316-322 and the Six Idylls, composed for solo viola respectively by Alessandro Rolla and his son Antonio. Not only do these pieces bring out the melodic and cantabile peculiarities of the instrument, but they also deepen it's technical virtuosic aspect. The discographic project thus seeks to restore due consideration to these composers and appreciated violists of European fame at the time, who contributed to the development and emancipation of an instrument of extraordinary beauty.

The father of Domenico Scarlatti (he of the 555 harpsichord sonatas), Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), a successful musician in his own right, composed a number of popular opera serie in his day, Griselda (1721) being the last. Bruno Maderna (1904-75), one of the finest Italian composers of the 20th c., understood this music intimately, and his conducting, rarely captured, is often wondrous. Complimented by a cast of singers including Mirella Freni, Heinz Ruhfuss and Ernst Haefliger, this 1960 Hannover performance of Griselda is a rare market sighting and offers true listening enjoyment.

Classical Music

Alessandro Scarlatti's St John Passion was the first Passion setting written in seventeenth-century Italy. Scarlatti treats the role of the Evangelist (composed in the mezzo-soprano register) in highly unusual fashion, giving his narrative numerous emotional passages. The Voice of Christ (bass) is invariably haloed by a string accompaniment. The version presented by Leonardo Garc�a Alarc�n inserts meditations assigned to the chorus; these are taken from Scarlatti's Responsories for Holy Week, polyphonic settings that reveal a little-known genre practiced by this composer.

With Vieni, o Notte, Francesca Aspromonte signs her first recording for Apart� with an all-Scarlatti program. Together with Arsenale Sonoro and Boris Begelman, she explores three cantatas (sometimes described as serenate) in which the composer makes the night the stage for his characters' thwarted loves. He gives them arias and recitatives that are painful, contemplative, or searing, complemented by two sonate a quattro with madrigalian lines, whose quartet performance by Arsenale Sonoro highlights the bold harmonic shifts, the shadows, and the light. The album closes with All'hor che stanco il sole, a world-premiere recording - a musical meditation on love and loss. Here, Aspromonte unfolds a mastery of line and text that reveals the full sensuality of this music.

The reputation of San Giovanni Battista, by far Alessandro Stradellas best-known and most recorded work by, has so far overshadowed the rest of his surviving oratorio output, amounting to a total of six works. Unlike the most representative masterwork, San Giovanni Crisostomo here released for the first time was conceived for more intimate resources and yet perfectly expresses the modernity of the oratorio genre as it appeared in the second half of the 17th century. Sacred and moral themes are combined with political, social, and sometimes erotic ones, and the subject, libretto, and music interact on multiple levels with surprising boldness and freedom.

This new release is the third installment of the Stradella Project, this time exploring the composer's oratorio output. Stradella's oratorio Edith is featured here. The oratorio is named for Edith of Wilton, an English nun of noble birth born during the 10th century. Legend says that she refused to take the throne, choosing monastic life instead. Argentine soprano Veronica Cangemi performs in the title role.

If you happened to see Daniel Barenboim’s 2003 Beethoven master classes on DVD, you might remember an unusually poised young pianist, Alessio Bax, who chose the “Hammerklavier” sonata’s daunting final movement. Fast-forward 11 years to Bax’s recording of the complete work, coupled with the composer’s ubiquitous “Moonlight” sonata. Bax might not take the “Hammerklavier” Allegro at Beethoven’s admittedly optimistic metronome marking, but the hurling momentum, lean yet nuanced textures, and astute ear for voice leading (the amazingly well contoured fughetta, for instance) convey both structure and kinetic energy. Also note Bax’s explosive build-up of the upward alternating broken fifths and sixths leading into the recapitulation, complete with the controversial “misprint masterstroke” Urtext A-sharp (played by Schnabel and Arrau) rather than the more logical yet less quirky A-natural (Brendel and Kempff).

The brisk, appropriately sardonic Scherzo features stinging offbeat accents and a ferocious upward F major scale buttoning the Trio. When I played the Adagio sostenuto for my college piano teacher, he constantly admonished me to “put some beef on that left hand.” I pass that advice down to Alessio! While he certainly sustains his slow basic tempo with the utmost in expressive economy, he does tend to uniformly voice his slow-moving chords, with the top melody line to the fore. Bax brilliantly characterizes the Largo’s madcap mood swings and broken chord transition into the Fugue, while the Fugue itself is a knockout: brisk, clear, clean, and jazzy as hell.

Bax sets an ideal and flexible pace for the “Moonlight” sonata’s iconic Adagio sostenuto, which he plays gorgeously. A few of the Allegretto’s clipped phrase endings and teensy tenutos strike me as what one of my British colleagues describes as “a mite twee.” However, Bax’s rhythmic discipline, focused articulation, and sharp attention to dynamics in the Presto agitato finale make the performance sound faster than it actually is.

Under Bax’s virtuosic fingers, the Chorus of the Dervishes whirls with Lisztian abandon. On the other hand, his overly fast and lightweight treatment of the Turkish March lacks the thrust and force of Beethoven’s original orchestral version, not to mention the once-popular Anton Rubinstein transcription. Reservations aside, this release adds up to an impressive achievement for which Bax should be proud.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

The Italian-born pianist and Leeds competition winner Alessio Bax returns with his third solo recital disc for Signum. His programme surveys a selection of highlights from Brahms' pianistic output, charting his development from the early lyrical collection '4 Ballades' (1854) through to the 'eight perfect gems' that are the 8 Klavierstücke Op.76 (1871-78). Bax also tackles Brahms' fiendish set of 'Variations on a Theme of Pagainini, Op.35', which Bax describes in the programme notes as one of 'the most fearsome works ever written for piano'.

The record Interplay: Duet for One and for the Other brings together two albums for piano and Disklavier-Diagram and Projection and Spring Scenes-which engaged me as pianist, composer, and producer throughout 2024 and 2025, and which were conceived as an artistic inquiry into the shifting boundaries between human agency and machine autonomy in the contemporary world. This project was carried out as part of the SecondLevel Master's in Piano "Play & Rec", directed by Maestro Roberto Prosseda, with the support of B�sendorfer Klavierfabrik GmbH. The two suites form a unique project worldwide that places Disklavier technology at the very center of both composition and performance-not as separate stages, but as synchronous and interdependent acts within a single creative process. Indeed, until now the Disklavier has been employed as a medium-for performance, recording, or composition-but never as the core of an aesthetic in which all these phases are integrated and mutually influence one another by virtue of it. I chose to regard the aesthetic framework as the common thread linking both suites, while at the same time expressing it in different ways in each project.

Alexander Gadjiev writes: “This is a special album that exclusively features brief pieces taken from short anthologies or collections. For me it’s like a journey without a chronology: I just wanted to choose an interesting itinerary. All these pieces seem to evoke a “dark meditation”. Even in lively passages there is an underlying mood of brooding: it is the atmosphere of the early 20th century and the cultural milieu of Symbolism. These are brief, abstract visions of different worlds. You can sense that a single chord or series of sounds could escalate to evoke an entire universe.”

REVIEW

Even knowing what’s in store from Prokofiev’s Sarcasms doesn’t entirely prepare you for the sheer venom he unleashes at the opening, nor for the intelligence with which he moderates that attack thereafter. The set of five pieces is not just the epitome of Prokofiev’s grotesque and motoric manners; it is also underpinned by eeriness and fantasy, as Gadjiev’s own interview-note puts it and as his playing beautifully demonstrates. The coupling is pleasingly adventurous but also logical, given that the Eight Pieces by Tcherepnin fils are so thoroughly indebted to Prokofiev and that Prokofiev himself was not only taught (orchestration) by Tcherepnin père but also (exceptionally) expressed his admiration. That several of Alexander’s Eight Pieces could be interleaved with the Sarcasms and probably fool most listeners is a tribute to their craftsmanship and strength of character.

I shall certainly be returning to Nikolay Tcherepnin’s rarely heard Illustrations to Pushkin’s Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish. These may borrow extensively from Debussy but they also display a subtle sensibility all their own[.]

--Gramophone

AGRICOLA Missa In myne Zyn. In minen sin. Sy j’aime mon amy. Pater meus agricola est. Regina caeli. ANON Bien soiez venu. In mynen zin • Dirk Snellings, dir; Capilla Flamenca • RICERCAR RIC 306 (59:50 Text and Translation)


Alexander Agricola (1456?–1506) is characterized in the notes to this disc as a mannerist. It is curious to see a late-15th-century composer receiving the same categorization as contemporaries of Ciconia at the end of the 14th century and contemporaries of Gesualdo at the end of the 16th century. This end-of-century phenomenon hardly occurred during the Gay 90s (Mahler the Mannerist?). On an earlier disc ( Fanfare 23: 1), Paul van Nevel referred in the same vein to the “secret labyrinth” of the composer’s music. His disc assembled a Mass made up of single movements of five of Agricola’s settings, with the Agnus Dei taken from the Mass heard here. (He called it a “Missa Guazzabuglio,” which I would have recognized as “mishmash” if I had looked it up.)


This new version is quite a contrast to its first complete recording under János Bali, who on two CDs gave us the composer’s four Masses on secular cantus firmi (29:1 for the later one). Both directors use adult male voices (van Nevel put two women on the top line), but Bali had an ensemble of 13 voices, while Dirk Snellings uses one voice to a part. Instead of presenting the Mass straight through, Snellings tries to put it into some kind of context, though not a liturgical one. The preliminary tracks include the Dutch tune and the composer’s polyphonic elaboration of it, while two tracks characterized as Vespers include an instrumental piece and a Regina caeli . The Mass is interleaved with Agricola’s instrumental versions of songs by Binchois, Ockeghem, and Frye. This arrangement offers more variety than sense.


This is rightly called the most extended of Agricola’s Masses, for at nearly 40 minutes without a Kyrie (assumed to have been written but lost) it ranks with Obrecht’s Missa Maria zart in length. The vocal ensemble contrasts with Bali’s small choir, but this does not put Bali at a disadvantage. If you have the latter already, you may decide that it is sufficient. Still, Snellings does consistent good work and this disc is a credit to him and his singers.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber

Classical Music

movement-by-movement comparison makes it clear that... The Borodins win hands down... their internal balance at every point is irreproachable (Gramophone)

Following up its recent box of his 78 and early LP recordings for RCA, Sony Classical is now issuing a 5-album set of Chopin recordings made by the Ukrainian-American pianist Alexander Brailowsky in stereo for American Columbia in the early 1960s. The new reissue contains the complete Preludes, Waltzes, Mazurkas, Polonaises, Andante spianato, B minor Sonata, Fantaisie-Impromptu, Berceuse as well as numerous other works.

REVIEW:

If Brailowsky's Polonaises don’t match Arthur Rubinstein’s finesse and red-blooded ardor, they’re at least idiomatic and shapely, as are the sensitively turned-out Chopin/Liszt song transcriptions and the Berceuse.

– ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Sony Classical is pleased to announce the first release of Alexander Brailowsky’s complete RCA Victor recordings, many of them never before available in the digital medium.

Born in 1896 in Kiev, Brailowsky studied at the conservatory in his native city, then part of the Russian empire. In 1911, he went to Vienna to become a pupil of the legendary Theodor Leschetizky, who taught many of the 20th century’s outstanding pianists. During World War I Brailowsky also studied with Busoni in Switzerland, and in 1919 made his debut in Paris. Five years later came his first appearance in New York where he settled, then making regular coast-to-coast tours of North America while continuing to visit Europe.

There was one composer with whom Alexander Brailowsky was associated throughout his career – and has remained associated through recordings since his death in 1976: Frederic Chopin. Brailowsky was the first pianist to present Chopin’s entire 169 solo works as a cycle, performing this feat before capacity audiences in New York, Brussels, Zurich, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Paris. At the end of his 1938 Chopin series in New York, one reviewer noted that “there are few enough pianists who have the prodigious memory, the physical strength, the comprehensive technique required for such an undertaking; there are far fewer who have – plus all these – the requisite musicianship. Mr. Brailowsky is one of these latter few.”

Not surprisingly, Sony Classical’s new comprehensive reissue of Brailowsky’s RCA albums largely comprises music by Chopin. Both piano concertos are included – No. 1 with William Steinberg conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra in 1949 and No. 2 with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1954. High Fidelity later wrote of these two performances: “Brailowsky’s energetically contoured, sharply etched clarity represents an emerging modernity of outlook that points to present-day Chopin players.” The set also features Brailowsky’s two traversals of the Waltzes, as well as his complete recordings of the Etudes, Preludes, and Nocturnes, plus Sonatas Nos. 2 and 3, the Ecossaises, and Berceuse. Of Brailowsky’s Nocturnes recording, Gramophone’s reviewer wrote: “He could sing beautifully at the keyboard. His nocturnes as a whole have a touching humanity and simplicity … The mono RCA sound is quite velvety.”

At the end of the 1920's and the beginning of the 30's, the German gramophone company Polydor issued a number of much sought after Brailowsky recordings, and even today the technical quality of these recordings as regards to resonance and tonality is astonishing. These old Berlin recordings, the matrices of which were unfortunately destroyed during the 1940-45 bombardment, must surely be some of the most inspiring; here the commercial 78 rpm pressings are presented in brand new digital transfers preserving the art of the "Keyboard Giant" Alexander Brailowsky, a Chopin player of rare distinction renowned for his prodigious technique and beautiful tone. The noted Russian-born French pianist, Alexander Brailowsky, studied first with his father, a professional pianist; then continued his training at the Kiev Conservatory, graduating with a gold medal in 1911. Following advanced studies with Leschetizky in Vienna from 1911 to 1914, and Ferruccio Busoni in Z�rich, he completed his training with Francis Plant� in Paris. To this day his Chopin Waltzes are considered authoritative and have seldom been outdone since he recorded them in the 1960s.

I commend this inexpensive disc to explorers of the string quartet who know and love their Smetana and late-Dvor�k Quartets. (MusicWeb) "Glazunov's string quartets contain attractive music... a successful reconciliation between the two traditions of Borodin and Tchaikovsky" (c) Gramophone [Quartet 5]: "one is tempted to believe this is the finest of the seven (quartets)... Shostakovich Quartet have great feeling for this music and play with real conviction" (c) Penguin Guide

Alexander Kipnis' Opera Arias & Songs is one of the most beautiful compilations of vocal recordings ever assembled on one disc. That all but one of the 21 recordings comes from the 1920s may dismay some listeners, but as in the rest of Sony's Masterworks Heritage series, the sound is as clear and clean as humanly possible and could be an impediment only to the most aurally challenged listeners. That the singer is a bass may dismay other listeners, who believe that male vocal beauty can come from tenors and the occasional baritone, but not from a bass. But the vocal beauty of Kipnis' voice, the sheer cream and velvet tone of his voice, is the equal of the best tenors and baritones, and only the most intolerant listener would be dissuaded.

Any track randomly chosen is amazing and moving, and listeners should try his Der Lindenbaum of Schubert: heartrending and so natural that it sounds like a folk song. Or his Mondnacht of Schumann: as light and graceful as the phenomena it describes. His arias from Handel are robust and virile, but supple and flexible; his Feldeinsamkeit by Brahms is sweetly lyrical with a seamless legato; his Doppelgänger by Schubert is maybe the scariest performance of the song ever recorded. Then try his opera arias: his maniacally cackling Faust arias, his regal Wagner arias, and the exquisite cantilena of his Sarastro's aria from Die Zauberflöte. One of the all-time great bass recitals.

-- James Leonard, AllMusic.com

The most amazing piece that this teenager, who is reaching for the stars if not beyond, has composed – and at the age of fourteen – is his First Symphony for large orchestra entitled “Kraftwerk”. It is almost an understatement to prophecy this young man a great future. That the pianist Alexander M. Wagner is in no way inferior to the composer is proven by this recording of piano works, recorded by the sixteen-year-old in February

Tcherepnin: Piano Music, Vol. 6

This is one of those discs that makes me want to shout with delight... A wonderful disc altogether!

This is one of those discs that makes me want to shout with delight. Not only is it the piano music of a neglected but brilliant composer but the sub-title Complete Piano Music 1 means there will be more. In fact there will be as many as eight volumes altogether. Hooray!
 
By his late teens, the accompanying booklet explains, Tcherepnin had already composed several hundred pieces. His father, Nikolay was a conductor, pianist and composer and, indeed the genes were passed on to Alexander’s son Ivan who was also a composer. Being born in what, as Confucius would, no doubt, have described as “interesting times”, the family had a difficult life from 1917 when they left for Tbilisi, Georgia, to escape the upheavals of the Russian Revolution, cholera and famine. Then they had to flee Georgia, following its annexation by the Soviet Union in 1921, for Paris where Alexander remained throughout the second world war before finally settling in the USA in 1948.
 
His corpus of work embraces all manner of genres including opera, ballet, orchestral, chamber, solo works, choral, band, music for films and the theatre and even compositions for accordion and harmonica, among others. Though I’ve yet to hear much of it I’ve always been particularly struck by his piano music which I’ve found original and exciting ever since I first heard it on a old vinyl disc. He’s another of those pianist composers from the early twentieth century who became masters of the piano miniature.
 
The disc opens with his 10 Bagatelles, op.5 from 1918, distilled from a much larger number of pieces begun when he was a mere 13 year old, and one of his best known compositions. It comes as no surprise to learn that fact as they are highly inventive and hugely satisfying works possessing a crystalline brilliance accompanied by a propulsive momentum that drives the music forward in a way that becomes almost addictive. They are pieces that stay in the memory for, though I never heard that old disc often and not for many years, I recognised the first two bagatelles as plainly as if I’d only listened to them last week. Years after he had written them Tcherepnin was embarrassed by their success regarding them as juvenile, though he relented later accepting their spontaneity. Artists can sometimes be too self-critical, finding it difficult to accept flashes of genius at an early age. These are certainly examples of that and while you listen just remind yourself that these were composed almost one hundred years ago - unbelievable!
 
Self criticism takes various forms and often includes destruction of works considered unworthy of publication - thank God that didn’t happen with the bagatelles! - and with Tcherepnin that was the fate of the first twelve of his 13 piano sonatas, written in his early teens. The fourteenth, later renumbered as his piano sonata no.1, is the sole survivor and listening to it you can only imagine what has been lost, with regret. It’s a wonderful piece that is rhythmically inventive and exciting and which reveals a creative talent that is simply mind-boggling for someone so young. The booklet’s authors find some similarities with Prokofiev’s earlier Toccata and describe it as “This distinctly Russian-sounding piece ...” I agree with this but also see parallels in Tcherepnin’s compositions with Medtner and aspects of Scriabin, Weinberg and even Shostakovich. With piano compositions of that era from that part of the world there seems to have been an inherent and instinctive prism through which these composers naturally viewed things musical.
 
The 9 Inventions, op.13 (1921) that appear on this disc as a world première recording are further proof of Tcherepnin’s compositional abilities. They are, like the bagatelles, short, brilliantly scored little gems. The booklet’s authors write that “... it is hard for the listener to escape the self-consciousness of the new compositional technique”. I obviously missed out on that and it makes me realise that sometimes it’s better not to be an expert so that I can enjoy things more easily.
 
Tcherepnin’s Sonata no.2, op.94 (1961) has an autobiographical aspect. It gives expression to a frightening episode in which Tcherepnin experienced a strange ringing in his ears. This persisted over two years but eventually disappeared of its own accord. I was not able to discern this in the music but enjoyed it for its own sake as yet more marvellous writing for the piano. Again it serves to emphasise his youthful abilities as this mature work did not leave the early works ‘in the cold’ by any means.
 
The final work on the disc is 10 Études, op.18 (1920) and another world première recording. As I listened to the opening of the first I thought of Chopin. I was interested to read that the booklet noted similarities with Chopin too but also with Prokofiev while others brought Rachmaninov to mind and again Chopin and Prokofiev. Which composer doesn’t draw on influences from others however. Those who make every conscious effort to plough a unique furrow often produce sterile works. These etudes are absolutely fabulous little masterpieces (no.8 lasts a mere 35 seconds!) and they round off the disc in a truly emphatic way. When you realise that these works, while they bear the date of publication of 1920, were in fact written when Tcherepnin was a young teenager you just have to marvel. Music seems to be an art-form that very young people seem able to master at an earlier age than just about any other. It would be staggering to come upon a novel or a painting, sculpture or a play created by anyone as young. On the rare occasions when it does happen we find it just that. In music it happens much more often. I thought of this only yesterday when I heard the string sextet written by the 11 year old Max Bruch.
 
This disc is a simply brilliant introduction to anyone who hasn’t come across Tcherepnin before and who loves 20 ^th century piano music. The works are played superbly by Giorgio Koukl who has already recorded all of Martin?’s piano works to great acclaim. A wonderful disc altogether!
 
-- Steve Arloff, MusicWeb International 

This disc was shaped by the encounter between one of the great composers of our time, Mauricio Kagel, a unique and engaging pianist, Alexandre Tharaud, and some of his close chamber music partners. It reaches out to its audience with a great sense of humour and tenderness.

For the first time, all fourteen piano sonatas by the enigmatic Soviet composer Anatoly Alexandrov (1888-1982) are brought together in a single recording. Known for his richly lyrical style, Alexandrov's music resonates with the spirit of his contemporaries Nikolai Medtner and Sergei Rachmaninov while charting a distinctive artistic path. A prolific composer of solo piano and vocal works, Alexandrov's �uvre has remained on the periphery of the repertoire, cherished by pianophiles but largely overlooked by broader audiences. His sonatas, written over the course of six decades, reflect a fascinating stylistic evolution shaped by the sweeping socio-political transformations of the 20th century. This landmark recording sheds new light on Alexandrov's place within Soviet music, offering a nuanced perspective that reaches beyond the familiar giants of Prokofiev and Shostakovich. It is both a celebration of Alexandrov's artistry and an invitation to explore the depth and complexity of a musical legacy ripe for rediscovery. Through this ambitious project, pianist Clarisse Teo offers an eloquent and compelling case for Alexandrov's sonatas as essential listening for lovers of 20th-century music, revealing a forgotten corner of the piano repertoire that brims with emotional depth and historical resonance. Singaporean pianist Clarisse Teo is renowned for her bold exploration of lesser-known and contemporary repertoire, earning praise for her "confidently eclectic tastes" (The Straits Times, 2022). Her international career spans solo and chamber performances, including a featured appearance on the acclaimed album Rarities of Piano Music at 'Schloss vor Husum' from the 2019 Festival (Danacord Records). Trained in piano, violin, and viola, she holds multiple distinctions, including the FRSM in piano, and completed her Master of Music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland on a partial scholarship. Clarisse's groundbreaking Doctor of Performing Arts degree from the University of St Andrews, supported by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Trust and Trailblazer Foundation Ltd (Singapore), focused on the fourteen piano sonatas of Soviet composer Anatoly Alexandrov. Passionate about reshaping the classical canon, she brings fresh insight and vibrant artistry to the stage, redefining what it means to champion overlooked music.

• Anatoly Alexander (1888–1982) is one of the forgotten figures of the Russian school of pianism. • Alexandrov's fourteen sonatas and much else for piano is of an attractive late-Romantic style that owes much to his teacher and friend Nikolai Medtner. • This first volume in the first-ever survey of his piano music presents a conspectus of works composed between 1939 and 1962, many of them first recordings.

Anatoly Alexander (1888–1982) is a forgotten figure of the Russian school of pianism that embraced Taneyev, Rachmaninov, Skryabin, Gilels and so many other composers and pianists. + His fourteen sonatas and much of his work for piano is in an attractive late-Romantic style that owes much to his teacher and friend Nikolai Medtner. + Pianist Kyung-ah Noh (b. 1982, South Korea) ‘plays with immense power when called for, but is equally able to command the subtlest “pianissimo”’ + Continuing, “she has a real empathy for the style of this underrated composer.” (MusicWeb Int’l on Volume 1)