This third volume, five-disc set of early 1950s Amadeus Quartet high-quality radio recordings is dedicated to works of its eponym. These previously unreleased recordings from the archives of the RIAS feature eight of Mozart’s ten great string quartets, complemented by recordings of his four great string quintets with second violist Cecil Aronowitz. Also included is the recording of Mozart's clarinet quintet with Heinrich Geuser, one of the leading clarinetists of his time.

With works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Fritz Kreisler, the Amadeus Trio presents a multifaceted programme that combines Viennese chamber music tradition, lyrical depth and virtuoso esprit. Beethoven's famous 'Gassenhauer Trio' captivates with it's wit and elegance, Schubert's first piano trio with it's formal breadth and poetic expressiveness, while Fritz Kreisler's miniatures bring the unmistakable Viennese charm into the modern age with a wink. Founded in 2020, the Amadeus Trio brings together three internationally renowned soloists who share a passion for chamber music and intense dialogue with each other - and with the audience. The members of the trio have already performed with leading orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, and have appeared in major concert halls such as Carnegie Hall New York, Wigmore Hall London, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Tonhalle Zurich, the Vienna Musikverein and the Konzerthaus. The Amadeus Trio performs internationally in Europe and Asia and received standing ovations at it's debut in the sold-out Vienna Konzerthaus. Today, the ensemble stands for lively, high-class chamber music that draws inspiration from tradition and brings it into the present with fresh energy and immediate expressiveness.

CUSTÓDIO CASTELO is the world’s leading player of the Portuguese fado guitar, the instrument that helped make fado music Portugal’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO). Like Carlos Paredes, Custódio Castelo creates groundbreaking new sounds that have promoted the Portuguese Guitar to a concert instrument that can be played solo or as accompaniment. His unique Portuguese guitar, handmade from an oak root by master Oscar Cardoso, is capable of fine nuances of emotion, and he uses them well, especially for melancholy, but also for a sense of jubilation. On this release Custódio Castelo plays fados made famous by the Queen of Fado, Amália Rodrigues. “Custódio Castelo is the world’s leading exponent of the Guitarra Portuguesa, the instrument that gives the country’s fado music its poignant song.” (Allmusic)

Harpist Anne-Sophie Bertrand presents Amalie's Cosmos, an evocative journey through the salons of 19th-century Europe. At the heart of Berlin's vibrant cultural life in the early 19th century stood Amalie Beer, a wealthy patron, intellectual, and matriarch of one of Europe's most influential musical families. While history often remembers her son, Giacomo Meyerbeer, as a towering operatic figure, it was Amalie's salon that cultivated artistic, scientific, and political discourse, supported composers, and encouraged the careers of remarkable women such as Fanny Hensel and Pauline Viardot. Amalie's Cosmos revives the spirit of these Berliner salons through a carefully curated programme of works that echo their creativity and curiosity. From the intimate lyricism of Fanny Hensel and Glinka to the exotic colours of Debussy's Estampes, the virtuosity of Parish Alvars, and the contemporary homage to Paganini by Nimrod Borenstein, the album traces a delicate thread through time, place, and influence. The result is a shimmering musical tapestry that celebrates memory, artistry, and the enduring power of the salon as a space for inspiration and dialogue.

Double 180gm vinyl LP pressing. Critically acclaimed Saharan Tuareg group Tinariwen's third album, Aman Iman: Water Is Life, is being reissued on vinyl for the first time. Released internationally in 2007 via Independiente, the album was produced by long-time associate Justin Adams and features the voice and guitar of founding member Mohammed Ag Itlale. The GRAMMY-winning collective perform a guitar-centric branch of Malian music known as Tishoumaren - a percussive, rock-oriented desert blues.

The vocal power of Mohammed Aman, sensitive to the finest melisma, transporting us back, through courtly poetry and chamber music to former glories of the Hejaz, cradle of Arabian civilization. In 1925, Hejaz became part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which was born after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but the history of Hejaz goes back much further. Since pre-Islamic times, Hejaz has been a hotbed of poetry and music; it was the annual 'Ukaz fair, where tribes from all over Arabia came to compete in poetic jousts. With the advent of Islam, the Umayyad dynasty settled in Damascus, but the cities of the Hejaz retained their importance, and while Mecca and Medina attracted pilgrims from all over the world, they also flourished in the arts and letters. Musicians formed a class of their own, many of whom were freed former slaves of African, Persian or Byzantine origin. Protected by patrons of the arts, they were also very popular, and this prestige extended to female singers, some of whom were of free status and were veritable divas.

Amanda Maier (1853-1894) and Julius Rontgen (1855-1932) were a couple in both music and love. This new album includes world premiere recordings of Amanda Maier's preludes, Julius Rontgen's piano suite "Julklapp" (Christmas Gift), and the piano suite "Zwiegesprache" (Dialogues), that the young couple composed together. In addition to this, you also get Rontgen's brilliant variation work "Neckens Polska," which he dedicated to his future bride. This release is charming, beautiful, and highly romantic music at it's best, performed by one of Sweden's most outstanding musicians: the award-winning pianist Bengt Forsberg.

AMANDA MAIER MEETS JOHANNES BRAHMS

This new release features even more world premiere recordings of the music of Amanda Maier (1853-1894). Amanda Maier was a Swedish-German composer, was married to fellow composer Julius Rontgen and was a close friend of Edvard Grieg, Johannes Brahms, and other great musicians of the time. The first volume of her music, released in 2016, was a huge success. On Volume 2, leading Swedish violinist Cecilia Zilliacus and pianist Bengt Forsberg perform Maier’s beautiful violin sonata, and Nine pieces for violin and piano. Soprano Sabina Bisholt makes her recording debut with her interpretation of Maier’s great songs. Eight of these seventeen tracks are world premiere recordings.

There are only world premiere recordings on this concluding Volume 3 of the wonderful music of Amanda Maier (1853-1894), including a recently re-discovered masterpiece: the piano trio in E flat! The previous two volumes of this remarkable, Swedish-German violinist and composer, married to composer Julius Röntgen, have been great successes. On this third volume, violinist Cecilia Zilliacus's and Bengt Forsberg's loving playing is backed up by cellist Kati Raitinen, second violinist Julia-Maria Kretz, and Johanna Persson, viola. Rising-star-pianist David Huang also appears in a four hand piece. Swedish violinist and composer Amanda Maier was the first female graduate in music direction from the Royal College of Stockholm. She performed concerts in Sweden and abroad, and began composing her first works, which she often premiered. With this album, her entire catalogue is now available.

Classical Music

"The performances on these discs have one thing in common: they are almost shockingly direct, so that one hears the mind of the composer Hindemith working behind every note. Anyone used to the readings of Mozart’s K.428 and Beethoven’s Op. 96 by, say, the Busch or Smetana Quartets may feel a lack of colour and nuance here. ..And yet, if the listener is patient, much will be gained by attending carefully to this no-frills approach." (Tully Potter)

AMARe is a musical tribute to the sea, to love, and to the ever-shifting tides of inspiration between Brazil and Europe. The title blends a mare (the tide) and amar e (to love is), capturing the album's essence: movement, emotion, and surrender. Vocalist Celine Rudolph, pianist Henrique Gomide, and guitarist Jo�o Luis Nogueira come together in an intuitive dialogue where Brazilian rhythms and jazz improvisation meet in perfect flow. The trio moves seamlessly between original compositions and fresh interpretations of classics by Jo�o Donato, Gilberto Gil, Toninho Horta, and Candeia. Each track resonates with freedom and connection whether in the poetic depth of Itacimirim, the rhythmic interplay of Toca da Arara, or the quiet beauty of Preciso Me Encontrar. AMARe is not a reconstruction but an organically grown musical language where tradition and modernity converge. With guest appearances by Toninho Horta and Teco Cardoso, this is a contemporary ode to Brazilian music authentic, exploratory, and timeless.

AMARYLLIS (ECM LUMINESSENCE SERIES)

'Amateur Girlfriends Go Proskirt Agents' was originally released in 2001, and soon got the 'classic' stamp. Tracks from this album are still on the top 10 streaming numbers for Xploding Plastix. Now, the full tracklisting from the album is finally presented on a deluxe double vinyl version, with 6 bonus tracks! With their mixture of obscure jazz-samples, cool beats, melodic feel, an 'anything goes'-mentality, and quite a bit of humor, Xploding Plastix created their own unique style. A kind of older Amon Tobin meets Scott Walker on a smoke-filled sleazy jazz-club. Throw in an exquisite taste for film-noire, and we are getting closer. This is Balearic beats, lo-fi, simply sweet! NME wrote: 'Meanwhile, over at Jam, Norwegians Xploding Plastix - two nutcases with lots of small boxes and a terrible name - are offering upheaval of a different kind. Theirs is a big, disorienting future-jazz racket, splicing DJ Food's mad drums, Aphex Twin's time signatures and The Herbaliser's moodiest, cinematic bits. Awesome.' ________________________________________ 'Meanwhile, over at Jam, Norwegians Xploding Plastix - two nutcases with lots of small boxes and a terrible name - are offering upheaval of a different kind. Theirs is a big, disorienting future-jazz racket, splicing DJ Food's mad drums, Aphex Twin's time signatures and The Herbaliser's moodiest, cinematic bits. Awesome.' NME - Tracklisting: A1. Sports, Not Heavy Crime (5:07) A2. Funnybones & Lazylegs (4:48) A3. 6-Hours Starlight (3:22) A4. Behind The Eightball (4:49) A5. Single Stroke Ruffs (2:28) B1. Treat Me Mean, I Need The Reputation (4:58) B2. Relieved Beyond Repair (1:45) B3. Tintinnamputation (4:26) B4. More Powah To Ya (5:26) B5. Having Smarter Babies (4:57) C1. Far-Flung Tonic (4:51) C2. Happy Jizz Girls (2:54) C3. Doubletalk Gets Through to You (5:23) C4. Comatose Luck (3:39) C5. Pistola Hub Club (3:17) D1. Behind The Eightball (Remix) (4:38) D2. Shakedown Shutoff (Live in Manchester) (4:56) D3. Omar Sharif Bonanza (5:28) D4. Popfrontical Eclection (4:22) D5. The Jim Pedesen Theme (2:42)

Running through this album is a path from despair and sin through revelation, repentance and belief, to life, triumph and finally love. The stations on the way are eight five-part fantasias for viols by Michael East (1580–1648), unusual in that each of them has a Latin title – from Desperavi to Amavi. In his time, East was one of England’s most published composers with seven books of his compositions in print, all of them containing music for viols and voices. The fantasias are here performed by the five members of Chelys Consort of Viols, who together with the singers in Fieri Consort have selected vocal items by East to complement each of the instrumental pieces. Regretting the lack of modern repertoire for this combination the performers have also commissioned a new piece by the composer Jill Jarman. Setting a verse by Sir Henry Wotton, a contemporary of East, Now are my thoughts at peace sums up the journey of the fantasias from Desperavi to Amavi, 400 years after they were written.

The amazing bebop piano genius Bud Powell made his most enduring recordings as a leader for Blue Note. Powell's 1949 and 1951 sessions were compiled in 1955 on The Amazing Bud Powell, Vol. 1. Featuring the pianist with the likes of Sonny Rollins, Fats Navarro, Roy Haynes and Max Roach on bebop classics including "Un Poco Loco" and "Bouncing with Bud." Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series is all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal.

This is the first commercial issue of the complete Lang-Worth Recordings of the legendary Fats Waller, and the sessions took place on Nov. 20, 1939 under the supervision of Cy Langloi, co-owner of Lang-Worth. Fats recorded the 20 selections included here, performing nearly one hour of music at one sitting, playing solo piano, organ & vocals.

The Amazon rainforest is almost mythical in it's richness and diversity, and music inspired by it is often the same. On AMAZ�NIA, composer Miguel Kertsman captures the awe-inspiring beauty and fragility of one of the world's natural wonders and pays homage to his homeland of Brazil. Featuring four of his earlier symphonic works, the album peers into the budding composer's early career, already rich with genre experimentation and musical storytelling. Kertsman's juxtaposition of Brazilian folk tradition with orchestral composition bends the rules of classical, creating a worldly sound with universal resonance.

Two Brazilian artists pay tribute to Villa-Lobos and the Amazon rainforest…Sebastião Salgado is a world-renowned photographer who has been working since the 1990s to protect and restore the Atlantic forest and water resources of the Rio Doce valley in Brazil. The Italian-Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes is passionate about the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and his symphonic poem Floresta do Amazonas; for which she created a suite for large orchestra and soprano. Together they travel the world to present an exhibition of Salgado's photographs; combined with concerts conducted by Simone in which the photographs are projected; the photographer having associated each musical phrase with one of his images…The music of this monumental project has been recorded with the Philharmonia Zürich and soprano Camila Provenzale. Ten photos by Salgado; each more striking than the last; are included in the booklet that accompanies this recording; which is completed by another tribute to Amazonian nature; by Philip Glass; with an extract from his Aguas da Amazonia.

 Ámbar, the fifth studio album from Chilean-born talent Camila Meza, showcases the multitalented vocalist, guitarist and composer's ever-evolving artistic sensibility. Accompanied by the Nectar Orchestra, frequent collaborator Noam Wiesenberg, pianist/keyboardist Eden Ladin, drummer/percussionist Keita Ogawa, violinists Tomoko Omura and Fung Chern Hwei, violist Benjamin von Gutzeit and cellist Brian Sanders, Meza reaches new virtuosic and expressive heights as a singer, a stirring guitar soloist, an ambitious songwriter and a producer. Distinguished by it's extraordinarily close attention to sonic detail, Ámbar is Meza's boldest artistic statement to date. Steeped in metaphor, romance and complex emotion, Ámbar is a breakthrough, rooted in the incredible agility and interplay of Meza's state-of-the-art jazz group.

Stoltzman plays in a uniquely personal style - bent notes and microtonal slides in near vocal effects. Magical!

Richard Stoltzman could be claimed as the James Galway of the clarinet. He has developed the personality of the instrument in new ways, often drawing on jazz effects, in what he regards as an American tradition. And he has a considerable following. He has recorded major pieces like the Corigliano Concerto (RCA, 4/89), but in this collection he's simply relaxing.

He starts with an ingenious arrangement of Gershwin's piano pieces, the Three Preludes, where the few extra effects in both clarinet and piano are completely idiomatic. Then there's Bernstein's early Sonata, another American classic, which Stoltzman has now recorded in Sid Ramin's orchestration (RCA, 12193).

W. T. McKinley makes his debut in the British catalogue with a recent, rather overblown, fourmovement Sonata and so does Clare Fisher with Sonatine. There's nothing very individual in either work, but Stoltzman obviously enjoys playing them. The real gems come when he goes deeper into jazz, especially Jimmy Rowles's The Peacocks, which was used in the soundtrack of Round Midnight. This brings out everything in Stoltzman's unique style - bent notes and microtonal slides in near vocal effects. Magical!

Dick Hyman is another jazz pianist and composer. He has recorded a complete Joplin and has written rags himself. His Clarinata is a red-hot encore with a soupy middle section. Finally Stoltzman plays his own arrangement of Amazing Grace, starting unaccompanied, and very touching it is too. Altogether an attractive collection, well recorded, with some uniquely personal playing.

-- Gramophone [9/1996]

AMBIENCE is Big Round Records' latest release from composer Joe Hume. After a decade of working exclusively as a professional pianist, Hume has returned to composing in a big way with this compelling 11-track album of airy original solo piano pieces. The bright, spacious textures of caf� de Paris-the album's first track-sets the tone for what is to follow. Though brief, at less-than three minutes long, the piece breathes peacefully, with it's unhurried motion punctuated by brief modulations. Next one hears Del Mar, a songful, poignant meditation. As the album continues, each piece sets a scene for the listener-The Swan floats with agility between major and minor, while Northern Shore sings with a lilting cadence like waves lapping at a rocky shoreline. Adagio for Strings, previously released as a single in July 2019, is rich and expansive, harnessing the piano's warm lower-middle voice. Nocturne, as it's name suggests, is tender and thoughtful, with long arpeggiated chords rolling seamlessly with the tune in the right hand. Winter's Tale concludes the album, with melodic lines so cleanly crafted that one's mind can almost imagine words hidden in the piano music. Hume writes that he set out to create music that was "melodic, calming, yet powerful in it's delivery." The composer/pianist has no doubt succeeded in this endeavor. As it's title suggests, AMBIENCE could simply be treated as lovely background noise -but that doesn't mean it should be. After all, listeners who take a moment to close their eyes and listen deeply may find Hume's piano is singing for them.

Award winning trumpeter/composer Dave Scott started his professional career in L.A. after graduating from University of Southern California. His penchant for performing and composing for the standard/classical quintet format was obvious already from the earlier stage. The Dave Scott Quintet here is the original group consisting of some of the finest instrumentalists Dave formed when he first moved to New York in 2000. “Scott allows plenty of space throughout the set for the other band members. He doesn’t dominate with his own instrument as some leaders are apt to do. This is exquisite musicianship from all and together they generate a unique and varied tapestry of sound. The album is full of surprises and is well worth repeated listening.” (Brian Payne – Jazz Journal on SCCD 31864 “In Search of Hipness”)

Premiered at the Opera-Comique in Paris on 26 January 1857, Ambroise Thomas's Psyche tells the story of the ill-starred love between Eros and Psyche, who are manipulated by the cynical Mercury and envied by Daphne and Berenice, the heroine's own sisters. The style of the work represents the nec plus ultra of mid-nineteenth-century French opera-comique, notably in the Italianate influence of Rossini, which gives the singers of the two leading roles - one of which, Eros, is a breeches part for mezzo-soprano - a chance to glitter amid torrents of coloratura poured forth in impressive, passionate love duets. The librettists Jules Barbier and Michel Carre achieved an inspired blend of comedy and tragedy by contrasting a quartet of cruel and grotesque characters (Psyche's sisters and their suitors) with the noble hero and heroine. Ambroise Thomas's music does not merely foreshadow the future triumphs of Mignon and Hamlet: it is worthy to stand beside them at the pinnacle of his operatic legacy, as his obituarists declared. This recording confirms their judgment.

Classical Music

Plurimo tocar 'I first met vedova when I was eighteen. It was the beninning of a long journey with him, at times slow moving, at times fast and at time even subversive in the true sense of the word. Vedova lived in a warehouse studio at San Vio and at the age of sixteen had made some splendid drawings of great Venetian architecture through which he also in his own way laid bare historical reality as he pursued his development, typical of a completely self-taught artist.' This is how Luigi Nono recalled the beginnings of a friendship, joint interests and a project destined to endure and be renewed for ever. These roots also innervate and characterise the interior geography, the cleary distinguishable personality of Claudio Ambrosini. Of the four works featured on this record, composed from 1998 to 2015, Plurimo is offered as an explicit homage to the painter, a contant living presence in the composer's emotional and cognitive world because of their natural affinites.

Classical Music

Amelie is a re-conception of the Broadway musical based on the beloved, Oscar-nominated film. The story of an astonishing young woman who lives quietly in the world, but loudly in her mind. She secretly improvises small but extraordinary acts of kindness for those around her. When a chance at love comes her way, she realizes that she'll have to risk everything and say what's in her heart. Amelie is nominated for a 2021 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.

Classical Music