In 2022, 19-year-old pianist Roman Borisov became the youngest winner of the prestigious Kissinger KlavierOlymp competition. After taking part in Alpha's 'Next Generation Mozart Soloists' collection (ALPHA991), he now presents his first solo recital in Alpha's ongoing 'Piano Stories' series, which he sees as a 'conversation with the past', featuring composers inspired by earlier styles to create new works. Born in 1870, the brilliant virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowsky composed twenty-four 'free arrangements' of music by masters of the Baroque. Among these, Roman Borisov has selected pieces based on works by Rameau, Corelli, Scarlatti and John Loeillet (whose pieces were originally mis-attributed to Lully)... In 1931, Rachmaninoff composed his last original work for solo piano: a set of variations on 'La Folia', a 15th-century dance theme that Corelli famously used in one of his violin sonatas. The encounter between the Baroque style and the harmonic richness of the Russian composer is fascinating. The superb Prelude, Chorale and Fugue composed by Cesar Franck in 1884, an obvious tribute to J.S. Bach, concludes Roman's pianistic journey through time.

For me, whenever I play the Bach suites, all of a sudden I find myself visualising Giacometti's hands incessantly moulding the earthen clay until a face appears. Getting to grips with the Bach suites is very closely related to that sense. You have to dig deeply into the string to give birth to the phrase, to make sure it breathes correctly: a phrase that is perpetually becoming, endlessly making and remaking itself. I waited a long time before recording these suites. Then one day, or rather one night, I began. Then there was my meeting with Sarah Moon. When I first felt my longing to record the Bach suites, I dreamt constantly of her images; because whenever I look at them I think of the creation of the world, the separation of the waters, the earth appearing, all before the beginning of history. Sonia Wieder-Atherton

The great French pianist Roger Muraro joins Alpha Classics for several recording projects. Born in Lyon to Venetian parents, he was a pupil of Yvonne Loriod and is regarded as the leading specialist in the music of Olivier Messiaen, to which he has devoted much of his career. But this noted pedagogue, a former professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, is also renowned for his profound and sensitive approach to the music of Ravel, Chopin, Schumann – and Liszt, of whom he is particularly fond. He now presents a monumental masterwork by Liszt which is in his view a work of ‘universal intimacy’: ‘I admire the freedom with which the evocations of the soul, of nature, of the colors of the masters of Italian painting unfold in succession. Everything Liszt saw during his pilgrimage to Switzerland and Italy contributed to a process of reflection, a journey, a quest to bring him closer to his ideal where silence became the ultimate authority.’

REVIEW:

This realization of Années de pèlerinage can only be described as a careercrowning achievement. Muraro accomplishes it through his unflagging attention to the most minute details of Liszt’s score and, above all, by the disarming sincerity of his readings. Heartily recommended without reservation to all those interested in Liszt, as well as to lovers of fine, richly imaginative piano-playing.

— Gramophone

This is the new recording we have been waiting for. Three years after Brahms (ALPHA792), the Belcea Quartet returns in a new formation: Suyeon Kang, their new second violin, joined the quartet in 2023. Today the Belcea Quartet presents a new recording of the Debussy Quartet - which they had previously recorded on their very first album 25 years ago - and two quartets by Karol Szymanowski, a composer they are particularly fond of and who possesses a unique and immediately identifiable musical language. The first quartet was composed in 1917 but the Russian Revolution intervened; it's premiere finally took place in 1924. Szymanowski - then a world-renowned composer and a leading figure in the reconstruction of musical life in the young Polish Republic - wrote his second quartet ten years after the first in 1927; it was premiered in Warsaw two years later.

'If, in a parallel universe, Wagner wrote a symphony rather than a sixteen-hour Ring, it might actually resemble my Ring Odyssey.' These are the words used by the new music director of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, Joseph Swensen, to present this anthology of Der Ring des Nibelungen for soprano, tenor, bass-baritone, male chorus and orchestra, which he composed on the basis of Wagner's monumental tetralogy. The American conductor confesses that, during a performance of Tristan, Wagner was suddenly revealed to him as 'a dreamer' full of 'humility, tenderness, vulnerability and generosity'. Swensen has made a point of following the chronology of the operas and respecting the original music: 'My solemn promise to Wagner was that, aside from the occasional solo timpani roll denoting the passage of time, I would not change or add a single note to his masterpiece.' An enthralling traversal, recorded at a memorable concert and delivered by exceptionally committed singers and instrumentalists.

Presented as 'An Experiment in Modern Music' when it was premiered in 1924, Rhapsody in Blue made George Gershwin famous, and he soon set to work on a version for solo piano, recorded here by Claire Huangci. In her first solo disc for Alpha Classics, Claire was keen to celebrate this centenary alongside her roots in America, where she was born, studied music and made her debut as a concert artist at the age of nine. The brilliant improviser and transcriber Earl Wild (1915-2010) took Gershwin's songs (Liza, Fascinatin' Rhythm, Somebody Loves Me, I Got Rhythm, Embraceable You, Oh, Lady Be Good, The Man I Love) to form the basis of his Seven Virtuoso Etudes for solo piano. Equally virtuosic is the Op. 26 Sonata by Samuel Barber, whom Vladimir Horowitz (who premiered the work in Havana in December 1949) regarded as one of the few Americans capable of writing for the piano. The New Hampshire-born composer Amy Beach took her inspiration from the folk music of both the New World and the Balkans, while retaining her harmonic language inherited from the Romantics. Her Variations Op. 60 (1904) bear witness to these influences.

Since the Baroque revival of the late 1980s, Iphigenie en Aulide is Gluck's only French opera to have remained unrecorded on period instruments. To celebrate it's 250th anniversary in 2024, Julien Chauvin, Le Concert de la Loge, Les Chantres du Centre de musique baroque de Versailles and a top-flight cast led by Judith van Wanroij, Stephanie d'Oustrac, Cyrille Dubois, Tassis Christoyannis, Jean-Sebastien Bou and David Witczak have filled that gap with a new recording of the work which revolutionised the aesthetics of French opera. It is underpinned by in-depth musicological and stylistic research carried out by the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles in collaboration with Julien Chauvin, in this, his first operatic recording.

After the immense success of her Bach-Abel album (ALPHA783), Lucile Boulanger celebrates the French viol through the centuries: 'This transchronological dialogue traces the history of a dynasty of composers in a subjective, even emotional way', from the seventeenth century (Marin Marais, Sainte-Colombe, Nicolas Hotman) to the twenty-first, with contemporary works by Philippe Hersant, Claire-Melanie Sinnhuber and Gerard Pesson, some of which were specifically written for Lucile Boulanger: 'There is no longer any need to prove that my instrument is an integral part of our musical landscape. The viol is alive and well. For several decades now, it has inspired new compositions; it's vocabulary is constantly expanding', concludes the violist.

2024 marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Ronsard, known as the Prince des Poetes, whose poems have been set to music more than four hundred times over the centuries. This programme has been curated by Denis Raisin Dadre and compares several settings of the same sonnet by 16th-century musicians (Gardane, Lassus, Castro, Bertrand, Costeley) and by such later composers as Charles Gounod, Camille Saint-Saens, Paul Dukas, Maurice Ravel, Theodore Gouvy, Pauline Viardot and Arthur Honegger, all of whom were clearly seduced by the same Bonjour mon c�ur and the famous Mignonne, allon voir si la rose some three centuries later. A truly fascinating playlist of songs inspired by a genius whose beau style bas, populaire et plaisant has stood the test of time. The musicians of Doulce Memoire re-create the Renaissance settings here, whilst singer Marc Mauillon and pianist Anne Le Bozec perform the songs of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Following their recordings of Bruckner's Symphonies Nos. 7 (ALPHA932, Diapason d'Or) and 8 (ALPHA987, awarded 'best symphonic recording of the year' at the International Classical Music Awards), Paavo Jarvi and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich here conclude their tribute to the Austrian composer in this bicentenary year with a recording of his 9th symphony. The orchestra's history has been closely linked to Bruckner since it gave the first Swiss performance of one of his symphonies under Richard Strauss in 1903. "The great classical and romantic tradition of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich make it ideally suited to Bruckner, the central composer for modern symphony orchestras," says Paavo Jarvi. Bruckner composed this musical farewell (he wrote the words "a farewell to life" in the score) in his final years; legend has it that he was still working on the symphony on the day he died.

The works of the theorbist Bellerofonte Castaldi and the guitarist Domenico Pellegrini are little known but nonetheless remain fascinating to their performers today, as they not only give clear proof of fertile musical imagination but also raise many questions about how they should be performed. Although Castaldi was the first to praise the innovative style of his friend Monteverdi, his works are marked by a strong Renaissance spirit. Castaldi and Pellegrini chose not only the most classical forms (dances, courantes, galliards) but also the most archaic (branles, batailles, canzoni). Lutenist, theorbist and baroque guitarist Albane Imbs here presents her first solo album. She has founded her own ensemble, Les Kapsber'girls and also plays in ensembles led by Jordi Savall, Francois Lazarevich, Raphael Pichon and Rolf Lislevand, the great Norwegian lutenist/theorbist who was her teacher. Imbs and Lislevand here perform Castaldi's Capricci a due stromenti, the only example of music written for a duo of theorbo and tiorbino, this latter being a miniature theorbo conceived and played by Castaldi himself.

Having recorded the 'great' French quartets of Debussy and Ravel (ALPHA295), the Van Kuijk Quartet now takes another path and explores treasures by Faure, Debussy, Satie, Ravel and Poulenc that were originally composed for piano or voice. The mark of the string quartet is secretly apparent in this programme, which includes Debussy's Petite Suite pour piano � quatre mains, Ravel's famous Pavane pour une infante defunte and well-known songs by Poulenc, Faure and Satie in transcriptions made especially for this recording by Emmanuel Francois, the Quartet's violist, and by Jean-Christophe Masson and Gildas Guillon. The Quartet also asked the jazz pianist and composer Baptiste Trotignon to create a work that would freely resonate alongside the styles of the composers whose works had been transcribed. An entire universe has now been re-created without any nostalgia or pastiche behind the first names of these composers, Ces Messieurs. The Van Kuijks have woven their instruments in and around these miniatures and here unfold a programme that is all lightness and delight.

After a first Brahms recital that made a great impression (Alpha 851) and Mozart concertos (Alpha 1039) praised by the press for their naturalness (Gramophone) and fluidity (Le Monde), Jonathan Fournel, winner of the Queen Elisabeth Competition at the age of 27 and now an important figure on the international stage, has decided to record a programme that he has already performed extensively in concert: "I like Chopin's 3rd Sonata because the melodic lines don't need any embellishments, they're already beautiful - in the same way that the Mona Lisa doesn't need any make-up. The same is true for Szymanowski's more virtuoso pieces. Szymanowski is a bit like a Scriabin who developed at full speed and who at times approached the Viennese style. I like that because there's research to be done inside, but it's not virtuosity � la Rachmaninov. What I like about these composers is that every element counts and expresses something."

Mozart's flute concertos are of course a Holy Grail for flutist Francois Lazarevitch, one that he has decided to tackle together with his ensemble Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien in connection with their work on sources of interpretation. He has recorded the two concertos for flute and orchestra on a one-keyed flute, a copy of an instrument made in Mozart's time, and the concerto in C for flute and harp on an eight-keyed flute - a flute with a C foot - with Sandrine Chatron playing a period harp by Francois-Joseph Naderman. As Mozart left no original cadenzas for the flute concertos, Francois Lazarevitch has here created his own, drawing inspiration from the cadenzas Mozart composed for his piano concertos. The Menuets and Gavottes in the final movements are particularly highlighted by the ensemble's expertise in music for dancing: "after a first movement that is a little solemn and a second that is more lyrical, the final movements are often a moment for release in dance," concludes Lazarevitch.

We are around the time of the Regency, at the political crossroads between Louis XIV and Louis XV. The viola da gamba was enjoying its last hours of glory in France, while the violin was beginning to take centre stage. The Golden Hour, which generally refers to the periods after sunrise and before sunset when the light changes, evokes here those years of convergence, even confrontation, between a viola da gamba in the twilight of its life and a violin at the dawn of its soloist destiny.

Each of the works on this recording was either composed by or inspired by a woman. We meet Cecile Chaminade (1857-1944) and her Concertino - 'a piece that has accompanied me for years and encapsulates her immense talent', says Mathilde Calderini; Claude Arrieu (1903-90), a pupil of Marguerite Long and Paul Dukas; Mel Bonis (1858-1937); and the young composer Lise Borel (b. 1993), whom Mathilde Calderini commissioned to write a piece entitled Miroir, which she premiered in 2023 with Aurele Marthan, the pianist on this recording and a longstanding artistic partner of hers. Debussy's famous nymph Syrinx and a transcription of his prelude La Fille aux cheveux de lin are also on the programme, as are his Six epigraphes antiques, inspired by the Chansons de Bilitis, named after an (entirely fictional) ancient poetess. Francis Poulenc's Sonata of 1957 is 'probably one of the most beautiful pieces ever written for flute and piano', according to the French flautist. The work was commissioned by the American pianist and philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who also did a great deal for such composers as Ravel, Stravinsky and Barber.

Each of the pieces in this programme is like an ephemeral castle that I can take refuge in when I feel like it, says Sebastien Llinares. The French guitarist, who stands at the crossroads of classical, jazz and contemporary music and also produces the programme Guitare, guitares on France Musique, here puts his playing at the service of every kind of music. Jimi Hendrix's Castle Made Of Sand was the inspiration for this programme; Sebastien Llinares hears in it the unchanging open string that the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos so often used. His journey continues with tributes to famous songs by Bernstein, Gershwin and Rodgers & Hart, an evocation of Rufus Wainwright and Baden Powell in the forms of the Habanera and Bossa Nova - not forgetting a tribute to Django by John Lewis as well as Leonard Cohen's eternal Hallelujah, which takes on the air of an ancient canario when played on the classical guitar. Two bagatelles and an impromptu composed by Llinares himself complete the family portrait.

This recording of Mahler's Ninth Symphony is an event, because it was made with period instruments of the kind the composer used in Vienna. The Mahler Academy Orchestra set itself the task of reconstructing this instrumentarium and researching how musicians of the time played it: 'We were struck during our rehearsals by the incredibly distinctive characterisation of the woodwinds, the shattering blare of the brass, the perfect balance between the instruments, and the pure and warm sound of the strings... They took Mahler's brilliant orchestration to yet another level', says Philipp Von Steinaecker, artistic director of this ambitious 'Originalklang' (original sound) project and conductor of this orchestra, which brings some fifty young musicians into contact with the finest instrumentalists from the world's leading formations (Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Wiener Symphoniker etc.). Together they made this historic recording in Dobbiaco-Toblach in Italy, where Mahler composed his monumental symphony in 1909, two years before his death.

No fewer than four major composers - Faure, Debussy, Schoenberg and Sibelius - were inspired by Maurice Maeterlink's play Pelleas et Melisande (1892). Given that we celebrate anniversaries of Faure and Schoenberg in 2024, Paavo Jarvi here offers his reading of their settings of Pelleas et Melisande with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, whose Music Director he was for almost ten years. Debussy was so much involved with his own operatic setting of Pelleas et Melisande that the famous English actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell turned to Gabriel Faure to write incidental music for the play; this music then became an orchestral suite in four movements that is considered to be Faure's symphonic masterpiece. Schoenberg followed advice given by his much-admired role model Richard Strauss in 1902 and composed his own symphonic poem based on Pelleas et Melisande. It's complex combinations of musical motifs and the rich fabric of the large-scale orchestra not only captivate us but also reveal his own vision of this archaic and yet universal story.

Here is all the chamber music composed by Gabriel Fauré between 1875 and 1924. These recordings, now viewed as benchmark versions, feature some of the finest artists on the French and international scene: violinist Daishin Kashimoto, cellist François Salque, violist Lise Berthaud, pianist Alexandre Tharaud, flautist Emmanuel Pahud, clarinettist Paul Meyer and the Quatuor Ébène. An exceptional project initiated by the pianist Éric Le Sage, whose 2019 recording of the thirteen Nocturnes completes the anthology.

Simon-Pierre Bestion has chosen to mirror two Stabat Mater that are more than 150 years apart: "in these two works I can feel the same tonal language, the same expression of sorrow" says the founder of La Tempête… "I have decided to ‘augment’ Scarlatti’s orchestration and ‘diminish’ Dvorák’s, so they can meet on even ground. To the Scarlatti I have added string parts sometimes doubling the vocal lines, colla parte, as was often done at the period: this not only allows the sound to be amplified, but adds an extra timbre to the voice. For the Dvorák, I have transcribed the original piano part into its minimum orchestral dimension, that is, for strings. This creates a common sound world between the two works – I would even say they have the same kind of lyricism in common, with just the timbres of the piano, organ and theorbo standing out."

Juri Reinvere, born in Tallinn in 1971, is an Estonian composer with a passion for theology and psychology; he has also written poetry. His collaboration with Paavo Jarvi began in Parnu, the birthplace of the Estonian Festival Orchestra, in 2016. This programme begins with And tired from happiness, they started to dance, in which feverish rhythms are followed by moments of ecstasy. Debussy's music here comes to mind, as does the glistening brass in Bruckner's symphonies. This is followed by a playful double concerto for flute - Reinvere had studied the flute, and it was thanks to this that he was able to join a military band instead of fighting in the Soviet army. On the ship of fools is inspired by the key phrase of a 16th-century novel: Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur (The world seeks to be deceived, therefore let it be deceived). "People deceive each other on Facebook and Instagram", comments Reinvere, whose music is both heady and troubling.

Singer Asmik Grigorian has chosen to record both versions of Richard Strauss's ultimate masterpiece, composed in 1948: the version with orchestra and the much rarer version with piano. For her, this work is associated with the idea of solitude, but not an unhappy solitude, rather a journey towards infinity: "Now all my senses long to sink into slumber. And the soul, unguarded, longs to soar up in freedom, so that, in night's magic circle, it may live deeply and a thousandfold." writes Hermann Hesse in Beim Schlafengehen (Going to Sleep), the third song in the cycle. For this unique coupling, Asmik is joined by two long-time accomplices: conductor Mikko Franck, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and pianist Markus Hinterhauser, artistic director of the Salzburg Festival. The combination of the two versions opens up new sensations: after the well-known abundance of Strauss's orchestration an incredible sensitivity is revealed by the piano version.

The Franco-American cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton has always sought to make music a language open to the world. A prizewinner in the Rostropovich Competition at the age of twenty-five, she is the interpreter of choice for many contemporary composers, among them Pascal Dusapin and Wolfgang Rihm, and has collaborated with actresses such as Fanny Ardant and Charlotte Rampling, as well as the film director Chantal Akerman. Sonia Wieder-Atherton's partnership with Alpha Classics comprises three recordings of Bach's Cello Suites, beginning with this recording of Suites Nos. 1 and 2. This and the following two volumes (Suites 3 to 6) feature photos by the great Sarah Moon: "For me, playing Bach's Suites is always at some point or another seeing the image of Giacometti's hands tirelessly moulding clay until a face appears. (...) To get to grips with the Bach Suites is an experience very close to that. It's a question of digging into the string until the phrase is born, as well as the right way to breathe it. (...) And then came the encounter with Sarah Moon. When my desire to record the Bach Suites was born I dreamt of her images. Because, when I look at them, I imagine the creation of the world, the separation of the waters, the appearance of the earth, before history begins."

Olivier Messiaen composed his eight-movement Quartet for the End of Time in 1940 while imprisoned in Germany. He drew his inspiration from the Apocalypse written by Saint John the Evangelist, one of the few works he was allowed to keep in the camp. Het Collectif explores this work, never forgetting that it was at the heart of this harsh winter of war, in a context of misfortune, confinement and deprivation, that Messiaen had an angel speak, promising paradise and the end of time... Stalag VIIIa, composed by Tristan Murail, whose title refers to Olivier Messiaen's place of detention in Görlitz in 1940, completes this programme.