Antonin Dvorak's 'American' chamber music works are the fruits of a happy, carefree time. And this is reflected in the music: colourful, vibrant, imbued with the musical and scenic impressions he gathered in the bustling metropolis of New York and during his summer holidays in rural Iowa. Antonin Dvorak spent a happy time in America in the early 1890s. As director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, he was generously paid, and concert audiences adored him. Some of his most famous and beloved works were created in the United States, including the 'American' String Quartet, which uniquely combines landscape painting and emotional expression in chamber music. Unjustly overshadowed by this piece is the String Quintet in E flat major, also known as the 'American' Quintet: a colourful, masterfully crafted work in which Dvorak sought to capture the spirit of Native American music. Both works have been among the Mandelring Quartett's favourites for many years. However, the Humoresques, Op. 101 were a new discovery for the ensemble. Presented here in a first recording of an arrangement for string quartet, they include the immortal melody that the Comedian Harmonists made into a hit, titled "Eine kleine Fruhlingsweise".

The Lithuanian pianist and composer Vytautas Bacevic?ius (1905-70) - exiled to the New World by the outbreak of the Second World War - is one of the undiscovered pioneers of the twentieth century. This third volume of his piano music presents works written between 1926 and 1959 and shows the evolution of his musical language from the post-Skryabin style of the early works, via the influence of Debussy, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, to a highly individual modernism that can occasionally nod to the jazz of his adoptive New York. It is a testament to the strength of Bacevic?ius' personality that his musical identity remains consistent even as his manner evolves - his individuality is never in doubt, not least because of his enduring fondness for a playful gesture.

Ferenc Farkas (1905-2000) is often viewed as a gifted miniaturist, sifting through Baroque and popular Hungarian sources to produce glittering orchestral dances of infectious energy. That Farkas does indeed exist, as in the suite from the ballet The Sly Students, but this album also shows an entirely different side to his musical personality. His Preludio e Fuga finds him experimenting with dodecaphony - but he offered a caution: 'In the twelve-tone theme of the fugue, I did not use Schoenberg's orthodox model but a softer form, more euphoric, with a rounder and more attractive sonority - I am thinking of works by Luigi Dallapiccola or [...] Frank Martin'. His only symphony was a victim of Communist orthodoxy, so severely criticised at Party meetings that Farkas shelved the score. This first complete recording reveals a work that is both big-boned and big-hearted - one of the finest of all Hungarian symphonies.

This live recording immortalizes Christophe Rousset's performance at the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid on January 8, 2025, a featured event in the Earning a Living concert series. Francois Couperin's keyboard compositions illuminate the role of royal patronage as the modus vivendi for musicians of the Early Modern period. Couperin's treatise, L'Art de Toucher le Clavecin, is here interwoven with a selection of his Pieces de clavecin, giving rise to a portrait gallery in music, each inspired by anonymous figures who inhabited the French court. This set of pieces de caractere, whose allusive and encoded meanings remain largely enigmatic today, is presented in groupings by tonality, each offering a window into the refined world of Baroque palace life and it's intricate web of connections.

SOMM Recordings is pleased to release Clarinet Concertos, four works for solo clarinet and wind orchestra, including two world-premiere recordings. The soloist is the English clarinettist, Peter Cigleris, who�enjoys a wide and varied career and is in great demand as a soloist and chamber musician. His burgeoning career as a clarinet soloist has taken him to Festivals in Spain, France, the Netherlands, and the U.S. Recently, he was invited to perform in Gyor, Hungary for the European Clarinet Festival, which led to a special invitation from the Gyor Symphonic Band to record four hugely enjoyable concertos for clarinet and wind orchestra. These are conducted by Laszlo Marosi, the world's foremost authority on Hungarian wind music, and Ferenc Szabo, the founder of the Gyor Symphonic Band. This release opens with the premiere recording of Concerto Semplice for clarinet and wind orchestra by the prolific Hungarian composer Frigyes Hidas (1928-2007). The concerto is written in a direct, almost classical, tonal language that portrays the composer's belief in traditional forms and syntax. Cigleris has given premiere performances of a number of new works for the clarinet, and he played the first performance of Sonatina in One Movement by the award-winning British composer Simon Milton. So, when composing his Concerto for Clarinet and Band, Milton knew that he "could push what I felt was playable and turn it into a challenge, whilst also maintaining a lyrical and sweet sound to the clarinet part." SOMM presents the premiere recording here. The Concerto for Clarinet and Wind Orchestra, written in 2014 by American composer David Maslanka (1943-2017), is an imposing composition in two large movements: "Lamentation" and "Dance." He described these as relating to "old forms such as the toccata and fugue - a free improvisatory movement followed by a rhythmically energized and formally strict second movement." This collection closes with a Clarinet Concerto from 2010 by one of the leading Japanese composers of music for wind instruments, Satoshi Yagisawa (b.1975). The work has achieved great popularity and is considered a major contribution to the composer's "Concerto Series." It is written in the traditional three-movement concerto form, played attacca with linking cadenzas for the clarinet solo. Peter Cigleris's previous collaborations with SOMM include Eclogue - British Chamber Music (SOMMCD 0653) and a full disc of first recordings, Dedication: The Clarinet Chamber Music of Ruth Gipps (SOMMCD 0641). This includes Gripps's Clarinet Sonata, one of the finest such works by any British composer, for which she won the Cobbett Prize of the Society of Women Musicians. The Gramophone review praised Cigleris and accompanist Duncan Honeybourne as "ideal executants in an account I cannot see being bettered any time soon." This recording features the Eusebius Quartet, formed in 2016 out of a passion for the extraordinary music written for this instrumentation, and praised as "excellent" by The Sunday Times. Their debut CD for SOMM of the Korngold Piano Quintet & Quartet (SOMMCD 0642) received critical acclaim: "Wit and clarity abound in the Quartet's Viennese-sounding performances," The Strad; "The musicians seem to feel the music just as it is, complex on the surface, but direct and straight from the heart," BBC Music Magazine. Elgar and Faure met once at the time of the London premiere of Elgar's First Symphony in 1908. Although Faure spoke no English and Elgar's French wasn't exactly conversational, it's fascinating to compare the musical language of their two quartets, both in the key of E minor, and written late in the composers' lives. Edward Elgar was a more than competent violinist, and he made several attempts throughout his career to write a string quartet. Finally, ill and depressed by war-time London in 1918, he completed his String Quartet, Op. 83. It is cast in three movements, the outer Allegro movements bookending one marked Piacevole (poco andante). This slow middle movement, which contains a�quotation�from Elgar's�Chanson de Matin, was a favourite of Lady Elgar, who described it as "captured sunshine." It was played at her funeral in 1920. Gabriel Faure composed his only String Quartet, Op. 121 in 1924, shortly before his death at the age of 79. By this time, he had been totally deaf for some years, and the quartet suggests a mind driven within itself in a way that hints at Beethoven's Late String Quartets. This final work of Faure presents an extraordinary duality, which masks the romantic ideas of his earlier music with what the English composer and writer Robert Matthew-Walker calls "a soft steely twilight that at times appears almost menacing." As with Elgar's quartet, the central Andante movement particularly captures the imagination with it's musical colouration suggesting a world of half-lights.

Phoenix Rising featuring violinist Angel Wang with the Phoenix Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Vena presents a cornucopia of Chinese and Western classical music that transcends borders. The album includes Alice Ping Yee Ho's commissioned work Phoenix Rising, the beloved Butterfly Lovers' Concerto by He Zhanhao and Chen Gang, alongside traditional Chinese songs like "Jasmine Flower" and "Galloping Horses," offering a captivating blend of contemporary and traditional music. Phoenix Rising opens with the Butterfly Lovers' Concerto by He and Gang, a violin concerto that blends Chinese and Western compositional techniques, depicting two young lovers transformed into butterflies after their deaths. Followed by traditional Chinese songs: Songs of Four Seasons from China's Qinghai province; Dance of the Yao People, inspired by southern China's drum dance; Mayila, a Kazakh song about a young girl's beautiful voice; Galloping Horses depicting the sounds of horses whinnying and racing across the Mongolian grasslands; and the famous Jasmine Flower from the Qing dynasty, which tells of a virtuous woman captivated by the flower's fragrance and pure beauty. The album closes with it's title piece, Phoenix Rising by Alice Ping Yee Ho, a single-movement tone poem for solo violin and orchestra, encapsulating the timeless idea of the Phoenix rising from it's ashes, symbolizing hope and rebirth.

This album combines Japanese and European art songs - two seemingly distant cultural spheres revealing often impressive affinities, whereby in the direct comparison the respective characteristic profiles of the Western and Far Eastern style traditions are certainly preserved, perhaps even more apparent. All in all, a musical round dance is created through the highs and lows of human emotions and experiences - and regardless of the permanent back and forth between East and West, an invisible bond leads us to the brilliant rising of the Far Eastern sun in the last song of "A magnificent morning" by Yoshinao Nakada. Wonderfully interpreted by Misaki Kobayashi and Matthias Veit.

In physics, entropy measures the degree of disorder in a system and the associated arrangement possibilities. Lina Tur Bonet chose this term as the title for her new CD on GLOSSA, on which she - together with theorbist Jadran Duncumb - interprets Italian violin music of the so-called stylus phantasticus. This style developed in Italy in the late 16th century from the practice of improvisation. It is characterised by extremely expressive playing in which short, sometimes dissonant and bizarre figures, sometimes extreme chromaticism, rapid virtuoso runs and sections with ostinato bass are combined as in a free improvisation. Johann Mattheson confirmed this impression in his book Der vollkommene Kapellmeister in 1739: 'For this style is the freest and most unrestrained way of setting, singing and playing that one can imagine, since one soon comes up with these and then those ideas, since all kinds of otherwise unusual passages, hidden ornaments, meaningful turns and embellishments are produced, without actual observation of the act and tone; sometimes hasty, sometimes hesitant; sometimes monophonic, sometimes polyphonic; sometimes also for a short time after the act: without sound-mass; yet not without intention to please, to hurry and to astonish. '

Sir Arthur Bliss (1891 - 1975) was an excellent conductor of his own music, but he sadly made only a limited number of commercial recordings. SOMM celebrates the 50th anniversary of Bliss's death with a 2-CD set of important archive performances, all but two of which he didn't record commercially, making them of particular interest. These live performances, mostly recorded at the BBC Proms and not previously made available, are skilfully remastered by long-time SOMM collaborator and executive producer, Lani Spahr, whose recent 6-volume "Bruckner from the Archives" received no less than two Editor's Choices from Gramophone magazine. At the invitation of Edward Elgar, Bliss wrote a new work for the Three Choirs Festival in 1920. He was inspired by a book on heraldry to compose a full-scale symphony incorporating symbolic meanings associated with primary colours. Hence, the four movements of A Colour Symphony are Purple, Red, Blue, and Green. The performance issued here is with Bliss conducting his 70th birthday concert at the Proms in 1961. For his 75th birthday concert at the Proms in 1966, Bliss conducted his Piano Concerto, commissioned by the British Council in 1939. Following this birthday concert, Bliss wrote that he felt "indeed positively youthful; perhaps that rejuvenation was accentuated by the exuberantly fine performance that John Ogdon gave of my Piano Concerto." That "exuberantly fine performance," along with Bliss's brief speech of thanks, are included in this set. Bliss and his younger brother served during World War I, and Kennard was killed at the Battle of the Somme. In 1930, haunted by nightmares of the war and grief about his brother, Bliss composed Morning Heroes, dedicating it "to the memory of my brother Francis Kennard Bliss and all other comrades killed in battle." The work is a symphony for orator, chorus, and orchestra, with poetry ranging from The Iliad to Walt Whitman and Wilfred Owen. Lady Bliss considered the pre-eminent orator of this work to be Donald Douglas, featured here with Bliss in 1968-surprisingly, the only performance to date of Morning Heroes at the Proms. The much-revised Concerto for Two Pianos is presented in a version for two pianos and three hands, which Bliss arranged after Cyril Smith suffered a stroke that paralysed his left arm. This performance with Bliss leading Cyril Smith, Phyllis Sellick, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra is from the 1969 Proms. Two shorter works complete this Bliss anniversary tribute. M�lee Fantasque from 1921, influenced by Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, is a precursor to many ballet scores Bliss would produce. The Phoenix, subtitled "Homage to France August 1944," is noted in the score as symbolizing "the imperishable life and the transcendent beauty of France." The extraordinarily vast repertoire of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau over his 45-year career comprised�lieder, operas,�cantatas,�and�oratorios.�He sang these in German, Italian, French, Russian, English, Hebrew, Hungarian, and Latin, from eras that spanned the Baroque to the latter part of the 20th century. Particularly, it was the controlled power and beauty of his voice, and the dramatic intensity and poetry of his interpretations, that led him to excel in the genre of German�lieder.�In this form he exerted a virtually unprecedented stylistic and interpretative influence-not only on the musical world of his day, but also on generations of performers to come. SOMM's centenary tribute opens with four songs by Ferruccio Busoni, all being works that were written late in the composer's career. They come from a programme that Fischer-Dieskau gave with Gerald Moore in 1962.� At the 1971 Helsinki Festival, Fischer-Dieskau presented a recital with Irwin Gage, which was devoted entirely to songs with texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The recital, described by a contemporary critic as "a landmark event," featured compositions by contemporaries of Goethe, who lived from 1749 to 1832, such as the Countess Anna Amalia, Kapellmeister Johann Friedrich Reichardt, and Goethe's friend Carl Friedrich Zelter. The more familiar composers represented on this Goethe-inspired recital were active during the first part of the 20th century. They include Richard Strauss, Max Reger, and Ferruccio Busoni. This tribute to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau also includes six songs from a programme of works by Gustav Mahler, which was presented with his long-time collaborator, Karl Engel. Three of the songs are from Des Knaben Wunderhorn,�based on texts of German folk poems, and three are from the collection of five Ruckert-Lieder,�after poems written by�Friedrich Ruckert. The musical component of this collection closes with a concert performance of three songs by Zoltan Kodaly, sung in Hungarian by Fischer-Dieskau. The composer proves himself an outstanding interpreter of his own music in conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. In the two interviews included on the bonus CD, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau discusses his early years, his teachers, the development of his career, and a small but revealing cross-section of his enormous repertoire.

The Portuguese composer Cesar Viana - born in England, in 1963, and now resident in Spain - is an all-round musician: conductor, pianist, early-music enthusiast, folklorist and flautist, with a special interest in the shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute. His resulting familiarity with Zen Buddhism has left it's mark on his music, where the clean lines of Japanese art combine with a fondness for the contrapuntal textures that form the basis of much European art-music - imagine Bach and Hindemith in the formal elegance of a stone garden, warmed by a touch of western wit.

August Fryderyk Duranowski (1770-1834) and Antonio Lolli (ca. 1725-1802) were both important violinists and composers of the 18th century. Duranowski was strongly supported by the Polish noble family of the Oginski, who financed his training with the famous violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti in Paris. Despite the temporal overlaps and stylistic similarities, there are no known direct connections between the Duranowski and Lolli, but interesting similarities and possible influences can be identified, such as the fact that both were outstanding virtuosos of their time. Antonio Lolli was known for his technical skills and his innovative contributions to violin playing technique, which laid the foundations for the modern violin style. Duranowski was also a brilliant virtuoso whose playing and compositions significantly influenced the development of violin music. His works are even said to have inspired Niccolo Paganini.

Georg Philipp Telemann is undoubtedly one of the composers who wrote the most parts for the recorder. No wonder, as he had mastered the instrument since his childhood and provided it with rewarding parts not only in chamber music, but also in orchestral and vocal works. The young Portuguese recorder player Joao Francisco Tavora studied in Porto and Leipzig and presents works for recorder by Telemann in various scorings, which show off his extraordinary playing technique and interpretative skills to their best advantage.

The internationally renowned pianist Yulianna Avdeeva presents Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, one of the most important works in the piano repertoire. This monumental cycle harks back to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and is considered one of the most demanding works for piano ever written. Avdeeva joins an elite group of pianists who have undertaken the challenge of performing the complete opus, which is rarely heard in it's entirety. To complement this iconic work, Avdeeva also presents the completion of an alternative Prelude and Fugue in C-Sharp Minor, discovered by leading Shostakovich expert Olga Digonskaya and completed by composer and Shostakovich biographer Krzysztof Meyer. Shostakovich sketched an initial prelude in C-Sharp Minor in 1950, but then decided to compose a new prelude-fugue pair in this key, which eventually found it's way into Opus 87. The sketch of the original prelude was found in the Shostakovich archive in Moscow in 2005; Krzysztof Meyer completed the fragment in 2019 and added his own fugue "in the style of Shostakovich". This discovery adds a new and exciting dimension to the cycle and will be an important part of the story behind the album.

One of the duties of the office of municipal music director in Hamburg was to perform a Passion every year during Lent, alternating from year to year according to the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Telemann took on this task with particular fervour and created a total of 46 passions throughout his time in Hamburg, from spring 1722 until his death in 1767, half of which are unfortunately lost today.

In the summer of 1717, after performing his Water Music during a royal cruise on the Thames, Handel began composing for James Brydges (1674-1744), who became the first Duke of Chandos and created the Cannons Concert at his estate in Cannons (near Edgware), with ten instrumentalists and three singers. Handel composed eleven anthems and a Te Deum for him from August 1717 onwards, as well as transposing and revising As pants the hart (HWV 251b). O sing unto the Lord a new song (HWV 249b) is an adaptation of an anthem written three years earlier for the Chapel Royal. The anthem Have mercy upon me, O God (HWV 248) was composed in 1717 and is a paraphrase of the Miserere. The Alleluia of Let God arise (HWV 256a) prefigures the famous Hallelujah chorus from Messiah (1741). Arcangelo and Jonathan Cohen now revive these four Chandos anthems composed for Cannons with eight singers and eleven excellent instrumentalists.