George Lloyd will mostly remembered for his 12 Symphonies, but his compositions include Opera, Choral, Concerto, Piano and Chamber Music. In 2023 the Trustees of Lyrita Nimbus Arts reached an exclusive agreement with The George Lloyd Society to take over the sale, hire, archiving and preservation of all George Lloyd's scores as well as the commercial exploitation of the collection of recordings made by the Society in the 1990s and conducted by the composer. Because George Lloyd's personal attention is a dominating influence on the scores and recordings, which he mostly conducted himself, we have decided to headline this representation the 'Signature Collection'. Scores will be cleaned, and new orchestral parts created, recordings will be reorganised into collectable sets available on CD, Download and Streaming with new notes commissioned from Paul Conway.

Luigi Boccherini composed just a single set of sonatas, Op.5, specifically for violin and piano. However, his commercial celebrity and his artistic reputation at the time, as a composer considered in the same breath as Mozart and Haydn, encouraged publishers to commission arrangements of other works. Such arrangements include this set of Sonatas published in London in 1780, made by Thomas Billington but admitted to the catalogue of Boccherini's works as G34-39. Igor Ruhadze and Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya have made the first ever complete recording of this set as a sequel to their 5CD set of Boccherini sonatas (96612) issued by Brilliant Classics in 2023. 'Looking forward to the sequel!' concluded the review in Diapason of that set, after praising the stylish spirit of musicianship and authenticity in the playing of both artists. Compared to their rivals on record, remarked the reviewer, 'the seduction is more demonstrative, the contrasts more accentuated, the sensuality and the feeling more showy.' Today, as Rudolf Rasch's booklet note remarks, we may prefer original works over arranged works; in the 18th century, such a preference was unknown. No one looked down on them. In fact, they made a composer's music accessible for those who could not perform them in their original format. There was hardly a format more accessible for music-making among friends than the violin sonata, in which the piano would take the lion's share of the harmony from the original work, with the principal melody line assigned to the violin. As well as these violin sonatas, Thomas Billington arranged Corelli's concerti grossi for solo keyboard, and composed a good deal of his own music. In these sonatas, he drew from Boccherini's Trios Op.4 and Op.6, Quartets Op.8 and Quintets Op.10. He was in any case emulating the example of Boccherini himself, who made several such arrangements. As always with Boccherini, there is no shortage of attractive melodies and upbeat, galant invention to contrast with the lyrical beauty of the slow movements. - Luigi Boccherini was born in the Italian city of Lucca in Tuscany, on 19 February 1743, the son of Leopoldo Boccherini, a cellist and double-bass player. The young Luigi received his first music lessons from his father and at the Seminario di San Giovanni in Lucca. The cello was to become his instrument. At the age of ten, he was apparently already so advanced that his father sent him to Rome for further studies at the end of 1753, where he possibly remained until 1756. Apart from a brief period in Vienna around 1760, he was in Lucca until he set out to Paris (perhaps the major musical centre of the time) in the spring of 1768. Later that year he would go to Spain, where he would remain for the rest of his life until his death on 28 May 1805. - This new recording is the second volume of the complete violin sonatas, works in which the pianoforte plays a significant role next to the solo violin. - Critical praise for violinist Igor Ruhadze and pianist Alexandra Nepomnyashchaya: 'The early-music world needs more performers like Igor Ruhadze... This is some of the most accomplished historically informed violin playing I have heard in a long time.' Fanfare (Geminiani, 96524). 'Nepomnyashchaya provides a lesson in how one may realize such sonata bass lines. Her accompaniment is varied in texture and detail, balancing right-hand countermelodies with arpeggiated chordal washes of sound and heavy block chords at cadences. Like Ruhadze, she is a consummate specialist in Baroque style and practice.' - 'These musicians make a strong case for the violin-keyboard duo as an artistic medium. 'Strongly recommended for the music itself and for the dedicated, exciting performances.' Fanfare (Locatelli, 94376).

The age-old spirit of the composer-performer lies at the heart of the 10-year collaboration between cellist-composer Christoph Croise and composer-saxophonist Daniel Schnyder (pronounced SHNEE-der). This resulting album features two of Daniel's concertos, both commissioned by Christoph, alongside numerous world premieres of solo and chamber works. Christoph shines in the Concerto for Cello, Percussion and String Orchestra, whilst the two Swiss compatriots share the limelight in Concerto Populaire for soprano saxophone, cello, percussion and string orchestra, both backed by members of Christoph's hand-picked Beyond Modern Orchestra, an ensemble dedicated to the creation and performance of new music. Christoph brings in other close collaborators, including Alexander Panfilov for Jazz Sonata for Cello & Piano, harpsichordist Peter Gorobets for Cello BLU - another Christoph commission that explores the unique timbral relationship between the two instruments - and an octet of leading European cellists for Cubac - a fusion of Cuban rhythms and Bachian-counterpoint. Throughout, Daniel's compositions seamlessly fuse a melting pot of musical styles, including classical, jazz, Middle Eastern, African and Latin American. Christoph, who himself is rapidly gaining renown as a composer, says, "There is no more fitting way to celebrate contemporary music than by performing it alongside the composer himself."

A new album on GENUIN from the internationally performing pianist Sophia Weidemann! A prizewinner at numerous international competitions, she thrilled both critics and audiences with her album of works by Fanny Hensel. Now she follows up with a recording devoted to Bach: the program features the world-famous Goldberg Variations, which show off the phrasing and tonal artistry of this young pianist from Swabia to brilliant effect. She takes her listeners on an exciting and moving journey through the 30 variations - a work in which, for Bach, an entire world is contained. To quote the composer himself: "A most joyful delight for the soul!"

Red is the color of love and of roses, but also of blood, anger, and shame. Soprano Eva Resch delves into the multifaceted meanings of this color in her new concept album for GENUIN. Together with her piano partner Eric Schneider, she interprets songs spanning from the Classical era to the present - from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Wolfgang Rihm. With her versatile voice, she traces the subtlest shades of human emotion and creates expressive character portraits that range from jubilant ecstasy to the depths of sorrow.

This album features the live recording of the concert given by Trio Lirico and pianist Josu de Solaun at the Fundacion Juan March in Madrid on April 23, 2025. It marks the world premiere recording of the two piano quartets composed in 1902 by the Spanish composers Vicente Zurron and Bartolome Perez Casas. The beginning of the 20th century represented a creative breakthrough in Spain, where chamber music had previously been limited to private settings and personal enjoyment. The expansion of chamber music into public concert halls inspired local composers to explore the genre - an impulse reflected in the recovery of these long-overlooked works.

The music featured on this CD has a unique origin. Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), a mystic, theologian, and German composer, claims to have heard these melodies during supernatural experiences. While other visionaries may lose touch with reality and fall into ecstasy, Hildegard experiences her visions while remaining completely alert. She later conveys what she has seen and heard through imagery, writings, and music. The title of this CD, Vox Aeternitatis, refers to the divine voice that instructs the mystic to write down her revelations. These compositions are drawn from the Symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum, Hildegard's most important musical work. The title reflects the celestial origin of these pieces, which include seventy-seven items such as Psalms, Hymns, Sequences, and Antiphons. For this performance the artists chose to include musical instruments linked to the environment of medieval monasticism, such as the psaltery, symphonia, cymbals, vielle, percussion, flute, and monochord. Only two voices are featured: one female, ideally representing Hildegard herself, and one male, the monk Volmar, her secretary, responsible for transcribing the content of the visions. Hildegard's melodies sometimes surpass the compositional conventions of the time, particularly in terms of vocal range and the expansion of melismas elements that are occasionally pushed to the limits of performability. Her style is remarkably personal and unmistakable, evident in the modal settings that align perfectly with the texts, and in the highly distinctive and recurring melodic formulas that are intimately connected to the spiritual and expressive nature of the lyrics. Performed with great respect and commitment by Schola Romana Ensemble, founded in 2000 by flautist and conductor Stefano Sabene, a group that specializes in both early and contemporary music. The ensemble presents multidisciplinary musical productions that often engage in dialogue with various art forms, such as theater, dance, architecture, visual arts, literature, and film. Their commitment to musicological research and experimentation drives the ensemble to explore an extensive repertoire, ranging from the music of ancient Rome to medieval Europe. In this context, they have especially focused on the performance practice of "a cappella" polyphony, rediscovering the so-called "just intonation."

On it's new CD from BR-KLASSIK, the Bavarian Radio Chorus, directed by Howard Arman, presents Christmas music from Italy. With his Lauda per la nativita del Signore, Ottorino Respighi modernised the medieval nativity play of the same name by the religious lyricist Jacopone da Todi. He had already explored art forms of the past in adaptations of early music, re-creations and free works based on Gregorian chants. In this piece, he assigned the medieval verses to three soloists - the angel, the Virgin Mary, and the shepherd - as well as a chamber choir. Accompanied by selected woodwind instruments reminiscent of the music of Italian shepherds, and by four-handed piano and triangle, the miracle of Christmas is brought to life in a simple yet impressive way. Francesco Paolo Frontini is remembered less for his compositions than for his many collections of Sicilian folk songs. From his Canti religiosi del popolo siciliano (Religious Songs of the Sicilian People, published in 1938), a collection of 22 songs for voice and piano underlaid with Sicilian dialect verses and their Italian translations, Howard Arman selected eight songs and arranged them for choir and instruments. Like Frontini, who already included regional variants from Catania, Palermo, and other parts of the Mediterranean island, Arman also arranged different regional versions of two songs. The melody of the Italian Marian carol O sanctissima, which is one of the most popular Christmas carols in the German-speaking countries with it's opening verse O du frohliche, could possibly also have originated from Sicily. The arrangement is once again by Howard Arman.

Born of a friendship formed at London's Royal College of Music over 10 years ago and boasting a discography of seven recordings, the Busch Trio takes it's name from the legendary Adolf Busch, whose G.B. Guadagnini violin Mathieu van Bellen has the honour of playing. Van Bellen and the Epstein brothers Omri on piano and Ori on cello now launch their ambitious project of recording the complete Beethoven piano trios. The first instalment contains the Op. 1 trios (Nos. 1 and 3), the first compositions by the young Beethoven who had left his native Bonn to study with Haydn in Vienna in 1792. Although Beethoven did not write a concerto for a wind instrument, he did compose a great deal of chamber music for them, including the Trio in B flat for piano, clarinet and cello (1798), although designing it so that the clarinet part could also be performed on the violin. The playful theme of the variations in the finale earned the trio it's nickname, "Gassenhauer"; (street or folk song).

... Romanticism is not the bloodless intellectual commitment to a program, but the expression of my most profound mind and soul." Sergei Bortkiewicz This deeply personal attitude toward Romanticism encapsulates the artistic philosophy that sustained Ukrainian composer Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952) through the turbulent tides of the early 20th century: the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the unrelenting horrors of the Second World War. Anchored in a deep sense of nostalgia, his works evoke a world imbued with dreams and elegance a stark contrast to the chaos that surrounded him. The composer's life and career reflect the multiethnic, multilingual, and politically complex tapestries of Ukraine during his time. This album is dedicated to the city of Kharkiv the hometown of both the composer and the pianist featured on this recording. Hailed by The New York Times as a pianist of a fiery sensibility and warm touch, Anna Shelest continues her collaboration with the legendary conductor Neeme Jarvi with this release. Their previous recordings featuring the complete works for piano and orchestra by Anton Rubinstein have been praised by Gramophone Magazine for their "... power and agility... effortless effect... nuanced and incisive all around.

The two composers heard on this album, Giovanni Gabrieli (1553-1612) and Giovanni Bonato (born in 1961) have more in common than their first names: both hail from the Veneto in north-east Italy - there is no documentation of Gabrieli's birth, but he was probably Venetian, and Bonato was born in nearby Schio. Their music, too, is conceived in terms of it's sound in space, with Gabrieli using the cori spezzati that sang from the opposing galleries of St Mark's Basilica in Venice, and Bonato employing cori spazzializati to build a spatial dimension into the music itself. Juxtaposed, their styles offer a striking contrast, with Gabrieli's bold declamations set against Bonato's shifting, timeless suspensions.

Jose Elizondo is a multifaceted Mexican composer. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at Harvard University. In the field of technology, Jose works full-time as an engineer in a company that specializes in speech recognition technology systems. As a composer, Jose writes chamber and orchestral music in a style that is lyrical and expressive, often drawing inspiration from Latin American folk music.

Discovering Wilfred HeatonPremiere recordings of major instrumental works by a remarkable yet overlooked English composer Wilfred Heaton (1918-2000) is a name well-revered in brass band circles, but nearly unknown in the wider world of classical music.�Discovering Wilfred Heaton�seeks to change that with no less than seven premiere recordings from pianists Murray McLachlan and Rose McLachlan, tenor James Gilchrist, clarinetist Linda Merrick, and flutist Alex Jakeman. The album is anchored by the first recording of Heaton's monumental Piano Sonata, which was performed in 2024 to rapturous applause by Murray McLachlan at Manchester's Stoller Hall. The Sonata, composed in the 1950s, is a work of striking ambition and depth. Harmonically daring, emotionally raw, and technically formidable, it stands comparison with the great mid-century sonatas of Bartok and Prokofiev. From the muscular counterpoint of it's opening, through a grief-tinged slow movement and a dazzling finale, Heaton's sonata reveals a powerful, individual voice he was fearless in embracing big themes, bold melodies, and contemporary idioms. Also featured are first recordings of the�Three Pieces for Piano�(1954), and the poignant piano suite�Pilgrim Reflections, adapted from Heaton's mystery play�Pilgrim's Song. A selection of Heaton's rarely-heard�songs written in his youth and again in later life are performed here by the acclaimed tenor�James Gilchrist, accompanied by�Rose McLachlan. Together, these works illuminate Heaton's stylistic evolution: his command of bitonality, rhythmic complexity, and melodic invention, rooted in a deep understanding of Bach and Brahms, and influenced by Walton, Hindemith, Bartok and Stravinsky. Heaton's career was shaped by a lifelong tension between personal conviction and professional ambition. A deeply private Yorkshireman, he turned away from a mainstream musical path after early promise studying with Matyas Seiber and submitting works to the Society for the Promotion of New Music choosing instead a life of teaching, reflection, and selective composition. The result is a body of work of exceptional quality, much of it unpublished or unheard until now. This album is not only a significant act of musical archaeology by Heaton's biographer and editor Paul Hindmarsh� - it is a compelling argument for Heaton's inclusion among Britain's most original post-war composers. Track highlights:-Piano Sonata (premiere recording) - Murray McLachlan, piano-Three Pieces for Piano (1954)-Pilgrim Reflections (suite for solo piano) For fans of:�Bartok, Britten, Prokofiev, William Walton, Elisabeth Lutyens, early Tippett. An essential discovery for collectors, performers, and listeners drawn to British 20th-century repertoire beyond the usual names.

Leading British critic Stephen Johnson called Poul Ruders "The Richard Strauss of the computer-aged orchestra", and indeed the Ruders six symphonies, collected here for the first time, sparkle with vivid color and brilliant orchestral virtuosity. Ruders is best known for his score to the opera "The Handmaid's Tale", based on Margaret Atwood's dystopian American tale, produced by opera companies throughout Europe and North America.

Another discovery unearthed by Brilliant Classics, and another name to add to the library of French-Baroque masters, from the voraciously inquisitive mind and virtuoso hands of Fernando de Luca. Who was Hubert Renotte (1704-1745)? He was born and died in the Belgian city of Liege, and for the last decade of his life served as the titular organist of the cathedral there. Accordingly he wrote a good deal of church music, which remains as overlooked as his output for keyboard. This in itself encompasses not only organ music but the distinctively Franco-Italian style of the harpsichord pieces presented for the first time on record in the present album. The C major Suite is launched in dazzling style with 'Les Roulades et Harpeggio', living up to it's title with cascades of sequences up and down the keyboard. Renotte must have been quite the technician, as well as a composer of great taste and refinement. Perhaps he had a sense of humour, too, to judge from the third movement of the suite: 'Les Bagatelles Ou Les Folies de Liege & Menuet en Suite Des Bagatelles'. Again, true to the title, Renotte presents a series of sharply etched, fantastical sketches, which we might now hear as proto-Beethovenian in their oblique and disconcerting wit. The Suite concludes with, literally, 'Le Torrent', another sparkling cataract of notes. Whether or not Renotte ever intended them to be played in sequence this way - the music survives in manuscript, and there is no sign that they were published - the other pieces are also gathered up by key signature. There are 17 such pieces in D major, including a 'Pastorella' whose charming character belongs to the association of the key with country manners. On this new recording, Fernando de Luca plays a modern copy by Claudio Capone of a Blanchet harpsichord from 1754. While Jos van Immerseel recorded an LP-length selection of Renotte's works, this is the first time that the composer's surviving keyboard music has been recorded complete. The album represents another feather in the cap for a musician who has done a great deal to revive forgotten names from 18th-century music with complete surveys of their music on Brilliant Classics, among them Dufour, Foucquet, Jollage and Siret. '[De Luca] thinks outside of the box, and he clearly is a man with discerning tastes. These extend to his playing, which is clear-headed and disciplined, but never rigid. "Charm" is such an overused word, but I cannot think of a better one to describe this music and these performances.' (Fanfare on the Jollage album, January 2024)