Baseball, Bach, a disused railway line and the misuse of music in Iraqi prisons might be unexpected inspirations behind the work of a composer who is an Oxford professor by day. But the piano music of Martyn Harry - born in Crawley, West Sussex, in 1964 - proves to be a wild, kaleidoscopic mix of just such unlikely influences: Satie, Sorabji, American minimalism, Prokofiev, Silvestrov and more, all intended to exercise the technique of his good friend, the fireball pianist Jonathan Powell, whose early death in December 2025 shocked the musical world. There is a gleeful, almost manic quality to much of this music that found a counterpart in the unflagging energy of Powell's playing. A song-cycle setting six early Anna Akhmatova poems likewise taps into the tension she found in intimacy, releasing a surprising degree of passion.

Beloved songs by Stanislaw Moniuszko are presented here in a striking new sound world, inspired by the tradition of 19th-century home music-making, where the piano gives way to plucked instruments-lutes and guitars. This bold artistic vision is further enriched by masterful spoken interpretations of poetry by writers close to the composer, delivered by acclaimed actor Krzysztof Gosztyla. Two contrasting vocal voices-a light, luminous female timbre and a strong, resonant male voice-come together to tell a story in which wit and humor intertwine with moments of tender, nostalgic reflection.

Lamenting Earth, the latest release from GRAMMY� Award-winning tenor Nicholas Phan, in collaboration with The Jasper Quartet and his long-time performing partner pianist Myra Huang, explores humanity's interaction with nature as expressed through composers of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Franz Schubert's songs evoke images of water, stillness, and solitude as mirrors of human emotion. Vaughan Williams's On Wenlock Edge, drawing on A. E. Housman's poetry, places the individual within vast cycles of time and landscape - hills, wind, and earth - which persist beyond human joy and grief alike. Ives's Housatonic at Stockbridge memories, hymns, and the river blend together into a shimmering meditation on transcendence, where nature becomes a spiritual threshold rather than a backdrop. 21st century responses include Patrick Castillo's Skyline Palimpsest, an homage to New York City, once his hometown, that reflects on how nature's effects may shape the future of the metropolis. The title track by Canadian-born composer Vivian Fung, pairs American writer Claire Wahmanholm's poem "O" - which has been described as a lament, an elegy, and a clarion call to action - with Gen Z-ers urgent written responses to climate change. Nicholas Phan's burnished tone and passion for vocal chamber music bring vivid beauty to the range of repertoire that shares a central theme. Lamenting Earth is released to coincide with World Earth Day (22 April 2026).

SOMM Recordings adds to it's already extensive catalogue of music by the British composer and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Stephen Dodgson�(1924�- 2013) with a third volume of his songs titled Turn Ye to Me. SOMM's previous Dodgson song releases include The Peasant Poet [SOMMCD 0659], hailed by Opera Today as "an incredibly interesting and engaging disc... done excellent service by all the performers;" and The Distances Between [SOMMCD 0673], about which the�British Music Society�said "the performances (by some prestigious names) and the warm, lifelike recording are impeccable." The performers on this third volume of Dodgson songs include prior SOMM�artists also featured in Volumes I and II: Irish soprano Ailish Tynan and British mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, both past winners of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition; doctor-turned-tenor James Gilchrist, who is noted for his forthright and passionate style; Roderick Williams, one of the most sought-after baritones of his generation; guitarist and Dodgson specialist, Mark Eden; and GRAMMY� Award-winning pianist, Christopher Glynn. The recital opens with a first release of Three Songs to words of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who died by suicide in 1849 aged 45. Tandaradei is his translation of the 13th-century German love poem, Under der linden, by�Walther von der Vogelweide. Dirge and The Old Crow of Cairo are from Beddoes's posthumously published drama Death's Jest Book. Three single songs include settings of Andrew Marvell's pastoral poem The Mower to the Glow-Worms; George Meredith's sonnet Winter Heavens; and Matthew Prior's poem Daphne to Apollo inspired by Greek myth and set to guitar accompaniment. Two short solo piano pieces are from a set of Eight Fanciful Pieces-included in full on SOMM's 2024 release of piano music by Dodgson [SOMMCD 0684.] The marcato (marked) tempo of Il Zoppo suggests an irregular gait, while the contemplative Mirage hints at an Impressionistic style. Dodgson composed three sets of Bush Ballads based on texts by Australian poets and Australian folk verses. This release of the third series is a first recording. All Got a Mate sets an anonymous text as a folk duet. Rollicking, but steady is the tempo marking for Song of the Squatters to words by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson. The group closes with a quieter setting of Waitin'-a-While by Jim Grahame. Two single songs from 1950 include The Stone, marked Moderato: Calmo, to words adapted from Hal Summers, and the title song, Turn Ye to Me, which is a gently haunting Hebridean air with lyrics by Christopher North. The recital closes with London Lyrics, a cycle of five songs for tenor and guitar set to poetry by five different poets across four centuries-including Wilfred Owen and Cecil Day-Lewis-all inspired by Dodgson's home city. The composer draws expressive and captivating range from voice and guitar, exquisitely executed here by James Gilchrist and Mark Eden.

The compositional career of Robin Stevens, Welsh-born (in 1958) and Manchester-based, is divided into two periods, separated by a period of illness. The first mainly produced chamber music and works for the church that employed him; restored to health, he found an appetite for larger forms, writing three substantial concertos and a number of other orchestral works. Stevens' substantial, four-movement Cello Concerto is something of a symphony-with-cello, casting the orchestra in kaleidoscopic discussion with the soloist. Here the Concerto sits between a charming orchestral miniature and a searching symphonic poem.

Spanning her debut in the 1890s to the esoteric vision of her later years, this world premiere recording features a superb line-up of rising Danish singers, breathing life into Tekla Griebel Wandall's (1869-1953) vivid songs. From the macabre irony of a -Heinrich Heine setting to the profound emotional journey of J.P. Jacobsen's poetry, Wandall grapples with seemingly irreconcilable opposites while toying with both form and feeling.

The Swedish composer Moses Pergament (1893-1977) - Finnish-born of Lithuanian-Jewish stock - chose the poems he set to music from a wide range of sources: those heard in this first-ever recording of his songs are mostly in Swedish but also in a variety of other languages. They likewise cover the gamut of human emotion, from buoyant folksongs and children's verses via lyrical expressions of love and loss to stark meditations on suffering and death. Many of Pergament's poets evoke the natural world in their expression of emotion, but his music never yields to sentimentality: he treats each song as a microcosm, expressed with drama and dignity. Time was when Pergament's songs were performed by singers of the calibre of Birgit Nilsson, Elisabeth S�derstr�m and Nicolai Gedda; it is high time they were rediscovered.

MM Recordings presents a seductive and captivating release of Russian art songs, an intriguing juxtaposition of Russian Romances for voice and piano by Anton Arensky (1861-1906) and his student Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). The recital, "performed with great charm and sympathy" (Opera Today), features two artists making their debut for SOMM: lyric coloratura soprano Anastasia Prokofieva-a rising young star in the opera world, described as "striking" by Opera Magazine-and London-based conductor, pianist, and vocal coach Sergey Rybin, an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, where he studied under SOMM recording artist Malcolm Martineau. Sergey Rybin's excellent notes, together with full texts and translations, help bring these neglected gems to light and highlight the inner connection between Arensky and Rachmaninoff. While there is no doubt that Rachmaninoff was possessed of a unique and innate musical gift, he acknowledged the profound influence of his teacher and mentor Arensky, who was his professor of harmony, counterpoint, and free composition at the Moscow Conservatory between 1885 and 1888, when Rachmaninoff was still a teenager. Arensky's writing-and Rachmaninoff's, too-is full of eminently singable melodies that are deeply connected both to bel canto and to a Russian folk aesthetic. Sergey Rybin also makes the point that a certain virtuosic flair in the piano parts of these rom�nsy, by both the professor and the pupil, "are unmistakably the branches of the same stylistic tree." Anton Arensky studied composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and he was just twenty-one when he began teaching harmony and counterpoint-and later, instrumentation and free composition-at the Moscow Conservatory. While his role as a teacher may well be his most lasting contribution, he remained active as a composer of operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and piano works. He also wrote fifty-seven rom�nsy, which show his affinity for intimate, emotional expression. Included among the thirteen art songs by Arensky on this release are the Five Romances, Op. 70 from 1900, and the five-song cycle Reminiscence, Op. 71, circa 1905. Before Rachmaninoff left Russia permanently in 1917, he composed a total of eighty-three rom�nsy for voice and piano. His gift for lush melodies, expansive emotional range, and exceptionally difficult piano works makes him one of the last great Romantic pianist-composers, and these stellar qualities are evident in his art songs. Thirteen are presented on this programme. The earliest, from his Six Songs, Op. 8 written in 1893, include Child! You are as beautiful as a flower and Dream. The Twelve Songs, Op. 21, composed in 1902, include some of his finest vocal writing, Lilacs being an exquisite example. Rachmaninoff's last compositions in the genre of rom�nsy were the Six Songs, Op. 38 in 1916; four from this set close the recital.

Mezzo-soprano Hermine May and pianist Manuel Lange invite you into Wagner's world of Tristan and Isolde where insatiable yearnings are awakened, passions heightened and where the fervent desire to transcend reality finds supreme love beyond death in Liebestod.

Hans Zender's reimagining of Schubert's Winterreise transforms a familiar piano cycle into a vivid orchestral journey, blending intimacy and intensity. Tenor Allan Clayton and conductor Nicholas Collon lead Aurora Orchestra through a landscape of fractured memories, where folk-like simplicity collides with Mahlerian grandeur and Berg-like expressionism. Zender preserves Schubert's vocal line but enriches the sound world with guitar, accordion, melodicas, and striking orchestral effects that evoke storms, frozen tears, and fleeting dreams. This interpretation magnifies the cycle's raw truth about love, loss, and despair, offering audiences a deeply modern, immersive encounter with one of classical music's most haunting masterpieces

Toivo Kuula (1883-1918) is one of the many composers who died at a tragically young age - 34 in his case: he was hit by a bullet fired after a brawl at a victory celebration at the end of the Finnish Civil War. The immediacy of the music he wrote during his short life points to the immensity of the loss not only to Finnish culture but to music more generally - as this second album of two, presenting his entire output of songs for solo voice and piano, makes abundantly clear. The range of moods captured here is striking; the most passionate of these songs generate an operatic intensity in their short span, in a style that balances directness of expression and rich late-Romantic harmonies.

Mario Pilati was born in Naples on 16 October 1903. His life was very short, intense and troubled. Together with his siblings, he was introduced as a child into the study of music, as was the custom in Neapolitan upper-middle- class families. He immediately showed a great talent as a pianist and an overflowing creativeness: at the age of 13 he had already decided that music was to be his profession. His father attempted to thwart his artistic calling by making him enrol in a technical school, but, with the help of his mother, he managed to go on with his musical studies: at the early age of 20 he took a diploma with honours in composition at the Conservatorio S. Pietro a Majella of Naples, under the guidance of Antonio Savasta. He immediately looked for a job, in order to become independent of his family: his father not only disapproved of his musical career, but also never accepted his engagement with Antonietta Margiotta, whom he married in 1928 and with whom he had three daughters, Annamaria, Laura and Giovanna. The award-winning specialists Manuela Custer and Raffaele Cortesi (already protagonists of the recent recording Liriche su testi di Dante, tc 840003) are the interpreters of the rediscovery of the vocal chamber music of the brilliant Neapolitan composer.

'Little Wanderer', from William Blake's dream world, seemed the perfect title for an album in which we are surrounded by myriad landscapes in songs by Benjamin Britten, Imogen Holst and Daniel Kidane. Since meeting on our first day at the Royal College of Music, we have long enjoyed programming Britten's masterful folk song reimaginings, and we adore the texts and music in his powerful Hardy cycle, Winter Words. It has been a joy to discover songs by Imogen Holst, Britten's close friend and assistant, and we are proud to be able to make the first recording of Dan's Songs of Illumination, commissioned for us by Leeds Lieder in 2018. For over a decade, song in English has played a major part in our musical lives and performing relationship, and we are delighted to present this programme together.

This Ondine debut album by the award-winning Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Justina Gringyte, one of the foremost rising stars of the opera world, and pianist Malcolm Martineau is her first solo album and the complete recording of Georges Bizet's (1838-1875) long-forgotten masterpiece, Vingt Melodies (20 Songs), Op. 21. Year 2025 marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Bizet, one of the greatest French composers of all time. During his short career of little more than twenty years Bizet composed a substantial quantity of music, including 15 operas. Bizet has been compared with Mozart in his sensitivity to the human voice and understanding of it's expressive potential. Several of Bizet's operas predate his twenty songs Opus 21, written between 1854 and 1872. Anyone new to these songs, a collection including many masterpieces, may wonder how music of such consistent quality could be so neglected! Clearly, they must be ranked among Bizet's most representative works.

In this debut album, baritone Jonas Muller and the Tomasi Musso Guitar Duo have recorded Schubert's Winterreise. The arrangement for two guitars creates a special new three-dimensional chamber music constellation, which certainly demands a different approach to singing from the singer, who must now internalise what the piano used to bring out. This is particularly in keeping with the idea that Winterreise is not simply a collection of songs composed by a travelling French horn player, but that the existential encounter between the stranger and the hurdy-gurdy man gives rise to new songs that have never been heard before and can only be sung together.

MDG's multi-award-winning Les Six anthology series showcases the entire spectrum of an epoch. This installment is dedicated to Louis Durey, the eccentric outsider of Le groupe des Six. Holger Falk's incredibly agile baritone and tremendous tonal range accompanied by Steffen Schleiermacher's sensitivity, verve and virtuosity on the piano yet again take the benchmark up a notch in art song excellence.

For generations, the noble family of the House of Szechenyi have played a decisive role in shaping Hungary's destiny. Katharina Ruckgaber and Tamas Egresi, accompanied by Helmut Deutsch, have compiled a representative selection of songs from the large repertoire of poems and compositions; an impressive testimony to the wide-ranging interests and talents of one of Europe's most important aristocratic families.

The settings heard on this disc meld together the talents of two outstanding creative artists, the composer Paul Honey and the poet Gregory Warren Wilson, producing a collection in which the inner life of the listener is both confronted and empowered. Warren Wilson's metaphysically-infused set of haiku, Earth's Imagined Corners, derives it's title from the seventh of John Donne's Divine Meditations, in an evocative setting for sixteen unaccompanied voices and solo cello. It was conceived as a sequence of four individual movements (Willows, Leatherback, Fireflies, Pomegranates), three of which invoke the fundamental elemental forces at work on our planet - water, earth, and fire. The final constant explored here is time, that boundless exponential continuum within which the human experience itself unfolds.

Werner Heinrich Schmitt, born in Mannheim in 1961, began to study the piano in boyhood, and soon started to compose as well. Since then he has earned his living as a pianist, writing music as time permitted. This first album of his works reveals a composer of considerable substance, particularly in the two moving song-cycles that book-end this album. The sensitivity and resourcefulness of Schmitt's aural imagination are confirmed in the chamber and piano pieces heard here. Some are infused with joy, others with sorrow, but they all speak a musical language that aims to speak to the listener directly.

During his lifetime, Oskar Merikanto (1868-1924) was the most popular composer at Finnish homes. Even today, in events such as weddings or funerals, his pieces are widely heard and performed. Merikanto was an excellent pianist and organist and possessed a particular gift in writing memorable melodies. Enjoying great popularity, Merikanto wrote over 200 songs, a number of duets and also several choral works, and nearly 200 piano works. Year 2024 marks the 100th anniversarys from the death of Oskar Merikanto. To celebrate this anniversary year, baritone Waltteri Torikka is presenting 29 melodies by Oskar Merikanto through this album. Signed by Warner in 2015, Waltteri Torikka topped the Finnish pop charts for 3 weeks in 2018, performs frequently in European opera festivals and music festivals, and has also performed at the BBC Proms.

The composer Peter Gast (1854-1918) - real name Heinrich Koselitz - is best remembered as a friend and posthumous editor of Friedrich Nietzsche rather than for his own music, which was kept under lock and key in communist East Germany for half a century; only recently has it begun to be performed and recorded. 'Il faut mediterraniser la musique', Nietzsche argued, and Gast's Lieder, in a reaction against Wagnerian gloom, do just that, singing of love, life, springtime, drinking and youthful ardour; even the more wistful songs have a spring in their step.

Songs in Flight features world premiere recordings of Shawn E. Okpebholo's complete song cycle for which the album is named, along with four additional art songs-one from each of his other song cycles - building upon the themes and messages of his work, performed by Grammy-winning and -nominated artists known for their dedication to cultural and historical music projects. Drawing inspiration from the Freedom on the Move database of advertisements for runaway enslaved individuals, Songs in Flight explores their untold stories over twelve songs with texts by poets Tsitsi Jaji, Crystal Simone Smith, and Tyehimba Jess. The work incorporates styles including spirituals, folk tunes, elegies, and protest songs, each song offering a unique historical narrative and emotional depth. A celebrated figure in contemporary classical music, Okpebholo has been described as "devastatingly beautiful" by The Washington Post. Songs in Flight continues his mission to create impactful, narrative-driven music, bringing new dimensions to historical stories. Performers include Grammy Award-winning multi-instrumentalist, Rhiannon Giddens, celebrated for her work in reviving African American folk traditions; Grammy-winning baritone Will Liverman, praised as a "voice for this historic moment" (Washington Post); Grammy-nominated countertenor Reginald Mobley, renowned for his powerful interpretations across diverse repertoire; Karen Slack, acclaimed soprano with a "sizeable voice that captures vacillating emotions" (New York Times); and pianist Paul Sanchez, praised as "the ideal interpreter... performing with clear virtuosity" (Fanfare). Saxophonist Julian Velasco, winner of Cedille's inaugural Emerging Artist Competition, joins in two of the songs following the cycle. Honoring the resilience of historical figures while acknowledging modern-day struggles with racial injustice, including references to Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin, Okpebholo's work reclaims the humanity and voice of these people, making their lives and struggles resonate through this intricate, soulful collection of songs.

Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937), one of the most influential French organists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, jokingly referred to himself as the substitute organist of the church of St. Sulpice, Paris, despite his 64-year tenure there. While best known for his ten organ symphonies, Widor composed in a wide variety of sacred and secular genres: chamber music, orchestral works, ballet, operatic music, works for piano, and most importantly for this recording, melodies. In his day, Widor won respect as a composer, organist, professor, and cultural ambassador of France. In 1890 he became Cesar Franck's immediate successor as Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatoire, and, in 1896, he succeeded Theodore Dubois as Conservatoire Professor of Composition. Widor's students in organ and composition included such distinguished names as Marcel Dupre, Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Darius Milhaud, Albert Schweitzer, and Edgard Varese. Widor composed over 100 songs which have been overshadowed by his immensely popular organ works. His genius with melody, comprehensive piano writing, and discerning poetic text settings distinguish him as a gifted song composer unusually sensitive to the capabilities of the voice. Throughout his extensive career, Widor was concerned with achieving the best possible musical result in his compositions and continually developed, revised, and republished his works. A publishing custom of the time was to group sets of six songs in a single opus number; however, the songs of each of Widor's sets are not necessarily related by poet or theme. The songs were not intended to be presented as a cohesive cycle. With that in mind, the songs in this recording are not presented by chronological opus numbers. Widor's melodies exhibit a wide variety of musical influences, from the works of the German lieder composers to French vocal genres, such as the bergerette and opera lyrique. His songs range from straight-forward strophic settings to intricate through-composed forms. Widor's harmonic language can find beauty in purely diatonic sonorities while others take advantage of the more remote modulations. Elements of Orientalism, popular in his day, color the exotic musical language and mood of several songs. Widor's songs represent his quest for a perfect marriage of music and text. His melodies feature the poetry of such beloved and respected literary figures as Victor Hugo, Theodore de Banville, Rene-Francois Sully-Prudhomme, Paul Bourget, and Pierre-Jules Theophile Gautier. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Widor - thrillingly - was inspired to include poems by women whose work he admired among his song settings. Some of them are contained in this album's offerings. To quote Widor biographer John Near, "We experience very great charm when happy fortune permits us to hear a page of Mr. Widor, harmoniously vying with Victor Hugo, Sully Prudhomme, or Paul Bourget."

As with many other Australian composers, the music of Linda Kouvaras (b. 1960) has a strong sense of wide-open spaces, expressed in lyrical, elegiac melodic lines that soar over freewheeling Lisztian piano textures and atmospheric echoes of French Impressionism. In this second album of a series presenting all of her instrumental works, chamber music and songs written since 1991

Multi award-winning Peruvian-Austrian tenor Juan Diego Flórez has now founded his own label. The first album of the label to be released is dedicated to the zarzuela genre. It also marks the star tenor‘s first recording with Sinfonía por el Perú Youth Orchestra and Choir, an organization that forms part of the social project he founded and supports. This first recording is led by conductor Guillermo García Calvo, who looks back on a long international career and has been Music Director of the Teatro de la Zarzuela between 2020 and 2024. A tour to major European arts centers featuring selected romances and orchestral pieces accompanies the release.

Juan Diego Flórez has made a name for himself as a bel canto specialist in particular. By turning to “zarzuela,” he returns to the genre with which he opened up the world of opera as a young singer and composer of popular songs. “These romances full of passion and emotion represent an almost unique opportunity for Spanish and Latin American tenors to sing in their mother tongue,” he says, describing his close connection to this Spanish form of opéra comique or operetta, which is very well-known and popular in the Hispanic world but less represented in other countries. By founding his own label, Juan Diego Flórez pursues the goal of documenting his artistic visions in a self-determined way.

The next releases include both solo albums, orchestra recitals, as well as complete operas. Having his own label also gives him the opportunity to support projects with Sinfonía por el Perú as well as promote young artists. “This recording production certainly fills me with happiness and pride. Firstly, because it represents my first recording with the Youth Orchestra and Choir of Sinfonía por el Perú - a social movement that seeks to improve the lives of Peruvian children and youngsters through the collective practice of music; secondly, because it was done in Lima, my hometown; and thirdly, because it constitutes the launch of my own record label." Juan Diego Flórez