Tenor Haitham Haidar's debut solo album Zaytoun (meaning 'Olive' in Arabic) is a captivating collection of beautiful Baroque and Arabic songs, interlaced with poetry and musical improvisations, an exploration of the intersection between Baroque and Arabic music. Whether it be through instrumentation, ornamentation, or vocal production, Zaytoun highlights the natural connections between what we generally view as separate worlds. Haidar pairs Baroque arias and songs by Monteverdi, Purcell and Bach, with the traditional Arabic songs which were his first introduction to music. He has added arabic instrumentation to some of these Baroque standards, and even translated a Bach aria into Arabic, incorporating Arabic style into the Baroque structure. Alongside the music, are three poetry tracks (from Gibran Khalil Gibran's The Prophet) read over beautifully performed oud improvisation by Abdul-Wahab Kayyali. These tracks (prelude, intermezzo, and postlude) help present the music to follow and shape Haidar's narrative of his own immigrant story in the unique intertwining of Arabic and Baroque music. "As an Arab immigrant, life continues to be a journey of exploration of home, of belonging and this musical project encompasses all parts of my identity, allowing them to live and shine within one sphere rather than compartmentalized sections of myself." Haitham Haidar is a Lebanese-Palestinian Canadian tenor highly sought out for his musicality, "standout presence", and sensitive storytelling. He is a proud graduate of Yale's Institute of Sacred Music, McGill's Schulich School of Music, and the University of British Columbia and currently resides in Montreal, Quebec. Haitham is praised for his 'musical and linguistic versatility' and his 'bright' and 'innately lyrical voice' and enjoys performing oratorio, opera, and chamber music across North America, Europe, and Asia. His recordings as a soloist with the Conspirare and Skylark ensembles have received multiple GRAMMY� nominations.

The fourth and final volume in Gilbert Rowland's acclaimed Froberger series completes the landmark recording project on specialist early music label Athene. This double album is the latest instalment of Rowland's authoritative traversal of the complete Harpsichord Suites by Johann Jakob Froberger - a composer of profound influence whose innovations shaped the very form of the Baroque suite later adopted by Bach and Handel. Praised for it's "glorious sound" and "energy and a good forward drive", the series has garnered widespread critical recognition. Recorded in the sympathetic acoustic of Holy Trinity Church, Weston, in October 2024, the album reunites Rowland with engineer John Taylor, whose audiophile-standard production has underpinned the previous volumes. Rowland's playing combines historical insight with expressive vitality, delivering performances marked by "impeccable clarity, flawless articulation, and period-perfect embellishments". His interpretations illuminate the elegance and inventiveness of Froberger's writing, making this collection an essential reference for enthusiasts and scholars of early keyboard music. This release is a vital addition for fans of Froberger, Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, and historically informed performances, offering both continuity for collectors and a compelling entry point into one of the Baroque's most fascinating keyboard oeuvres.

As well as being internationally recognized as a leading interpreter of music new and old, Peter Sheppard Sk�rved is the only violinist to have performed on the personal violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. In this new series, he plays music on these and many more instruments, many of which only he has access to. Probably the best known work of J.J. Vilsma�r, his set of six partitas of 1715 are perfect and relatively early examples of the baroque dance suite, and have found more popularity than many other contemporary works for the solo violin. Peter plays a superb instrument labelled 'Amati Brothers' but in fact made by Girolamo (his brother had died by 1610) with the help of his son and successor Niccol�; it was probably one of the last violins on which Girolamo worked as he died in 1630. 1629 was the year in which the Great Plague swept through Italy; Nicol� found himself a lucky survivor and inheritor of the great Amati tradition. The spectacular instrument has a spruce front and single-piece maple back, with scroll and ribs in the early Cremona fashion. Sk�rved says that it's extraordinary qualities (he has played it since 2013) have profoundly influenced his love for the violin and his understanding of what it can do. The violin is held in the collection of the Royal Academy of Music in London.

As well as being internationally recognized as a leading interpreter of music new and old, Peter Sheppard Sk�rved is the only violinist to have performed on the personal violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. On this recording he plays a fabulous instrument made by Martin Leopold Widhalm II in 1782 with a bow by Fran�ois Tourte around 1775. Peter's work is celebrated worldwide and he has made many recordings for Athene and, with contemporary music, for it's sister Divine Art group label M�tier, both as soloist and with the Kreutzer Quartet and the ensemble Longbow. Julian Perkins is one of Britain's most accomplished early-music specialists and with his ensembles Sounds Baroque has worked with many top singers and actors. He has also directed the Academy of Ancient Music and has presented concerts and operas around the UK. Here he plays a square piano of 1812 by the Clementi family. Franz Schubert had two approaches to the violin - one a particularly virtuosic and fiendish style which evolved from his earliest orchestral works through to his late G major String Quartet. The other is far more subtle, using a narrower range of notes and extremes, and here in the 1816 Sonatas, revealed in a perfect balance between the two instruments in a technically and musically concise form. This concision drew publisher Diabelli to call the works 'Sonatinas' and they have been wrongly called such for 200 years; however this misappellation is almost an insult to the fascinating and wonderfully balanced works that they are.

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Brilliant Japanese pianist Mariko Terashi has loved the music of the baroque since a very early age. This new album presents her beautifully warm yet virtuosic playing on a modern piano of classics by three composers central to the development of baroque keyboard music: the French masters Couperin and Rameau, and the Portuguese Carlos de Seixas. This is truly a superlative concert program. This album was released to great success in Japan only (Nami Records) in 2016, and it is now receiving it's global release. Mariko Terashi studied in France and has lived in the UK since 1995 where she enjoys an active concert career as soloist and chamber musician. She is particularly interested in piano adaptations of harpsichord music of the 17th and 18th centuries and has been described as 'offering fresh insights into the music' and displaying 'tremendous emotional depth'.

As well as being internationally recognized as a leading interpreter of music new and old, Peter Sheppard Sk�rved is the only violinist to have performed on the personal violins of Viotti, Paganini, Joachim, Kreisler and Ole Bull. In this new series, he plays music on these and many more instruments, many of which only he has access to. This double album contains 96 (short) pieces which are all of the works for solo instrument contained in the Klagenfurt Manuscript, a substantial folio dated circa 1685 and which the violinist believes may have been composed by a nun - we will probably never know. He plays these works which mainly consist of individual movements of a style typically found in the baroque Dance Suite; some seem to 'fit' into multi-movement suites, others clearly do not. For the purposes of this recording each movement is listed and tracked separately. This is the world premiere recording. Peter plays a wonderful Stradivari instrument of 1685 (thus exactly contemporary with the music). In those days violins were made in several sizes and this one measures 328mm (the modern standard being 350mm). It's design and construction is clearly influenced by Nicola Amati. Though 'modernized; in the 19th century, it is hear played with a period-design bow and gut strings for authenticity. The violin is from the historic instruments collection of the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, England.

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Gilbert Rowland is one of Europe's most senior and accomplished exponents of the harpsichord. Following his critically acclaimed 6-album series of the Harpischord Suites of Handel for Divine Art, he moved to the Athene imprint specializing now in baroque music and 'period' instruments for his well received album of Suites by Johann Mattheson. This 2-album set is the first volume in a projected complete survey of the Harpsichord Suites by Johann Jakob Froberger, whose organ and harpsichord music is individual in nature and ground breaking - he was one of the first composers to settle the 'dance-movement' style of Suite taken up by Couperin, Bach, and Handel among many others. There are 12 Suites in this collection. Gilbert Rowland plays a 2 manual French style harpsichord made by Andrew Wooderson after an instrument by Goemans (Paris, 1750).

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