Following his recordings of Tchaikovsky and Barber concertos (BIS-2440), honoured with a "Diapason d'or", Gramophone's "Editor's Choice" and BBC Music Magazine's "Concerto Choice", and Nielsen and Sibelius (BIS-2620), awarded Gramophone's "Editor's Choice", Swedish-Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene now takes on three of the most popular concertante works for violin in the entire repertoire, composed in three different eras. Felix Mendelssohn's Concerto in E minor needs no introduction: this masterpiece from the composer's mature period is one of the best known and most beloved works in all of classical music thanks to it's freshness, originality of writing, and magnificent themes. Max Bruch's First Violin Concerto, another pillar of the violin repertoire, is appreciated for it's natural lyricism and memorable melodies. In these two works, Johan Dalene is accompanied by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by it's concertmaster Malin Broman (Mendelssohn) and by Gemma New (Bruch). Imbued with a serene, meditative spirit and a sense of communion with nature, Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending concludes the program. However, the work is not performed here in it's well-known orchestral version, but rather with choir in an arrangement by Paul Drayton. The Swedish Radio Choir is conducted by it's director Kaspars Putnins, a musical partnership whose recordings on BIS have earned numerous awards.

Galina Ustvolskaya was a profoundly original composer, unrivalled in the extremism of her style, who was largely ignored during her lifetime. Fiercely independent, Ustvolskaya created highly expressive, even violent music that sounds like the work of no other composer and reveals no distinct influences, while often being imbued with religiosity or spirituality. Her music has been described as having the 'narrowness of a laser beam capable of piercing metal'. Only after her death was Ustvolskaya's original and uncompromising talent finally recognised. Christian Karlsen and the London Philharmonic Orchestra present here Ustvolskaya's five symphonies. While the first appears superficially traditional (it is the only one for full symphony orchestra), it features two boys singing - through microphones, in a chanting manner - texts that speak of poverty, racism and injustice. Symphonies Nos 2 to 5 break decisively with the traditional mould; each consists of a single, rather short movement, in the manner of theatrical rituals. Written for instrumental combinations as varied as they are unusual, these symphonies became increasingly intransigent as their instrumentation contracted further and further, down to just a handful of instruments in the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. A solo voice appears sporadically, not necessarily for singing, but rather to verbalise a prayer - a prayer asking for forgiveness but not for a better life.

While the three composers featured on this recording are not, in the public perception and sometimes even in that of the performers, among the most significant exponents of Viennese music in the first half of the twentieth century, their remarkably expressive and virtuoso writing is deeply rooted in fin-de-si�cle Vienna. They were banned by the dictatorships of the 1930s and then blacklisted in the aftermath of the Second World War by the young European avant-garde, and it is only in recent years that the beauty and opulence of their works have been rediscovered. Vienna-born conductor Sascha Goetzel writes about the works performed here with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire: 'With Korngold, Schreker and Krenek, we're not just hearing music - we're entering a dialogue between past and present, tradition and rebellion, myth and modernity [...] Korngold embodies the emotional sincerity and creative ambition of the late Romantic tradition. Schreker immerses us in the subconscious - mythical, unstable, and rich in feeling. Krenek breaks through the facade, injecting irony, jazz and fragmentation into the orchestral form [...] In their own ways, each composer pushes back against inherited conventions to discover new languages of sound.'

Three major works for piano and orchestra by English composers, all eschewing the traditional nineteenth- century model of a bravura virtuoso soloist pitted against an orchestra, in distinctive ways. Together with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under George Vass, Clare Hammond presents an original programme that provides a unique perspective on how the piano concerto reflected musical currents in mid-twentieth-century Britain. William Walton's Sinfonia Concertante for Orchestra with Piano Obbligato began as a ballet score. After it was rejected by Sergei Diaghilev, Walton arranged his score into a leaner, more direct and more effective work that reveals the influences of Stravinsky, Poulenc, Rimsky- Korsakov, Borodin and, at times, Elgar. Benjamin Britten's Diversions was commissioned by the left-hand pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Enthusiastic about the challenge of writing for the left hand, Britten devised a work in variation form; he did not seek to conceal the soloist's one-handedness, but revelled in it while still retaining emotion and grandeur. Michael Tippett's Piano Concerto completes the programme. Inspired by a performance of Beethoven's Fourth Concerto, Tippett was convinced that a contemporary concerto could be written, 'in which the piano is used once again for it's poetic capabilities'. In his work, the orchestra does not merely accompany; the principal players shine when they get their opportunity for solos or close dialogue with the soloist.

The three works on this recording bear witness to the changes that took place at the dawn of musical modernism. The reappraisal and reinterpretation of traditional musical genres and innovations led to new ways of organising and addressing the harmonic, melodic, timbral and rhythmic elements of music. Polish composer Karol Szymanowski developed a highly personal musical language that prioritises tone colour, an approach that is perfectly suited to the triptych Mythes, inspired by legends from ancient Greece. Here he developed a new mode of expression, a fusion of the violin and the piano into a single entity with the use of extended violin techniques. The Hungarian Bela Bartok assimilated Szymanowski's contribution and composed his two sonatas for violin and piano in quick succession at the beginning of the 1920s. These two works, as daring as they are demanding, skilfully blend the influence of contemporary composers such as Debussy and Schoenberg with elements of Central European folklore. Frank Peter Zimmermann, whose recent recording dedicated to Bartok's two Rhapsodies and Stravinsky's Violin Concerto (BIS-2657) has received international critical acclaim, performs these landmark works with pianist Dmytro Choni, his regular partner since 2023.

Released on the occasion of the Swedish Radio Choir's centenary, this recording brings together works that testify to the richness and the vitality of the internationally acclaimed Swedish choral tradition. The programme features twelve extremely varied works, demonstrating the openness, versatility and flexibility of the Swedish Radio Choir and it's multi-award-winning conductor, Kaspars Putnins. It also pays tribute to the pioneering work of the choir's long-standing choirmaster Eric Ericson, whose work has influenced and inspired composers from many generations. The older works, by Ivar Wideen, Lars Johan Werle, Lars Edlund and Ingvar Lidholm, draw on ancient, secular and religious traditions, from Gregorian chant and madrigals, and combine clear melodic lines, glissandos, chants, whispers and traditional harmonies to create a language that is both modern and accessible. More modern works by Anders Hillborg, Britta Bystrom and Johannes Pollak and explore the human voice and it's possibilities in every conceivable way. Staffan Storm, Ulrika Emanuelsson and Anna-Karin Klockar pay tribute to the great Swedish Romantic Hugo Alfven in pieces composed for the 150th anniversary of his birth. Finally, Arne Lundmark and Jan Sandstrom adapt existing folk and religious pieces and 'expand' the musical content, offering a vision that is both personal and respectful of the original work. The Swedish Radio Choir and Kaspars Putnins invite you to celebrate a century of Swedish musical history.

Pianist Nicolas Stavy, who has already made recordings devoted to works by Boris Tishchenko (BIS-2189) and Dmitri Shostakovich (BIS-2550), now presents the first instalment of a complete survey of Alfred Schnittke's compositions for solo piano. This recording presents works from various periods of the Russian-German composer's career - from the 1950s, which the composer described as the 'years of obscurity', to the 1990s, a time shaped both by world fame and serious illness. While Schnittke wrote relatively little music for the piano, each work reflects - or sometimes anticipates - the phases of the composer's creative development. The Five Preludes and Fugue and the Prelude and Fugue belong to Schnittke's first creative phase, when he was still under the influence of Shostakovich. The Little Piano Pieces, composed for the composer's six-year-old son, are an example of his 'polystylism', juxtaposing and combining music of various styles from the past and present. The Sonata No. 2 and the Five Aphorisms, both from 1990, return to a more ascetic and abstract language, with a bleaker tone, no doubt echoing his serious health problems.

This recording is dedicated to two recent concertos by Kalevi Aho, one of Finland's foremost contemporary composers. The author of a body of work as important as it is varied, Aho enjoys collaborating with exceptional soloists, for whom he composes works that highlight their musical qualities, inventiveness and personality. The Concerto for Alto Flute and Strings features an instrument with a soft tone, well suited as a soloist with a small orchestra of strings alone. The work is in six movements played without interruption, and the soloist, Sharon Bezaly, sometimes switches to the bass flute, which brings a mystical feel to the music. The St Michel Strings and their conductor, Erkki Lasonpalo, contribute to the mysterious atmosphere in which lyrical and dramatic episodes abound. The Double Concerto for Viola, Percussion and Orchestra, entitled 'Moonlight Concerto', was composed at the initiative of a Berlin-based musician couple, violist Hiyoli Togawa and percussionist Alexej Gerassimez. Here we are immersed in a Japanese atmosphere that reveals echoes of the 1,000-year-old tradition of ritualistic gagaku music. In this work, the percussionist plays instruments that are not usually heard in orchestral concerts, such as the moon gong, the waterphone, a hang drum and nine Thai gongs. The Lahti Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Anja Bihlmaier, provides the rich orchestral commentary.

Pianist Peter Friis Johansson has brought together renowned musicians, including violinist Johan Dalene and soprano Sofie Asplund, for a programme that juxtaposes three generations of Swedish composers. The vocal and chamber works performed here testify to the special place these genres occupy in Swedish art music and to the vitality of musical societies in the early twentieth century, which sparked an interest that went far beyond easily digestible music. Andreas Hallen is the oldest of the composers featured here. His Piano Quartet shows great confidence despite being an early work. Like many composers of his generation, Hallen readily incorporates folk elements. Wilhelm Stenhammar produced an important and varied body of work. His Violin Sonata is a work that reflects the ideals of his German education: it is absolute music without any explicit extra-musical narrative content, a 'synthesis of classicism and sensitive poetry', as his first biographer put it. Sara Wennerberg-Reuter is the least-known of the three, and many of her scores remain unpublished. Stockholm's only female organist with a permanent position, she left behind a varied body of work spanning a wide range of styles. She distanced herself from her contemporaries with a musical style that focused on melody, a commodity she felt had by then become scarce.

For the fifth instalment of the critically acclaimed Schubert+ series, Can Cakmur juxtaposes the Viennese composer with his illustrious elder Ludwig van Beethoven, for the first time in this series. After establishing his mastery of the lied genre, Schubert still had to show his full potential in the realm of piano sonatas, a quintessentially Beethovenian form. In his Sonata in A major, D 664, he abandons the traditionally oppositional nature of the sonata in favour of a melody- based narrative in which landscapes appear to change gradually, as if seen from a traveller's perspective, thus offering a conception that is as new as it is personal. Beethoven is represented here by a series of variations, a genre in which he also excelled. The 32 Variations in C minor range from tender yearning to an emotional turmoil reminiscent of the 'Appassionata' Sonata. In the Sonata in C minor, D 958, composed in 1828, the first of his towering final trilogy, Schubert staked his claim to be seen as Beethoven's successor as a writer of piano sonatas. In a work that Can Cakmur sees as a tribute to Beethoven, Schubert achieves a synthesis of the master's influence and the lyricism of his own early sonatas. Just weeks before his death, the younger composer finally sits beside the older master and converses with him on equal terms.

Three works by three women composers from three different countries, each piece with it's own original idiom, are performed here by the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra under the direction of it's dynamic conductor and artistic director Malin Broman. Three works that assuredly deserve a wider audience! The Sea Sketches by Welsh composer Grace Williams open the programme. Inspired by the beaches of Glamorganshire and by it's seascape, this five-movement work seems in constant motion and evolution. One can practically taste the salt spray and feel the power of the waves. The second work is Grazyna Bacewicz's Fourth String Quartet, played here in an arrangement for string orchestra. Bacewicz was an important figure on the Polish music scene in the mid-20th century, and her quartet is an approachable work - something that has undoubtedly contributed to making it her best-known composition - with influences of folk music and passages which, according to Malin Broman, can only be described as heavenly. Vienna-born Johanna Muller-Hermann's String Quartet, also in an arrangement for string orchestra, concludes the programme. Exciting, beautiful and powerful, this work with it's post-romantic language is a testimony to the golden age of Vienna, when the music of Mahler, Strauss and her teacher Zemlinsky reigned supreme.

Sueye Park is no stranger to solo violin recitals. After her recording of the Paganini Caprices (BIS-2282) and a recital entitled Journey through a Century (BIS-2492), both critically acclaimed, she brings us another solo project, Echoes of Exile, an undertaking that finds it's raison d'�tre in today's very turbulent times. Park offers us different perspectives on the topic of exile with works composed between the 1920s and 1950s, by great composers who left their country as a result of political circumstances as well as by others who went into their own inner exile. Two pieces by composers who left their native lands for artistic reasons, Enescu and Ysaye, frame three substantial and very contrasting works by composers forced into exile, either because their existence was threatened or because of a feeling of alienation within their respective countries. The works of Bartok and Ben-Haim show composers who, in their longing for their homelands, succeeded not only in emphasising the value of their culture even more strongly, but also in anchoring it within the environment into which they had entered. Zimmermann's sonata, with it's unique expressive language, evokes the concerns of a young composer in the devastated Germany of the post-war period.

Recently awarded the prestigious Brahms Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society, Kent Nagano and the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, of which he was principal conductor from 2015 until 2025, perform the last two symphonies by the Hamburg-born composer, recorded in concert. The most personal of Johannes Brahms's four symphonies, the Third is both heroic and deeply troubled; moreover, all four movements end quietly. After the heroism of the First Symphony and the pastoral flavours of the Second, the Third Symphony reveals Brahms at a crossroads: the youthful impulses are now reined in and the mood is more one of profound reflection on life and death. The theme of the slow movement has been adapted many times and even sung by Frank Sinatra under the title of 'Take My Love'. The Fourth Symphony might be described as the most classical of Brahms's symphonies, not least because of it's chaconne finale, a variation form inherited from the baroque era. Described as an 'autumn symphony' or 'elegiac', it's mood is sometimes tormented and fiery, sometimes harsh and solitary. The culmination of a genre that cost him so much effort, the Fourth is the last word of Brahms the symphonist; he would never compose another work of this kind.

One of the foremost vocal chamber ensembles active today, New York Polyphony is renowned for it's innovative programming ranging from Gregorian chant to contemporary commissions. On Sky of my Heart, the selection spans over four hundred years of musical history and bears witness to this vocal ensemble's commitment to discovering and developing new works that augment it's core early music repertoire. Some of the works performed here deal with the essential themes of life, death and the afterlife and have been inspired by personal bereavement (Smith) or by the impact of Covid confinement (Moravec). Others are steeped in a spiritual atmosphere, whether religious (Byrd, Moody, Tavener and McGlade) or meditative (Naito). The contemporary works, some of which were written at the behest of New York Polyphony, are firmly rooted in the rich history of plainsong, while at the same time featuring some very contemporary harmonies. The vocal ensemble is joined by LeStrange Viols in three pieces: My Days by Nico Muhly, a ritualized tribute to the early 17th-century English composer Orlando Gibbons, The Silver Swan by Gibbons himself, which brings the programme to an appropriately quiet and poignant close, and Byrd's Agnus Dei. The viol ensemble adds a colour that is both appropriate for Gibbons and original in it's treatment of sound.

Following the release of the first three quartets of the Op. 33 set in May 2023 [BIS-2588], a recording that was hailed by critics for it's 'extraordinarily faithful reading that goes straight to the heart of the works' (Diapason) and won numerous awards (including a Diapason d'or, Choc from Classica and Supersonic from Pizzicato), the Chiaroscuro Quartet presents the last three quartets in this set. Having already recorded Op. 20 and Op. 76, this ensemble, whose unique sound has been described as 'a shock to the ears of the best kind' (The Observer) here continues it's historically informed and illuminating journey through Joseph Haydn's string quartets, a long- term project that started in 2020. Dubbed the 'Russian Quartets' and dedicated to the Russian Grand Duke Paul, the future Tsar Paul I, these works show Haydn at his most eccentric and non- conformist. For this set, Haydn felt the need to write music more in keeping with the public's lighter, more 'popular', less 'scholarly' tastes, with a livelier sense of rhythm. With their stylistic advance over the preceding quartets, it can be said that in real terms they mark the birth of the classical quartet genre. Mozart drew inspiration from them for his own quartets 'dedicated to Haydn'.