Italian pianist Sebastian Di Bin provides us here with an intriguingly beautiful performance of Franz Liszt’s complete Transcendental Etudes. Sebastian Di Bin has dedicated this album to the memory of his brother, Francois, who passed away in March 2015. The composition of Liszt’s twelve Transcendental Etudes began when the 15-year-old composer composed a set of much less difficult exercises titled the Etude en douze exercices. These works were elaborated upon to become his Douze Grandes Etudes in 1837, then finally revised and republished in 1852 as the etudes performed here.

Seattle Baroque, founded in 1994 by violinist Ingrid Matthews and harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, quickly established itself as one of the most vibrant American early music ensembles. Their goal is to awaken contemporary audiences to the vitality of baroque music through historically informed performance of both familiar and unfamiliar works. Recorded 2011-12, their new Centaur release features a varied selection of sonatas and a lute concerto by Antonio Vivaldi, including some that spotlight individual soloists.

This is a great program of contemporary works for clarinet and piano, and one work for clarinet, piano, and violin. These are all immediately accessible, appealing works. Christopher Ayer, a native of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, is Professor of Music at Stephen F. Austin State University, where he coordinates undergraduate and graduate clarinet study, and performs with the Stone Fort Wind Quintet. He has studied with Thomas Martin, Associate Principal Clarinetist with the Boston Symphony, and Ronald de Kant, former Principal Clarinetist of the Vancouver Symphony. Prior to his appointment at SFA, Dr. Ayer was the clarinet professor and orchestra conductor at Eastern New Mexico University. He holds graduate performance degrees in clarinet from the New England Conservatory of Music and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Violinist David Park, with pianist Melissa Garff Ballard in some works, performs a program of works by the great composer and violinist Fritz Kreisler. This is a truly exciting album of virtuosic violin works. DAVID H. PARK, 'a soloist with extraordinary artistic gifts', (Salt Lake Tribune) started playing the violin at the age of five in Seoul, Korea. Park has studied with two of the most distinguished pedagogues, Josef Gingold and Dorothy Delay. He received his Bachelor of Music at the University of Indiana and Master of Music at the Juilliard School. At the age of 14, he was one of the last students of the legendary Jascha Heifetz. Park maintains a balance between his engagements as soloist with orchestras throughout the world and his recital and chamber music activities.

Clarinetist Gianluca Campagnolo has to his credit over 1000 concert performances (in Sicily, in Italy and abroad) as a soloist and in various chamber and orchestral ensembles. A clarinetist of international stature, he is also a member of the Polymeric Clarinet Quartet, director of the Orchestra Mediterranean di Clarinetti, and has repeatedly seen on RAI as well as radio and private television. He's recorded 14 CDs and published a "Method for Clarinet" in ten volumes. "The Clarinet in the 20th c.", his new Centaur release, features works by Berg, Bernstein and Hindemith, among others.

In the space of four months, American pianist Stephen Beus won first prize in the Gina Bachauer Int’l Piano Competition, first place in the Vendome Prize Int’l Competition (Lisbon) and was awarded the Max I. Allen Fellowship of the American Pianists Assoc. (Indianapolis). + Currently teaching at the University of Oklahoma, this recital, recorded live at Sharp Hall located on the University campus, features Bach, Liszt along with more rarely heard works from Mendelssohn (his Sonata, op. 6) Medtner and Kabalevsky.

Italian clarinetist Gianluca Campagnolo, along with Giovanni Caggia, clarinet II, Antonino Cicero, bassoon, Leoluca Di Miceli, viola, and Francesco Scrofani, piano, performs some of the greatest chamber and solo works for clarinet of the classical period. Included are some generally lesser-known, yet enchanting period-representative, virtuoso works from Frenchmen Michèl Yost (1754-86) and François Garnier (1755-1825), and the Austrian classicist and Mozart contemporary Anton Stadler (1753-1812).

Classical Music

Argentine guitarist Lucas Martino presents a great collection of world premiere recordings of Argentine guitar works.

The child prodigy Charles Harold Bernstein performed as piano soloist with orchestras by age nine. + A serious health problem put a halt to a promising career a decade later. + Following a business career, he began to compose in 1970, and remains an active composer at age 96. + He has produced an impressive range of music - from extended solos for violin, cello, oboe, clarinet and flute to quintets and eight works for orchestra. + Violinist Adam Korniszewski, the works’ dedicatee, performs Bernstein’s Introduction and 24 Variations, cellist Boris Andrianov the Outline and Drawings for solo cello.

This disc comprises of some of the most important piano works of the 20th-Century, performed by Susan Svrcek.

This 2CD set of Schubert’s Piano Trios features historically informed performances, with the piano part performed on fortepiano by Viviana Sofronitsky, the daughter of legendary Russian pianist Vladimir Sofronitsky. Violinist László Paulik is one of the founding members of the Concerto Armonico Chamber Orchestra, and the Quartetto Luigi Tomasini. Cellist Sergei Istomin is in demand throughout Europe and North America as soloist and chamber musician. His repertoire includes baroque, classical, romantic and contemporary music on both period and modern instruments.

Seymour Barab (1921-2014) was a noted American composer of opera, songs, instrumental pieces, and chamber music, as well as a veritable cellist, organist and pianist. He was especially well-known for his fairy tale operas for young audiences, one of which is featured on this release- Little Red Riding Hood. This is not only Barab’s most popular and most performed opera, it also the most performed opera of any American composer. It paved the way for the rest of Barab’s fairytale-based and children’s operas. He began working on the opera after he was asked to write an opera suitable for children in Winifred Leventritt’s program called “Young Audiences” which toured in public schools. The libretto for Little Red Riding Hood is the first that Barab wrote himself. His sensitivity to young audiences is clear in this opera, as well as all of his others.

Clarence Mader (1904-71), considered to have been one of the finest teachers, performers and composers of his generation, and who was organist at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles for 37 years (1929-66), wrote some of the finest organ music of the 20th c. + Jacob Benda, currently organist and choirmaster at Grace Episcopal Church in St. Francisville, Louisiana, has worked with this literature extensively; on this new Centaur release, Music At Midnight: A Tonal Palette, he presents some of Mader’s finest work.

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