WATER NAMES

Midway through Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic speech at the 1963 March on Washington, a voice rang out from behind him: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" That voice belonged to Mahalia Jackson, King's close friend and one of the most revered gospel singers of the 20th century. Glorious Mahalia, a visionary tribute to Jackson's life by the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet, uses that moment as a springboard to explore the depth of Jackson's musical craft and it's impact on the Civil Rights Movement, including her relationship with Clarence Jones and Studs Terkel, other luminaries of the time. Featuring compositions by Stacy Garrop and Zachary James Watkins, a new arrangement of Jackson's astonishing version of the Antonio Haskell composition "God Shall Wipe All Tears Away," and archival audio of Jackson's voice, the album illuminates Jackson's historic artistry and advocacy.

Steven Isserlis -"Schumann & Moscheles: 1851 Cello Sonatas" "Prepare to be seduced," (Gramophone). Steven Isserlis's latest album takes inspiration from a single year: 1851, a year of invention, exhibition and creativity. Sonatas by Moscheles and Schumann (Violin Sonata No 2, specially arranged for cello by Isserlis) both date from that year. Also featuring four miniatures, including a Schumann song transcription and the famous Bach/Gounod "Ave Maria." The album centers around an 1851 Erard piano (played by Connie Shih) which won a Prize Medal at that year's Great Exhibition in London. The piano recorded here may well be one of the very instruments first showcased at the Great Exhibition Winner of 2 Gramophone Awards. Steven Isserlis CBE enjoys a global career as a cellist, author and broadcaster.

Celebrate the legacy of Ryuichi Sakamoto with Opus, a definitive 2-CD collection curated by the composer himself. Spanning decades of groundbreaking work, this anthology brings together iconic film scores, Yellow Magic Orchestra classics, and deeply personal compositions that reflect Sakamoto's singular musical voice. Featured tracks include Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, Andata, and Aqua, alongside never-before-recorded pieces such as for J�hann (a tribute to J�hann J�hannsson), BB (dedicated to Bernardo Bertolucci), and 20180219 (featuring prepared piano). Presented in a deluxe six-panel digipak constructed from premium black stock with black foil stamping and silver text, the CD edition is wrapped in a custom eight-panel sleeve showcasing evocative black-and-white imagery of Sakamoto during the Opus performance. A collector's booklet offers liner notes and credits, providing deeper insight into the music and the artist's final reflections. Opus is more than a retrospective; it's a lasting tribute to one of the most influential composers of our time.

MOUNT ANALOGUE

BERNHARD LANG: HERMETIKA IX

MADLI MARJE GILDEMANN: DREAM SEQUENCE OF AN

The album includes premier recordings of six Holliger compositions written between 2018 and 2020, as well as strongly contrasting pieces dedicated to him by fellow composers over the years. The earliest of these are J�rg Wyttenbach's Sonate (1961) and Jacques Wildberger's Rondeau (1962), and the most recent are Gy�rgy Kurt�g's aphoristic con slancio, largamente and Toshio Hosokawa's evocative Musubi (Knots), both written to celebrate Holliger's 80th birthday in 2019.

Wolfgang Kogert - Friedrich Cerha: Complete Works For Organ - Appearing in Cerha's jubilee year, this album pays tribute to an extraordinary late oeuvre by an extraordinary composer. / One of the central figures of European modernism, Friedrich Cerha is known for his monumental Spiegel cycle and his distinctive contribution to postwar music. This album presents his complete works for organ, composed between 2011 and 2020, marking a surprising late turn toward the instrument. Recorded by Wolfgang Kogert in close collaboration with the composer, these pieces reveal Cerha's characteristic clarity, concision, and expressive precision. Appearing in Cerha's jubilee year, this album pays tribute to an extraordinary late oeuvre by an extraordinary composer.

After 'Oylam' in 2010, Judith Berkson (mezzo-soprano, pianist, composer and improviser) returns with another unclassifiable, and strangely compelling, artistic statement. On 'Thee They Thy,' she leads a trio with Trevor Dunn and Gerald Cleaver through a radically changing program addressing new settings for prayer, original songs, vocal experimentation, improvised piano and more. 'Thee They Thy' was recorded at Oktavaen Audio Studio, Mt. Vernon, New York. The album was produced by Manfred Eicher.

Sometime in 2020 I listened to Canto Ostinato for the first time, and my enthrallment with the piece had begun. I was transfixed by it's particular amalgam of harmony, repetition, and pacing. By the spring of 2023 I had constructed and released my own solo interpretation, and I assumed at that point my working relationship with the composition had run it's course. But I underestimated it's magnetism. The following year I was back in it's grips, having been invited by Metropolis Ensemble's Andrew Cyr to expand on the foundation I had laid with the piece. Soon I was in Brooklyn, on a team of six with Cyr and the members of Sandbox Percussion, humbled and thrilled to be helping architect a brand new large ensemble arrangement of Canto Ostinato for a summer solstice performance at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We did so, our cohort growing to include the students of The New School's Sandbox Percussion Summer Seminar, as well as composers David Leon, Ben Wallace, and Ledah Finck and the Bergamot Quartet. It was a day we will all remember-sweeping, dreamlike, and what felt like a quintessential culmination. But even then... The piece still beckoned, and it became clear this new orchestration called for the embarkment on a studio album. A permanent document of our now collective ardor. Refined over a year and recorded in New York, 2025, this performance recasts the piece anew in a towering framework of mallet percussion, woodwinds, strings, and piano. It is our truest attempt at conveying Canto's beauty and magnitude in all it's kaleidoscopic harmony, dynamism, tension, and release. I stand once again in awe of Simeon ten Holt's monumental creation; to be a thread in it's sonic fabric is one of the great honors of my musical life. I don't assume we might be so fortunate again... but who knows.

GERSHWIN IN VIENNA

GARRO: MASSES O QUAM PULCHRA ES & CANTATE DOMINO

ACROSS ... IN GRIEF AND DETAIL

RENEWAL

SOLO PIANO

APHORISMEN

OPEN SPACE

The distinguished French pianist Pascal Roge turned 75 on April 6, 2026. An exclusive Decca recording artist in the 1970s and '80s, his recording career started early. He played the solo piano part in a vaunted recording of Giordano's opera Fedora, recorded in Monte Carlo, and produced a tremendous Liszt album as an 18-year-old. He then went on to document extensively the music of Ravel, Debussy, Satie and Poulenc. Concertos, chamber music, solo piano music and song, Mozart, Beethoven, Saint-Sa�ns and Faur� all make their way into a comprehensive 43-CD box set with original jackets. Many of these recordings have been unavailable, physically, for several years. But collectors will be additionally pleased to discover two unpublished works - Brahms's Second Sonata, left unpublished for want of a suitable coupling, and a selection of preludes by the Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu. Also published for the first time on Decca is a recording of Mozart concertos with Raymond Leppard.

MOTHERLOAD

THE ROYAL EDITION - SHOSTAKOVI

"The Hindemith concerto, while not exactly revealing itself as an unregarded masterpiece, gets just the right degree of tempered bombast and pastoralism - suggesting that here is a piece ripe for reassessment."

-- BBC Music Magazine reviewing Sony 64507

"These two concertos are the product of Nielsen's last years: the Clarinet Concerto, surely one of his strangest and most powerful utterances, was written in 1929, only two years before his death, and the Flute Concerto comes from 1927. They are two of the most masterly concertos for their respective instruments (Nielsen whose understanding of the wind was second to none had planned a concerto for each of the wind family) and Robert Simpson rightly calls the Flute Concerto "the richest and most original" written for the instrument...Stanley Drucker gives an intelligent account of his demanding part...Julius Baker is the excellent soloist in the Flute Concerto which he plays with great virtuosity."

-- Gramophone Reviewing original LP, CBS 72639

"Michael Tilson Thomas made some excellent records with the Philharmonia in the ’80s, and although I hadn’t come across this particular performance before, knowing this conductor’s flair for such music, I expected good things. I wasn’t disappointed.

The Nutcracker was the final ballet in Tchaikovsky’s great triptych, and was completed in 1891, a year during which the composer made a fatiguing concert tour of America and also suffered a nervous collapse. There is real justification in calling Tchaikovsky the father of the modern ballet score, and he effectively paved the way for dance-theatre music to be taken seriously. However, his first ballets were coolly received, and he was (as ever) wracked with self-doubt about this work, even after the premiere. This score has, of course, gone on to become one of his most popular scores.

Like Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker is most often heard in highlight form, but in fact works better when experienced complete. It’s just the right length, and has so many famous numbers that it seems ridiculous to condense it to 20 or 30 minutes. I do possess excerpt discs, but turn most frequently to my benchmark complete version, Ashkenazy’s Decca recording with the Royal Philharmonic. It has a spectacular sound, full, rich and wide-ranging, and a very useful fill-up is included, Glazunov’s masterpiece The Seasons. However, that set is at full price, so the real competition for this budget Sony release comes from Previn’s excellent LSO version (now on Classics for Pleasure, also without a filler), and Dorati’s marvellous Concertgebouw recording on a Philips Duo, which finds room for a substantial Sleeping Beauty selection (Fistoulari and the LSO).

The fact that Tilson Thomas can hold his own against anyone is immediately evident in the Overture, which has a Mendelssohnian lightness and graceful wit that is captivating. As a Bernstein protégé, MTT is a theatrical conductor through and through (listen to any of his Mahler or Copland records), so he is completely at home with the colour and drama of this great score. His pacing throughout is exemplary, on the fast side but with ensemble crisp and rhythms tight. All the famous dances of Act 2 are as infectious as one could wish for; listen to the delectable trumpet playing in the Spanish Dance, whilst the Russian Dance has tremendous weight and panache. The principals of the Philharmonia obviously relish the many solos that litter the score, and indeed the whole orchestra enjoy themselves enormously. I like the way Tilson Thomas gives due attention to Tchaikovsky’s exotic ‘special-effects’, including a child’s trumpet in C, children’s drums, a rattle and mechanisms suggesting cuckoos and quails. He even uses a ratchet and Irish whistle in the Grandfather’s Dance, while kazoos, toy snare drums and a children’s cap gun are used in The Battle. Marvellous fun!

The whole performance has a flair and feeling of ‘rightness’ that are very captivating. The conductor never loses sight of the famous adage that ‘there is a lot of ballet in Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, and a lot of the symphony in his ballets’. He gives everything its due place, so one feels an organic growth in the piece, rather than a succession of set-pieces. Listening to these discs was as satisfying as any of the competition I had to hand, and in many ways the short playing time ceases to be an issue in the face of a great performance. Recording quality is also well up to scratch, with a full-bodied richness that matches the playing...highly recommended."

-- Tony Haywood, MusicWeb International

Saint-Saëns holds a vital place in the history of French chamber music. At a time when his compatriots were more devoted to opera and song, Saint-Saëns (who wrote both, too) repeatedly produced chamber music of compelling individuality and lasting significance. The 1875 Piano Quartet in B flat major, Op 41 remains one of the great works in the chamber repertory, a masterful example of the composer’s organisational skill and lyric gifts. The gorgeous Barcarolle is followed by the youthful Piano Quintet in A minor, Op 14, a brilliantly confident work with a concerto-like role for the piano.

Harry Partch is an American visionary and stubborn individualist... He has built his own musical world out of microtones, hobo speech, elastic octaves and percussion instruments made from hubcaps and nuclear cloud chambers. Recently ... an army of young music lovers stormed New York’s Whitney Museum to hear Harry Partch and his thirteen disciples produce a music that was totally personal and eclectic in the best sense. African polyrhythms, and ancient Greek modes, bits of Babylonia and the pulse of the American diesel engine all gathered into a richly erotic, primitive, fresh and stirring drama of sound.

-- Newsweek


Includes bonus tracks: The Instruments of Harry Partch.