Shostakovich was known for his fun-loving attitude during his early years as a composer. The colourful incidental music for The Shot - reconstructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald from the original piano scores - vividly evokes the raucous life of experimental youth theatre in Leningrad during the late 1920s. This carefree world had changed dramatically by 1934 when Shostakovich completed his music for The Human Comedy - a work that creates a charming atmosphere of Parisian escapism. Discarded movements from his first opera The Nose form an entire orchestral suite. The programme concludes with Mark Fitz-Gerald's reconstruction of the March of the Anarchists, transcribed by ear from the film The Vyborg Side.

Following their début album, Belle Époque, the Orsino Ensemble turns its attention to music from Bohemia. There is a strong tradition of Czech wind playing, and hence a wealth of great repertoire on which to draw.

Antoine Reicha was a contemporary (and friend) of Beethoven. His E flat Quintet, published in 1817, demonstrates his harmonic ingenuity and talent for idiomatic instrumental writing. Mládí, described by Janácek as ‘…a sort of memoir of youth’, was composed in 1924 in celebration of the composer’s own seventieth birthday, and the mood of the piece is optimistic throughout.

Born in Brno, Pavel Haas studied at the city’s conservatory, under Janácek – indeed Haas is widely considered to be Janácek’s greatest pupil. Composed in 1929, the Wind Quintet typifies his quirky musical imagination and affinity for instrumental timbre.

Bohuslav Martinu came from the small town of Policka, on the Czech-Moravian border, but received his early musical education in Prague, where he also played second violin in the Czech Philharmonic. A government scholarship enabled him to move to Paris in the early 1920s to study with Roussel. Martinu immersed himself in Parisian musical life, the works of Stravinsky and the Jazz scene proving two considerable influences on his own compositions. His Sextet for Wind and Piano is considered one of his most successful Jazz-inspired pieces and, although an early work, demonstrates the natural melodic style so typical of his later works.

REVIEW:

Reicha’s Quintet pairs different combinations of instruments together with delightful felicity, and the bubbly horn writing is a constant delight. It’s a well-paced reading, too, coming in at 28 minutes. The Orsino Ensemble’s performance of Janáček’s Mládi is crisp and tight and I especially appreciated Walker’s pipy and lithe piccolo playing.

The church acoustic has been well judged and there’s no sense of billowy or unfocused sound, rather a warm, uncloying well-cushioned directness. There isn’t – or, at least, I’ve not been able to find – an exact competitor to this disc so the excellence of the performances stands in the Chandos team’s favor as does the adventurous repertoire. Carping critics like me may suggest alternatives in individual works but overall this is a highly effective disc.

-- MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

Rakhi Singh is a violinist, music director, curator and composer based in the UK. In 2016 she co-founded Manchester Collective, a progressive group that the BBC describes as "transforming all our perceptions of what a classical music group can be."

"Sabkha" is the first single from Singh's full-length debut album Purnima (coming October 27) — a stirring stream-of-consciousness foray into signal processing and multi-tracking for violin, with Singh's own wordless vocals adding to the hypnotic mood. Purnima, which translates literally from the Sanskrit as "she who is the full moon,” is not only Singh's middle name — it's also a source of spiritual inspiration that has guided her own musical journey on her chosen instrument. Interpreting works by composers Alex Groves ("Trace I"), Emily Hall ("Outshifts"), Julia Wolfe ("LAD") and Michael Gordon ("Light Is Calling"), and augmenting them with unearthly electronic and electro-acoustic textures, Singh creates a haunting dreamworld of melody and sound that doesn't quite emit a completely "classical" aura — but instead suggests an altogether new one.

Claudio Santoro's late works are marked by great concision and considerable emotional density. The music on this album was written in the last months of his life. The Viola Concerto and the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra juxtapose restless energy and expansive - if at times desolate - lyricism. The powerful Symphony No. 13 shows Santoro's mastery of orchestration and form at it's peak, and the compact Symphony No. 14 was to be the last in a cycle widely acclaimed as the most significant of it's kind ever composed in Brazil.

Grammy Award-winning Chicago-based percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion (Sean Connors, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, David Skidmore) presents Between Breaths, an album of world premieres of works by four contemporary composers, plus a work by the quartet itself.

Known for their captivating performances and innovative approach to modern classical music, TCP has been praised for “commandingly elegant” (New York Times) performances and the “rare power” (Washington Post) of their recordings. Between Breaths, a follow up to TCP’s widely praised album, Perspectives, “continues to push percussion in new directions, blurring musical boundaries and beguiling new listeners” (NPR).

The works on Between Breaths explore aspects of meditation in sound, incorporate unconventional timbres and tones, and invite listeners to lose themselves within a captivating sonic landscape. Missy Mazzoli’s five-movement Millennium Canticles transports listeners into a vivid realm where a group of people strive to recreate the rituals and stories of human life after an apocalypse. Mazzoli skillfully crafts an evocative soundscape using diverse elements such as wooden planks, resonant metal pipes, tone chimes, drums, discordant metallic tones, a resounding lion's roar, and an array of vocal expressions.

In Practice, a collaborative composition by TCP, began as a sound meditation drawing upon the personal rituals of the quartet’s members, from a warm-up routine to using sounds created with everyday objects. This source material laid the foundation for the work, which developed its own sense of direction and purpose, with an atmosphere of meditation and balance.

Tyondai Braxton's Sunny X juxtaposes otherworldly acoustic and electronic timbres against a steady rhythmic drive. Within this sonic tapestry, resonant wooden planks, metallic pipes and plates, and an array of gongs and woodblocks contribute to a distinctive and immersive experience.

Chicagoan Ayanna Woods’ Triple Point refers to the unique state where a substance simultaneously exists as a gas, liquid, and solid due to temperature and pressure conditions, which results in liquids bubbling into gas, rapidly freezing, exploding, and melting into liquid again. Woods’ composition mirrors this phenomenon, as it encapsulates moments of dynamic energy and musical elements that rise to the surface and dissolve again.

Gemma Peacocke’s Death Wish, composed in tribute to Hinewirangi Kohu-Morgan, a Maori artist, poet, and activist, has become a staple of TCP’s repertoire. Performed by four players on two marimbas, the music creates a powerful landscape of melancholy, personal devastation, and hope.

REVIEW:

Third Coast Percussion’s Between Breaths is another fresh and thought-provoking album in what has been a steady stream of recordings from the Grammy-award winning quartet over the past seven years. Released Sept. 8 on Cedille Records, Between Breaths returns to many themes explored on the ensemble’s debut EP, Ritual Music (2006): relationships between individuals, communities, and ritualistic acts. The highly programmatic and hypnotic new album showcases the quartet’s vision for commissioning works by living composers and features world premiere recordings of works by Missy Mazzoli, Tyondai Braxton, Ayanna Woods, and Gemma Peacocke, and by Third Coast Percussion itself.

-- I Care If You Listen (Forrest Howell)

Heinrich Marschner's role as Germany's leading Romantic operatic composer in the generation between Weber and Wagner has tended to draw attention away from his accomplished chamber compositions. Marschner had a high regard for the piano trio genre, composing seven throughout his career, which won the admiration of his friends Robert and Clara Schumann. The Trio No. 1 in A minor is profusely lyrical and not without surprises and contrasts. Written three decades later, the Trio No. 7 in F major is a work of his maturity - assured, dramatic and energetic.

The fourth volume in this series explores a pivotal decade in Claudio Santoro's compositions, traversing his move from serialism towards nationalism. The release starts with the transitional, reflective Canto de Amor e Paz and continues with Symphony No. 4, one of his most accessible and influential works, and his brief Symphony No. 6 of 1958. The concertante works for saxophone and violin show his command of dance rhythms, colourful lyricism and virtuosity.

German composer Hans Werner Henze’s (1926–2012) admiration for the great masters of the Baroque and musical Classicism manifested in compositions born from a desire to transcribe, rework and transform 17th- and 18th-century masterpieces into new orchestral textures. The project Travestimenti (Disguises), managed by conductor Marco Angius and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto, from which this CD was created, makes reference to Henze’s ‘reinventions’ of masterpieces by Mozart, C.P.E. Bach and Vitali, clothed in new, modern fashion.

For the Drei Mozart’sche Orgelsonaten, Henze takes up three of Mozart’s one-movement Kirchensonaten (church sonatas or trio sonatas). Sonatas 17 and 15 are in an Allegro tempo, whereas the Sonata K.67 is marked Andantino, so Henze, in his transcription, places the latter between the two livelier tempos, thus reconstructing the tripartite structure of a classical three-movement sonata. Scored for an ensemble of 14 players that includes the less common, softer variants oboe d’amore and viola d’amore, it aims to underline the darker instrumental timbres, favouring the sombre sonorities of the alto flute in G, the bass flute in C, the bass clarinet and the bassoon. During the last year of his life, in 1787, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach composed a Fantasia libera per tastiera sola (Free Fantasia for keyboard alone) which he expanded into the Clavier-Fantasie mit Begleitung einer Violine (Fantasy for harpsichord with violin accompaniment), one of his most personal and expressive works.

Henze transcribed it for solo flute, harp and strings, aiming to project the extremely interesting and expressive harmonic material of the composition into a larger instrumental apparatus, thus making its future-oriented harmonic structures more manifest and moulded. He proposed two options for division of the: string quartet + string quintet or string quartet + tutti (the latter version is recorded here).

Although it was probably composed in the early 18th century, Vitali’s Ciaccona ‘Il Vitalino’ – whose musical form is inspired by dance and consists of variations on a ground bass – was only rediscovered in 1867, published by the German virtuoso violinist Ferdinand David. Henze’s Il Vitalino raddoppiato – called “raddoppiato” (“doubled”) because of his extension of the composition by means of interpolated variations of each original section in the style of 18th-century doubles – retains Vitali’s bass almost throughout the entire composition. It alternates Vitali’s variations on his chaconne theme with Henze’s variations of Vitali’s variations, in an ever-changing dialogue between the 18th-century past and Henze’s present.

Brooklyn based SydeBoob Duo is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of contemporary performance in repertoire for soprano and flute, bringing their virtuosity to ambitious works that highlight their committment to broad representation alongside the highest aesthetic standards. On this debut full length release, they perform works by Rebecca Saunders, Eric Moe, Anthony Braxton, Ramin Akhavijou, Max Johnson, and Beat Furrer that are both landmark works for the instrumentation and core works that have shaped Sydeboob as an ensemble.

One of Saxony-Anhalt's oldest and most tradition-rich orchestras presents a compelling combination of two major orchestral works on GENUIN, marking the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus's relocation from Weimar to Dessau: the Anhaltische Philharmonie of the Bauhaus city Dessau, under it's general music director Markus L. Frank, pairs Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (in Ravel's orchestration) with Feininger Fractals by Eisenach-born composer Thomas Buchholz (b. 1961) - two orchestral works closely connected to visual art. The finely spun textures of Buchholz, who in this work engages with Bauhaus master Lyonel Feininger, and the endless colors of Mussorgsky/Ravel are in the best hands with this Dessau ensemble. Magnificent but not pompous, virtuosic yet full of meaning, the orchestra plays with intelligence and nuance under it's chief conductor.

Cappella Amsterdam and it's celebrated chief conductor Daniel Reuss present an integral recording of Lassus' Penitential Psalms. Building on their exquisite recording of Schnittke's Psalms of Repentance, this release explores new dimensions in the theme of penitence and marks a significant return to Renaissance repertoire following their celebrated PENTATONE debut album In Umbra Mortis. The album pairs Lassus' austere and introspective music with images from the richly-illustrated original score, one of the most visually beautiful manuscripts ever created. Under Daniel Reuss' artistic direction of over thirty years, the choir has garnered numerous accolades, including an Edison Klassiek Award for In Umbra Mortis (2021). This album was followed by David Lang: the writings (2022), Schnittke: Psalms of Repentance (2023) and Tales of song and sadness (2024), a tribute to those two giants of Dutch music culture, conductor Frans Bruggen and composer Louis Andriessen.

Nominated for a GRAMMY® Award!

Read our exclusive ArkivMusic interview with star Anthony Roth Costanzo

Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Gil Rose present the world premiere recording of The Lord of Cries, a breathtaking opera by John Corigliano and Mark Adamo. Telling the story of Euripides’s The Bacchae with the characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the piece explores the power of sexual desire and humans’ need to blame and attack others for what they can neither resist nor accept in themselves. Corigliano returns to opera for the first time since his The Ghosts of Versailles, introduced by the Metropolitan Opera, made an international sensation in 1992. The brilliant cast—most of whom introduced their parts in the world premiere in 2021—is led by star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role. Multi-award winning composer John Corigliano’s music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. The Pentatone recording of The Ghost of Versailles, released in 2016, won two Grammy Awards. Composer-librettist Mark Adamo’s four previous operas, including Little Women (1998) have been staged, recorded, and broadcast hundreds of times on five continents. Under the leadership of conductor Gil Rose, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project has become an unsurpassed advocate for 20th and 21st century American music; they make their Pentatone debut with The Lord of Cries.

Krasa Quartet, a young ensemble specializing in music by Jewish authors from the Terezin Ghetto, are releasing their debut album, with compositions by Hans Krasa, Erwin Schulhoff and Karel Ancerl. Krasa's Theme with Variations and his String Quartet, Schulhoff's Divertimento for String Quartet and Ancerl's Two Student Fugues all come from early stages of these composers' careers, before the political events in the aftermath of the First World War drastically affected their lives. In 2012, four young musicians who met during their studies at the Prague Conservatory decided to found their own ensemble. The members of Krasa Quartet - Marie Forestova, sarka Petrikova (first violin), Jan Paloucek (second violin) and Daniel Menhart - were then of similar age as these authors would have been while working on their early compositions. Now, having gained experience performing at festivals in Czechia and abroad and participating in master classes (Pavel Haas Quartet, Hagen Quartet), the quartet are relaesing their debut album. Besides quartet classics, such as, for example, works by Ludwig van Beethoven, the ensemble's repertoire encompasses 20th-century music, with special emphasis on works of Hans Krasa and other Terezin authors. Krasa Quartet regularly collaborate with foremost instrumentalists, including pianists Jan Bartos and Marek Kozak, as well as with choirs and dance ensembles. For several years, the ensemble performed as part of the ballet production Vertigo at the National Theatre in Prague.

For his series called Schubert+, pianist Can Çakmur juxtaposes the complete major piano solo compositions by the Viennese composer with works by others who were inspired by his music, thus providing the opportunity to see these works in a new light. While making up a near complete anthology of Schubert’s completed major piano music, each disc is also intended as a self-contained recital.

In this third instalment, Çakmur presents not only a work by the 20th-century composer Ernst Krenek but also Krenek’s completion of an unfinished sonata by Schubert. In the process, Krenek assimilated the Schubertian language so well that the result is astonishing. As Çakmur says, ‘I would find it difficult to spot where Schubert ends and Krenek begins if it wasn’t specified in the score.’ Krenek, whose career spanned more than seven decades, was a prolific composer who embraced a host of styles. For his Second Piano Sonata, composed in the 1920s, he pays homage to Schubert by adopting some of his techniques, though the music owes much more to early 20th-century Paris than to 19th-century Vienna. A fascinating and neglected work to be discovered through the prism of Schubert.

UBIQUE lives on the border between enigmatic lyricism and atmospheric distortion. Through a combination of sounds, pitches, and textural nuances, low deep drones envelop lyrical materials and harmonies that breathe in and out of focus throughout the progress of the piece. The flow of the music is primarily guided by continuous expansion and contraction - of various kinds and durations - as it streams with subtle interruptions and frictions but ever moving forward in the overall structure. The work is inspired by the notion of being everywhere at the same time, an enveloping omnipresence, while simultaneously focusing on details within the density of each particle, echoed in various forms of fragmentation and interruption and in the sustain of certain elements of a sound beyond their natural resonance - throughout the piece, sounds are both reduced to their smallest particles and their atmospheric presence expanded towards the infinite. As with my music generally, the inspiration is not something I am trying to describe through the music as such - it is a way to intuitively approach and work with the core energy, structure, atmosphere and material of the piece. UBIQUE is 45 minutes in duration and is written in 11 parts, for flutes, grand piano, 2 cellos and pre-constructed electronics. - Anna Thorvaldsdottir

Our knowledge of Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji is based more on his reputation than on his work. A marginal figure in twentieth-century music, he is renowned for the length and complexity of his compositions. After forbidding the performance of his music, he earned a small income through his writings as a critic and essayist of great wit. His best-known works are for solo piano, many of which have been released by BIS. This disc presents first recordings of his music for chamber ensemble and chamber orchestra plus several world premiere recordings of art songs, including a new arrangement and the first completion of a fragment. The American collective Wild Beautiful Orchestra, made up of instrumentalists and singers renowned for their versatility and enthusiasm, and it's founder, conductor Chappell Kingsland, together with flautist Sharon Bezaly in the longest work, present this programme featuring previously unreleased music by the maverick composer. There is no doubt that this extraordinary variety will expand our collective appreciation of Sorabji's genius and that this album will serve as an entry point to his unique musical imagination.

The Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra can with justification be regarded as ‘Sibelius’s own orchestra’, as it was this orchestra, usually conducted by the composer, that premièred most of his major works. On this disc of three such pieces, the orchestra is conducted by Susanna Malkki; the recording follows on from their three acclaimed albums devoted to the music of Bartók.

Although they were all later revised, the three works on this recording all originated within a very short period in Sibelius’s career: the years 1893–96, a time when he was beginning to establish himself as a composer and a time of national awakening.

One of his most popular works, the Karelia Suite is drawn from a series of tableaux that evoked events in the history of Karelia, the region where Finland and Russia meet. In late 19th-century Finland, the promotion of Karelian folk culture was both fashionable and politically relevant. The short suite Rakastava [The Lover] is a subtle reworking of a work for male voices based on lyrical poems from the collection Kanteletar; Sibelius often conducted it in concert. Sibelius often drew inspiration from the Finnish national epic Kalevala, and episodes from this poem provide the subject matter of Lemminkainen, a substantial four-movement suite (including the captivating Swan of Tuonela) that recounts the adventures of a daredevil hero, a sort of Nordic Don Juan.

REVIEWS:

Mälkki and the orchestra remarkably conjure the dark, swirling soundworld of ‘Lemminkäinen in Tuonela’ (the Hades of Finnish legend). And the concluding ‘Lemminkäinen’s Return’ canters along in roistering style.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Susanna Mälkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra produce wellcrafted, beautifully detailed accounts on a par with rival versions – including the Helsinki orchestra’s own with Segerstam (with warm Ondine sound) from the mid-1990s.

-- Gramophone

This is re-issue of the previous bestseller C756081 (4011790756127). Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's 1985 production of "Pagliacci" (and "Cavalleria rusticana") was one of the French director's last assignments at the Vienna State Opera before his untimely death 1988. The sensation of that June evening in 1985 was, however, Placido Domingo's consummate performance in Leoncavallos Pagliacci. He was more than an expressive singer with an incomparable tenor voice, he was also a truly great actor able to convey the whole world of his emotions to every member of the audience. Domingo's ability to bring out utter hopelessness transformed Leoncavallo's hackneyed opera into a highly individual tragedy from whose sway no one could escape. The dramatic intensity of his performance fired the other singers, too: thanks not least to her extraordinary vocal skills, Ileana Cotrubas was able to make Nedda's easygoing attitude as credible as her genuine feeling for Silvio and her struggle to safeguard the new love that had entered into her life; Wolfgang Schone gave Silvio an unusually clear-cut character and Heinz Zednik's presence in the cast likewise gave Peppe a whole new dimension. Finally, the French baritone Matteo Manuguerra was able to display thanks to his great and powerful voice a "terrifyingly evil" Tonio. By the end of the evening the public and the critics "were genuinely gripped"

Ahead of the 80th birthday of one of Britain's most singular compositional voices, this double album presents the complete organ works of Michael Finnissy a body of music as rich in intellectual depth as it is in imagination. Performed with careful nuance by acclaimed American organist Forrest Eimold, these works span over six decades and chart the evolution of a composer constantly challenging himself to think beyond presumed forms. At the heart of the collection are Finnissy's four Organ Symphonies: bold, searching works that pay homage to and wrestle with the legacies of Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler, while also evoking the French organ tradition of Vierne and Widor. "Why even write a Symphony?" Finnissy asks in a personal note for this release. "To explore and learn. To challenge oneself with the abiding presence of awe-inspiring history... to locate a rhetoric which fearlessly approaches the 'higher world of knowledge.'" From the youthful drama of ... ere the set of sun...  (written as incidental music for MacBeth in 1965) to the industrial solemnity of Blackburn (2022), the album presents not just a body of work but a kind of inner autobiography. The Hymn-Tune Preludes - transformations of Sacred Harp and Norwegian folk melodies - offer a striking contrast: intimate, harmonically volatile, and unhitched from convention. Even the earliest works here, like the student piece Xunthaeresis, reveal the seeds of a language already driven by risk and complex expression. Forrest Eimold, a formidable interpreter of 20th and 21st century keyboard music, brings dazzling technique and interpretive depth to this music. His command of registration, colour, and pacing allows each piece - from the vast landscapes of the symphonies to the epigrammatic preludes - to speak with clarity and conviction. Recorded on a range of instruments, including the organ of the UK's Blackburn Cathedral, this is a release release which anchors Finnissy's contribution to the organ repertoire as one of bold imagination and philosophical depth. It also continues Metier's retrospective celebrations for Finnissy's 80th year, with further releases to follow.

The violin, a bowed instrument with four strings, of such perfection that it has focussed the attention of composers from the Baroque to the present day. Apart from the piano, no other instrument has had so many important concertos written for it, from Locatelli and Vivaldi, to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, among many others. It might seem unimaginable that this instrument with it's one bow on four strings be able to perform polyphonic works from the piano, Lied and orchestral repertoire unaccompanied, but that is precisely what the great virtuosos of the early Romantic period right up to the modern era repeatedly saw as a challenge in their compositions. Paganini, Ernst and their successors pushed the technical possibilities of the violin to the limit. With this CD we present the most important of these works, which are otherwise pigeonholed as salon or encore pieces. The result is musical gems ranging from practically complete Lieder such as the Erlkonig, to Isang Yun's masterful arrangement of The Musical Offering by Bach. Her debut CD "1939" on Solo Musica with the Munich Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kevin John Edusei received worldwide acclaim, including reviews in BBC magazine, The Strad Magazine, Gramophone and the American Record Guide. This new release is the first solo album by violinist Fabiola Kim, hailed by the New York Times as "a brilliant soloist" who plays "with extraordinary precision and intensity". She is an energetic performer and enjoys a wide-ranging career as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher.

Heinrich Marschner was the leading German operatic composer between Weber and the rise of Wagner, but he also wrote prolifically for chamber forces. His Piano Trios No. 2 and No. 6 share similar qualities: both are in a minor key, they are rich in agitated melodies, and are full of inventive interplay between the three instruments. In contrast to the earlier light-hearted Trio No. 1 (available on 8.574612), No. 2 is a darker, more tension-filled work, albeit with Mendelssohnian grace. No. 6 also embodies elements of mid-19th-century Romanticism conveyed in music that ranges from the turbulent to the spectral.

I see the future of Baroque orchestral music in the hands of modern ensembles - the fetish of the 'original instrument' has had it's day, but not the profoundly trained professional who guides an orchestra into the deeper dimensions of the composition. For it isn't the instrument that makes the music, but the head! (Reinhard Goebel "the icon of early music" - Suddeutsche Zeitung)

For his third album for Chandos, the saxophonist Marco Albonetti turns to the rich tradition of film music from his native Italy. Marco writes: ‘Film music has been described as the defining new genre of classical music in the twentieth century. It engages both the ear and the heart of an audience. The masterpieces composed by two Italian film composers in particular, Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone, embody the cultural identity of most Italians and they have become recognised and loved by audiences around the world. The film themes on this album capture the magical combination of romance, melancholy, friendship, and violence. The notes vibrate with such passion that the compositions continue to engage the listener, bringing the work of these great Italian composers to life wherever and whenever it is performed.

Film music is meant to be an accompaniment to the action on screen. However, the music of the great Italian composers is so powerful and enduring that these melodies can stand on their own merit, transporting us to another time and place, evoking memories of past experiences or introducing us to new worlds, places which we can only see in our imagination. This album is a tribute to the Italian spirit, to my spirit, expressed through a musical journey: it offers Postcards from Italy.’

The Ensemble InterContemporain and it's musical director Pierre Bleuse continue their monographs on the great figures of contemporary musical composition. After the multi-award-winning Ligeti, it is the composer Unsuk Chin who is celebrated here. Of Korean origin, she moved to Germany in the 1980s. Her music shines with an immediate sensuality, and the inexhaustible transformations of her instrumental polyphony produce unprecedented sound constellations. This programme presents her piece Gougalon (2009/12), which evokes the memory of the travelling amateur theatres of her native country, with deliberately offbeat instrumentation in six episodes. She presents it as 'imaginary folk music that is stylised, fractured and only appears to be primitive.' Chin titled her 2013 piece for large ensemble Graffiti. All sound registers are exploited in a colourful, lively, and varied manner. 'The musical language of Graffiti oscillates between roughness and refinement, complexity and transparency,' says the composer. Her double concerto for piano and percussion completes this programme.

Helmut Lachenmann, who celebrates his 90th birthday in the music year of 2025, has composed several milestones in contemporary classical music. Sir Simon Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra are dedicating themselves to some of these exceptional works. In his tuba concerto Harmonica, Helmut Lachenmann explores the limits of sound - with music that oscillates between eruption and silence, by means of "strictly constructed denial" (Lachenmann) and by deliberately disrupting the familiar, and eludes socially preformed listening expectations. This appeal to the audience's self-awareness remains as relevant as ever. The soloist is Stefan Tischler, principal tuba player of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the live recording with the BRSO conducted by Sir Simon Rattle was made on March 22, 2025. Klangschatten - mein Saitenspiel by Helmut Lachenmann deals with the "verso" of sound, it's suppressed and "unwelcome" components. The spectrum here ranges from toneless or muffled sounds to differently coloured noise and clear tones. Lachenmann himself described the piece as " an offer of expressive intensity that reflects the bourgeois longing for beauty and seeks to fulfil it, that is, to overcome it." The work was performed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Matthias Herrmann on May 23, 2025 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. Helmut Lachenmann, born in Stuttgart in 1935, is one of the most renowned German composers of contemporary music. He studied piano, music theory and counterpoint in Stuttgart and composition with Luigi Nono in Venice. The first public performances of his works took place in 1962 at the Venice Biennale and at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. He taught composition in Hanover (1976-1981) and in Stuttgart (1981-1999), and has given numerous master classes in Germany and abroad. His works are performed by internationally renowned players and orchestras all over the world. Helmut Lachenmann has received numerous awards, including the German Music Authors' Prize of GEMA (2015) for his lifetime achievements and, most recently, for his compositional work, the 'President of the French Republic Prize' from the Academie Charles Cros (2025).

Heinrich August Marschner was a master of German Romantic music, and this third volume in the series presents excerpts from some of his later operas. These include Das Schloss am Aetna with it's dark Faustian themes, and Lukretia in which the composer generates an air of Classical antiquity. Both Sangeskonig Hiarne and Der Babu showcase Marschner's talent with descriptive ballet music, allowing us to discover a completely new side to his musical craft.

October 29, 1923 was a date steeped in history. In the middle of a year of political and economic crises, the age of public radio in Germany was ushered in with the first broadcast of the "Berliner Funkstunde" (Berlin Radio Hour) from the attic of an office building on Potsdamer Platz. Radio offered entirely new possibilities for the production and reception of music. The two compositions on this CD not only benefited from these developments but also played an active role in shaping them.

Eduard Künneke's five-movement Concerto grosso "Tänzerische Suite" op. 26 for jazz band and large orchestra corresponded to modern dances: the Overture is a Foxtrot, the Andante a Blues, the Intermezzo a Tango, the valse mélancolique a Boston Waltz, and the Finale a Foxtrot again. The suite was celebrated as a milestone in contemporary radio music and soon became part of the regular concert program.

Hanns Eisler's cantata "Tempo der Zeit" (Tempo of the Times) op. 16 for soloists, narrator, choir, winds, and percussion was written in 1929. The libretto was written by the popular lyricist Robert Gilbert, under the pseudonym of David Weber. With its pure wind ensemble and percussion, "Tempo der Zeit" captures the typical Songspiel sound of the time. The fact that Eisler used the "modern" medium of radio, of all things, to get his fundamental criticism of blind enthusiasm for technology across to the people is an ironical aspect of the work’s composition and reception history. This CD is part of the special programme focus on the topic "The Wild Sound of the Twenties".

Pierre Boulez's early ambitions to become a concert pianist provided the impetus to write piano music as a composition student at the Paris Conservatoire. The Theme et variations pour la main gauche and Trois Psalmodies reveal his extraordinary talent in their compelling mix of energy, drama and playfulness. Presenting these works alongside two later compositions provides a unique glimpse into the full arc of Boulez's musical journey. These pieces are powerful, their emotions raw and unfiltered, offering listeners a chance to experience the early foundations and mature reflections of a master composer.

Known in his lifetime as ‘the north German Schubert’, Carl Loewe (1796–1869) is remembered today chiefly as a composer of songs and ballads. Yet there is a considerable body of piano music that is strikingly innovative in content, expression and harmony, containing the germs of ideas later taken up by composers such as Wagner and Liszt. Loewe was unquestionably a brilliantly original talent, a major figure in ushering in the Romantic era – with the remarkable Four Fantasies of 1854 heard here ‘documenting’ in music the contemporary emigration of German families to the United States. This third volume of Linda Nicholson’s survey of his piano music on historical instruments concludes its first-ever complete recording on any kind of piano.

Conductor Simon Crawford-Phillips leads the Västerås Sinfonietta on their new concept album; 'Scotland'. The principal work is Mendelssohn's famous 3rd Symphony; the 'Scottish'; coupled with two interesting contemporary works with strong bonds to Scotland: Helen Grime's "Elegiac Inflections"; and Peter Maxwell Davies' 'Strathclyde Concerto No. 10'.