Bridge's new Complete Mozart Flute & Orchestra album features the Odense Symphony Orchestra and their principal flautist, Rune Most, performing on a wooden flute. The recording, made in the acoustically superb Carl Nielsen Hall, includes the two flute concertos, the rondo, and perennial Mozart favorite, the Concerto for Flute and Harp. Rune Most began his studies at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense with Karl Lewkovitch. Later came studies with Professor Lóránt Kovács in Budapest, and in 1990 he made his debut from the soloist class of the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he had studied with Toke Lund Christiansen. Today Rune Most is solo flautist with the Odense Symphony Orchestra and teaches at the Carl Nielsen Academy of Music in Odense. Over the years music has taken him to South America, China, Russia and many countries in Europe as a chamber musician and soloist. As a soloist and chamber musician he has recorded several albums of, among other things, Danish and South American music.

Shortlisted for the Gramophone Awards!

Following the success of their last album, Timelapse, this new album from Orchestra of the Swan is a collection of extraordinary works connected by ideas of pilgrimage, contemplation, exploration and enlightenment through the works of composers such as Richter, Respighi, Britten, Piazzolla, Brian Eno, Nico Muhly, Joy Division and more. As with Timelapse, the joy is to be found in discovering the surprising and delightful connections between culturally disparate and musically contrasting time periods. Labyrinths have been an important part of humanity’s cultural landscape for thousands of years; from the Ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur to the intriguing stories of Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco. Our overwhelming desire to find patterns and ‘the hidden truth’ is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the subversive and complex vistas of music. Formed in 1995, Orchestra of the Swan is a British chamber orchestra which, under the artistic direction of David Le Page, is passionate about audience inclusivity and blurring the lines between genres, through its adventurous and accessible programming.

Tatjana Ruhland has been described as »the Paganini of the flute.« At the very latest since her debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall she has numbered among the most prominent artists performing on the flute. On the present program she dedicates herself to Carl Reinecke’s chamber and concertante flute compositions, all of which he composed during the second half of his life. Along with the Undine Sonata op. 167 for flute and piano, today his most frequently performed work, the recording features the two concertante works written by him when he was over eighty years old. Here the initial dominance of stylistic elements associated with Mendelssohn has yielded to a tonal language that is both electrifying and highly individual. Reinecke’s music is diatonic in design but so strongly pervaded by semitones and suspensions that it also continues to flow. The »build-up phase« of the concertante last movements is only one of the procedures hardly invented by Reinecke but very much loved by him.

Joseph Schwantner is one of the most prominent American composers of our day. This new release features Looking Back, a commission in honor of flutist Sam Baron by his former students. Sarah Frisof showcases Schwantner's works with her vibrant and soulful playing. Frisof was the winner of both the National Flute Association Young Artist Competition and the Heida Hermanns International Woodwind Competition. Frisof considers herself a proponent of contemporary music and frequently premieres major works.

In the early 19th-century, a rivalry existed between two of Italy's greatest guitarists/composers, Francesco Molini and Ferdinando Carulli. This album features not only the complete Molino works for flute and guitar, but also the Carulli Concerto for Flute and Guitar. Both composers are wonderful, as are these performances. Diversity of styles is a hallmark of Roberto Alvarez’s concerts and recitals. As a matter of fact he feels just as comfortable performing classical, baroque or avant-garde music as well as Celtic, jazz or rock. He has received various international prizes, such as the Diploma of Honor in the Torneo Internazionale di Musica, Concurso Internacional de Música “Paper de Musica” de Capellades, the Ángel Muñíz Toca Award and the Ciutat de Manresa Prize. Born and raised in Singapore, Kevin Loh is a recipient of the Fellowship of the Royal Schools of Music, the 2018 Goh Soon Tioe Centenary Award and the 2010 HSBC Youth Excellence Award for Musical Excellence. He was talent-scouted by The Yehudi Menuhin School via his YouTube channel when he was only 12 years old and was awarded a grant by The Rolling Stones to study at the prestigious music school as their first Asian guitarist.

Written in his late teens: Flight, for solo flute, whose swooping crests and curlicues are fervently relished in Michael Cox's performance. Benjamin describes the piece as 'inspired by the sight of birds soaring and dipping over the peaks of the Swiss Alps'. Listening to the piece you'll hear a panoply of songs surfing the musical thermals in the alpine either: low, long-breathed cries and calls, filigree flocks of ornamentation in the atmospheric heights of the flute's register, a chorus of vapors conjured by a single instrument. Into The Little Hill is based on the Pied Piper story, allowing audiences an immediate entry point into the opera's dramaturgy. But Crimp's re-telling simultaneously updates the story, with its politicians, photographs, and limousines, and opens up further mythic dimensions to the narrative. The drama of Into the Little Hill is concisce, clear and simultaneously ambiguous, even chilling. Benjamin says, 'Martin's text is hard-edged, formal, and hyper-condensed'. The reason for its musical and dramatic success is Benjamin's unerring feeling for expressive characterisation. Each layer of Into the Little Hill's score is immediately identifiable, from the Crowd's baying cries of 'Kill them' rightat the start of the piece, to the rodentine scurrying of the rat's music, and the Mother's lamenting grief in the last scene. Dream of the Song is a mysteriously sensual and sensually strange song-cycle for countertenor, a halo of female voices that are similar in register, but so different in timbre and sound and expression, and orchestra. The counter-tenor sings poems, in English, by Jewish poets of 11th century Andalucia, themselves inspired by Arabic poetry of earlier centuries. There are images of ravishment and wonder here - moonlight, the celestial tent of the sky, a dream of a gazelle, a harp, a flute - but they are always undercut by other ideas. Above all, it's the gossamer rapier of Benjamin's music that cuts to the heart of these settings.

The Welsh flautist Emily Beynon plays a selection of British flute concertos, accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and Bramwell Tovey. Beynon is the Principal Flute of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Equally at home in front of the orchestra as in its midst, she has also performed as soloist with, amongst others, several BBC Orchestras, the Philharmonia Orchestra, NHK Symphony, and the Vienna, Prague, Netherlands and English Chamber orchestras.

Gary Schocker has composed some of the greatest works for flute of the past half-century. Included on this new release are his Sonatas for Flute and Piano Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9, performed by Leslie Neighbor Stroud. Leslie Neighbor Stroud, flute, received her Bachelor’s degree in Flute Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music where she was a student of Britton Johnson (National Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) and Timothy Day (San Francisco Symphony Orchestra). She has also studied with Lois Schaefer (Boston Symphony Orchestra), Walfrid Kujala (Chicago Symphony Orchestra) and Mark Sparks (St. Louis Symphony Orchestra) and baroque flute with Suzanne Stumpf (Musicians of the Old Post Road), as well as participating in the master classes of Gary Schocker, Julius Baker, Bonita Boyd and William Bennett. Leslie currently performs with the Pentangle Arts Orchestra, BarnArts Festival Orchestra, Pro Musica Vermont, Guilford Music Festival Orchestra, Cameo Baroque (a period instrument ensemble), Buttonwood Wind Quintet, the Richard Faith Ensemble, and the Sterling String Quartet. She has performed with New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, The Plymouth Philharmonic, New Bedford Festival Theater, the Tri-County Symphonic Band, the Buzzards Bay Musicfest, the Savannah Symphony Orchestra, the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Chicago Civic Orchestra, the Peabody Wind Quintet, the Bellemore Ensemble of Baltimore, the Mozart Festival of Alameda, and the Trinity Chamber Concerts of California.

Everbest Music presents a reissue of two classic Virgil Thomson albums: Portraits and Self-Portraits and Mostly About Love. Performed by pianist and New York Times chief classical critic Anthony Tommasini, these out-of-print gems are now available as Portraits, Self-Portraits and Songs in a 2-CD set, digital download, and streaming formats. Previously released on Northeastern Records, these definitive recordings feature 22 of Thomson’s chamber and vocal works, showcasing his signature wit and shrewd musical style.

Elan Sicroff is one of the leading interpreters of the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann music, which was the result of a unique collaboration in the 1920s in which the sacred and folk music of the East was arranged for piano. From 1973-75 he attended the International Academy for Continuous Education at Sherborne in Gloucestershire, England, as a student and later as Director of Music. The Academy was run by J. G. Bennett, a leading exponent of the teachings of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. In 1974 Mr. Bennett contacted Mme. Olga de Hartmann, widow of the composer, who introduced Elan to the music that Thomas de Hartmann composed in the classical idiom. Between 1975 and 1979 Elan studied with her and performed many of de Hartmann’s works. In 1982 he made a tour of the U.S., which included performances in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Boston. Since then he has given numerous recitals in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

The prize-winning Lars Hegaard (b. 1950) has, over more than 40 years, been an important voice in Danish musical life. Centered on the composer’s own instrument, the guitar, we present six of his most important works for small groups. With their refined modernist expressivity, they offer a fascinating picture of the guitar’s possibilities as a solo instrument, as accompanist and as the first amongst equals in chamber music. Lars Hegaard studied guitar with Ingolf Olsen (diploma 1973, music teaching degree 1977), and composition with Ib Nørholm (diploma 1980). He has also taken a music degree at the University of Copenhagen. In 1983 he was awarded a three-year working grant by the National Arts Foundation, and in 1992 the Sylvia and Poul Schierbeck Grant. In addition to that, he has since 1986 received annually working grants from the National Arts Foundation.