On his second Pentatone album Sogno, tenor Javier Camarena pays tribute to Francesco Paolo Tosti, together with pianist Ángel Rodríguez. Camarena and Rodríguez have curated a collection of Tosti’s songs that not only include some of his greatest hits but also highlight lesser-known works, including songs in French and English.

The songs selected for this album give us an overview of the different facets of Tosti’s style. Some are deeply sentimental, exemplified by 'Vorrei morire!' — one of the composer’s most famous pieces — while others, such as ‘Marechiare’, draw inspiration from folk traditions. Although Tosti is not often remembered in the history of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century music, Javier Camarena is inviting us to rediscover the enchanting world of his songs. Javier Camarena stands as one of the preeminent tenors of our time, and Sogno marks his second album following the successful Signor Gaetano (2022). Pianist Ángel Rodríguez makes his Pentatone debut.

In this recital, Véronique Gens and Hervé Niquet bring back to life a neglected aspect of France’s Romantic heritage: songs with orchestral accompaniment. Aside from a few pieces by Debussy and Duparc, and Berlioz’s famous Nuits d’été, orchestral mélodies form a virtually forgotten continent. In collaboration with the specialists of the Palazzetto Bru Zane, Alpha now revisits these musical landscapes, taking us from Brittany (Hahn) to Persia, whose beauties Fauré and Saint-Saëns exalt in very different ways. Mélodies by Chausson, Gounod and Dubois and rarely heard instrumental pieces by Massenet, Fauré and Fernand de La Tombelle round out the journey with their musical reveries.

On this unique and originally programmed journey, the violist Massimo Piva takes the kind of fantasy journey (Fantasiereise) that forms one of the cornerstones of German Romanticism. It is in the context of highly wrought, fantastic tales that Schumann’s style is formed from a literary point of view: Hoffmann's short stories and Jean Paul's novels, inhabited by bizarre characters and surreal situations, are his polar stars. On the musical side, he had an 18th-century heritage of fantasies by composers such as Mozart or C.P.E. Bach to draw upon, in which the notion of the fantasy is still linked to the Baroque idea of improvisation.
This is the background to the Marchenbilder Op.113, which Schumann worked on feverishly in March 1851. As a masterpiece in his late style, the collection shivers with obsession and fevered dreams. Placing them side by side illuminates the degree to which Reinecke was inspired by Schumann’s example in his own Fantasiestucke Op.43. But this recital moves on into less familiar territory, where the viola’s personality as a melancholy guide takes us to repertoire by Vieuxtemps (an F minor Elegy), Wieniawski (Rêverie in F sharp minor) and Sibelius (Rondo in D minor) by composers much better known for their prowess as violinists, and as violinst-composers.
The recital reaches a natural chronological end with the pre-eminent poet of the viola in the early decades of the 20th century, Frank Bridge. No violist he, but inspired by the artistry of Lionel Tertis, Bridge came to write a good deal for the instrument such as the Two Pieces featured here, and found its mellow, soulful voice a natural fit for his own as a composer. As a former member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and Orchestra Mozart, Massimo Piva worked extensively with the conductor Claudio Abbado. As a member of the Quartetto Prometeo he has performed both modern and classic repertoire across Europe, working with composers including Sciarrino and Fedele, and recorded the complete works for string quartet by Hugo Wolf on Brilliant Classics (94166).

This album is dedicated to the compositions of Federico Mompou, a composer and pianist of profound sensitivity. He exhibited an early inclination for the piano but, inspired by a Gabriel Fauré concert, he shifted his focus to composition, making his way to Paris to further his study. Mompou’s compositional approach was channelled through the piano, which he considered a fundamental tool for connecting with music’s essence, so he composed primarily on and for the instrument. There are some exceptions, however: notably his guitar compositions Suite Compostelana (1962) and Cançon i Dansa No.13 (1972).

In the guitar’s melancholic and evocative timbre, Mompou discovered an ideal medium to express his contemplative and gentle poetic world. The guitar becomes the canvas where sound and silence intertwine, evoking emotionscapable of transporting the listener to archaic places suspended in time.

In 2018, Brilliant Classics released Ramelli’s recording of Mompou’s original guitar compositions. This new album furthers his exploration of the composer’s works, taking his piano compositions and reimagining them for the guitar. The collaboration between the guitarist and James Beneteau, who presented Ramelli with these exquisite transcriptions of Mompou’s pieces, has been profound.

Throughout the transcription journey, Ramelli and Beneteau followed Mompou’s scores as a map, transmuting each piece through the lens of contact with the geography of the guitar’s unique resonance. Decisions about transcription, instrumentaltechnique, tempo, and dynamics are all intertwined with this listening to the instrument itself. Playing Mompou’s music transcribed for guitar is a journey aimed at heightened listening and sensitivity, exploring the spaces between notes through tactile contact with the instrument. This recording captures this creative process and marks the beginning of this ongoing artistic journey.

Pianist Sophia Weidemann and actress Tinka Kleffner present a musical-literary encounter with the exceptional composer Fanny Hensel in their new GENUIN album, "Das Jahr" (The Year). The album includes a remarkable piano cycle along with letters and diary entries to and by Hensel. Through their interpretation, these two highly acclaimed artists offer a high-level, intimate glimpse into the life and work of one of the most significant 19th-century female composers and enlightened thinkers, Fanny Hensel. Hensel's piano cycle covers a whole year, and the chosen and thoughtfully read excerpts mirror the emotionally rich and skillfully constructed music in the most delightful way!

Born in London in 1886, violinist/violist Rebecca Clarke was also a composer who produced a significant number of works; her songs and chamber music were particularly notable. Although her output became neglected after the Second World War, it experienced a renaissance in the 1970s. The performances on this album take the listener on a journey through the eloquence and profundity of Rebecca Clarke’s creative world. This is OehmsClassics’ second album featuring Judith Ingolfsson (violin, viola) and Vladimir Stoupel (piano), furthering the label’s commitment to presenting musical discoveries.

The city of Petersburg has a complex history, merging diverse cultural influences into a distinct profile. The forces generated amid the constant interplay of repression and the yearning for freedom find expression in experimentation. This led the Günter-Kim duo to explore the cosmopolitan city in search of traces. In the process, the cello-piano duo has discovered various compositions related to Dmitri Shostakovich: Boris Goltz, Galina Ustvolskaya, Boris Arapov… and, as a world premiere recording, Leonid Gorokhov. The duo's arrangements of Shostakovich's Spanish and Jewish songs symbolize a thoughtful approach to foreign cultures. This stands in stark contrast to the current somber reality: Petersburg, once the gateway to Europe, is on the brink of closing itself off.

As the pre-eminent forerunners to Chopin’s works in the same genres, the Nocturnes of John Field have few rivals for music well known by history but so seldom heard. They were largely inspired by the slow movements of Classical concertos, Mozart above all, as well as opera arias. From them, Field evolved his own firm concept of a form with rich harmonies and gentle dynamics to suggest the night and dreaming, though in fact he began by giving these pieces traditional names such as Pastorale, Serenade and "Romance. He wrote the 18 works not as a set, but over the course of 15 years, rarely completing more than one and never more than three in a single year. Liszt observed in them ‘The total absence of everything that looks to effect'.

Even when he settled upon Nocturne, Field bestowed upon some of them a qualifying subtitle: ‘Cradle Song’ (No.6), ‘Reverie’ (No.7), ‘Song Without Words’ (No.13), ’Nocturne Pastorale’ (No.17), and ‘Nocturne characteristique Midi’ (No.18). This last Nocturne stands apart from its companions as a tribute to midday, cast as an Allegro, with a coda in which a chiming clock strikes twelve as quicker notes laugh and dance around the repeated note.

As a window on the salons of 19th century Europe, the Nocturnes are taxing neither to play nor to listen to, but they are polished with painstaking finesse, and they demand from the performer all the subtle pianistic guile of Chopin’s works: notably a command of rubato to shape the melodies, and the imaginative and technical capacities of a coloristic palette to bring variety without eccentricity to the sequence.

Tyler Hay can call upon such talents and skills as critics have recognized in his previous recordings for Piano Classics such as an album devoted to the music of John Ogdon (PCL10132) ‘Tyler Hay is a formidable pianist… I believe John Ogdon would be very pleased by these performances of his music’ (Fanfare). ‘The young pianist Tyler Hay has brilliantly mastered and assimilated these often elusive scores, even to the point where I heretically prefer his interpretations to Ogdon’s’ (Gramophone).