Through the haze of the years, a poet remembers the women he loved. But when it comes to matters of the heart, nothing is as it seems. Particularly when the devil himself is involved. Journeying back to his school days, Hoffmann (Juan Diego Florez) relives his childhood romance with Olympia, a model student in every sense. Doomed love follows him into adulthood, where the dancer, Antonia, is taken from him too soon. Meanwhile, the sensual courtesan Giulietta has her own secret agenda. As memory and fantasy become increasingly blurred, will Hoffmann find the enigmatic Stella before it is too late? Olivier award-winning director Damiano Michieletto returns to The Royal Opera for a new production of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann alongside conductor Antonello Manacorda.

Through the haze of the years, a poet remembers the women he loved. But when it comes to matters of the heart, nothing is as it seems. Particularly when the devil himself is involved. Journeying back to his school days, Hoffmann (Juan Diego Florez) relives his childhood romance with Olympia, a model student in every sense. Doomed love follows him into adulthood, where the dancer, Antonia, is taken from him too soon. Meanwhile, the sensual courtesan Giulietta has her own secret agenda. As memory and fantasy become increasingly blurred, will Hoffmann find the enigmatic Stella before it is too late? Olivier award-winning director Damiano Michieletto returns to The Royal Opera for a new production of Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann alongside conductor Antonello Manacorda.

- Series of award-winning recordings by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon continue with a new album of orchestral works by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). This release includes Strauss' longest and final major orchestral work, the Alpine Symphony together with Four Songs, Op. 27 sung by soprano Louise Alder, one of the most in demand singers today.

This new album from pianist Peter Jablonski and the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Lukasz Borowicz, includes the world premiere recording of pianist-composer Andre Tchaikowsky's (1935-1982) 1st Piano Concerto and the first studio recording of the composer's 2nd Piano Concerto together with the Piano Sonata.

In November 2025, SOMM pays special tribute to the centenary of Sir Charles Mackerras (1925 - 2010) who was, amongst other stellar achievements, an outstanding interpreter of the music of Czech composer Leos Janacek�(1854 - 1928). At the age of 25, and over the next six decades, Mackerras introduced generations of London opera-goers to Janacek's extraordinary masterpieces, and he was directly responsible for these works becoming established in the British operatic repertoire. Our centenary tribute features the release of a remastered broadcast, from 1964, of Mackerras's first London production of the opera The Makropulos Affair. Also included is Janacek's quasi-operatic�song cycle, The Diary of One who Disappeared. Audio restoration is by Lani Spahr, whose previous restorations for SOMM of works by Elgar, Bruckner, Holst, and Bliss have recently received no less than three Gramophone Editor's Choices. Shortly after Mackerras arrived in the UK from Australia in 1947, a�British Council�Scholarship enabled him to study conducting with�Vaclav Talich�at the Prague Academy of Music, during which time he discovered Czech music and Janacek in particular. His breakthrough in introducing Janacek's unfamiliar music to British audiences came in February 1964, when he conducted The Makropulos Affair at Sadler's Wells. This release is an exciting, highly-charged souvenir of that first London production. The title of the opera, inspired by Karel Capek's 1922 play, refers to a century-old probate case, which holds the key to the formula for a life-extending elixir. The coolly enigmatic opera diva Emilia Marty shows great interest in the case, and is revealed to be Elina Makropulos, a woman from�Crete, who has lived for 337 years. This recording features the Australian dramatic soprano Marie Collier, an outstanding exponent of the role. The vocal writing in the opera is predominantly conversational, underpinned by an orchestral score that is both uncompromisingly modern and evocative of ancient times. The lead characters in two of Janacek's operas Kata in�Katya Kabanova�and Emilia Marty in�The Makropulos Affair were inspired by Kamila Stosslova with whom he fell deeply in love, despite their both being married and he being almost forty years her senior. The earliest work to be inspired by Kamila was�The Diary of One who Disappeared, begun the month after Janacek met her in 1917. This unorthodox song cycle for tenor, contralto, female voices, and piano was inspired by a diary-in-poems about a village boy who falls in love with the gipsy girl �ofka. Janacek wrote to Kamila, "All through the work I thought of you! You were my �ofka." This 1956 recording features Bernard Keeffe's English translation with Richard Lewis, tenor, Maureen Forrester, contralto, women from the BBC Singers, and pianist Ernest Lush.

Joseph Gibbs is one of the 18th century's best-kept secrets; his music is characterful and individual, fusing the best of Italianate virtuosity with English and quirky Gibbs-ian humour. Despite the obvious brilliance of his compositions, the 8 Solos for Violin and Basso Continuo, Op. 1 of c. 1746 are one of only two published sets of music, and there are scant references to Gibbs in the years after his death. However, the re-emergence of his portrait (painted by Thomas Gainsborough) in the early years of the 20th century sparked a curiosity and interest in Gibbs's music, which has been described as amongst 'the finest English violin sonatas of the century'.

... four of the brightest young stars in classical music today. We are enjoying another golden era thanks to Quartet Integra. -Martin Beaver, First Violin, Tokyo String Quartet Producer's notes: Yarlung Records returned to Zipper Hall at Colburn School in April, 2025 to record the debut album for Quartet Integra toward the end of the quartet's 3-year residency in Los Angeles. They had just returned from acclaimed performances in Wigmore Hall in London. The quartet left again after our recording for summer concerts (and a little bit of family time) in Asia before moving to Paris and Hannover in the autumn. Quartet Integra begins a two year residency in Paris at the Centre Europeen de Musique de Chambre and will continue study with Oliver Wille at the Hochschule fur Musik, Theater, und Medien in Hannover. We will miss the Quartet badly in Los Angeles and hope they return soon. This extraordinary young ensemble, Kyoka Misawa and Rintaro Kikuno on violins, Itsuki Yamamoto on viola, and cellist Ye Un Park play Classical, Romantic, Contemporary and Renaissance music equally well. In fact, we explore all four eras in this recording. We begin with Beethoven's last published work, String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Opus 135, written in 1826. Beethoven wrote this piece at the height of his Romantic powers, but the quartet looks back with irony and nostalgia to his classical period. Next, Quartet Integra tackles Ligeti's 1968 ground-breaking Sonata No. 2, which they played for me at their audition and which won me over immediately. Kyoka, Rintaro, Itsuki and Ye Un find beauty and repose in this seat-belts-required 25-minute work full of extended techniques and mid-20th-Century sound world while communicating humor and transcendent energy. Kyoka said "When people hear the name Ligeti, many tend to associate it with contemporary music and assume it will be difficult to listen to. But in reality, that's not the case. Especially the String Quartet No. 2, which we're performing this time - it's wild and destructive, yet it holds a kind of breathtaking beauty. It feels almost like watching a movie." Mike Wechsberg, an audience member at our special live concert recording session commented heartily how "Ligeti is not the sort of music I normally like, but THIS was magnificent! Bravo Quartet Integra!" We ended the concert with Green Mountains, Now Black, a new piece by David S. Lefkowitz which he completed in the spring of 2025. Donna Morton commissioned David's piece for Yarlung Artists and Quartet Integra through Yarlung's sister organization Coretet. Donna and her group have steadfastly supported new chamber music including from composers Caroline Shaw, Diego Schissi (who won a Latin GRAMMY� nomination for Nene, which he wrote for Yarlung's Sibelius Piano Trio), Jamie Thierman, Eric Nathan and Benjamin Taylor among others. Donna serves on the boards of both Yarlung Artists and Coretet, and we relished the opportunity to collaborate again as Coretet celebrates it's 10th Anniversary and Yarlung celebrates it's 20th. Beethoven wrote his last major composition, String Quartet Op. 135, in 1826. This was his final statement in his groundbreaking series. Opus 135 premiered in 1828, performed by Ignaz Schuppanzigh and his famous ensemble, a year after Beethoven died. When the members of Quartet Integra suggested we record this work on their debut album instead of Schubert's "Rosamunda" Quartet written only two years earlier, I initially demurred. Who needs yet another superb performance of Beethoven's final masterpiece?" I complained. "Who needs yet another Rosamunda?" Quartet Integra 'cellist Ye Un Park responded within milliseconds. She had a point, and I'm glad we recorded the Beethoven instead, at least on Quartet Integra's first Yarlung album! The ensemble had just performed Beethoven's first string quartet in London's Wigmore Hall in London, as well as "Rosamunda, " and they were game to expand their horizons and capitalize on their "Beethoven High." They also wanted to utilize the superb acoustics at Colburn School while the quartet was still living in Los Angeles, and we knew Zipper Hall would do the Beethoven special justice. Our recording concludes with David S. Lefkowitz' Green Mountains, Now Black. David's piece offers quotations from Monteverdi's earliest extant opera Orfeo (one of my favorites in the operatic literature) and additional quotations from Monteverdi's final opera The Coronation of Poppea, including it's magical and ever-so recognizable love duet between Poppea and the emperor Nero at the end of the opera. Instead of merely transposing my favorite arias, choral passages and this famous duet for string quartet, David wrote a work that explores the very nature of what it means to be a string quartet. And he experiments with the genre, pushes boundaries, and incorporates his own despair witnessing the burning of much of Los Angeles in the spring of 2025. David and his wife Laurie could see flames and smoke not too far away from their home as he composed this work. Nero himself famously allowed a good chunk of downtown Rome to burn, exercising (and bragging about) his dubious leadership in the process. David layers Octavia's farewell to her beloved city with the giddy love duet between Octavia's husband, the emperor, and his mistress Poppea, to tell the story of David's own distress while writing the piece. Green Mountains, Now Black not only refer to Monteverdi himself (Green Mountain) but the fire which turned so many of our spring green mountains to char in Los Angeles. Despite David's gloom and worry during our fires, his iridescent string writing shows itself proudly and his many glorious and lyrical passages outnumber the darker ones. As musicians, the members of Quartet Integra communicate superbly with audiences and with each other as they explore the depths and details of these musical scores. With generous support from Sel, Nick and Martin at Colburn School, we worked with Quartet Integra on April 13-15, 2025 and ended our recording session with a live concert for invited guests from the Los Angeles and Orange County Audio Society on April 15th. You can enjoy videos of this concert on YouTube's YarlungChannel. Fellow recording engineer and equipment designer Arian Jansen and I used SonoruS Holographic Imaging technology in the analog domain to refine the stereo image, Yarlung's SonoruS ATR12 to record Agfa-formula 468 analog tape, the Merging Technologies HAPI to record 256fs DSD in stereo and surround sound and the SonoruS ADC to record PCM. We used our friend Ted Ancona's AKG C24 microphone previously owned by Frank Sinatra, and Yarlung Audio vacuum tube microphone amplification designed and built by Elliot Midwood. In closing, it was Donna Morton and Martin Beaver who suggested Yarlung support Quartet Integra and Martin coordinated their audition. The Quartet has been lauded as the most exciting ensemble to emerge from Japan (and Ye Un from Korea) since the famous Tokyo String Quartet formed in 1969 at Juilliard. I love a certain symmetry here: two of the non-Japanese born musicians playing as members of the Tokyo String Quartet were Yarlung Special Advisor Martin Beaver, who became principal violin in 2002, and Clive Greensmith, who joined Tokyo as cellist in 1999. Both Martin and Clive performed with the Tokyo Quartet until the ensemble gave their final concerts in 2013, and now Martin and Clive co-direct Chamber Music at Colburn School and have mentored the four members of Quartet Integra. Before their Colburn residency, Quartet Integra won a four-year fellowship with Suntory Hall's Chamber Music Academy where they were coached by Tokyo Quartet members Koichiro Harada, Kikuei Ikeda and Kazuhide Isomura. This is generational integrity and communication worthy of Kyoka, Rintaro, Itsuki and Ye Un. As we celebrate Yarlung's 20th Anniversary, we are enjoying thinking back to our original inspiration. We began working with young musicians starting international concert careers and sharing their transformative performances with the world. Yarlung Records takes it's name from the Yarlung Valley in Central Tibet, which legend holds as a meeting place between heaven and earth. It is in this valley, at the site of Yambulakhang Castle in our Yarlung Records logo, where Heaven and Earth touched in order to transform humanity. What could be a better metaphor for the transformative power of great music? I feel a deep connection between this mythical name for our record label and Quartet Integra. Hearing them play and working with these four good-natured and talented people reminded me why we created Yarlung Records in the first place. Despite my earlier comment, Quartet Integra is not a Japanese ensemble. Three of their members come from Japan and one from Korea, but they are inherently international. Quartet Integra lived in California these past years, and as indicated will spend the next several years in France and Germany. Their ties to the famous Tokyo String Quartet increase the Japanese-ness of Quartet Integra, but Tokyo String Quartet was actually founded in 1969 at Juilliard in New York City, not Japan. In planning their album cover, this image of the Toyosaki Kompira Shrine Torii Gate on the west coast of Hokkaido jumped out at us, and reflected Quartet Integra's refreshing vitality. As does the inspiration for the name of Yarlung Records, a Torii gate symbolizes a portal to the sacred in Shintoism connecting everyday reality with transcendence. -Bob Attiyeh, producer

REFERENCE RECORDINGS� proudly presents the beloved Requiem of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in a very special interpretation. Academy Award� and Golden Globe� winning film and Broadway star F. Murray Abraham joins Manfred Honeck, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh and the Westminster Choir for Honeck's dramatic conception of "Requiem: Mozart's Death in Words and Music." This album was recorded live in 2023 in beautiful and historic Heinz Hall, home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, in superb audiophile sound.

Few conductors of Klaus Tennstedt's generation demonstrated such complete mastery of the Classical and Romantic repertoire from Beethoven to Mahler and Strauss, coupled with an intensity in live performance that was palpable. He was among the finest German conductors to emerge after the Second World War and was in constant demand with such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic the Boston Symphony, the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Philharmonic. Doremi's 7th volume of live recordings of Klaus Tennstedt feature 3 works by Shostakovich: the Piano Concerto No.1, the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the Symphony No. 9 - with a performance from Tokyo of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, Barber's Adagio for Strings and Mozart's Overture to Don Giovanni.

Of Paganini's fifteen quartets with guitar only six were published during his lifetime. They represent his finest body of chamber compositions as can be heard in the three quartets for violin, viola, guitar and cello, Op. 4. Of them, No. 3 in A major is a masterpiece, with French-styled inspiration, rich lyricism and piquant invention, while the virtuosic, almost concerto-like No. 8 in A major embodies his quatuor brillant writing, with it's Rossinian resonances. No. 12 in A minor is the most 'symphonic' of the three, containing formal originality, one of the most moving of Paganini's slow movements, and his most serious-minded finale.

Close your eyes and surrender to Hypnos, god of sleep. Zefiro Torna pours a hallucinatory elixir of dreams, solitude, secret fantasies, and soothing whispers. Baroque masters like Kapsberger, Dowland, Moulinie�, and Huygens drew inspiration from night and sleep. The enchanting voice of Lore Binon pierces the darkness, carried by Jurgen de bruyn's theorbo and lute. Lean back and drift away into... Somnia.

Alessandro Scarlatti's Il trionfo dell'onore (The Triumph of Honour) - his only comic opera - was first performed in Naples in 1718. With it's distinctive recitatives and expressive arias, and a cast including four pairs of lovers, it can be considered one of the forerunners of opera buffa. The central character is the unrepentant seducer Riccardo Albenori, a Don Giovanni-like figure though without the villainous aura. In this opera, Scarlatti ensures not only perceptive psychology but a rich variety of arias, duets and quartets that generate the work's pathos as well as it's humour and eroticism.

With my second album, "All Things Will Clear Up, Eventually", I want to encourage people to pause-to take a moment to truly feel the struggles in their lives, reflect on themselves, and engage in introspection. It's like lying on your back and gazing at the clouds, watching them appear, shift, and eventually dissolve. You begin to see shapes and patterns-new things you wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't taken the time to look a little longer. I believe that pausing and "gazing at the clouds" is essential for our mental well-being. It keeps us from fleeing into the rush of daily life and ignoring the difficult parts. Instead, it invites us to slow down and attentively observe what surfaces and moves within and around us. And I believe that pausing gives hope. These are the moments when, even in the midst of difficulty, we slowly begin to notice new possibilities and beauty-the blue sky between the clouds, the childlike images hidden in the darker ones. I believe my music can play a comforting and empowering role in this process.

A prevailing feature of music of the 16th century and earlier was a split between the deployment of voices and instruments: occasionally replacing each other, or used in alternation - a more concerted effort in writing dedicated instrumental music with increasing degrees of complexity and virtuosity was taking place. The penchant for writing stories about love in it's many forms continued, finding a new home in the developing operatic works as well as the ever-popular madrigal genre, as composers continued to find ways to describe the joy, grief, despair and ecstasy of the human experience of love. Cupid's Ground Bass is a celebration of these developing musical aesthetics of early 17th century Italy, focusing particularly on the composers' language of love in all it's forms.

Emanuel Gruber and Arnon Erez's classic account of Beethoven's music for cello and piano has been remastered for this 2-CD release. The Jerusalem Post called Gruber "one of our great artists" citing "his extraordinary capacity for projecting the deepest meaning of the music". Gruber was awarded the Pablo Casals prize by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Arnon Erez has been the head of the Chamber Music Department at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music at Tel Aviv University for nearly two decades. With Emanuel Gruber, Erez has recorded the complete cello and piano Sonatas by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Brahms.