Violin and piano duo Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Huw Watkins explore a violin and piano programme spanning four generations of musical imagination. Prokofiev's F minor Sonata captivates with it's dramatic intensity and baroque-inspired clarity. Stravinsky's Duo Concertant enchants through five lyrical musical poems, blending wit, elegance, and classical poise. Knussen's 'Reflection', written for Waley-Cohen and Watkins, immerses listeners in a jewel-like world of colour and introspection, where every note is deliberately placed. Watkins's Violin Sonata fuses modern lyricism with bursts of earthy vitality, creating a dialogue of subtle contrasts.

With four superb albums already setting new artistic benchmarks, the Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen continues it's exploration of the complete symphonic oeuvre of Mozart under the baton of celebrated Mozart specialist Johannes Klumpp. Now this fifth stage of the ensemble's sonic journey brings us Symphonies Nos. 8, 22, 23, and-as a brilliant highlight-the grand Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major. International critics praise these recordings for their "exceptional technical mastery" and hail conductor and orchestra alike as "ideal Mozart interpreters." This release is a testament to the radiant diversity and expressive power of Mozart's symphonic writing.

Thomas' imagination for Bebop Riddle IV - Hummingbird Jamboree was inspired by the vibrant, dazzling technique, flair, spirit for adventure, and musicality of the Akropolis Reed Quintet. When composing, playing, and hearing Bebop Riddle IV, the virtuosity, flexibility, and energy of superstar jazz artists leaps to ear and mind. These forces, when intersected with other specific musical perfumes, formulate a unique sonic palette. A working image for this composition is that of a hummingbird jamboree-animated, sprightly, energized hummingbirds zipping around in all directions. Hummingbirds hover at rapid wing-flapping rates, which are signified by the trills in the composition. Hummingbirds are the only vertebrates capable of sustained hovering and can fly backwards and upside-down, which inspired the music's whimsical and dexterous turns of flight.

This album traces pianist Alexandra Dariescu's journey through discovery, memory, and celebration, uniting masterworks with neglected gems and world premieres. Mozart's radiant Rondo in D major, K. 382, opens the programme, paired with Emmy Sch�fer Klein's long-forgotten Child's Dream and James Lee III's newly composed Humble Birth. Music by Clara Schumann, Nadia Boulanger, Florence Price, Amy Beach, Germaine Tailleferre, Leokadiya Kashperova, and others highlights the voices of women across centuries. Interwoven are personal favourites-Bach/Siloti's Prelude in E minor, Villa-Lobos's sparkling O polichinelo-alongside youthful treasures by Carl Filtsch and Tudor Ciortea. Together, they form a vivid portrait of music as dream, memory, and renewal.

Rudersdal Chamber Players is one of the Nordic region's leading ensembles for contemporary music, and this recording represents a special tribute to their friendship with the composers, which dates back to 2019. London-based Elena Firsova and Dmitri Smirnov are internationally acclaimed composers. Their catalogue is extensive and includes commissions and performances by, among others, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, RSNO - Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Gidon Kremer / Kremerata Baltica, Ensemble InterContemporain (Paris), Ensemble Modern (Germany), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, The Hall� Orchestra, and BBC Proms. Elena Firsova and Dmitri Smirnov formed an extraordinary composing couple who spent almost half a century of creative life together as wife and husband. They met and fell in love while studying at the Moscow Conservatoire, and from the start, they shared a passion for the arts and the world around them. As young composers, Smirnov and Firsova's music was heard in "unofficial" concerts outside the USSR, away from the judgmental ears of the Union of Soviet Composers. Despite this, they still ran afoul of officialdom and were denounced as members of The Seven, a group of non-conforming composers that included Denisov, Firsova, Smirnov, and Gubaidulina, at the 6th Congress of the Union of Soviet Composers. Ironically, this rebuke only served to generate more foreign interest in the composing husband-and-wife team. When Smirnov died in 2020, at the start of the COVID pandemic, he left behind not only a prolific musical legacy (200 opus numbers), but also poetry, artworks in various media, and several books, including Song from Underground, one of the most important chronicles of later Soviet music. For Elena Firsova, her first critical influence as an artist was her father, an internationally distinguished thinker in the field of atomic theory. As if to balance her father's scientific perspective, Firsova found inspiration in the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam and has composed numerous works based on his texts.

This recording takes the listener deep into the heart of late-seventeenth-century Naples, where brothers Rocco and Gaetano Greco were central figures in the city's thriving musical life. Their works, grounded in the practice of partimento - an improvisational method built around a given bass line - showcase the cello's emancipation from a purely accompanying role into a fully expressive solo voice. Through vivid dialogues between lower string instruments and harpsichord, I Mastricelli revives a forgotten musical language in which virtuosity, counterpoint, and improvisation converge. The result is a rare glimpse into the creative processes that shaped the Neapolitan cello school and it's lasting influence across Europe. The second part of the programme focuses on Gaetano Greco's pedagogical legacy, presenting short dances, toccatas, and improvisations drawn from early-eighteenth-century student notebooks, alongside music by Francesco Mancini. I Mastricelli highlights the diversity of Neapolitan musical culture - from the earthy energy of the tarantella to the refined contrapuntal art of the keyboard. The ensemble's instrumentation - including cellos, bass viols, bass violins, theorbo, lute, guitar, and harpsichord - evokes the rich timbral world of Baroque Naples. Combining scholarly research with living performance, this debut album offers both an artistic rediscovery and a celebration of the improvisatory freedom at the core of the partimento tradition.

The album Bohemian Legacy by Trio 258 is a heartfelt tribute to three generations of Czech composers - Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvorak, and Josef Suk - whose music embodies the soul of Bohemian culture. The program begins with Smetana's Piano Trio in G minor, a deeply personal and tragic work written in the wake of his daughter's death, where raw grief intertwines with Bohemian folk melodies and a sense of resilience. Dvorak's Piano Trio No. 3 in F minor follows, showcasing his synthesis of Bohemian lyricism and Germanic symphonic structure, combining folk-inspired dance rhythms with Brahmsian complexity. The album concludes with Suk's Elegy in D-flat Major, dedicated to poet Julius Zeyer and inspired by his poem Vysehrad, a reflective and nostalgic ode to Prague's cultural and spiritual heritage. Together, these works form a tapestry of national identity, friendship, and artistic lineage - an exploration of emotion, beauty, and belonging through music. In their liner notes, Trio 258 (Lestari Scholtes, Eduardo Paredes Crespo, and Leonard Besseling) emphasize the importance of language, nature, and folk tradition in shaping Czech music. They describe their interpretive process as an "immensely valuable journey," seeking to find their own voice while honoring the composers' intentions. Through this album, the trio not only presents technically accomplished performances but also reflects on the Bohemian spirit - one that fuses melancholy and vitality, individuality and tradition. Their recording is both a musical homage and a personal exploration of how the language of music can bridge generations, resonating with the timeless ideals of freedom, emotion, and national identity

When we think of London's Baker Street, we probably first think of Gerry Rafferty's famous pop song from 1978, perhaps also of the spectacular bank robbery in 1971, but certainly of the residence of private detective Sherlock Holmes. With this recording, the Austrian Baroque Company, led by recorder player Michael Oman, takes us on an alternative musical stroll through Baker Street, performing English consort music, symphonies, dances, and fantasies from the period 1580 to 1706 in almost chronological order, the recorder is often at the center of the selected pieces, and Michael Oman knows how to showcase it to it's best advantage.

The renowned Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo celebrates it's 30th anniversary in 2025. The duo has been honoured with numerous international awards and recordings. With the recording of all of Debussy's works in three volumes for piano duo, the Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo is now appearing on the Oehms label. The programme includes both well-known and lesser-known works, some of which are versions of orchestral works such as the famous Trois Nocturnes. The recording was made in co-operation with WDR Broadcast.

Music is a river fed by many streams. Try as one might to capture it and attach tidy labels - classical in this bottle, jazz in that, minimalism in the other - the river flows on, enriched by each tributary as it goes.

The Confringo Piano Quartet, winners of the Hans G�l Prize and fellows of the 2024 German Music Competition, present a fascinating dialogue between the familiar and the rediscovered. This compelling program pairs Johannes Brahms' Third Piano Quartet, a cornerstone of the repertoire, with a rarely heard work by Hans G�l-a composer whose life was deeply shaped by National Socialism and exile. G�l's composition from the 1920s reflects the openness and vitality of it's era, it's vivid colors and expressive power unjustly neglected in concert halls today. Together, these works illuminate a powerful conversation between Late Romantic tradition and twentieth-century rediscovery, offering listeners a deeply engaging musical experience.

The Ritual and the Cycle of Life that shape the repertory of Capella de Ministrers transcend cultural boundaries through the profound common root of the Mediterranean peoples. For centuries this mare nostrum has been a meeting ground, a space of coexistence for Jewish, Sephardic, Arab, Turkish, Greek, and many other communities, who shared languages, customs, and music in a web of exchanges and cross-fertilizations. After the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from Spain in 1492, their communities maintained and enriched their musical and social traditions in their new settlements around the Mediterranean basin. Out of this arose a musical culture of great richness and diversity, expressed in many tongues-Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Bulgarian, Ladino-emblems of coexistence and dialogue among diverse peoples. Music is a universal language, able to convey sorrow, hope, spirituality, and the daily life of those who perform and share it. It is living testimony of collective memory and a tool of social cohesion. When we evoke places such as Casablanca, Salonika, Sofia, Ferrara, Venice, Odessa, Istanbul, Tangier, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Alexandria, Smyrna, or Jerusalem, we are giving voice to a common cultural memory and celebrating the dignity and historical wealth of the peoples of the Mediterranean. This Ritual, born of crossroads and of shared histories, embodies plurality, coexistence, and the integrative force of culture, standing against oblivion, genocide, and exclusion. To honor this legacy is itself an act of historical recognition and a pledge for coexistence, peace, and dialogue among cultures.

Baroque Beyond invites you on a sonic journey between Baroque tradition and modern expressiveness. Shorena Tsintsabadze combines historical piano works and arrangements with a contemporary perspective characterized by profound reflection and artistic virtuosity. In an era of great social and technological upheaval, reminiscent of the transition from the late Renaissance to the Baroque period, this album demonstrates how music can serve as a human anchor and an expression of inner strength. A captivating listening experience that connects past and present and raises questions about our humanity in the digital age.

A native of Frankfurt, Anton Urspruch was a student of Joachim Raff, later becoming one of Liszt's favourite proteges. Urspruch's style was more aligned with Mendelssohn and Beethoven, however, and he proclaimed that 'you can't understand modern music if you don't understand Bach'. The Cavatine und Arabeske are delightful salon pieces, while the Variationen form an extensive canvas that revels in contrasting moods and constructional ingenuity. The short but emotionally packed Cinq Morceaux stand at the apex and final flowering of purely Romantic pianism in Europe.

This recording explores the emotional depth, colour and inventiveness of Finnish concertante works for violin and orchestra. The pieces range across the transitional landscape of the country's national music during the 20th century, where mysticism, modernism, folklore and experimentation co-exist. Major figures such as Selim Palmgren and Aarre Merikanto are represented, as is charming film music by Einar Englund, writing under a pseudonym. Distinctive works by Vaino Haapalainen, Vaino Raitio and Nils-Eric Fougstedt complete the programme.

Henrique Alves de Mesquita was a prolific composer who defied Brazilian society's systemic exclusion of Black people to achieve prominence as one of the leading figures in the local musical scene of the 19th century. He was highly regarded for his sacred music and operas, which are rarely heard today. After study years in Paris, Mesquita turned his versatility and sophistication towards fashionable music theatre styles such as polkas, tangos and waltzes, conveying emotions ranging from contagious joy to gentle melancholy. It is these lighter pieces that are now considered by many scholars to be one of the main origins of modern Brazilian popular music.

Georges Onslow's reputation as the 'French Beethoven' was earned in the field of chamber music. His 34 string quintets build on a form perfected by Mozart, and are enhanced through Onslow's suggested use of a double bass instead of a second cello, as heard in this recording. The String Quintet No. 14 in F major has an attractively genial quality, with distinctive themes contrasting with warmly emotive lyricism; String Quintet No. 24 in D major shows the influence of Beethoven in it's theatrically dramatic moods.

Ottorino Respighi's Maria Egiziaca, described by the composer as a 'mystery in three episodes', narrates the life of Saint Mary of Egypt in a profoundly moving and deeply sensuous musical representation of Christian faith as seen through it's various characters. This work, depicting Maria's journey from prostitution to sainthood through sin, conversion and atonement, started out as a concert triptych and sits somewhere between an oratorio and an opera. The intensely dramatic and at times symphonic qualities of Maria Egiziaca are imbued with ancient Italian musical traditions, with two beautiful symphonic interludes separating the three episodes.

Head Space: Candlelight is the first EP in The King's Singers' Head Space series, aiming to connect choral music with calmness and reflection. Inspired by compline, the Catholic night service, it features plainchant, including "In manus tuas Domine" and "Salva nos Domine vigilantes," emphasizing breath-led pacing. The album also includes wordless Orlando Gibbons "Songs," contemporary pieces by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Judith Bingham, and Arvo Part, and the experimental "4'33" by John Cage, concluding with Robert Parsons' "Ave Maria" and Edvard Grieg's "Ave Maris Stella," all designed to create a contemplative atmosphere.

This album features three works by distinguished composer Alec Roth, each setting poetry on themes of nature and human reflection. A Road Less Travelled is a cantata for tenor and guitar using poems by Edward Thomas, written before his death in 1917. The Garden Path is a cycle for mezzo-soprano and string quartet setting poems by Amy Lowell, many inspired by her garden. Other Earths and Skies sets Vikram Seth's translations of LI Bai's poems for tenor and oboe. Performers include Mark Padmore, Morgan Szymanski, Martha McLorinan, the Sacconi Quartet, Hugo Hymas, and Nicholas Daniel.

Violist Jonathan Bagg unearths three overlooked gems of the mid-20th century chamber repertoire by Marion Bauer, Ulysees Kay, and Margaret Bonds. Joined by pianists Emely Phelps and Mimi Solomon, Bagg sheds light on well deserving repertoire by three composers whose contributions to the larger musical field went far beyond their fine music.

The silver Renaissance trombone and the ostentatious claviorganum were once glittering status symbols for Renaissance popes and Baroque princes. Duo GlossArte bring these treasures to life with a colourful journey of timbres around the Mediterranean that celebrates virtuosity as well as heartfelt emotion. The bright, lyrical and contoured sound of the silver trombone is perfectly suited to virtuosic passages, from Renaissance ornamentation to Baroque stylus fantasticus. The expressive richness that Spanish historical trombone virtuoso, Juan Gonzalez Martinez explores finds an imaginative and charismatic counterpart in the Swiss-born organ and harpsichord specialist Lea Suter.

Franz Liszt: Complete French Songs for Soprano, Vol. 3 This volume carries the header of a "Cycle imaginaire", based on textes by Victor Hugo who seems to have been the most important poet for Franz Liszt. All Lieder textes in German/French/English here: https://avi-music. De/html/lyrics/cycle_imaginaire. #html "The 3rd volume of our complete recording of Franz Liszt's art songs is exclusively devoted to vocal settings of poems in French. Liszt was one of the few Central European composers of his time who not only mastered the French language in addition to German but was also an avid reader of contemporary French poetry. Multilingualism was relatively uncommon in the mid-1800s; Liszt was a rather exceptional polyglot, just like his pupil Pauline Viardot (1821-1910), who composed art songs in each of the six languages she fluently spoke... Liszt's songs have been handed down to us in several variants and versions. Thus, in this third volume, we once more had to decide whether to select one "definitive" version or offer our listeners the enriching occasion to hear several alternatives. We decided to create an imaginary song cycle of Victor Hugo settings. Admittedly, Liszt never wrote concept-oriented song cycles like those of Schubert or Schumann, but we chose to combine all of his Hugo settings (excepting Gastibelza) in a collage-like succession... In most cases, we have chosen the songs' last versions. "... read more (Excerpt from the booket notes by Daniel Heide) Vol. 1 Liszt, Petrarca Sonettes Nos 47. 104. 123 (Andre Schuen; Daniel Heide) Vol. 2 Liszt, Der Du von dem Himmel bist (Konstantin Krimmel; Daniel Heide)

This thoughtfully conceived, beautifully executed, and boldly multi-idiomatic new album is a state-of-the-art insight into the unique soundworld of the contemporary marimba. It is also a portrait of the imaginative virtuosity of one of the instrument's finest practitioners engaging in the worlds of both contemporary classical music and jazz with equal devotion and insight. Her choices on this project display the creative boldness that has defi ned her entire career.

Mezzo-soprano Hermine May and pianist Manuel Lange invite you into Wagner's world of Tristan and Isolde where insatiable yearnings are awakened, passions heightened and where the fervent desire to transcend reality finds supreme love beyond death in Liebestod.