Eric Whitacre - "Eternity in an Hour". Eric Whitacre presents the album, Eternity in an Hour, a 60-minute work inspired by William Blake's poem, Auguries of Innocence. Eric conducts the work which combines his first love of electronica and synthesizers, with his choir, the Eric Whitacre Singers, strings and piano. This album explores the connection between the opening line "To see a world in a grain of sand" and granular synthesis. Eric even 'grainified' the poetry, taking slivers of each line for each movement, where only those words are sung. It is a culmination of Eric's life as a musician. Identifying as a long time 'synth nerd,' Eric uses the raw, mystical sound of the Lyra-8 synthesizer, alongside a Tasacm 424 tape recorder, whilst playing all the piano parts on his grandmother's 125-year-old piano, the sound of his childhood. 2LP set.

Karl Richter (1926-1981) remains one of the most significant figures in post-war Bach performance. This edition brings together his complete recorded legacy for Telefunken-Decca (Teldec) and Ducretet-Thomson, now part of the Warner Classics catalogue. Reflecting his activities as a harpsichordist, organist and conductor, it documents a musician whose repertoire extended beyond Bach, while providing an overview of his work and his place in twentieth-century musical life. Several recordings appear on CD for the first time. His extensive discography, recorded principally for Telefunken-Decca (later Teldec) and Archiv Produktion, encompasses the major sacred works of J.S. Bach, keyboard music, concertos and chamber works, alongside recordings of Schutz, Handel, Monteverdi, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Bruckner and the German Romantic organ repertoire. Based in Munich until his death in 1981, Richter remains one of the defining Bach interpreters of the twentieth century, his recordings representing the culmination of the great German performing tradition before the emergence of historically informed performance.

Though little known today, Pierre de Manchicourt was regarded - by Rabelais among others - as one of the greatest masters of his age. In this program, where motets and chansons frame the Missa Veni Sancte Spiritus, Gli Angeli Geneve restores him to his rightful place, inviting us to rediscover his dense, expressive polyphony, punctuated by brilliant and at times disconcerting audacities. An album shedding light on one of the most distinctive voices of the Franco-Flemish Renaissance.

Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra reach new musical peaks with An Alpine Symphony, one of the most spectacular scores ever written for orchestra. This monumental fresco, inspired by the Bavarian Alps Strauss loved so greatly, is the very summit of symphonic poems: a fascinating album of images in which nature stands as a metaphor for existence itself.

When Jonathan Biss's plans for a near-perpetual tour playing the 32 Beethoven sonatas fell apart during 2020, he devoted his daily practice to music he adored but had put to one side. The time he spent with Schubert during the pandemic was an extraordinary gift that changed him forever. In 2022, when he was thinking about how to program the three sonatas, he decided that he wanted to pair each of them with a newly commissioned work; it is those works that comprise this recording. They are not meant to relate or respond to Schubert's music in any way. But Schubert's music is a portal into a different realm, and he wanted to play it alongside new music that would similarly expose him to sounds and perspectives he had never imagined, much less heard. "Tyson Gholston Davis, Alvin Singleton, and Tyshawn Sorey have written works that are, in three completely different ways, full of mystery and wonder. Living with them has made me grow as a musician and, I suspect, a person. I am thrilled to share them with you."

Although he was naturalized French in 1661, Giovanni Battista Lulli kept the musical imprint of his native country alive in his work for years, filling his ballets with numerous airs in Italian, a language very much in vogue at court in the early years of Louis XIV's reign. What we hear here, then, is a "Signor Lulli" steeped in the Commedia dell'Arte and Italian Baroque lyricism, a whimsical, unbridled Mister Hyde before the level-headed Doctor Jekyll of Jean-Baptiste Lully takes over and becomes the great champion of French tragedie lyrique. Jerome Correas and Les Paladins record the complete Italian music of Lully here for the first time, revealing a musical world quite apart from the rest of the Sun King's official composer's output - a secret garden linking him back to his childhood, and a musical portrait of the Florentine Lulli: violinist, guitarist, mime, dancer, and performer of his own works.

With this new recording, Cyrille Dubois continues his passionate exploration of the French-language vocal repertoire, taking on an unexpected challenge: paying tribute to Benjamin Britten, a towering figure of British music, through his works in French. There is a playful twist to the idea, aimed in particular at the British audiences who have welcomed Dubois as an Artist in Residence at Wigmore Hall, London's temple of song. Winner of a Gramophone Award in 2023 for his complete recording of Gabriel Faure's songs with pianist Tristan Raes, the tenor confirms here his standing as one of today's foremost interpreters of this repertoire, while broadening his horizons to embrace one of the major figures of twentieth-century English music. The Orchestre national de Metz and it's Music Director David Reiland have lent their support to the recording, providing the project with a setting of rare sonic elegance. The program brings together three cornerstones of Britten's French-language vocal output. Les Illuminations (Op. 18), composed in 1939 to poems by Arthur Rimbaud, form a strikingly modern fresco for tenor and strings, swept by lyrical impulses and expressionist ruptures. The Quatre Chansons francaises, a youthful work written at the age of sixteen to poems by Victor Hugo and Paul Verlaine, reveal an adolescent Britten already possessed of an extraordinary poetic sensitivity, coupled with orchestral writing of astonishing maturity. Finally, the Folk Songs* in their French-language arrangements, complete this journey, as Britten approaches popular melodies with the tenderness and refinement that are among the hallmarks of his art. These three works can be heard as different facets of a single perspective: that of a British composer fascinated by the French language and French culture, absorbing and transcending them to create a voice entirely his own - universal and poetic. Under David Reiland's direction, the Orchestre national de Metz brings the warmth and precision this repertoire demands, while Cyrille Dubois unfolds the luminous clarity of his timbre, a high tenor voice with a gently amber-hued, honeyed quality, capable of moving from Hugo's Romantic ardour to Rimbaud's Symbolist vertigo without ever losing it's naturalness or intensity. This recording explores the boundaries between musical cultures, bringing France and England together, for the span of an album, in a shared poetic impulse.

The outstanding success of our release of Bach's Cello Suites performed by Janos Starker has encouraged us to follow this up with a no less important interpretation of Dvor k's Cello Concerto by the Hungarian virtuoso. Starker tackles this concerto with amazing confidence; technical difficulties encountered by others in it's performance appear unknown to him. Tonal purity, even in the dreaded upper register and the cadenzas, remains unscathed, so that one can concentrate wholly on the meditative magic of the music.Janos Starker has found worthy fellow musicians in Antal Dorati and the London Symphony Orchestra. The conductor and soloist set a benchmark in how to work together as a team in concert in that it is less the often lamented emulation than the interpretation which stands in the foreground in this performance. Rather, the two protagonists commit themselves to a chamber-music-like reading which is distinguished by the dynamically moderate intonation of the orchestra and the slender tone of the soloist throughout.An ever-welcome encore is found on side two with Bruch's "Kol Nidrei", performed with verve and a good portion of romantic, melting sweetness which allows this evergreen to flourish.." Recording: July 1962 at Wembley Town Hall, London, by C.R. Fine and Robert EberenzProduction: Wilma Cozart." Anton¡n Dvor k: Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in B Minor,op. 104 / Max Bruch: Kol Nidrei, op. 47 - Janos Starker and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati." standard sleeve

(3-LP set) Way in front of composers of the Viennese Classical era, which he did not take particularly seriously - although his performances keenly reflect Beethoven's rhythmicity - comes his personal deity: Bach. Gould's notorious strictness gives form to the minutest of figure in the score. He weaves his way through Bach's music and thereby articulates it's tightly knit and multi-facetted depths. No lecturing keyboard proponent this, but a creative co-composer who imbues the spirit of the music with life and sonority.

From Næstved to Middelfart, from Svalbard to Brooklyn: the NOVO Quartet charts it's course across geographies and eras. For Track 2, the four Danish musicians, laureates of the 2023 Geneva Competition, bring together Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 2, a Romantic masterpiece that holds a very personal place in the ensemble's story, Nielsen's String Quartet No. 2 in F minor, fierce and harmonically daring, and Missy Mazzoli's Harp and Altar, recorded here for the first time. An album born in the far North, between ice and light, that confirms the singular voice of a quartet already prize-winning and fully committed to it's own narrative.

As part of the Cultural Olympiad, the vocal ensemble Sequenza 9.3 spent three years collecting traditional oral songs throughout Seine-Saint-Denis, a region home to 175 nationalities. Entrusted to contemporary composers, these songs were transformed into a new polyphonic repertoire. The album Memoires vivantes brings together fifteen of these works: Corsican and Andalusian lullabies, a funeral lament, a Greek sailors' song, an Anatolian nursery rhyme, an Albanian song from the Ottoman era, an Indian melody, a song from China's Qing dynasty, Violeta Parra's hymn to life, and more. Shaped and refined over generations, these fragments of collective memory have crossed borders and centuries alike before finding new resonance, under the direction of Catherine Simonpietri, in the voices of Sequenza 9.3's twelve singers alongside the instrumental ensemble Opus 333.

In eighteenth-century Venice, the festivities never ceased: Carnival could last for up to eight months of the year. In the Serenissima, everything becomes mask, metamorphosis and illusion. Sottosopra! - "upside down" - conjures up the topsy-turvy world of Baroque Venice: a city where masks erased hierarchies, where Carnival suspended the rules, and where music became at once mirror and vertigo. Centred on Ophelie Gaillard's cello and the voices of countertenor Zoltan Darago and tenor Zachary Wilder, this program brings together major pages from Vivaldi's output, but above all a wealth of delightful rarities reflecting a spirit of discovery, effervescence and celebration. The album is completed by a previously unrecorded cantata by Giovanni Finazzi, a castrato and composer who embodies the art of disguise in Baroque Venice.

Swedish composer Marten Jansson has built an international reputation for music of remarkable emotional depth, combining a distinctive melodic voice with a profound engagement with spirituality, humanity and the natural world. In Psalms of Doubt and Wonderment, his first album with the VOCES8 Scholars Ensemble and the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Jansson invites listeners on a journey through uncertainty, reflection and ultimately hope. At the heart of the recording is the title work, a major cycle for choir and saxophone quartet setting newly written texts by acclaimed poet Charles Anthony Silvestri. Written in the style of the King James Bible, these contemporary psalms confront some of the defining anxieties of modern life - political division, environmental fragility and the search for belonging - while seeking wisdom, beauty and meaning beyond them. The result is music of striking intensity and sincerity, charting a path from fear and questioning towards wonderment and joy. Surrounding the cycle are works that reveal the breadth of Jansson's compositional voice. Quaere Me reflects on the presence of the divine in all things, whilst Lead Me, Lord offers a moment of quiet devotion. The Place I Called Home provides a deeply personal instrumental meditation on memory and loss, and The Choirmaster's Burial sets Thomas Hardy's celebrated poem in music of profound warmth and humanity. Performed by the outstanding VOCES8 Scholars Ensemble under the direction of Grammy Award-winning conductor Ragnar Bohlin, alongside the internationally acclaimed Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, Psalms of Doubt and Wonderment showcases a rare and compelling meeting of voices and instruments. Rich in melody, atmosphere and emotional honesty, it offers a powerful introduction to one of Scandinavia's most distinctive contemporary choral composers.

A Polish composer endowed with sensitive and bold artistic views, Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) is perhaps one of the most authentic heirs to the musical and pianistic realm of Frederic Chopin (1810-1849). The two composers share an irresistible attraction to memory, a fondness for an intangible yet inextinguishable voice of the soul. This album offers a journey through the various works and stages of their respective creative lives, the Mazurkas in particular, which obviously bring the two men closer to each other from an emotional perspective.

The early twentieth century was a period of enormous innovation and inventiveness in French organ music. On his debut album, Charles Maxtone-Smith brings together some of it's finest treasures by three titans of the organ repertoire, namely Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, and Maurice Durufle, making full use of the resources of Buckfast Abbey's Ruffatti instrument. Vierne's tumultuous Cinquieme Symphonie explores chromaticism through his vivid imagining of two overarching themes which coalesce at the end into a triumphal conclusion. Charles Tournemire evokes the beating heart of French mysticism with his sensuous colour and harmony in an improvisation, later transcribed, on the Marian hymn "Ave maris stella". Vierne's carefully controlled musical forms and Tournemire's evocative expression are synthesised perfectly in the Maurice Durufle's Prelude, Adagio et Choral varie, whose beauty and power celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Following his complete Ravel recording), Francois-Xavier Poizat continues his exploration of the composer with an album devoted entirely to transcriptions. From Daphnis et Chloe to Sheherazade, and from the Rapsodie espagnole to the jazz-inflected world of L'Enfant et les Sortileges, this programme for two pianos, percussion, flute and voice casts Ravel's melodic lines, colours and meticulous craftsmanship in a new light. Deeply at home in this repertoire, Francois-Xavier Poizat once again demonstrates his gifts as a colourist, alongside his virtuosity and freedom of expression.

This recording from the sopranos and altos of Buckfast Abbey Choir captures the unique sound world of upper voices for the Mass. Drawing on repertoire from a short, yet vibrant, period in early twentieth-century France, the program showcases Masses by Gabriel Faure, Jehan Alain, and Jean Langlais, three significant figures in the evolving tradition of French church music. These works are interspersed with Gregorian chants in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, patron of the Abbey Church at Buckfast, in whose radiant acoustic this album was recorded. Faure's Messe basse, with it's intimate lyricism, is paired with a contemporary Gloria by David Davies. Alain's Messe modale en septuor reveals his rhythmic vitality and chant-inspired style, while Langlais' Missa in simplicitate embodies an effortless spiritual purity. Rooted in the Benedictine tradition - restored at Buckfast by French monks in 1882 - and French inspiration, this album offers music of beauty, simplicity, and prayerful intensity.

A striking new debut from the Emissary Quartet, [moment]um explores movement, change, and momentum through a program of contemporary works for flute quartet. Inspired by the Japanese concept of "Jo-Ha-Kyu" - a progression from calm beginnings to rapid culmination - the album unfolds as a carefully shaped arc, moving from the stillness of Herman Beeftink's Frequency to the driving energy of Jennifer Higdon's Steeley Pause. The program features music by living composers including Nicky Sohn, Heike Beckmann, Sung-Hyun Yun, and Kai-Young Chan, while showcasing the unique sound world of the flute quartet. Delicate lyricism, rhythmic intensity and percussive effects all contribute to the album's sense of forward motion. Founded in 2009, Emissary Quartet has established itself as a leading flute quartet, with a strong commitment to contemporary music and collaboration. The ensemble has performed and taught across the United States, appeared at the National Flute Association Convention and Mid-Atlantic Flute Convention, and was among the few flute ensembles ever to reach the live quarterfinal round of the prestigious Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition.

For her first recital with harmonia mundi Gabrielle Rubio transports us to late 17th- and early 18th-century France, and the music of the first French composers to have affirmed the status of the still quite novel transverse flute. These sounds have fascinated her since childhood: a chiaroscuro blend of dance and daydream, with all the poetry of an emerging art of elegance, sophistication and emotion.

Experience the magical atmosphere of thrilling spy thrillers live with the DNSO in this program. Legendary film music from James Bond and Mission Impossible-Agents Only Live Twice promises a musical extravaganza and unique action from the DNSO Concert Hall!

Though a crucial figure in the Golden Age of Louis XIV, Sainte Colombe remains shrouded in mystery. La Reveuse invites us to rediscover his work in the light of his time, alongside music by Nicolas Hotman, Louis Couperin, Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers and Jean Rousseau: an aesthetic soundscape of 17th-century France, where the art of the viol reached the height of intensity and refinement.

Following on their recording of the Fourth, hailed for it's fresh approach, Pablo Heras-Casado and Anima Eterna pursue their exploration of Bruckner with his Third Symphony. In it's tougher, more daring original version of 1873, the 'Wagner Symphony' reveals a man on fire, still free from all self-censorship. This radical reading, featuring period instruments, is carried along with an infectious, boundless energy.

Experience the magical atmosphere of thrilling spy thrillers live with the DNSO in this program. Legendary film music from James Bond and Mission Impossible-Agents Only Live Twice promises a musical extravaganza and unique action from the DNSO Concert Hall!

Gianandrea Noseda and the National Symphony Orchestra present a gripping new recording of Samuel Barber's Vanessa, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American opera of love, longing, and illusion. In Barber's atmospheric, emotionally charged score, echoes of Verdi, Puccini, and Hitchcock-era Hollywood intertwine with a distinctly modern American voice. This performance brings together an exceptional cast, including Nicole Heaston, J'Nai Bridges, Matthew Polenzani, Susan Graham, and Thomas Hampson, who illuminate Gian Carlo Menotti's haunting tale of desire across generations. Recorded live in concert, this release captures Vanessa's sweeping romanticism and psychological depth with vivid orchestral color and extraordinary vocal artistry. A landmark addition to the contemporary operatic discography, it reveals why Vanessa remains one of the 20th century's most compelling operas.

At first sight Beethoven's Violin Sonatas appear to occupy only a subordinate role when placed alongside his great symphonic works and the piano sonatas. While the earlier works in the genre were viewed in their time with scepticism due to the "rare difficulty" and "learnedness" of their piano part, the later sonatas however display an increasingly marked independence of the violin part. For this reason, the A major Violin Sonata (which was dedicated to the French violinist Rodolph Kreutzer), and the so-called Spring Sonata (whose nickname was added by an unknown hand) soon became two of the most famous representatives of their genre.David Oistrakh, the brilliant violinist in this Philips re-release, certainly needs no further introduction. All the more attention, therefore, should be given to the great achievement of the less well-known pianist, Lev Oborin, a frequent chamber-music partner of Oistrakh's. Every possible facet of the instrumental dialogue is captured in Oborin's performance. He is restrained in passages where the melody is given over to the violin; he and his partner toss the motifs back and forth between them; and he takes the reins firmly into his hands when the music demands it. All this takes place with the precision of a Swiss clock but by no means with mere mechanical virtuosity.."." Beethoven: Sonatas for Piano and Violin Nos. 5 & 9 - Lew Oborin and David Oistrach." standard sleeve

With a selection of pieces traditionally regarded as studies, Pierre Hantai places himself in Johann Sebastian Bach's lineage as both disciple and master. A devoted pedagogue, Bach taught throughout his life. It takes profound artistic maturity to relive the experience of learning and recover the original emotion inspired by the beauty of these didactic works. An album to be heard as a masterclass.

One of the great works in the solo piano repertoire, Schumann's Symphonic Etudes were completed in 1835, and published in 1837. This version omitted five etudes that had been composed in 1835. Schumann revised the work in 1852, calling it "Etudes in the form of Variations," with Etudes nos.3 & 9 removed. Schumann's father-in-law Friederich Wieck published a third edition after the composer's death in an attempt to reconcile the earlier versions. A further twist is the theme at the beginning of the work. It was composed by an amateur musician, Baron von Fricken - Schumann had become engaged to his daughter in 1834. However, Fricken's theme is hardly discernable in most of the etudes. In fact, the finale is based on a theme from Marschner's opera Der Templer und die Judin based on Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe. Faure's Variations Op.73 is one of Faure's longer pieces (usually taking more then quarter of an hour), is an apt coupling on several counts. Not only does it take it's inspiration from Schumann's Etudes but it is set in the same key - all except the very last variation which is in the rare key of C sharp major (seven sharps), the enharmonic equivalent D flat major - which is the key of Schumann's Marschner finale! Both works are a supreme challenge to the performer in their technical demands.

On this new album from LSO Live, Chief Conductor Sir Antonio Pappano conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in a pair of evocative British works-Ralph Vaughan Williams's expansive Symphony No.1, A Sea Symphony and Elizabeth Maconchy's dream-like Nocturne for Orchestra. Premiered in 1910, Vaughan Williams' Symphony No.1 was the first choral symphony of it's kind by a British composer. This blazing celebration of the sea transforms text from Walt Whitman's visionary poetry into an epic orchestral voyage. Brought to life by star soloists Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, Will Liverman and the London Symphony Chorus, alongside the LSO, this epic performance is another magnificent addition to Pappano's ongoing Vaughan Williams symphony cycle. Composed in 1950, Maconchy's Nocturne for Orchestra depicts a meditative yet unsettling night under a journeying moon. Despite the pastoral influence of her formative teacher Vaughan Williams, this atmospheric miniature more closely reflects the composer's interest in central European modernism. While not often performed, the shimmering melodies and mysterious harmonies of Nocturne for Orchestra create a thought-provoking and memorable work.