For her first project at Cypres, young Belgian pianist Cassandre Marfin thinks big and has come up with Jusqu'a la nuit, a triptych devoted to chromesthesia, one of the many forms of synesthesia known to date. Synesthesia refers to the general alliance of two senses within the brain of an individual. Chromesthesia, on the other hand, refers specifically to the association between colours and sounds. Each volume of this trilogy is dedicated to a primary colour: blue, yellow and red. This first volume focuses on blue, which is undoubtedly the colour most present in music and the one most appreciated in the Western world. According to Cassandre Marfin, it evokes the world of night and dreams, something intangible and indefinite. It is a source of multiple representations in our imaginations. Through a skilfully conceived programme, the pianist associates this colour with ideas, metaphors and compositional systems that allow us to form our own personal impression of blue.

The largest collection of piano nocturnes on CD, celebrating the art of the romantic piano song without words. Over a century of repertoire in all modern recordings, plus a new booklet essay exploring the history and context of the nocturne. Composers of the 18th century such as Haydn and Mozart wrote notturnos as serenades to be sung and played at night time, both on an operatic stage and as independent pieces for entertainment. The early 19th century saw a rapid evolution in the technological, the cultural and the musical development of the piano - as an instrument of longer sustaining power and greater volume than before, offering a broader palette of tone-colours, presenting composers with the potential to write quasi-orchestrally for a single instrument, as Baroque composers had done for the organ. At the same time, musical forms were becoming looser, more shaped by extra-musical inspirations in literature, poetry and the natural world. The Irish composer John Field was the first to publish nocturnes for the solo piano as standalone works, rather than as poetic interludes within larger pieces such as suites or sonatas. Having inherited the form from Field, Frederic Chopin then raised the nocturne to new heights of inward expression. As much as the salon became a place for pianistic display of technique, it also became a space for quiet soliloquy through the course of the 19th century, accessible to the rapidly expanding bourgeoisie with access to an instrument at home and to the education required to play it. Thus publishers commissioned nocturnes from both greater and lesser composers to satisfy an ever-growing market. The nocturnes in this box cover all the great names of Romantic-era piano writing, and many lesser-known ones too. Many of the performances are played on instruments of the period, enabling listeners to immerse themselves into a 19th-century world of softer and more gentle colours and expression. This new box also features an essay by Peter Quantrill outlining the history of the nocturne and it's lasting hold upon our affections and imaginations.

The album "Present Reflections" offers an anthology of Amy Beach's piano works, showcasing her remarkable compositional talent and stylistic range-from expressive virtuosity to deep interpretative intimacy. This distinctive quality is due not only to her extraordinary gift but also to several factors: the profound cultural shifts she experienced between the late 19th and early 20th centuries-bridging late Romanticism, the emergence of the avant-garde, and the advent of jazz-and her unmistakable emotional expressiveness. Despite the strict, self-imposed discipline of her compositional process (she was entirely self-taught), her style remains deeply personal and authentic in every work. Looking back in time, beginning with her later compositions, one can observe a radical evolution in her writing. These works are not only a significant contribution to American piano literature but also a testament to the transformation of an era-one that slips away from the present to become almost immediately part of the past. In this way, Present Reflections becomes a mirror of today's world, reflecting the epochal changes of which we are all a part. Mrs. Beach's incredible talent, which enabled her to emerge as one of the greatest composers of her time, tells the story of both women and men-transcending the limitations imposed by society and leaving behind a musical legacy that deserves not only rediscovery but celebration. Katia Spluga

Discovering a masterpiece that is still largely unknown to the music world creates a very special excitement - and is a real rarity. To find three such gems and to capture them in a premiere recording with outstanding artists is a stroke of luck!Even though the first recording of Amy Beach's "Gaelic Symphony" with the Munich Symphony Orchestra under it's new chief conductor Joseph Bastian can now be found time and again in the concert repertoire, Beach's fascinating musical language remains undiscovered territory for many musicians. And that is precisely what makes working with it as an interpreter so beautiful and exciting: getting completely involved in a new world of sound, harmonising the details with the broad lines and learning to understand the subtleties and sophistication of her magnificent art of orchestration is an enriching experience that opens the ears and soul. This music is so rich, so multi-layered and so colourful that you can only love it. The "Gaelic Symphony" is the very first symphony by an American female composer. It's existence is due on the one hand to the creative power and defiant self-confidence of Amy Beach, who did not let go of music even under the thumb of her husband. On the other hand, the influence of Antonin Dvorak, who was living in the USA at the time, as the midwife of a genuinely American music. The three vocal works on this album (all premiere recordings) are imbued with poetry and drama. It was particularly moving for the Munich Symphony Orchestra, Joseph Bastian and the singers Angela Brower and Camille Schnoor to bring these sounds back to life for the first time in over a century, as far as is known.

Her Story rather than "His Story": On her new GENUIN album, the remarkable Austrian pianist Mitra Kotte reexamines music history, placing women composers of the 19th and 20th centuries at the forefront. How many people truly know the works of Dora Pejacevic, Louise Farrenc, Cecile Chaminade, or Emilie Mayer as they deserve? Mitra Kotte, a prizewinner at international competitions, sheds light on a long-overlooked chapter of music. With great passion and the highest technical mastery, she introduces us to exquisite gems and profound works that leave us marveling both visually and aurally!

What would it mean to 'compose like a woman'? The present collection answers the question, in a literal sense, while undoing the premise on which the question was asked in the first place. In social and historical terms, it means enjoying privileges of upbringing, education, and/or wealth that were historically denied to the vast majority of women. It means, on the part of the women represented here, a single-minded determination in pursuit of their vocation, helping them to overcome prejudice and sexism in a cultural, social and political milieu that has consistently denied women the opportunity to find and express their own voice in music. Only with movements of emancipation in the last century, and much more rapidly in the last 50 years, has this situation begun to be addressed and corrected. What composing like a woman does not mean - as the music in this collection makes clear - is a definable set of qualities or characteristics to the music itself which would distinguish the work of female composers from the music composed by men.

This remarkable set gathers many individual recordings of music by women composers, which Brilliant Classics has quietly yet actively championed in their catalogue for decades, uniting it with exciting new outings, so that a comprehensive historical picture of the highly varied struggles and successes of women composers through the ages to our present time are chronicled and celebrated.

Other information:

- Recordings date from 1994-2024

- Booklet in English contains liner notes by Peter Quantrill

- The revival of interest in female classical composers reflects a growing recognition of their overlooked contributions to music history.

For centuries, women composers were marginalized, their works overshadowed by their male counterparts. However, recent efforts by musicians, scholars, and institutions have brought these composers into the spotlight, highlighting the richness and diversity of their compositions.

- This renewed focus stems from a broader movement toward inclusivity in the arts, challenging traditional narratives that have historically excluded women. The rise of feminist musicology has also played a key role, offering fresh perspectives on these composers' lives and works.

- This comprehensive box set offers a wide spectrum of works by female composers, from the Medieval mystic Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179), through the Renaissance Isabella Leonarda (baptized 1620-1704), Francesca Caccini (1587-1640) und Barbara Strozzi (baptized 1619-1677), traversing the Baroque and Classical eras, and arriving in the contemporary field, with composers such as Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006) and Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969).

- A long due homage to the art and voice of female composers, spanning nearly a thousand years!

Hildegard And Her Sisters, Katelyn Bouska, piano. After our first success with Women and War and Peace, Katelyn Bouska put a big smile on my face when she mentioned a second project she wanted to do with Yarlung Records. Kate can play any genre, and we discussed an album celebrating the great composer, mystic, poet, philosopher, scientist, rabble-rouser and visionary abbess Hildegard von Bingen. Hildegard is the first composer for whom we have a definite name in the European canon. She was born in 1098 and died in 1179 at 81 years of age. I was even more enthusiastic when we discussed that Kate and Yarlung would commission new music for the project in Hildegard's honor. To help place Hildegard in wider European history, she was born a mere 32 years after the Battle of Hastings, 47 years before the start of construction of Chartres Cathedral, and Henry IV was Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire after inheriting Charlemagne's throne in Aachen. Kate wanted to return to Samueli Theater at Segerstrom Center for the Arts where we made our first recording together. Aaron Egigian was able to secure dates over Easter Weekend, March 29th, 30th and 31st, 2024, when the concert hall, Kate and our team were available. My fellow recording engineer Arian Jansen and I set up for the recording before Kate arrived, and while I do not believe in frequent divine intervention for such things, we asked Hildegard to "bless the more than 50 vacuum tubes" that we would need to be working perfectly for the recording. With or without Hildegard's intercession, all vacuum tubes worked beautifully for the duration without hiss, pop or crackle. Because Hildegard is best known for her vocal music, we decided to record this album as if Kate's piano were a full choir, stretching from far left to far right in the soundstage. Thanks to the superb acoustics in Samueli Theater, you may hear ambience and extreme high and low notes on Kate's keyboard expanding outside your speakers in your listening room. Unconventional as this may be for a solo piano recording, this was intentional such that the listener can experience more of the sound Kate enjoyed sitting at the piano, as if our ears are Kate's ears while she plays.

A wide-ranging introduction to the distinctive compositional voice of Amy Beach through her solo piano music, featuring both well-known and unfamiliar pieces. While Amy Beach is now among the best-known female composers of classical music history, her story becomes more remarkable as details of it are disseminated. The pianist Mark Viner introduces her life and music in a detailed but approachable essay to accompany this new recording of her piano music on Piano Classics. She was essentially self-taught, and a prodigy to match any previous celebrated male examples, at least in technica l terms. She translated Berlioz's treatise on orchestration in order to use it herself. She became a formidably accomplished pianist in her own right, but was then prevented from giving more than two recitals a year by her husband. Beach continued to compose, however, and steadly so through the last decade of the 19th century and well into the 20th. The earliest piece on Martina Frezzotti's recital is also one of her most familiar, the nocturne Dreaming from 1892, in which she emulates a Chopin model with piano writing that's deceptively simple on the page but uniquely haunting on the ear. The album's most substantial work is the 25-minute Variations on Balkan Themes, from 1904. The four themes in question were passed on to her by a missionary to the region, and the piece amounts to a proud cry for Serbian nationalism in the post-Lisztian style. Through it's course, Beach writes in the style of a barcarolle, a parlour waltz, a funeral march, a Hungarian dance and much more, weaving together her material with a sure hand. Beach's own skill as a pianist surely contributes to the soft tonal shades she conjures in her transcription of Richard Strauss's song St�ndchen. She also explored the possibilities of making accurate musical transcriptions of birdsong decades before Olivier Messiaen did so, and her most celebrated work in this vein is the achingly beautiful Hermit-Thrush at Eve from 1922. Martina Frezzotti's album of Fanny Mendelssohn for Piano Classics (PCL10238) won enthusiastic praise from David Hurwitz on a video review for Classics Today. According to pianodao. Com (Andrew Eales), 'Frezzotti proves a brilliant advocate for these pieces in this recording, combining a poetic sensibility with the necessary weight and flair to showcase the more dazzling elements of Mendelssohn's piano writing. The recording is bright, reverberant and luminous.

Classical Music

The Ambache is a flexible group fo from three to thirty players. Since its formation in 1984, it has become known for its performances and for the cohesiveness of its collaborative, unconducted teamwork. The Ambache is famous for its championship of music by women composers. Their previous recording of Amy Beach (CHAN9752) was given a Rosette in the Penguin Guide to CDs. Recorded in: St Michael's Church, Highgate, London 28-30 October 2002 Producer(s) Rachel Smith Sound Engineer(s) Jonathan Cooper Matthew Walker (Assistant)

Classical Music

Includes work(s) for cello and piano by various composers. Soloists: Steven Isserlis, Stephen Hough, Simon Callow.

CORO Welcomes The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, to the label.

In their first recording for CORO, The Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, under the direction of Mark Williams, explore the repertoire that has provided the bedrock of the college’s musical life for the last 500 years, all of which was written for the end of the day.

Much music associated with evening time is naturally calm and soothing, satisfying those seeking transcendental beauty in the form of unchallenging ‘sound baths’. However, this collection also seeks to challenge, contrasting contemporary settings with music from the 16th century. We hope, through this range of works, to capture something of that liminal space between day and night characterized by Evensong and to lead the listener into that ‘peace that passes all understanding’.

The album showcases works by composers from John Sheppard to Joanna Marsh and features much-loved pieces such as Hubert Parry’s Lord, let me know mine end and John Tavener’s The Lord’s Prayer, as well as new additions to the Evensong repertoire such as Grayston Ives’ In pace and Piers Connor Kennedy’s O nata lux.

The idea for this recording was born during the Covid pandemic in 2020, when many of us were isolated and unable to communicate with each other in person. It was difficult for musicians during this time, especially because they couldn't make music with others or give live concerts. This situation made us think about how composers, musicians and artists dealt with situations where there was no freedom and how they dealt with chaos, obstacles or persecution. In selecting the works for this album, we looked at different historical periods (which sometimes included pandemics) to understand the impact that oppression and lack of freedom had on the creative process. In the course of our extensive research, we finally became aware of the "positive" aspect of this topic: we were not so much interested in what people could not do due to restrictive situations and adverse circumstances, but above all in what they were able to achieve despite these circumstances. During our research, we came across impressive artistic personalities who have left behind music of great value.

Winners of the First Prize at the inaugural Birmingham International Piano Chamber Music Competition, violinist Usha Kapoor and pianist Edward Leung present an album of violin sonatas by American composers Amy Beach and John Corigliano. The album features Beach’s large-scale chamber work of 1896, the Sonata for Violin and Piano Op. 34, and her earlier Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23 from 1893, together with Corigliano’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. Completed in 1963, this work was originally called ‘Duo’ and is very much intended for two equal musical partners.