Of arms and a woman is a chronicle of love, loss, chivalry and memory built around the late medieval wind music of Dufay, Binchois, Ciconia, Landini and Machaut, performed on shawms, slide trumpet, recorders, sackbut, bagpipes and percussion. The album is inspired by the writing of Christine de Pisan, whose work touched on every aspect of courtly life, from romantic poetry to military strategy and feminist critiques of the position of women in society. It includes rousing calls to battle, arresting love songs, and the heartbreakingly beautiful Dueil angoisseux, the only contemporary musical setting of any of de Pisan's poems. Blondel performs ceremonial fanfares and intimate chansons, dances and theatre music on reconstructions of historical instruments.

John Dowland (1563–1626) is recognized as the greatest English composer of lute music and songs. Michael Butten presents a collection of the composer’s most popular and beautiful songs arranged for the classical guitar. A whole album of Dowland performed on classical guitar is rare, usually heard on the lute, so FHR are pleased to be able to present this release. In this recording, Butten plays with a very beautiful sound, incredible colors, lovely melodic phrasing and immaculate control of tone, which draws you right in. This is a spellbinding album, wonderfully recorded. Born in Berkshire, Michael Butten studied at Junior Academy, where he twice won the Lower Strings Prize, before being awarded a scholarship at the Academy to continue his studies with Michael Lewin. In his first year he won the Julian Bream Prize, adjudicated by Julian Bream, and, shortly afterwards, gained the Nervi/Bodrato Prize as the youngest semi-finalist at the Michele Pittaluga Guitar Competition in Alessandria. On completing his BMus degree with first class honours, he received from the Academy one of the Regency Awards for Notable Achievement and in June 2014, as a postgraduate with a scholarship from Help Musicians UK, he became the first guitarist ever to win the R.A.M. Club Prize. He was the 1st prize winner at the 2016 Ivor Mairants Guitar Award, and is a Yeoman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. Upon leaving the Academy in 2016 he also won the David Russell Prize.

Risonanze is the d�but solo album of London-based viola da gamba player Ibrahim Aziz, who is one of the greatest performers of the instrument of his generation. This recording is a performance of immense expression, expertly delivered on a viol made by English string maker Barak Norman in 1712. The album includes one of the highlights of the baroque era the Cello Sonata No. 2 by J.S. Bach as well as other baroque works. Risonanze also includes contemporary works, including one specially written for Aziz. Popular between the 15th-18th centuries, the viol has a unique quality of the sound through plangent tones of it's middle voice, silvery and vibrant high notes, and the depth of it's bass and human-like qualities. It's bow is played with a technique that discourages sharp attacks on the strings, but instead draws out and threads together each note like beautiful pearls on a maiden's neck, glowing with a silky halo. This quality of sound is not volume but resonance.

Ravel was very happy with his second Violin Sonata, written between 1923 and 1927, whose second movement adopts the Afro-American blues. This wonderful sonata is characterized throughout by the contrast between the consistently fairly dry piano part and the smooth, melodic violin.

The Sonata for Violin and Cello, written between 1920 and 1922, is dedicated to Debussy, who had died in 1918, and the work could be thought of as an elegy for the composer. There are references to Debussy’s final chamber works.

A complex and emotional work, the magnificent Piano Trio of 1914 contains four movements all full of exoticism and color.

Heino Eller (1887–1970) is the founding father of Estonian professional instrumental music, both as a masterful and original composer, and as a teacher of composition over half a century. His output of around 300 titles is almost exclusively dedicated to instrumental music. Though Eller wrote three symphonies, around a dozen symphonic poems, six string quartets and four piano sonatas, he is nevertheless essentially a master of the small form. Eller’s music is characterized by a bright pantheistic lyricism and a Nordic restraint in expression, whilst retaining a philosophically charged, at times epic undercurrent. This magnificent album is the first ever devoted to Eller’s music for violin, about half of which is represented here — including the demanding second of his two sonatas for violin and piano, the remarkable, hyper-expressionist Fantasy for solo violin, and the most popular, emblematic work in Estonian repertoire for the instrument, Pines.

One of the key German composers before Bach with over 500 surviving individual pieces, Heinrich Schütz mainly composed church music. Credited with bringing the Italian style to Germany, he continued its evolution from the Renaissance into the early Baroque. Despite living most of his long life in Germany, Schütz made two trips to Venice in his twenties. The first was between 1609 and 1613, during which he studied under Giovanni Gabrieli. The second trip occurred in the late 1620s, possibly to meet and study under Monteverdi. These visits significantly influenced Schütz’s music as he blended the ornate and theatrical Venetian style with the more subdued Lutheran tradition. This album explores his solo cantatas alongside examples of the brilliant and virtuosic Venetian-style instrumental music.

Vestiva: not only our red thread throughout the album, referring to one of our favourite madrigal hits Vesti va i colli, but also a metaphorical motto: “dressing up” the music with colours, diminutions, trilli, accenti … (as the hills, the colli, in the original madrigal text are dressed up with flowers) in the balancing act of pure fl exibility and absolute punctuality or momentum – creating spoken “words” with a minimal, reduced instrumentation and without actual sung text. Working in this minimal, fragile and intimate instrumental setting with lute, harp and recorders while trying to reach maximum expression is an absolute challenge and pure joy.

This album brings together three works for cello and piano. The first of them, Gabriel Fauré’s Cello Sonata No. 1, is a cornerstone of the repertoire for this medium. It was composed in 1917 and premièred by cellist Gérard Hekking and pianist Alfred Cortot.

The second, Gordon Crosse’s Wavesongs, is a modern masterpiece and written for this present recording’s cellist Alexander Baillie in 1983. The work ranks among Crosse’s most personal inspirations, as well as being an impressive composition in its own right. The third is a transcription of an early, appealing work by Maurice Ravel. Written in April 1897, and sometimes referred to as Sonate posthume, Ravel’s [First] Violin Sonata is among his earliest extant works.

Night Fancy is Michael Butten’s second release on FHR, his previous being the critically acclaimed recording of works by John Dowland [FHR84]. Butten, one of the UK’s leading guitarists, has won many solo guitar competitions including 1st prize at Ivor Mairants Guitar Award and recently the 2nd prize at the 2023 Francisco Tarrega Competition. The title of the album Night Fancy, was the original title of Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland, Op. 70, which is featured on the recording.

This album draws inspiration from the musical life of 18th century Dublin at the Smock Alley Theatre and its neighbourhood; exploring connections between Italian and Irish musicians working there with the atmospheric; rich and earthy sound of multiple bass instruments

HENSEL: Lieder (contains 17 première recordings) – Complementing the historically important 2021 publication of the complete songs of Fanny Hensel, this album has been curated to guide the listener through the rich and varied musical life of the composer, including songs from the different compositional phases and poets Hensel chose to set. Recorded at Mendelssohn-Haus, Leipzig where Hensel herself once lived, the 34 tracks on this recording feature many songs which have never been performed in public before, 17 of which are première recordings. The album cover features a specially commissioned work by Glasgow-based artist Kirsty Matheson.

Although he remains best known for his symphonies, Anton Bruckner’s output of sacred choral works is sizable and represents the essence of a composer whose Catholicism was both profound and almost entirely unwavering. These works include various motets and anthems of which some of the most popular are featured on this recording including Ave Maria, Locus iste and Os Justi. Thanks to the excellent acoustics of the 11th century St Albans Cathedral, this recording sounds wonderful, particularly in the immersive spatial audio with Dolby Atmos version (which is available to stream via Apple Music). The recording features boy choristers rather than the more commonly heard women's voices, fitting closer to Bruckner’s intentions. St. Albans Cathedral Choir is regarded as one of the finest cathedral choirs in the country and this is the first time they have recorded these works. This recording is released ready for Bruckner’s 200th birth anniversary in 2024.

The present release comprises two works by Russian composers of differing generations, in music which has long been central to the repertoire of composer and conductor Álvaro Cassuto who is heard conducting the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra. Even before the Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet had made it to the stage, selections were heard in concert on both sides of the Atlantic, and various sequences continue to feature prominently in the orchestral repertoire. Although these sometimes take the guise of one of the three orchestral suites, it has become more common to select freely from across these or even from the overall ballet. Establishing dramatic and musical continuity within this context is more difficult than might be supposed, to which end Cassuto had devised his own selection on this present recording. Rimsky-Korsakov’s mastery of orchestration is heard at its most impressive in the Russian Easter Festival Overture, (composed at much the same time as his symphonic suite Scheherazade). Cast in a loose sonata-form design, the piece falls into three main sections which the composer prefaced with quotations from Psalms, Gospel of Mark and his own description of the Easter celebration. Almost all its themes are derived from the Obikhod, the collection of liturgical chants with which every Russian would then have been familiar – not least the composer, even though he had long since become a non- believer and viewed this music strictly as a source to be utilized in his own compositions. These two live recordings were originally broadcast by Antena 2, Portuguese Radio and Television in the mid-1990s. This album is the recording’s first commercial release.

"This album is a snapshot of the way I live in music. Diversely; organically; intimately; sometimes collaboratively, sometimes solitarily; always sincerely; and anywhere, be it a concert hall or home studio. Stradgrass is the exploration of the violin’s stylistic capabilities, through various American folk styles, from a Classical lens. The word ‘Stradgrass’ first came about in 2015, from the novelty of performing Bluegrass on the Stradivari I was playing at the time: the 1683 ex-Gingold violin, on loan to me until 2018 as a result of my silver medal finish at the 2014 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis.

"Hearing Bluegrass played on a Strad is unusual, unfortunately, so I thought it warranted its own term. The word has caught on in the social media world and seems to succinctly encapsulate what one might partly expect from a recital of mine. Stradgrass seems to be a type of musical exploration that is becoming more common within Classical violin training, and I hope this album will further encourage us all to continue that direction." -Tessa Lark

THE FUTURE is FEMALE is a three-volume series, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These albums encompass 30 compositions by women from around the globe and include many new commissioned works and world première recordings. Most pianists grow up with the classical canon, which has always excluded women composers as well as composers of colour. It is still standard practise to perform recitals consisting entirely of music written by men. The Future is Female aims to be a corrective towards rebalancing the repertoire. It does not attempt to be exhaustive, in any way, and the three albums in this series represent only a small fraction of the music by women which is waiting to be performed.

Vol. 1, In Nature, and Vol. 2, The Dance were released in 2022 to much critical acclaim. American pianist Sarah Cahill, hailed as ‘a sterling pianist and an intrepid illuminator of the classical avant-garde’ by The New York Times and ‘instrumental in bringing to life the music of many of our greatest living composers’ by Keyboard Magazine, has commissioned and premièred over 70 compositions for solo piano. She was named a 2018 Champion of New Music by the American Composers Forum.