German-born American composer Kurt Weill was a leading composer for the stage in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his fruitful collaborations with poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht. Their collaborations were hugely successful at the time, and remain popular. In this present recording, the Weill-Brecht collaboration is featured
in the classic The Seven Deadly Sins, possibly their most famous composition. Also presented in this release is the rarely heard yet charming Suite panameenne along with the ever popular orchestral suite from The Threepenny Opera.

This live concert recording, made in 1991 and 1993, was only ever released locally in Basel for a short period after the recording. FHR’s remastered recording will now make the release fully available on streaming platforms along with full worldwide CD distribution.

New piano transcriptions by Greek pianist Alexandra Papastefanou of various Cantatas, an Organ Sonata and a Chorale Prelude by J.S. Bach, all recorded here for the first time. The famous Myra Hess transcription of Bach’s cantata Jesus bleibet meine Freude concludes a fascinating new look at some of Bach’s choral and organ works.

From the ensemble: The sad news of George Crumb’s death was announced on 6 February 2022, shortly after these recordings from a concert in Holland in 1978 were discovered in the KRO-NCRV archives in Hilversum. They included the first European performance of Dream Sequence (1976), one of his most beautiful and original compositions. George was always a pleasure to work with, highly professional, considerate, open to suggestions and relaxed. On one fraught occasion, when Rohan’s cello mysteriously disappeared for several hours, making rehearsal impossible, we would have expected many composers to throw a tantrum (!) but not George. He remained completely calm and slightly amused by the ensuing Tati-esque comédie. He was also a master calligrapher. His scores, all hand-drawn, are works of art, the notation often original, and models of musical practicality. We offer these three recordings from long ago in tribute and gratitude to a remarkable musician, composer and friend.

The young violinist Conor Gricmanis and his early music ensemble Noxwode, have recorded rare and beautiful violin sonatas by the early Italian Baroque composer Marco Uccellini for FHR. His sonatas for violin and continuo contributed to the development of an idiomatic style of writing for the violin (including virtuosic runs, leaps, and forays into high positions), expanding the instrument’s technical capabilities and expressive range. This stylus fantasticus genre is evident in this recording, providing ample opportunities for the soloists and ensemble to personalize their interpretations. On this recording, Gricmanis plays what is believed to be the oldest fully playable violin in the world, a 450 year old Andrea Amati made in 1572.

The For nearly a hundred years, the doors of the famous Red Hedgehog coffee house (Zum roten Igel) opened onto the very heart of Viennese musical life. The Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde established the city’s first public concert hall there, hosting regular premières by Beethoven, and then Schubert, who even lived next door at one point. As if that wasn’t enough, the complex of buildings included a bar at the back with a vaulted cellar that later became Brahms’s favorite haunt, where patrons caroused and who knows what kind of musical activities went on after hours. The original building was demolished in 1906, but the spirit of the great composers feeding off the soundscape of a dynamic and cosmopolitan urban culture lives on in ZRI. Schubert and Brahms were both fascinated by Hungarian ‘Gypsy-band’ music and it became as fashionable as the waltz in Vienna, with one of the tunes included here still a concert favorite even now in an arrangement by Brahms. Bach may never have been to the city but some of his music must surely have been performed at the Igel and his ghost presided over the whole tradition.

This recording celebrates ghosts from the future too. American tunes were being played in Vienna even in Brahms’s time, and once the first recordings started to arrive the jazz influence on improvising Hungarian bands and artists like Georges Boulanger was immediate. The transatlantic flavor of Hora din Budesti and Tamboo owes much to this uniquely Viennese melting pot and, if the Igel still stood, the fusion of old-world instruments with contemporary songs by Donna Summer, Solange and Taylor Swift would not be out of place.

This album strives to understand the varying ways composers comprehend grief, loss and death. How did they cope, their hearts broken, their peace gone? And how can we cope? In this combination of works Weiss has tried to follow the paths these great composers walked in their own grief. Their tracks lead us from death back towards life, from horror to hope. Of his Arc album series, Orion Weiss explains: ‘The arc of this recital trilogy is inverted, like a rainbow’s reflection in water. Arc I’s first steps here head downhill, beginning from hope and proceeding down to despair. The bottom of the journey, Arc II, is Earth’s center, grief, loss, the lowest we can reach. The return trip, Arc III, is one of excitement and renewal, filled with the joy of rebirth and the anticipation of a better future.’

The six Sonatas, which are often described as ‘Trio Sonatas for Organ,’ hold a unique place in Bach’s oeuvre. In a sense, ‘trio’ is the most natural organ texture: right hand, left hand, and feet each takes one line of counterpoint. However, in the six Sonatas, the contrapuntal lines are granted a degree of independence that is unmatched in Bach’s surviving organ music. Thus, they are atypical of Bach’s output for the instrument, and indeed of organ music in general. The Sonatas are, in effect, ‘ensemble music for one player’ – indeed, several movements originated as actual ensemble pieces. To Bach’s contemporaries, this transplanting of the secular, instrumental trio sonata genre onto the organ would have seemed rather daring. After all, the organ was, first and foremost, a liturgical instrument, with its own venerable repertoire tradition.

‘One of the few great things about lockdown for me was the opportunity to discover and share some wonderful solo violin music, both old and new, via YouTube. In a time when I couldn’t work with other musicians or play to live audiences, I felt I could still connect and relate to you, my virtual audience, through music. This recording consists of those works played during lockdown, both those from the classic solo violin repertoire such as Telemann and Prokofiev, and also those by contemporary composers – Sally Beamish, James Francis Brown, Lyell Creswell, David Matthews and Errollyn Wallen. Some of these pieces were written especially for me, and appear here as premiere recordings. One was even a lockdown commission.’ (Sara Trickey)

Sara Trickey enjoys an exciting and diverse career as a solo violinist and chamber musician. Noted for her ‘fiery and passionate’ performances (The Strad) and her ‘beautifully refined tone’ (Musical Opinion), she performs at many of the major UK festivals and venues, including in the Presteigne, Alwyn, Oxford May Music, York, Ashburton and Wye Valley Chamber Music festivals. Trickey plays regularly with pianist Dan Tong with whom she has recorded the Schubert Sonatinas (Champs Hill Records) to critical acclaim (‘Irresistible!’ – Barry Millington). She has also made a world première recording of Mathias’ Violin Sonatas (Naxos) with pianist Iwan Llewelyn Jones.

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 color. It is still standard practice 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.

One of the greatest achievements in musical composition history, The Well-Tempered Clavier of Johann Sebastian Bach is a collection of two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys. It seem both books, composed two decades apart, were written primarily for educative personal and private use in the home – probably to be played on the intimate clavichord. One of the most famous works written for the keyboard, The Well-Tempered Clavier is simply enjoyable music of the highest craftsmanship. Alexandra Papstefanou graduated from Athens Conservatoire, where she studied piano under Aliki Vatikioti. She followed her studies with Olga Zhukova at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, with Peter Solymos, at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and, on a scholarship from the Alexander Onassis Foundation, at the University of Indiana in Bloomington, USA, with the highly influential teacher György Sebok. She has also taken lessons from Alfred Brendel. Papastefanou was a finalist at the Clara Haskil Competition in Switzerland and received the Liebstoeckl and Fazioli Prizes at the International Geneva Competition, as well as the Spyros Motsenigos Prize from the Academy of Athens. She has performed all of Bach’s keyboard works and, in a series of recitals, has presented his complete Well-Tempered Clavier, Goldberg Variations, The Art of Fugue, and The Musical Offering as well as his keyboard concertos.

Ireland’s Piano Concerto was the only concerto he wrote. It was an immediate success, and for 40 years it was considered the outstanding British piano concerto, performed by all the leading players of the day such as Clifford Curzon, Moura Lympany and Artur Rubinstein. This release co-incides with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Annarosa Taddei, the pianist in the Ireland Piano Concerto. This recording was made at the Italian premièr of the work. The Cello Sonata of Ireland is one of his most deeply passionate and expressive works. The recording on this album was issued for the first time in September 1929. Ireland is the pianist, and the cellist is the Catalan Antoni Sala who discovered the sonata, and came to London to give many performances and recorded it with the composer. If there were prizes on offer for the most-travelled composer of the twentieth century, the one who gave the most concerts, or the one who did most to help his composing colleagues, the Italian Alfredo Casella might well sweep the board. The catalogue of his activities as composer, arranger, conductor, keyboard player, teacher, concert organizer, writer and editor is simply mind-boggling. This FHR issue unites the only surviving (broadcast) recordings of Casella the orchestral conductor and Casella performing on piano with orchestra. Judging it to be one of his best pieces, Casella said of his Triple Concerto ‘the great success my Concerto has met with right across Europe and both Americas’ (North and South), recalling with particular enthusiasm the Trio Italiano’s appearance with the ‘prodigious’ Boston Symphony Orchestra and their conductor Serge Koussevitzky early in 1936.

This release is the first volume in a series of new recordings in which the illustrious pianist Roman Rabinovich will record all of the piano sonatas written by Haydn for FHR. Haydn was a prominent and prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period and composed 62 keyboard sonatas. Written over a 40 year period or so, and displaying a variety of styles, the earlier sonatas were written for harpsichord and the last for the newly developed hammer-action fortepiano. Rabinovich is a brilliant interpreter of Haydn. Indeed, The New York Times hailed Rabinovich’s Haydn performances as ‘admirable interpretations, performed with a rich, full-blooded sound, singing lines and witty dexterity’. Each album will feature artwork illustrated by the pianist. Rabinovich has earned critical praise for his explorations of the piano music of Haydn, which include his 42 sonata cycle at the 2018 Bath International Festival. Rabinovich has performed throughout Europe and the United States in venues such as London’s Wigmore Hall, Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, and the Millennium Stage of Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Lauded as ‘a master of tone-color’ (International Piano, 2018), Rabinovich made his Israel Philharmonic début under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age ten. He was a top prize winner at the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in 2008.

This album gives a fascinating glimpse into courtly life during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. It features music by the great William Byrd, Anthony Holborne and Alfonso Ferrabosco II, the beautiful Lachrym� pavane by John Dowland and lively dance music by Thomas Morley as well as works by lesser known composers Elway Bevin and Hugh Aston. All of this sparkling music is performed here by The Flautadors on a beautiful renaissance consort of recorders made by Thomas Prescott after 16th century instruments in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum.

This reissue brings together for the first time, in newly remastered hi-resolution transfers from the source tapes, the Edizioni Curci stereo recordings of Italian composer Alberto Curci's four works for violin an dorchestra. These four superb performances by one of the great Italian violinists, Franco Gulli, appear here for the first time on disc. The anonymous orchestra, conducted by Franco Capuana, is almost certainly made up in the main of members of the Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala. Curci's concertos are delightful melodic works, some with folkloristic elements. Although rarely heard, these are beautiful and alway slyrical passionate compositions for solo violin and orchestra. For half a century Franco Gulli was one of the world's top violinists, a noble ambassador for the Italian string style and a superb musician. One of the most engaging aspects of Gulli's artistry is a profound feeling of intellectual rigour and understanding. He had a brilliant career, was an influential teacher and his discography is large covering many genres.