Celebrating Lysander Piano Trio’s 10th anniversary in 2020, they present their FHR début with a new album featuring première recordings of new American piano trios commissioned or premièred by the ensemble. The works included on this album, with their richness of styles and origins, provide an exciting and optimistic glimpse into music being written for piano trio today. Of particular note is ‘Love Sweet’ written by Grammy Award winning composer Jennifer Higdon and featuring the brilliant soprano Sarah Shafer. The Lysander Piano Trio has been praised by The Strad for its “incredible ensemble, passionate playing, articulate and imaginative ideas and wide palette of colors” and by The Washington Post for “an uncommon degree of heart-on-the-sleeve emotional frankness.

All recordings featured on this album are live studio recordings made in 1971 and 1972 for radio broadcast in Holland. Written for the great cellist Rostropovich and considered one of the most difficult cello concertos, Prokofiev's Cello Concerto, Op. 58 is not often recorded and thus this FHR album is a welcome issue. This concerto is the composer's original version of his Sinfonia Concertante in E minor for cello & orchestra, Op. 125. For the other two works on this album, the Ballade, Op. 15, written when the Prokofiev was only 21, and the Cello Sonata, Op. 119, written just a few years before the composer's death, Rohan de Saram is joined by his pianist brother, Druvi. Working extensively across Europe and Asia, Druvi de Saram has preformed in leading venues in London and Europe.

The present release is the second volume of Roman Rabinovich’s complete cycle of Haydn Piano Sonatas. 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 is the first time a whole album of Handel featuring viola da gamba has been published. Includes the premiere recording of Kassel Sonata No. 5 George Frideric Handel is generally regarded as one of the greatest composers of the baroque era, known especially for his operas, oratorios, concertos and keyboard works. His chamber works include a fine selection of solo and trio sonatas with basso continuo, written for a variety of instruments such as the violin, recorder and transverse flute. In Handel's lifetime the viola da gamba (or viol, as it is also known), was highly regarded in some parts of Europe and Handel featured the instrument in numerous works. In the eighteenth century, the practice of performing music written for other instruments was fairly common, and countless examples of instrumental transcriptions of varying kinds survive from this period. Included in this album are several transcriptions of works of Handel's, as well as pieces which are attributed to him such as the Sonata in C major with Obbligato Harpsichord and a sonata from a recently unearthed collection called the Kassel Sonatas, which here is a premiere recording. Aziz's previous FHR album 'Risonanze' (FHR83) has received much critical acclaim. 'This is a recording to be reckoned with' (American Record Guide)

Brigitte Fassbaender said: ‘Gundula Janowitz possesses one of those voices where you have only to hear a couple of notes and you immediately know who it is. Her elegant timbre and unmistakably instrumental way of forming the phrases is unique.’ Few singers have voices that approach the purity of Janowitz’s: with its very fast vibrato and ‘white’ production, the focused sound can soar, swoop and dip with astonishing ease and control, the vocal line becoming almost liquefied into a seemingly endless melisma. Janowitz’s recorded catalogue, tends to misrepresent the focus of her career because it downplays her work as a recitalist. Of course, she did tape all of Schubert’s songs for high voice but apart from a couple of late song recitals and a disc of Hindemith’s Das Marienleben, that is all we have to remember her by as a performer of song. So this album will be a welcome addition to her discography. For her Athens recital, Janowitz chose two composers absolutely at the centre of her song repertoire, Franz Schubert and Richard Strauss, with a third, Robert Schumann, forming a bridge between the two.

Paul Hindemith and Karl Amadeus Hartmann were born a decade apart and died in the same month. Hindemith was the more inclusive artist while Hartmann more fully reflected the cultural concerns of his time; as conveyed by the contemporaneous but aesthetically very different pieces on this release. Composed in 1942 during his stay in the United States, Ludus Tonalis was first performed in 1943 in Chicago. It is one of the greatest solo piano works of the mid-20th century, exploring matters of technique, theory, inspiration, and communication. This masterpiece comprises all 12 major and/or minor keys and was intended to be the 20th century equivalent to J.S. Bach’s The WellTempered Clavier. Written just three years after Ludus Tonalis, Hartmann’s Piano Sonata [No.2] depicts the shuffling feet of 20,000 camp prisoners from Dachau whom Hartmann watched being marched away from the approaching Allies. The subtitle of Hartmann’s work, ‘27 April 1945’, is clarified by an epigraph the composer (in his own words) positioned at the head of the score: ‘On the 27th and 28th of April 1945 trudged an endless stream of Dachau prisoners of war past us … unending was the misery … unending was the sorrow’. This is made explicit by the (central) Lento, a ‘Marcia funebre’ that ranks with Hartmann’s finest utterances; its sombre and fatalistic tread – shot through with fanfare-like elements – reaching an impassioned climax before regaining its mood of numbed sorrow. Esther Walker is pianist who combines “virtuoso fire and musical temperament” with “lyrical sensibility” in an almost ideal way.

The sirens are ‘entwiners’ (from the Greek seiraô, to bind or entwine). In John Croft’s Seirenes, whose five movements form the centerpiece of this album, the title refers to the way in which lines twist together and entangle to form a single, slow melody, sometimes distinct, sometimes obscured, as if carried by the wind. This cycle is presented alongside three pieces for soloist and live electronics, exploring the various ways that the sound of an instrument can be treated and transformed in real time, to create new colours, intensities, and haloes of sound. John Croft was born in 1971. He studied philosophy and music at the Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), subsequently composition and music cognition at the University of Sheffield. He has also studied with John Casken at the University of Manchester, where he completed his doctorate. He is currently Reader at Brunel University, London. His music has been performed by a wide range of ensembles and soloists – including the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, Gageego, Ensemble Exposé, Studiya Novoi Muzyki, the Distractfold Ensemble, the Explore Ensemble, Séverine Ballon, Juliet Fraser, Emma Richards, Marij van Gorkom, and Richard Craig. He was awarded First Prize at the 2001 International Jurgenson Competition for his String Quartet and the 2011 ICMC European Region Award for ... ne l'aura che trema for alto flute and live electronics, while Intermedio III for bass clarinet and live electronics won the Prix Ton Bruynèl in 2012.

Adam Golka’s third album for FHR begins a wonderful journey in which he records all of Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas. This first volume, released in Beethoven’s 250th anniversary year, includes one of the composer’s most celebrated works, the ‘Pathétique’ Sonata in C minor, alongside the contrasting Sonatas, Op. 10. All four sonatas were written 1796-98. Since first self-presenting and performing Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas at the age of 18, Adam Golka has immersed himself in studying the master’s works. He has studied Beethoven under the guidance of masters such as Leon Fleisher, Alfred Brendel, Sir András Schiff, Murray Perahia, and Ferenc Rados. In 2011, Adam performed a cycle of all five Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Lubbock Symphony, with his brother Tomasz at the baton, and last summer, he made his San Francisco Symphony début at the Stern Grove Festival in Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. He will celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday in 2020 by playing the whole cycle of Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas in multiple cities, which includes a self-produced video series named 32@32, made in collaboration with filmmaker Zac Nicholson and designed to be part of the concert experience.

Beethoven’s Op. 1 Piano Trios are startling in their freshness and forcefulness, but there is a lot more to them than that. For one thing, they teem with witty touches, something that is brought out by performances like these, featuring the George Malcolm Piano Trio. “There cannot be a better Op. 1 by any composer, and the George Malcolm Piano Trio conveys the attractions of these two works with skill and intelligence... You could not fail to enjoy this record.” (Original Gramophone review from 1977) Originally released in 1977, the recording is published here on modern technology for the first time, and fittingly in Beethoven 2020 year. These are fresh, bold and musically great performances. The George Malcolm Piano Trio only lasted three years before the trio’s cellist Kenneth Heath died; this is their only recording and is a true testament of a wonderful ensemble partnership, full of verve and humor.

The Six Partitas, BWV 825–830 were the first of a series of works for keyboard instruments that Bach published under the general title of Clavierübung (Keyboard Practice). They consist of a set of six harpsichord suites, are amongst the last set of keyboard suites Bach composed and the most technically demanding. In fact, although Bach was age 40 at the time, these were the first of his compositions to see publication. The Partitas follow the basic form of the Baroque dance suite. An elaborate opening movement is followed by four stylized dances: the Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue.

Following on from her two previous successful FHR albums of J.S. Bach, Papastefanou has now recorded one of the most iconic works in the history of music, the Goldberg Variations. This challenging, inventive masterpiece feels completely natural under Papastefanou fingers and will surely be a recording to be revered, like her previous Bach recordings for FHR. 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 Sebők. She has also taken lessons from Alfred Brendel. 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.

The Future is Female is a three volume series, which celebrates and highlights women composers from the 17th century to the present day. These recordings feature more than 70 compositions by women around the globe and includes many premiere 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. This first Vol., In Nature, will be followed later in 2022 by Vol. 2, At Play and Vol. 3, The Dance. 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.

Written almost 100 years ago, The Thief of Bagdad is one of the greatest ever film scores and incredibly, has never been recorded untill l now - FHR are honored to be able to release the first recording of this wonderful score. Recorded in 2019, this recording features one of greatest European orchestras, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony, along with conductor Mark Fitz-Gerald who has an unparalleled reputation for performing the very specialized task of accompanying silent films live with orchestra. The score was written by the American composer Mortimer Wilson at the specific request of the film's main star actor Douglas Fairbanks. The Thief of Bagdad is now widely considered one of the great silent films and Fairbanks's greatest work. For the first time, Fairbanks recognized the composer as a creative collaborator from the start in the overall composition of his film (Wilson spent many hours in the projection room working out precise timings for every scene). Wilson was essentially a classical composer. Indeed, you can hear influences of Puccini's aria Vissi d'arte from Tosca, hints of Wagner's Valkyrie, along with moments of Alban Berg, Reger and Tchaikovsky. Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance writes, "An epic romantic fantasy-adventure inspired by several of the Arabian Nights tales, The Thief of Bagdad is the greatest artistic triumph of Fairbanks's career. The superb visual design, spectacle, imaginative splendor, and visual effects, along with his bravura performance (leading a cast of literally thousands), all contribute to making this his masterpiece."

Incantati brings together three instrumental timbres which were used in the baroque period to represent enchantment or otherworldliness, whether it be the touch of the supernatural, the moment of falling in love or the departure into the next world. The recorder’s sweet tone was associated with pastoral and amorous scenes, while the viola d’amore’s ethereal quality enhances moments of spirituality in both religious music and opera. In the Passions by J.S. Bach, the viola da gamba’s delicate sound accompanies the departure of Christ from life on earth. These three sonorities come together in incantati to create a uniquely charming sound, with each of the instruments clearly distinguishable, yet complementing each other.

The present recording consists of seven previously unrecorded wonderful violin sonatas from the early 18th century. This is the second volume of a FHR series in which samples of the musical riches, that lie in the Dresden Schrank II collection, are brought to life through new recordings. A large portion of the Schrank II manuscripts belonged to the composer/violinist Johann Georg PISENDEL (1687-1755), who, whilst travelling throughout Europe, amassed a huge quantity of music, mostly manuscripts. Some he bought from music shops or receive directly from composers. Most, however, he copied out himself. This collection is one of the largest and most diverse repositories of latebaroque music in the world. In this volume, there are three varied sonatas by Martin Bitti which resemble Corelli. A sonata by Henricus Albicastro who is of the South German school of composition. A delightful sonata by Carlo Fiorelli. Finally, two anonymous sonatas which are both complex and intensely expressive, and possibly written by the composers G.G. Laurenti and A. Montanari. The two brilliant musicians on this recording were chosen specifically for their incredible skills, musicianship and specialist baroque talent. Violinist Kinga Ujszászi and harpsichordist Tom Foster, both members of The English Concert baroque orchestra, give exciting and stylish performances in a wonderful crystal clear recorded sound.