WELL TEMPERED CLAVIER BOOK 2

COMPLETE PIANO MUSIC 38: LES PRELUDES

VIOLIN SONATAS

IN THE NIGHT WORKS BY BEETHOVEN CHOPIN SCHUMANN

This album contains Hindemith's most popular orchestral works, including the Balanchine-choreographed Symphonic Metamorphosis, performed with lapidary precision and great empathy by Hyperion regulars the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins, who have proved themselves consummate interpreters of this composer. Countermanding his reputation a composer of grim, gritty music, this is Hindemith at his most genuinely enjoyable - as Gavin Plumley writes in his informative booklet notes, "Hindemith's music is both intelligible and intellectual, as entertaining as it is finely wrought."

Alice Coote, one of the most distinctive mezzo-sopranos of today, makes her recital debut on Hyperion with pianist Graham Johnson, a stalwart of the label and tireless explorer of vocal repertoire. The Power of Love creates what Johnson describes as, "a pageant of English song and poetry," covering half a century of song and surveying not just human love but love of nature.

On this album the young Spanish soprano Sylvia Schwartz, accompanied by pianist Malcolm Martineau, offers a deeply seductive collection of romantic Spanish songs. The recording includes works by Granados and Turina as well as less familiar composers such as Guridi, Toldr+i and Montsalvatge. Schwartz demonstrates her wonderful emotional and dramatic range in Granados's Tonadillas en estilo antiguo, a set inspired by the paintings of Goya, and her commitment to this repertoire is evident from her utterly enchanting performance of the folk-influenced songs by Guridi that set a beautiful series of Castillan melodies.

With this new volume in their ongoing Romantic Violin Concerto series, Hyperion proudly announces a new collaboration with the brilliant young British violinist Chloe Hanslip, the former child prodigy famously signed to Warner Classics at the age of just fourteen. Here, she lends her now mature talents to the second release in Hyperion's overview of Vieuxtemps' Violin Concertos. Henry Vieuxtemps (1820-1881) was a French violin virtuoso who, after the death of Paganini, was widely considered to be the best violinist in Europe. Besides being a brilliant player, he was a remarkably fine composer, as demonstrated in these, his first two concertos. Alongside the memorable violin fireworks, Vieuxtemps here shows a well-argued musical sensibility that straddles both the Classical and Romantic eras as well as the ability to write gorgeous, almost operatic slow movements in the best bel-canto tradition.

COMPLETE PIANO MUSIC 16

Mats Lidstrom / Leif Kaner-Lidstrom - "Swans". Inspired by Saint-Saens's iconic piece "The Swan (Le cygne)" from the Carnival of the Animals, cellist Mats Lidstrom and his son Leif Kaner-Lidstrom present no fewer than 24 "Swans" from across the world and down the ages. Featuring composers as diverse as Fanny Mendelssohn, Orlando Gibbons, Ravel and Villa-Lobos, the album offers up two-dozen musical reflections on the unmistakable and much-loved Saint-Saens original.

Marc-Andre Hamelin - "Found Objects / Sound Objects". Join Marc-Andre Hamelin on a fearless voyage into the extremities of piano music. Music by Frank Zappa, John Cage, Salvatore Martirano, John Oswald, Stefan Wolpe, Yehudi Wyner and Hamelin himself, all pioneers in their approach to the piano. More than any other pianist, Marc-Andre is renowned for winning over listeners with rare and daring repertoire.

MOZART: PIANO SONATAS K. 457, 533, 545, 570 & 576

Performing music from Baroque to new commissions on both modern and period instruments, Alina Ibragimova has established a reputation for versatility and the "immediacy and honesty" (The Guardian) of her performances. Alina has performed with orchestras including the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, London Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Swedish Radio Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Tonhalle-Orchester Z?rich; and conductors Vladimir Jurowski, Sir John Eliot Gardner, Jakub Hrusa, Robin Ticciati, Daniel Harding, Edward Gardner and the late Bernard Haitink, among others. Her 2020 album of Shostakovich violin concertos with Vladimir Jurowski and the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia 'Evgeny Svetlanov' won a Gramophone Award and Diapason d'Or and was one of The Times's Discs of the Year. This 2-LP set is pressed on 180g vinyl.

WHITACRE: CLOUDBURST AND OTHER CHORAL WORKS

The music of CPE Bach makes complex stylistic demands of the performer like little else of it's time, the extraordinary drama and intensity tempered by Enlightenment elegance and the influence of the Baroque. Marc-Andre Hamelin's performances set new standards in this endlessly absorbing repertoire.

For his 2011 recording of the Grieg & Liszt Piano Concertos, Sir Stephen Hough travelled to Grieg's hometown of Bergen to join forces with Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. Upon it's original release, the Sunday Times named Hough's album "one of the Liszt bicentenary's prime releases, from Britain's greatest living magician of the keyboard." Available on 180g vinyl.

De Profundis/Eamonn Dougan - "Morales: Requiem a 5; Officium defunct". Cristobal de Morales's five-voice Missa pro defunctis is steeped in a grandeur and solemnity which resonate powerfully with the listener, especially in a large-scale account such as that recorded here by de Profundis. The Requiem is preceded by a selection of motets which address last things in an affecting Office for the Dead.

Polyphony and Stephen Layton present highlights from the choral repertoire by four twentieth-century American giants: Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Randall Thompson. Framed by Thompson's understated favorites Alleluia and Fare Well, the program includes Bernstein's Missa brevis, motets by Copland and - of course - Barber's inimitable Agnus Dei.

Endless hours of joy and wonder is how Angela Hewitt sums up the insights and rewards of playing and recording Mozart's piano sonatas, and a similar experience awaits listeners to these remarkable accounts, the first release in a complete cycle.

It's tempting to imagine that this is how the music might have sounded four centuries ago in the glorious surroundings of St Mark's. Certainly, any comparisons are unlikely to be to the disadvantage of these exceptional young singers from The London Oratory Schola Cantorum who excel in this repertoire.

Apocalyptic walls of sound cascade around the Gothic vaults of Saint-Eustache in Paris as Stephen Layton and David Briggs unleash, respectively, the full power of a top-notch Trinity Choir and the mighty van den Heuvel organ of 1989.

This is the fourth Romantic Piano Concerto album from Simon Callaghan, and that combination of talents which made his first three so successful- not least a flair for exploring the neglected byways of the Romantic repertoire, and the technique and musicianship to do them justice-proves just as compelling here.

One of the twentieth century's best-loved choral works, Durufle's Requiem-a magical synthesis of the old (plainsong) and the new (a harmonic language appropriate to it's time and place) - continues to cast it's potent spell over performers and listeners alike. This new recording from Stephen Layton and his Trinity forces fully deserves to be regarded as 'definitive'.

The 'heavenly lengths' Schumann loved in late Schubert are as much in evidence in the sublime G major quartet as in the other large-scale works of Schubert's final years. The Takács Quartet's earlier Hyperion recordings of Schubert were hailed as 'near ideal' and 'superlative' and this new release is every bit as fine.

A fascinating new name bursts into our Romantic Piano series with the two concertos by Thomas Tellefsen, here coupled with an extended concert piece by series stalwart Friedrich Kalkbrenner. All three works here enjoy Howard Shelley's trademark dexterity and exuberant bravura technique.