The Helsinki Chamber Choir (Helsingin kamarikuoro) was founded in 1962 as the Finnish Radio Chamber Choir and assumed it's current name in 2005. It is currently Finland's only professional chamber choir. The choir's Artistic Director from 2005-2007 was Kimmo Hakola. Since 2007 Nils Schweckendiek has been responsible for the group's artistic planning. While it's wide-ranging repertoire includes music from the Renaissance to the present day, the Helsinki Chamber Choir is particularly highly regarded for it's work with new music. The choir regularly commissions new works and has given over 70 world premieres in the seasons since 2005, as well as more than 30 Finnish first performances. The choir appears frequently at major Finnish music festivals and collaborates with orchestras and Baroque and contemporary music ensembles. Recent touring has included concerts in Russia, Estonia and Belgium. On this new release the ensemble performs works by Paola Livorsi, Einojhani Rautavaara, and Lotta Wennakoski.

Winner of the First Prize at the Maria Canals Piano Competition in Barcelona, Viv McLean has performed in all the major venues in the UK as well as throughout Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA. Viv's concerto work includes appearances with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Halle Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Sinfonia Viva, Orchestra of the Swan, Orchestra of St John's, Northern Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Concert Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra under the baton of such conductors as Daniel Harding, Wayne Marshall, John Lubbock, Christopher Warren-Green, Owain Arwell Hughes, Philip Hesketh, David Charles Abell, Stephen Bell, Carl Davis, Christopher George and Marvin Hamlisch. Recent concerto highlights include Mozart K467 with the ECO at the Royal Festival Hall, Grieg with the LPO at the Barbican, Rachmaninov's 3rd Concerto with the RPO in Cambridge, Gershwin, Bernstein, de Falla and Ravel with the Hall� at the Bridgewater Hall, The Sage Gateshead and other venues in the North of England, and Beethoven's 5th Concerto with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall. Viv has recently been on tour with the London Concert Orchestra where he played Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in venues including the Royal Festival Hall, Symphony Hall, Bridgewater Hall, St David's Hall Cardiff, Philharmonic Hall Liverpool and Leicester's de Montfort Hall. On this new release, he presents a programme of well-known George Gershwin compositions and transcriptions.

Time In Time Out

This recording's title, Freedom, reflects the disc's exploration of what composers produced when they did not start with a codified musical form but rather with a poetic idea. In this thought-provoking program, both Schubert and Schumann's cycles show powers of evocation and characterization at their height, while in Schoenberg's music, pared back beyond it's essentials, we catch a glimpse into the elements of a psychological crisis. Fiammetta Tarli's playing reveals details of the music unheard before, and in such central repertoire that's quite an achievement; especially impressive is the sense of buoyant fun that she found in Schoenberg's short piano pieces, fun being seldom associated to Schoenberg's music.

A collector's item recorded live at the South Bank Centre, London on June 30, 2002. Although this trio toured extensively from 1998-2010, they only released two albums. After the untimely death of pianist Rumen Toskov at the age of 41, the Theodosii Spassov Trio ceased it's activity.

Brahms on the Piano, Vol. 1

Stravinsky: Petrushka & Le sacre du printemps (Version for P

Debussy: Piano Works, Vol. 1

The second release of Ivo Varbanov on ICSM Records (ICSM Records 004) presents early piano works by Johannes Brahms: his Piano Sonata no. 1 in C major, Op. 1, the Scherzo, Op. 4, and the four Ballades, Op. 10. All three piano works were performed at crucial moments in Brahms's life: The Piano Sonata was the focus of one of the most romantic first encounters in musical history. The handsome 20-year-old-unknown from Hamburg presented himself at Robert Schumann's house in D�sseldorf on 1 October 1853. Schumann invited him to play something, and he sat down to begin the C major Sonata. Visit from Brahms, a genius, wrote Schumann in his diary for that day. The Scherzo Op. 4 was one of the first works Brahms showed to Franz Liszt and to Schumann in 1853. Liszt found the piece so congenial that he played it to an assembled company at Weimar. Lastly, the Ballades emerged at a fateful juncture in the 21-year-old Brahms's life, shortly after his revered friend and patron Schumann had attempted suicide and been confined in a sanatorium near Bonn. Brahms had thus suddenly been thrust into the role of protector and comforter of Schumann's wife Clara and her children, and was simultaneously wrestling with the fact that he had fallen in love with her. The Ballades, his first group of short lyric pieces, are prophetic of the compressed masterpieces of his later years. Varbanov's visionary choice of pieces is matched by his powerful rendition. This recording will impress the listener for it's supreme sound beauty and the interpreter's unusual choices.

Johannes Brahms often consolidated his mastery of freshly explored domains by writing two examples in a specific genre in quick succession. His output consequently features such complementary couplings as the Piano Quartets Nos. 1 and 2, (Op. 25 and 26), the String Quartets Op. 51 Nos. 1 and 2, the Clarinet Trio Op. 114 and Clarinet Quintet Op. 115, Six Piano Pieces Op. 118 and Four Piano Pieces Op. 119 and, in the field of orchestral music, the Academic Festival Overture Op. 80 and Tragic Overture Op. 81. A notable exception to this trend is provided by the two sonatas for cello, which are separated by some 21 years and reflect the composer’s changing circumstances: the first is the product of a young man serving notice of his scholarship and maturity, while the second is the work of an older man writing at the peak of his powers with remarkable vigor and intensity.

Beethoven's Bagatelles, written three years before his death, were considered by the composer the best things of their kind that he had done, a true cycle of miniatures. Schumann's Morning Songs, with their visionary intimacy inspired by the great German poet Friedrich H�lderlin, were written just a few months before Schumann's tragic attempt to drown himself in the Rhine, due to his mental illness; his content is in stark contrast to his early piano works. As for Brahms' Chorale Preludes, written after the death of his beloved Clara Schumann, they are works of lonely self-communing and consolation, the ultimate fruit of Brahms' lifetime immersion in early music. In these rarely performed transcriptions, Busoni has re-imagined them in the style of Brahms' own late piano pieces.