In May 2026, Metier Records proudly presents American Ethos from acclaimed pianist Carolyn Enger, a stunning collection of works from a range of American composers, including Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Ned Rorem, William Grant Still, Florence Price, and many others. Released in time for the celebration of the 250th anniversary of America's Declaration of Independence, Carolyn Enger poses the question of how to characterise American composition over so many years and throughout times of such sharp division. How can a musical 'Ethos' be encompassed in all it's various styles, sentiments, and beliefs? "I wanted to have a broad feeling of Americana," Enger explains. "Voices that have been overlooked over the years then come to light because they influenced voices that we're very familiar with." Enger has long been a champion of the piano music of Ned Rorem, and American Ethos centers his work, The Wind Remains, alongside three selections from Soundpoints, each a brief moment of distilled emotion. Rorem then stands as a starting point for connecting Enger's vision of American composition threads. Contemporary composer Daron Hagen was Rorem's first student, and we hear his Five Nocturnes, telling of a family setting down for the night. Rorem's roots in American music go deep as well, having studied with composer Margaret Bonds, who was herself a student and friend of composer Florence Price. Enger presents the African-American sacred music traditions behind Florence Price's Adoration. Price influenced many American composers beyond Bonds and Rorem, including William Grant Still. Price's influence on Grant Still is easily heard in his evocation of the divine in Seven Traceries: A Suite for Solo Piano, of which Enger plays four. Perhaps one of the most famous of American voices is Leonard Bernstein, who spoke about the healing power of music as a response to violence, and several works in this collection connect to him. His Thirteen Anniversaries, by turn tender and whimsical, celebrates 13 family members, friends, and colleagues. One of these is composer Craig Urquhart, a former assistant, represented here by The Awakening, Urquhart's birthday offering to Bernstein, and Adieu, which followed the global pandemic and 2020 political upheavals. John Corigliano's An Anniversary for Lenny is an affectionate remembrance for a 2016 Bernstein centennial celebration, and Aaron Copland's 'Our Town' Three Piano Excerpts is similarly dedicated to Bernstein. Completing Enger's vision of a comprehensive, inclusive American ethos is 'The Vastland' from Under the Blue Dome by San Francisco-based composer of Native American descent JJ Hollingsworth, conjuring the Colorado plains, and Margaret Ruthven Lang's Twilight, the first woman to have a work performed by a major American orchestra. New York City-based writer and editor Steve Smith says in his excellent booklet notes: "What emerges in this collection of disparate yet interconnected lives and works is a patchwork quilt of individual voices, perspectives, and aspirations, woven together to form a more perfect union stronger than it's parts. The music they made, informed by shared stories and songs, brings to life the sky, stone, sinew, steel, and sentiment that make up this nation - an American ethos, expressed in sound". Internationally celebrated American pianist Carolyn Enger has gained critical acclaim for her exquisite lyrical playing and her deeply felt interpretations, with many performances across the United States and Europe. Her 2013 recording of Ned Rorem: Piano Album I was on The New York Times Best of Classical list that year, and her recent Metier recording Resonating Earth, an artistic response to the contemporary climate crisis, received glowing praise: "a thoughtful programme. Enthralling" (Nigel Simeone, International Piano). Ms Enger studied at the Manhattan School of Music and is a Steinway Performing and Recording Artist.

The project ‘Solitary Poems for Soprano Saxophone’ is a creative response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent obliteration of livelihoods for freelance musicians. The 23 world premières presented on this album were all composed specifically for Anders Paulsson so that he and they could keep growing artistically during the pandemic when all concerts and touring came to a standstill, and simultaneously to support the creation of new music for soprano saxophone. Some pieces turned out to be extremely virtuosic while others were more contemplative and lyrical. While the vast majority of the pieces are for solo soprano saxophone, some feature a second instrument, including one that is a dialogue between Paulsson and himself. Composers from across the world have been given free rein to express musically what the pandemic has meant to them, whether it’s a reflection on solitude or on the imposed standstill, a hope for a better tomorrow, a concern for crucial environmental issues or a sense of wonder at nature. All the pieces also reveal the extraordinary potential of the soprano saxophone as a classical soloist instrument. Available in Dolby Atmos on selected streaming services.

Nominated for a GRAMMY® Award!

Read our exclusive ArkivMusic interview with star Anthony Roth Costanzo

Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Gil Rose present the world premiere recording of The Lord of Cries, a breathtaking opera by John Corigliano and Mark Adamo. Telling the story of Euripides’s The Bacchae with the characters of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the piece explores the power of sexual desire and humans’ need to blame and attack others for what they can neither resist nor accept in themselves. Corigliano returns to opera for the first time since his The Ghosts of Versailles, introduced by the Metropolitan Opera, made an international sensation in 1992. The brilliant cast—most of whom introduced their parts in the world premiere in 2021—is led by star countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role. Multi-award winning composer John Corigliano’s music has been commissioned, performed, and recorded by many of the most prominent orchestras, soloists, and chamber musicians in the world. The Pentatone recording of The Ghost of Versailles, released in 2016, won two Grammy Awards. Composer-librettist Mark Adamo’s four previous operas, including Little Women (1998) have been staged, recorded, and broadcast hundreds of times on five continents. Under the leadership of conductor Gil Rose, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project has become an unsurpassed advocate for 20th and 21st century American music; they make their Pentatone debut with The Lord of Cries.

The violin, a bowed instrument with four strings, of such perfection that it has focussed the attention of composers from the Baroque to the present day. Apart from the piano, no other instrument has had so many important concertos written for it, from Locatelli and Vivaldi, to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, among many others. It might seem unimaginable that this instrument with it's one bow on four strings be able to perform polyphonic works from the piano, Lied and orchestral repertoire unaccompanied, but that is precisely what the great virtuosos of the early Romantic period right up to the modern era repeatedly saw as a challenge in their compositions. Paganini, Ernst and their successors pushed the technical possibilities of the violin to the limit. With this CD we present the most important of these works, which are otherwise pigeonholed as salon or encore pieces. The result is musical gems ranging from practically complete Lieder such as the Erlkonig, to Isang Yun's masterful arrangement of The Musical Offering by Bach. Her debut CD "1939" on Solo Musica with the Munich Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kevin John Edusei received worldwide acclaim, including reviews in BBC magazine, The Strad Magazine, Gramophone and the American Record Guide. This new release is the first solo album by violinist Fabiola Kim, hailed by the New York Times as "a brilliant soloist" who plays "with extraordinary precision and intensity". She is an energetic performer and enjoys a wide-ranging career as a soloist, chamber musician and teacher.

"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

Winners of the First Prize at the inaugural Birmingham International Piano Chamber Music Competition, violinist Usha Kapoor and pianist Edward Leung present an album of violin sonatas by American composers Amy Beach and John Corigliano. The album features Beach’s large-scale chamber work of 1896, the Sonata for Violin and Piano Op. 34, and her earlier Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23 from 1893, together with Corigliano’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. Completed in 1963, this work was originally called ‘Duo’ and is very much intended for two equal musical partners.

When film composers turn to classical music, they shed a straitjacket rather than lose a safety net. In his Metamorfosi di Violetta, Ennio Morricone dissects the unravelling of La Traviata's heroine with filmic acuity. Tigran Mansurian's Agnus Dei oscillates between chant and dissonance to evoke unresolved grief. John Corigliano's Soliloquy turns inward even further, transforming private loss into quiet radiance. Bernard Herrmann never sought classical abstraction, yet Hitchcock's musical alter ego-the composer of the Psycho and Vertigo scores-provides this programme's pièce de résistance: Souvenir du voyage, a nostalgic gem with profound cinematic sensibility.

Richard Lin, the 2018 winner of the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis releases his debut recording. Performed with passion and flare, Lin is joined by renowned pianist Thomas Hoppe in music of Richard Strauss, John Corigliano, Gershwin/Frolov, Vitali, and Debussy.

This recording of Corigliano's chamber arrangement of Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan featuring soprano Laura Hynes, is coupled with Vincent Ho's virtuosic and mystical Gryphon Realms for piano trio. World premiere recordings. Corigliano's orchestration of Mr. Tambourine Man can be heard on 8.559331.

I had always heard, by reputation, of the high regard accorded the folk-ballad singer/songwriter Bob Dylan. But I was so engaged in developing my orchestral technique during the years when Dylan was heard by the rest of the world that I had never heard his songs. So I bought a collection of his texts, and found many of them to be every bit as beautiful and as immediate as I had heard – and surprisingly well-suited to my own musical language.

I chose seven poems for what became a thirty-five minute cycle. A Prelude: Mr. Tambourine Man, in a fantastic and exuberant manner, precedes five searching and reflective monologues that form the core of the piece; and Postlude: Forever Young makes a kind of folk-song benediction after the cycle’s close. Dramatically, the inner five songs trace a journey of emotional and civic maturation, from the innocence of Clothes Line through the beginnings of awareness of a wider world (Blowin’ in the Wind), through the political fury of Masters of War, to a premonition of an apocalyptic future (All Along the Watchtower), culminating in a vision of a victory of ideas (Chimes of Freedom). Several years after composing the vocal/piano score I orchestrated the work, and some years later transcribed it for Pierrot ensemble, a chamber group. This is the first recording of the chamber version. - John Corigliano

Gryphon Realms is a three-movement work, inspired by gryphon mythology, that explores the coloristic, virtuosic and expressive possibilities of the piano trio while highlighting my more personal musical language. - Vincent Ho

Modern American music has long been characterised by kaleidoscopic variety, reflecting the vigour and optimism of American culture more generally. John Corigliano's early Violin Sonata is a work of the mid-twentieth century. But his own assessment of the piece - 'It's eclecticism, it's rhythmic energy, and it's bright character give the Sonata a very American quality' - could be applied with equal merit to the three 21st-century scores that accompany it here, all four switching easily between gentle introspection and spirited exuberance.

Under the title ODYSSEY, the French-Dutch violinist Cosima Soulez Lariviere and the Austrian pianist Philipp Scheucher lead us through a legendary world, as it were, beginning with Karol Szymanowski's "Myths" op. 30. The three movements "Arethusa", "Narcissus", "Dryads and Pan", which are strongly influenced by Impressionism, refer to motifs from Greek mythology and are considered a milestone in the duo repertoire for violin and piano due to their various innovative playing techniques. The following two-movement Sonata in E-flat major op. 11 No. 1 by Paul Hindemith is also influenced by Impressionism, although Hindemith's very specific, simple and "classical" musical language clearly shines through at all times. The Sonata for Violin and Piano by the American composer John Corigliano from 1962/63 captivates with it's diverse moods, which are underlined by impressively virtuoso as well as lyrical or complex rhythmic elements. The final piece is the breathtaking "Aria" by his compatriot Kevin Puts, described as a "master of polystyle", who has enjoyed great success in recent years with his latest opera "The Hours".