Wanderlust is a voyage around the world of folk and the traditions that emerged from each countries’ unique blend of traditional music. Ranging from the rolling hills of Romania to the jagged cliffs of Newfoundland, flutist Lara Deutsch and guitarist Adam Cicchillitti have compiled a survey of folk music naturally suited to the flute and guitar. Drawing on the roots of folk traditions from around the world, the duo gracefully navigates a plethora of styles through their own unique identity as predominantly classical players.

Lovers and Mourners: Variations and Sonatas from 17th-century Germany, offers a comprehensive glimpse into the lives of virtuoso composer-performers Johann Jakob Walther, Heinrich Biber, and Johann Georg Pisendel. The Composers featured on Lovers and Mourners drew upon the “stylus phantasticus,” a 17th-century Italian idiom whose features were marked by jagged shifts of affect and intended to display the player’s technical command and expressive abilities.

Bandy nimbly guides the listener through a labyrinth of variation sets and themes, simultaneously reproducing faithful interpretations of the music while injecting his own unique touch. Lovers and Mourners boasts a brief, yet intense survey of one of the richest chapters in the history of the virtuoso composer-performer.

Airs for the Seasons is Rezonance Baroque Ensemble’s rendition of James Oswald’s remarkable two sets of 48 Airs for the Seasons, 96 in total. Each air includes two to four separate movements in different time signatures and tempos. Airs for the Seasons showcases Rezonance Baroque Ensemble at their most delicate and subtle, deftly combining Scottish charm and classical elegance in a languidly metaphorical depiction of the countryside’s seasonal bloom. The sonatas of Airs for the Seasons reflect a composer whose control of both the macro and micro are complete. Oswald demonstrates a unique penchant for combining allant chamber music and Scottish air, along with a generous offering to those who prefer their metaphors served seasonally. Combined with Rezonance Baroque Ensemble’s control of tone and mood, Airs for the Seasons is a powerfully resonant album that encapsulates the seasons of our lives.

Around Baermann sees historic clarinet specialist Maryse Legault spotlight the early 19th century clarinet virtuoso Heinrich Baermann, who was one of the most important yet overlooked clarinetists in the history of the instrument.

Born in Potsdam in 1784, Heinrich Baermann honed his skills under the tutelage of virtuoso clarinetist Josef Beer, who was a key figure in the development of the clarinet and its repertoire. B Baermann went on to tour extensively and significantly impacted the clarinet's role in classical music, particularly in France. Around Baermann is Legault’s tribute to Baermann; a giant in his field and one of the more important developers ofthe clarinet’s style, technique, and repertoire.

Darkness, mystery, grief, rest, and quiet: night-time has inspired people to tell stories since before the written word. This music for voice and lute weaves together many perspectives on the night, from the courts and musical spheres of 17th-century England and Italy, to ancient folk melodies from Ireland and new compositions. Recalling the monastic rites of Vespers and Compline, this program seeks to create a beautiful and sacred space to contemplate the darkness through the lens of ancient music. In addition to familiar songs by John Dowland and Thomas Campion, there are rarely recorded and previously unrecorded songs by John Corprario and George Handford, as well as original arrangements for lute and voice.

Theme: Variation – traces an arc spanning 400 years of composition, beginning with Orlando Gibbons’ The Italian Ground ca. 1605, and culminating in Variations on a Fantasia of J.S. Bach (2017), an original work from Rogosin’s friend Kevin Morse. The result is an album whose explorative gusto is matched by its sweeping scope. Theme: Variation – sees Rogosin navigate through hundreds of years of compositional variation with aplomb, from Handel to Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin, and on to Milton Babbitt. The liner notes, found in the accompanying iTunes booklet and written by Rogosin, are an indispensable companion as you listen through the record. Rogosin meticulously explains the variations and technical underpinnings of each track while highlighting important or noteworthy nuggets for the discerning listener to catch. Interspersed with technical explanations are personal asides, offering insights or anecdotes surrounding his relationship with the composition.

VC2’s second full-length album, I and Thou, reflects on the role relationships play, whether fleeting or lasting, in how humans construct meaning in the world. The title of the record, and the philosophy to which it refers, comes from Philosopher Martin Buber. This idea became particularly salient during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the relationships we enjoyed with our family, friends, and community weathered a strain never before seen in modern times. In the spirit of the album’s context, VC2 invited some colleagues with whom they enjoy the closest of relationships to contribute to the album. Together, they form the record I and Thou. A pensive, deliberate rumination on the power of relationships to undergird a pillar of a person’s well-being; the need for meaning.

The Rosebud String Quartet was formed in 2013 at the inaugural Rosebud Chamber Music Festival, an annual summer chamber music showcase in rural Alberta. Comprised of principal players from the Edmonton Symphony and the orchestras of the Canadian Opera Company and National Ballet of Canada, the RSQ is one of Canada’s most dynamic ensembles with a unique voice and a deep love for the music of Haydn. This recording brings together three great, late works by the acknowledged masters of Viennese classicism, Mozart and Haydn, and on it displays the Rosebud String Quartet's remarkable chemistry and depth.

De mille feux sees James Wright in collaboration with the Andara Quartet to realize four unique works. The first, written by Benjamin Britten at the age of 28, String Quartet No. 1, Op. 25 is undoubtedly the most luminous of his four string quartets. The Andante sostenuto begins with one of the most remarkable opening pages in English chamber music: the violins and viola are seemingly suspended at a stratospherically high pitch, like a trail of twinkling, distant stars. The remainder of the work takes us on a series of voyages between earth and the cosmos, between the rooted energy of the ground under our feet, the impalpable shimmering of the ether in which we seem to bathe, and the human aspirations that travel between the two. In 1936, Samuel Barber completed the String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11, and he arranged its Adagio movement for string orchestra later the same year. The quartet was premiered by the Pro Arte Quartet on December 14, 1936, at the Villa Aurelia, at the end of Barber's Prix de Rome residency there. In its arrangement for string orchestra, the Adagio for Strings ultimately became Barber’s best-known work. Dark Energy, from Kelly Marie-Murphy, was commissioned by the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the CBC as the required piece for the 2007 competition. In a single movement, the quartet opens softly and simply. It explores and displays a variety of string colors and techniques, and it continually gains momentum, eventually consuming itself with its own propulsion. The final piece is James K. Wright’s own, a commissioned piece intended as a gift from Carleton University professor David Cray to his wife, Ellen. While “Ellen at Scattergood” is ultimately programmatic in inspiration, it is otherwise largely “absolute music” in the traditional sense.

Kate Read’s debut solo album After arrives November 18 on Leaf Music. Artfully mixing Baroque repertoire with experimental electronics, After delivers a stirring mix of antiquity and modernity from one of Newfoundland’s most in-demand violists. Read takes listeners on a journey that entwines the purity of Bach with the chaos of electronic improvisation in ways equally surprising and satisfying. She’s joined on the last track, Aftermath, by award-winning audio engineer Michelle LaCour, whose improvisational synth stabs and found effects provide a counterpoint to Read’s modern interpretation of Bach.

Christina Haldane is thrilled to present Tu Me Voyais, her first record on Leaf Music. Set to be released on October 21, 2022, Tu Me Voyais is the result of a collaboration between Christina Haldane and Carl Philippe Gionet, along with several other artists, writers, and composers who have contributed their own offerings. The album is anchored around Gionet’s new arrangements of Twelve Acadian Folk Songs, tailored for Haldane’s voice. These re-imaginings are set in the 19th-century lieder aesthetic or art song where voice and piano play equal solo parts within the musical architecture.

Gionet’s approach to the Acadian folk song arrangements is rooted in the oral tradition, where music and texts are passed orally from generation to generation, without the use of musical notation. He selected folk songs that were already committed to his memory, passed on to him orally from family members and childhood musical activities. In the arrangements, Gionet has remained as faithful as possible to his musical memory. He has also taken liberties with the traditional texts, often re-working the order of the storytelling, making omissions, and creating repetitions to enhance the dramatic arc of the pieces. Tu Me Voyais represents a notch in the modern evolution of the songs of Acadie.

OH Canada: A Young 150!, is the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra’s (NBYO) celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday. The NBYO’s celebration pays tribute to Confederation and the accomplishments of a great history, but also to a future to be built from all the genius, optimism and hope of our youth. The centrepiece of the celebration is a song commissioned by the NBYO, for orchestra, soloist and choir, by Canadian composer Howard Shore, winner of three Academy Awards, three Golden Globes and four Grammy Awards, and one of the most celebrated composers in the world. The song ‘Sea to Sea’ is performed by the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra with internationally renowned soprano Measha Brueggergosman and a special Canada 150 Choir.

This new release is the debut album of soprano Maureen Batt, and features a rare recording of Schubert’s “Op. 52 Lady of the Lake” song cycle and a newly commissioned work on the same epic Walter Scott poem by Nova Scotian composer Fiona Ryan. Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake is set during an uprising of the Highland clans against the Lowland Scots who are loyal to King James V. The story focuses on Ellen Douglas, a young woman who lives in exile with her father, an outlaw who has fallen out of favor with the royal court and fled to an island in Loch Katrine with his daughter. Today, the work is not that widely known but in the nineteenth century it was a bestselling book throughout Europe. It was translated into several languages, including German which Schubert used for his song texts. Fiona Ryan writes about her contributions to this album: “I draw upon Scottish (and Nova Scotian) folk music traditions in my songs. Some movements are very obviously influenced by Scottish folksongs…and others draw inspiration from rhythmic patterns, ornamentation, and droning sounds found in Scottish bagpipe music. In a way, this project is about bringing people and ideas together… Although this is a story of a different and dangerous time, it gives an affirmative answer to the eternal question of whether people who are enemies can eventually reconcile.”

Robert deMaine is an American virtuoso cellist who has been hailed by The New York Times as "an artist who makes one hang on every note.” He has distinguished himself as one of the finest and most versatile instrumentalists of his generation, performing to critical acclaim as soloist, recitalist, orchestral principal, recording artist and chamber musician. He is currently Principal Cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and is in demand around the world as a soloist, chamber musician and clinician. This recording is a collaboration with New York conductor Joel Eric Suben and the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra recorded at Reduta Conceret Hall in Olomuc, Czech Republic. It was in this spirit of personalized composition that Haydn wrote his Cello Concerto in C major, Hob. VIIb:1, for the Esterházy family. The piece was unknown to modern audiences until 1961, when a copy of the score was uncovered. Since that time, it has become a staple of the cello repertoire, championed by many of the world’s greatest cellists. Robert deMaine adds his name to that list with this lush recording. Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D major, Hob. VIIb:2 was written for the Esterházy orchestra’s principal cellist Antonín Kraft, who is said to have had a beautiful singing tone, expressive phrasing, and an explosive technique, especially in the cello’s upper register. All of this is realized once again in this fresh performance from Robert deMaine.

Savour the creative talent heard through these hand-picked selections of Christine Walevska, cellist extroadinaire, who continues to touch her audiences worldwide with her timeless, polished, eloquent, sensuous, engaging and dramatic musicality. Christine is known for her numerous recordings with Philips Records, and for her countless concertos worldwide. In 1975, she became the first American concert musician to perform in Cuba under the regime of Fidel Castro. Music Critic Antonio Hernandez wrote in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo that Christine was the “goddess of the cello,” a name which she is still called today. “She is still the only cellist who takes my breath away…” (Arthur Rubenstein) “She parallels on the cello the single persuasiveness of Fritz Kreisler on the violin…” (Patterson Greene, Los Angeles Music Critic)