Kip Winger is a genre-bridging composer with a long and successful career in rock music. His celebrated ballet score Conversations with Nijinsky led conductor Giancarlo Guerrero to commission the two works on this album. Weaving four floriographical meanings into the musical arc, In the Language of Flowers is a violin concerto that celebrates a love story "no words could adequately express." Symphony of the Returning Light sits in the tradition of autobiographical fantasies stretching back to Berlioz. The symphony incorporates the use of Morse code rhythms and is centered around the theme of atonement.

Gianandrea Noseda and the National Symphony Orchestra present a gripping new recording of Samuel Barber's Vanessa, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American opera of love, longing, and illusion. In Barber's atmospheric, emotionally charged score, echoes of Verdi, Puccini, and Hitchcock-era Hollywood intertwine with a distinctly modern American voice. This performance brings together an exceptional cast, including Nicole Heaston, J'Nai Bridges, Matthew Polenzani, Susan Graham, and Thomas Hampson, who illuminate Gian Carlo Menotti's haunting tale of desire across generations. Recorded live in concert, this release captures Vanessa's sweeping romanticism and psychological depth with vivid orchestral color and extraordinary vocal artistry. A landmark addition to the contemporary operatic discography, it reveals why Vanessa remains one of the 20th century's most compelling operas.

The prolific Finnish composer Kalevi Aho periodically undertakes large-scale compositions that showcase the full breadth of his artistic abilities. The Symphony No. 17 exemplifies this tendency, representing his most ambitious orchestral work to date. The symphony requires a substantial orchestra, incorporating less common instruments such as the lupophone, a variation of the baritone oboe, and the contraforte, an acoustically enhanced contrabassoon. The first movement, "From the Deep", which can also be performed as an independent symphonic poem, establishes a somber and profound atmosphere. The second movement, "Scherzo macabre", suggests a macabre dance of death. The finale, "Distant Songs", features musical shifts that evoke distant times, dances, and songs, before ultimately returning to the present. Following it's triumphant première in 2019, the symphony was immediately hailed as a magnum opus within Kalevi Aho's oeuvre.

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra and it's Music Director Jader Bignamini present Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, one of the most electrifying works of the twentieth century. Drawing on thirteenth-century manuscripts from Benediktbeuern Abbey, Orff transformed the exuberant, irreverent texts of wandering scholars and rebellious clerics into a monumental scenic cantata. From the iconic opening of "O Fortuna" to the exuberant outdoor dances, tavern scenes, and courtly love interludes, the work pulses with elemental rhythms and striking orchestration, with chorus, percussion, two pianos, and celesta playing central roles. Motifs from "O Fortuna" recur throughout, linking the contrasting worlds of humour, erotic longing, and the inexorable wheel of fate. Orff balances diatonic simplicity with rhythmic ostinati, while movements such as the flute-timpani duet, castanets solo, and piano-percussion passages evoke primal energy and recall Stravinsky's Les noces. From the introspective soprano arias in "In trutina" to the sardonic baritone tavern numbers, the score alternates between joy, melancholy, and satire, culminating in the final return of "O Fortuna" to close the cycle. Following their acclaimed release of Marsalis' Blues Symphony in March 2025, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Jader Bignamini return to PENTATONE, reaffirming their mastery of landmark repertoire.

Igor Stravinsky is renowned for his legacy of glittering fairy tales in treasured favourites such as Petrushka and The Firebird. Another favourite is the ballet Pulcinella, a lovable melange of Baroque theatricality, heard here in it's concert suite form. The other works in this programme are surprisingly less known: the luminous and symphonic Song of the Nightingale, and The Fairy's Kiss based on Tchaikovsky's music, are both derived from stories by Hans Christian Andersen. An astonishing rarity, The Faun and the Shepherdess is an ancient Greek tale that was Stravinsky's romantically sensual gift to his young bride.

Terra Infirma was directly inspired by the experiences of it's creative team. Reena Esmail, who resides in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Altadena, was forced to evacuate her home during the catastrophic fires of January 2025. Kondonassis, a committed advocate for the environment, is founder and director of the non-profit organization Earth at Heart; her initiatives include the widely-praised commissioning project FIVE MINUTES for Earth. Terra Infirma reflects not only the environmental passion and advocacy of both artists, but also their inspiration to innovate and expand the concerto form. In this bold new work, with a title taken from a poem by Robert Walters, the harp symbolizes the protagonist Earth, both fragile and powerful. The towering instrument is moved choreographically by Kondonassis across the stage as she journeys through various arrays of suspended percussion. In the composer's words, the work is "part virtuoso concerto, part performance art, and part theater." Esmail, who is Indian-American, has drawn on her extensive studies of Hindustani music in composing Terra Infirma. Her compositional voice is at once arresting, lyrical, haunting, and fierce. The work, which includes a defining movement titled "Immolation," incorporates elements of Raag Deepak, an ancient collection of pitches believed to invoke fire. Kondonassis, known for "a range of colour that's breathtaking," (Gramophone), brings the work to life with colorful authenticity. Says Esmail, "Terra Infirma sits somewhere between a harp/percussion concerto and a monodrama - Yolanda leads us through the trajectory of a wildfire, starting with the eerie moments before the first spark, and ending with the hope of new growth. The work explores our human relationship to fire - a force that can be at once devastating and illuminating. It has been a dream to work so closely with Yolanda, who has reinvented the role of the harp over and over again throughout her career. We have built the DNA of this piece together over so many years - experimenting in percussion studios, mapping stage plots, pushing our imaginations to the limit. I am so excited to share this work with the world." States Kondonassis, "The personal and musical resonance that I feel with Reena has resulted in a work that's deeply personal, uniquely colorful, and ground-breaking in so many ways. The harp is a highly visual instrument, and Terra Infirma utilizes that element to the fullest. In this work, the harp is actually a character in the musical drama onstage, and that gives me the chance to portray an enormous range of artistic emotion." The new concerto forms the heart of The Terra Infirma Project, a multi-year initiative of the Interlochen Center for the Arts, which boasts Kondonassis as an alumna (class of '82). The Interlochen Orchestra is featured along with Kondonassis and conductor Andrew Grams on the world-premiere recording, released in April 2026 on the Grammy-winning Azica label. The entire process, from initial workshops to the world-premiere and recording, has been captured by the award-winning film crew, Fulvew Productions, for an upcoming documentary to be released for airing on PBS Television in August 2026. The Terra Infirma Project is generously supported by the Allen B. Cutting Foundation.

With 'An American Dream?', Barbara Hannigan explores the concept of The American Dream. "I grew up in awe of America. I am still in awe, but largely in a nostalgic way. With this repertoire, I want to express my admiration for the incredible creativity and tenacity of composers who shaped a musical language that was truly their own." The Canadian conductor and soprano collaborates with her long-term partners, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, on this programme of works by American composers. With 'the fair' as a recurring theme across the repertoire, the image on the cover shows a carousel horse that is at a standstill. A pretty, painted object - but the floor is cracked and half the lights are burned out. Nostalgia and memory are mixed with underlying darkness and destruction. From George Gershwin's masterpiece Porgy and Bess - an opera about love, addiction, racism, and hope - Robert Russell Bennett's iconic arrangement of A Symphonic Picture is featured. Inspired by watching the silent film Nosferatu, Aaron Copland composed the vibrant Dance Symphony. The Carousel Waltz (arr. Don Walker) is the overture to the Broadway musical Carousel by Richard Rodgers. For the grand finale, Barbara Hannigan reunites with American composer and arranger Bill Elliott in their joint creation, At the Fair, a suite which includes a multitude of American songs and themes, including Have I Stayed Too Long at the Fair? and Jule Styne's famous hit Don't Rain on my Parade.

Gabriela Lena Frank's Conquest Requiem brings to life the complexities of colonisation, identity and survival through the story of Malinche, a Nahua woman from the Gulf Coast of Mexico who was given to the Spaniards as a young slave. Using a fusion of Western liturgical traditions, indigenous Nahua poetry and Latin influences, this powerful work deals with the fundamental question of how to reconcile a legacy of historical violence that continues to shape modern issues. Antonio Estevez's wildly popular Cantata Criolla - considered one of the greatest choral pieces of the 20th century in Latin America - is the composer's most celebrated work.

Kirnberger Symphoes: World Premiere Recordings "His early acquaintance with the great school of Sebastian Bach, as well as his perspicacity, which enabled him to discover at an early stage the depth and incalculable richness in the works of this great master, unfathomable to so many others, and which had endeared him to this school, an institution which also demanded high precision and refinement in it's practice, something far more difficult to achieve than the glittering lustre of more recently founded schools, as well as for the harmonic part of the art, which it's master fathomed and exhausted as no one before him had ever done, all the more passionately and exclusively, since nature seemed to have denied him the delicate feeling for melodic beauty." - AMZ III, December 1800, p. 506

Three major works for piano and orchestra by English composers, all eschewing the traditional nineteenth- century model of a bravura virtuoso soloist pitted against an orchestra, in distinctive ways. Together with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under George Vass, Clare Hammond presents an original programme that provides a unique perspective on how the piano concerto reflected musical currents in mid-twentieth-century Britain. William Walton's Sinfonia Concertante for Orchestra with Piano Obbligato began as a ballet score. After it was rejected by Sergei Diaghilev, Walton arranged his score into a leaner, more direct and more effective work that reveals the influences of Stravinsky, Poulenc, Rimsky- Korsakov, Borodin and, at times, Elgar. Benjamin Britten's Diversions was commissioned by the left-hand pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Enthusiastic about the challenge of writing for the left hand, Britten devised a work in variation form; he did not seek to conceal the soloist's one-handedness, but revelled in it while still retaining emotion and grandeur. Michael Tippett's Piano Concerto completes the programme. Inspired by a performance of Beethoven's Fourth Concerto, Tippett was convinced that a contemporary concerto could be written, 'in which the piano is used once again for it's poetic capabilities'. In his work, the orchestra does not merely accompany; the principal players shine when they get their opportunity for solos or close dialogue with the soloist.

Douglas Moore's opera Giants in the Earth receives it's world premiere recording with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra under the music direction of Delta David Gier. Set on the stark, uninhabited Dakota plains, the drama follows Beret and Per Hansa, whose deep love is tested by isolation and the harsh realities of pioneer life. Moore's text-driven vocal lines flow with natural expression, weaving short, expressive ariosos into a seamless melodic tapestry. Central to the story, Beret's ornate Norwegian chest serves as altar, refuge, and symbol of home, underscoring the opera's themes of memory, tradition, and human longing. Moore's tonal score contrasts strength and fragility through vocal ranges, building tension toward Beret's fateful choices amid blizzards and loss. Every nuance is vividly realized, from intimate lyrical passages to the opera's devastating climax. This landmark recording illuminates the emotional intensity, psychological depth, and lyrical beauty of a work long awaited in full, making it an essential addition for lovers of American opera. The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra excavated, engraved, and revived the opera in Sioux Falls on April 26, 2025.

Hugo Alfvén was an accomplished writer and painter as well as musician and composer. Born in Stockholm in 1872, he studied first at Kungliga Musikhögskolan (the Royal College of Music) and then in Berlin, Dresden, Paris, and Brussels. Influenced by Wagner and Richard Strauss, Alfvén's style is also permeated with the influence of Swedish folk music. Festspel (Festival Play) was commissioned to inaugurate the new art nouveau building for Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern (the Royal Dramatic Theatre) in Stockholm, in 1908, the work is suitably rousing and celebratory for such an occasion. Alfvén was asked in 1932 to write incidental music for a play by Ludvig Nordström, to commemorate the 300-year anniversary of the death of the protestant Swedish monarch at the battle of Lützen, at the end of the Thirty Years War, the suite that he subsequently extracted is a substantial work in it's own right. Cantus arcticus is perhaps Rautavaara's best-known work, and was commissioned by the University of Oulu, in northern Finland, to honour it's first formal doctoral graduation ceremony, in 1972, Rautavaara instead took his inspiration from the natural environment of the region, incorporating two-channel tape recordings of birdsong as part of the orchestral texture.

Anyone familiar with Apollo's Fire will recognise the exceptional baroque orchestra's engaging and entertaining principal cellist Rene Schiffer. Featured on dozens of the Apollo's Fire recordings, Rene steps into the spotlight for his solo debut recording with a meticulous rendering of that pillar of the baroque repertoire, J. S. Bach's Six Suites for Solo Cello. Deploying different instruments - a 1768 Benoit Fleury cello for the first four suites, an anonymous late 18th century violoncello piccolo with an added string for the fifth (in his own arrangement) and sixth - and multiple tunings, Rene's distinctive interpretations are in harmony with his comprehensive and probing liner notes which abound with theories and intellectual insights.

Denis Kozhukhin presents a new album of Haydn: Sonatas, offering a fresh and illuminating journey through the composer's keyboard repertoire. Haydn's keyboard sonatas brim with invention, drama, and wit, matching the brilliance of his symphonies and quartets. Revisiting this repertoire, Kozhukhin reveals their expressive depth and sparkling originality in a recital of striking contrast and character. From the genial Allegro of the early D Major Sonata, Hob XVI:4, to the restless intensity of the C minor Sonata, Hob XVI:20, each work reflects Haydn's inexhaustible inventiveness and subtle mastery of keyboard textures. A prize-winner of prestigious competitions, including the Leeds International Piano Competition (2006) and the Queen Elizabeth Competition (2010), Denis Kozhukhin has established himself as one of the most acclaimed pianists of his generation. He presents another chapter in his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE, following albums such as Grieg and Tchaikovsky: Piano Concertos (2016, Gramophone Editor's Choice), Brahms: Ballades and Fantasies (2017, 5 stars in Diapason), Ravel & Gershwin and Richard Strauss' Burleske (2018), Grieg: Lyric Pieces & Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte (2019, Gramophone Recording of the Month), Cesar Franck's Symphonic Variations (2020), and Somnia (2025, Gramophone Critic's Choice for 2025 Top Recordings).

Richard Strauss summed up his two-act opera Intermezzo as a 'bourgeois comedy with symphonic interludes'. The soprano role of Christine with it's shimmering cantilenas represents Strauss's wife Pauline, while the successful Kapellmeister Robert Storch serves as Richard Strauss himself in a domestic drama that was avant-garde for it's time but now resonates with the accessibility of today's reality shows. This production from the Deutsche Oper Berlin was acclaimed for it's lush orchestral sound and superbly characterful cast led by a formidable central performance from Maria Bengtsson.

Steve Elcock - UK-born (in 1957) but long since based in France - was recently hailed by a fellow composer in the American magazine Fanfare as 'the greatest living symphonist'. All eleven of those he has composed to date are, in various ways, concerned with the large-scale accumulation and dissipation of tension, rather in the manner of the later Nielsen symphonies - the half-hour span of his Fourth Symphony also reconciling tonality and atonality in it's wild and energetic arch. Elcock is fond of bringing popular elements into his music, and elements of folk-dance duly animate his Viola Concerto. These major works are book-ended here by two big-hearted orchestral showpieces that could become audience favourites in the fullness of time

Shostakovich was known for his fun-loving attitude during his early years as a composer. The colourful incidental music for The Shot - reconstructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald from the original piano scores - vividly evokes the raucous life of experimental youth theatre in Leningrad during the late 1920s. This carefree world had changed dramatically by 1934 when Shostakovich completed his music for The Human Comedy - a work that creates a charming atmosphere of Parisian escapism. Discarded movements from his first opera The Nose form an entire orchestral suite. The programme concludes with Mark Fitz-Gerald's reconstruction of the March of the Anarchists, transcribed by ear from the film The Vyborg Side.

Claudio Santoro's late works are marked by great concision and considerable emotional density. The music on this album was written in the last months of his life. The Viola Concerto and the Concerto for Chamber Orchestra juxtapose restless energy and expansive - if at times desolate - lyricism. The powerful Symphony No. 13 shows Santoro's mastery of orchestration and form at it's peak, and the compact Symphony No. 14 was to be the last in a cycle widely acclaimed as the most significant of it's kind ever composed in Brazil.

Elsa Barraine, a notable and politically intrepid figure in her lifetime (1910-1999), is a composer whose distinctive voice is being heard again. Under it's music director Cristian Macelaru, the Orchestre national de France performs four works by Barraine: the Symphony No 1, completed in Italy in 1931; the compact, but powerful Symphony No 2, composed in 1938 and ominously subtitled 'Voina', the French transliteration of the Russian word for 'war'; Song-Koi (Le Fleuve rouge) - an eight-movement evocation of the Red River which flows through Vietnam, composed in 1945, the year Vietnam declared it's independence from France, and, dating from 1959, Les Tziganes, which, as it's name implies, takes inspiration from gypsy culture. Rooted in tonality, Barraine's music is confidently and soberly crafted, it's orchestral palette both clearly defined and subtly shaded as it reflects it's times and the composer's philosophical and spiritual concerns.

Rumon Gamba directs the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra for the third instalment of his exploration of Overtures from the British Isles. As in the case of the previous volumes, the recorded repertoire is rarely played, and the album includes three world premiere recordings. All the works were composed in a period of eleven years, between 1938 and 1949, against the background of the horrific world events of that era. Presenting an eclectic mix of musical styles, the album, like it's predecessors, sheds light on some wonderful discoveries, passionately and enthusiastically performed by orchestra and conductor.

The four symphonies of Arvo Part were composed over a span of forty-five years, and bear little or no relationship with one another - four individual pieces that represent his output at separate parts of his creative journey. The First Symphony was composed in 1963, shortly after Part had graduated from the Tallinn Conservatory. It's two-movement structure looks to the baroque - Canons and a Prelude and Fugue - but the harmonic language is extremely advanced, giving off a distinct whiff of twelve-tone serialism. The Second Symphony, from 1966, in three movements, again employs a combination of serialism and textures hinting at Penderecki and the Polish school. Also in three movements, the Third Symphony (1971) reflects the time Part spent in the late 1960s studying chant and mediaeval music. Symphony No. 4 'Los Angeles' came much later (in 2007 - 08) and now the style is directly inspired by sacred music. Part took as his models two great litanies of the Orthodox Church: the Canon of Repentance, and the Canon to the Holy Guardian Angel. Unusually scored for strings, harp, timpani, and percussion, this final work is also cast in three movements. With her elegant, expressive body language, natural stage presence, and infectious musicality, Eva Ollikainen is one of the leading conductors of our time. This former student of Leif Segerstam and Jorma Panula has been Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra since 2020.

History teaches us that we should be wary of attaching such absolute labels as "inventor of " or "father or mother of ' with the blanks to be filled in with every conceivable phenomenon from the string quartet to film. For time and again, deeper research necessitates revisions - as in the case here, where suddenly two new fathers of Russian music relegate the younger Mikhail Glinka and the mighty handful to the back seats. Bohemian Ernst Wanczura (pronounced Van-CHUR-a), born ten years before Mozart, ended up in St Petersburg and was possibly the first composer to use folk songs in his delightful Symphonies Op. 1 and Op. 2. His colleague Fomin, fifteen years his junior, with the beautiful first name Yevstigney Ipat'yevich, a pupil of the famous Bolognese Padre Martini at the state's expense, was particularly successful with stage works. His melodramas and operas are veritable parabolic mirrors in which Italian, Russian and Western stylistic features coalesce into a distinctive expression that could undoubtedly have become a significant force had Fomin been granted a longer life.

David Hackbridge Johnson, born near London in 1963, is an all-round musician - not only a prolific composer but also a conductor, violinist, singer, pianist, jazz drummer and poet. Both works in this album, recorded under the baton of the composer, have extra-musical stimuli. The Piano Concerto evokes the Kafkaesque fantasy world and tragic fate of the Polish-Jewish writer and artist Bruno Schulz, a victim of Nazi oppression - and it also marks the early death of another uniquely gifted individual, since it was written for Jonathan Powell, whose last recording it became. The Symphony, taking it's lead from earlier composers like Bax, Britten and Vaughan Williams, is a response to the English landscape, as seen through the paintings of a number of artists whose work Hackbridge Johnson esteems - it's colours and moods changing as kaleidoscopically as nature itself.

Elements explores the distinctive sound world of saxophone and harp in a program that moves between Baroque masterworks and newly commissioned music inspired by the four classical elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Performed by saxophonist Huw Wiggin and harpist Oliver Wass, the album places Bach, Purcell, Vivaldi and Couperin alongside contemporary works written specially for the duo. Each commission reflects a different elemental idea, from the luminous textures of Charlotte Harding's Euphotic to the volatile energy of Laura Bowler's Caesium and the wind-driven virtuosity of David Wallace's blowing A gale. Interwoven throughout are inventive arrangements of Baroque works, drawing subtle connections across centuries. The pairing of saxophone and harp creates a sound palette that is intimate and richly coloured, capable of lyric stillness and brilliant display. Praised for his "liquid gold tones" by The Times, Wiggin joins forces with leading harpist Oliver Wass in a programme that moves between reflection, drama and radiant beauty.

Embracing the whole world, Mahler's Symphony No. 3 is a vast fresco in which nature, man and the spiritual interact on a cosmic scale. Directing the combined forces of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Chorus and Tiffin Boys' Choir, and with the movingly expressive voice of Hanna Hipp, Vasily Petrenko reveals all the richness of this visionary peak of Post-Romanticism.

FLORENCE B. PRICE. A composer advocates for the exchange of different traditions and cultures. Florence B. Price's works combine a fascinating spectrum of intense emotion, buoyant lightness, and playful charm, which captivated me from the very first moment. In particular, her songs, which bear witness to great sensitivity and melodic ingenuity, have made a lasting impression on me in terms of their expressiveness and complexity. However, it is not only her music that touches me; I also feel profoundly moved by her life story. Florence B. Price was a single mother of two children after separating from her husband. Tragically, she had to cope with the loss of one of her children at an early age-a fate that is sure to have shaped her life profoundly. As an African-American artist, she also had to assert herself in an era characterised by deep-seated racism, and in a world where women in classical music rarely found recognition. Astonishingly, her works have not yet been fully published or featured in the standard repertoire. Her music, culturally rich, full of history, and brimming with emotion, deserves to be elevated to it's rightful rank due to it's artistic quality. The apparent lack of widespread recognition of Price's oeuvre cannot be explained by a lack of compositional quality, but rather by socio-historical circumstances that marginalised artists like her. It is very surprising that her works have not yet been published in their entirety...(Excerpt from the liner notes by Sascha EL Mouissi)

The German composer Johanna Senfter was a student of Max Reger, who recognized her musical talent and encouraged her to pursue advanced studies in his composition class in Leipzig, which she completed with distinction in 1909. In 1910, she was awarded the Arthur Nikisch Prize for the best student composition of the year. Born into a well-to-do industrial family, she was financially independent and able to devote herself entirely to her creative work throughout her life. In addition to numerous chamber music pieces, she left behind nine symphonies. From the youthful Sturm und Drang of her first symphony (1914) to the thoughtfully moving ninth (1949), composed after two world wars, the development of her musical language can be discovered here with this world premiere recording.

SOMM Recordings is proud to present an album devoted to works by David Matthews, hailed as one of the leading symphonists of our time. His diverse output is superbly represented here by a Symphonic Diptych from his opera, Anna; his Symphony No. 11; and his Flute Concerto. The release features Dutch conductor Jac van Steen and the Ulster Orchestra, of which he is Honorary Principal Guest Conductor. Both are frequent SOMM collaborators, most recently on Manuel de Falla: The Three-Cornered Hat, Nights in the Gardens of Spain & Seven Spanish Folk Songs, SOMMCD 0694, about which Gramophone magazine wrote, "when van Steen unleashes the full orchestra... The tone is big and generous." They are joined by flautist Emma Halnan, winner of the BBC Young Musician Competition in 2010 in the woodwind category. She was also elected an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM) in the Academy's 2024 Honours, recognizing alumni of the Academy who have distinguished themselves in the music profession. Emma enjoys commissioning new works, and composers who have written for her include Sir Karl Jenkins, James Francis Brown, and, as here, David Matthews. David Matthews' first opera Anna had it's concert premiere at The Grange Hampshire in July 2023, conducted by Jac van Steen. Shortly afterwards, Jac suggested that David should make an orchestral reduction, as Strauss had done for his Intermezzo and Die Frau ohne Schatten. So, in this Symphonic Diptych, David has compressed the opera into two movements, one for each act-I. Anna in Love and II. Lament for Anna-which tell the story in purely orchestral terms about a brother (Peter) and sister (Anna) and their different reactions to the revolution that has just taken place in their country. In transferring all the vocal parts to instruments, David has slightly increased the opera's orchestra. In 2022, at the Presteigne Festival, David Matthews heard some striking trumpet playing at an orchestral concert. The next day, he wrote a few bars of quiet trumpet solo over a string chord. At first, he did not know what to do with this idea, until he thought it might be the beginning of a symphony, and so his single-movement Symphony No. 11 was conceived. He decided to preface it with an allegro D major/d minor theme, beginning on violas and moving to first violins, and these two ideas form the basis for a set of free variations. Considering the flute to be, essentially, a melodic instrument, David Matthews composed his Flute Concerto as alternating song and dance. The first movement combines a gentle allegretto with a fast waltz. The slow middle movement evokes a dance celebrating Pan, while the finale begins with a little tune that he wrote for his wife, Jenifer, at Christmas 2019, which has something of an Irish flavour. Siegfried Wagner was named for the young hero in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle and immortalized in the Siegfried Idyll, included on this release. He was born to Richard Wagner and his future wife, Cosima (nee Liszt), on 6 June 1869. Although Siegfried considered following a profession outside music (and, as a youth, studied architecture in Berlin and in Karlsruhe), it was inevitable that he would follow a career in music given the lineage of both his parents and his grandfather, Franz Liszt. In addition to receiving instruction in music from Liszt, the thirteen-year-old Siegfried began his advanced musical studies in Frankfurt with Engelbert Humperdinck, a true disciple of Richard Wagner. Siegfried became an assistant at Bayreuth in 1892, immersing himself in his father's music under the strong influence of Cosima Wagner and the conductor Hans Richter. In 1895, he made his debut at Bayreuth conducting a complete Ring cycle. The debut was a considerable artistic success, and Siegfried's future as the true guardian of the Wagner inheritance was assured, as he took a greater share in the direction of the Bayreuth Festival. With Cosima's full endorsement, Siegfried assumed the general directorship from his mother in 1908. Siegfried's busy professional life was devoted in the main to Bayreuth in the 1920s, but it was also during this time that he began a recording career devoted almost exclusively to his father's and his own works. Apart from his evident qualities as a conductor of his father's music-heard here in the recorded legacy he left of his performances at Bayreuth and in Berlin and London-he was equally keen to establish himself as a composer. The first of his twelve completed operas, Der Barenhauter (Bearskin) inspired by the German fairytale, met with public and critical acclaim when it was produced in 1899. The acoustic recording of the overture is heard here. Among the Richard Wagner works conducted by Siegfried Wagner on this historic release are well-known selections from Das Rheingold and Die Walkure from the Ring Cycle. Also included are a suite from Parsifal and selections from Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and Tristan und Isolde.

Anton Rubinstein and Alexander Adolfovich Winkler represent two generations of Russian Romanticism, and their sonatas for viola and piano reveal contrasting yet complementary approaches to chamber music and to the expressive potential of the viola. Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894), one of the founders of the Russian conservatory system and a towering figure as pianist, conductor, and composer, approached chamber music with a distinctly European Romantic sensibility. His Sonata for Viola and Piano is notable for it's lyrical breadth and dramatic contrasts. Rubinstein treats the viola not merely as an accompanying voice but as a fully expressive partner to the piano, exploiting it's warm, dark timbre and vocal qualities. The sonata's sweeping melodies, rich harmonic language, and expansive formal design reflect Rubinstein's admiration for composers such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms. At the same time, moments of intense lyricism and emotional weight highlight his belief in music as a direct vehicle for personal expression. Alexander Adolfovich Winkler (1865-1935), a student of Sergei Taneyev and a representative of a later Russian school, brings a more refined and introspective character to his Sonata for Viola and Piano. Winkler's writing is marked by structural clarity, contrapuntal skill, and subtle harmonic color. His sonata emphasizes the viola's expressive nuance, often favoring intimate dialogue between the instruments rather than virtuosic display. The work blends Romantic warmth with Classical balance, revealing Winkler's interest in formal discipline and textural transparency. Luca Sanzò is a pupil of Bruno Giuranna. His concert career has taken him to the world's major concert halls, both as a soloist and in collaboration with leading musicians. He has collaborated as principal viola soloist with various orchestras, including those of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, and the early music orchestra Concerto Italiano. He teaches viola at the Conservatorio di S. Cecilia in Rome. He has recorded for Nuova Era, Bottega Discantica, BMG Ricordi, Opus 111, Tactus, Edi Pan, Stradivarius, Naïve, Chandos, and Naxos. Italian pianist Maurizio Paciariello, schooled by Aldo Ciccolini and Paul Badura-Skoda and prizewinner of the ARD Competition, is a champion of rare repertoire and a specialist on period instruments.